Translations:
Russian Version (Ficbook.net - courtesy of JulsDo and Daniel Alexandrovich)
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This fic involves mature content, explicit language, dark themes, dark magic, difficult topics, violence, torture, blood, descriptions of injuries and the long-term consequences, mercy killings, heroic sacrificial tendencies, LGBTQ and coming out anxiety, major character deaths, and all the other difficult things that come with a story about war. Everyone has different tolerances, so while I like to think that the darker aspects of this story are not gratuitous or overdone—and that this story has plenty of happy, cathartic, and humourous moments—I do not want to accidentally trigger anyone without sufficient warning.
So please consider this as your warning. This fic has a level of gritty war brutality that some may not be comfortable with. I've done my best to include chapter specific warnings and summaries for chapters containing the more difficult content, but I've yet to complete this task, so just be mindful of that as you read. Please note this fic does not involve bashing, instead it takes a realistic look at the war, the consequences of actions, the price of power, and grey morality of people faced with difficult situations.
It is intended to be written for adults with an R rating, as per the assigned fic rating.
Please be kind to everyone on this platform and remember that there are an infinite number of ways to tell a story. Hateful, rude, and inappropriate comments will be deleted. Note that I typically disable comments on stories one year after they are completed.
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September 15, 1997
‘So why are you still here?’ Harry asked Ron.
‘Search me,’ said Ron.
‘Go home then,’ said Harry.
‘Yeah, maybe I will!’ shouted Ron, and he took several steps towards Harry, who did not back away.
Hermione tensed as the scene started to unfold in front of her.
What was happening? For being ‘the brightest witch of her age’, it was as if her brain suddenly short-circuited and stopped functioning. After everything they had been through, the fights they had endured previously – Ron and Harry’s pissing fit in fourth year – she could feel the tension. She could visibly see the flames enlarging towards an inevitable explosion. The building pressure was familiar, like their fights before – but she knew, this time, it was different.
They were arguing about whether or not Harry cared about Ginny and the rest of the Weasleys. Or was it that Ron was upset that the mission thus far had been long? Exhausting? Difficult? Utterly defeating? It was ludicrous. They were arguing about everything and nothing at the same time – but none of it was tangible.
Hermione tried to step in to calm things down, to bring Ron to the rational conclusion that Harry didn’t mean what Ron seemed to think he did. But Ron seemed determined to mimic the ever-growing storm outside as his face grew redder with rage. Ron exploded again – lashing out at her too this time, her and the fact that her’ parents were safely out of the way’. As if the fact that she had confunded and obliviated her parents that past summer made things easier on her or made the ongoing situation less intense. As if he thought that it somehow excused her from feeling the same worry and anguish that he was clearly feeling, because she now had less to lose in the war. Her chest tightened, and her jaw clenched as she felt the prickle of tears at the corner of her eyes. She didn’t know how to respond. But it didn’t matter because Harry was already screaming back, raising the octave of the tent another level only for Ron to immediately yell once more in retort.
‘Then GO!’ roared Harry. ‘Go back to them, pretend you’ve got your spattergroit, and Mummy’ll be able to feed you up and–‘
Ron made a sudden movement: Harry reacted, but before either wand was clear of its owner’s pocket, Hermione had raised her own.
‘Protego!’ she cried, and an invisible shield expanded between her and Harry on the one side and Ron on the other, all of them were forced backwards a few steps by the strength of the spell, and Harry and Ron glared from either side of the transparent barrier as though they were seeing each other clearly for the first time.
It was suddenly quiet, despite the noisy raindrops which hit the tent heavily. It felt as though the tent had frozen; time stood still. Hermione could taste the acid in the air, see the hatred in Ron’s eyes and the raging anger in Harry’s. The familiar building tension had finally snapped, but it snapped in an unfamiliar way as Hermione had dreaded. Lingering under the raw and turbulent emotions was something new, something different – something broken. Like a thousand shards of glass on the floor, this felt irreparable.
She heard Harry speak, but this time his voice was calm, cold, and flat.
‘Leave the Horcrux,’ Harry said.
Ron wrenched the chain from over his head and cast the locket into a nearby chair. He turned to Hermione.
Hermione’s eyes opened a fraction wider, and it was at that moment she realized that silent tears had been streaming down her cheeks. She was crying, crying because subconsciously, she knew what they had just lost even if her mind was still racing and trying to figure out what to say – how to repair the situation. Crying because she knew what Ron was about to ask her, and she already knew her response. Then Ron spoke, and she dreaded the words.
‘What are you doing?’
She stared at him, her eyes wide as tears rolled down her face, and the words slipped through her lips quietly. She didn’t want to do this.
‘What do you mean?’
Ron’s face twisted in frustration. He knew that Hermione knew what he meant. Angrily he clarified for her, a hint of desperation in his eyes.
‘Are you staying, or what?’
‘I…’
Hermione looked anguished. A loud roll of thunder outside of the tent sent a shiver down her spine. It felt like she was burning from the inside out. Her stomach was twisting, the feeling of sickness at the back of her throat. She took a breath, blinking her eyes once before she responded in the calmest voice she could manage.
‘Yes – yes, I’m staying. Ron, we said we’d go with Harry, we said we’d help–‘
Ron didn’t wait, though. He didn’t wait for her to explain her reasons. He didn’t want to hear them. He didn’t want her to remind him that the two of them, together, had promised to follow Harry and support him on his mission to hunt and destroy Horcruxes. The mission that Albus Dumbledore had assigned them. All of them. The mission that literally the entire wizarding world was depending on them completing – even though no one knew about it. He never listened. He never thought.
Why did she ever believe that this would be different?
‘I get it. You choose him.’
His face was ugly. Angry. Filled with a betrayal that was unjustified and selfish. She saw the turn of his shoulders as he started to pull away, as he started toward the door of the tent. She tensed and raised a hand as if to grab and stop him.
They had to fix this!
A wave of nausea and desperation flew over her, but she was impeded by her own shield charm. Waving her wand to remove it, she hurried after him through the tent door and into the rainstorm leaving Harry standing motionless inside. She screamed his name, calling him to come back.
‘Ron, no – please – come back, come back!’
Running farther from the tent, she caught the faintest sound of an apparition pop and her hand, which had still been slightly outstretched, fell to her side. She stopped. Her knees quivered as her lip trembled and the rain soaked through her hair.
This was different.
Turning solemnly on her heel, she walked slowly back to the tent, her eyes clouded and stuck to the ground. Stepping in under the flap, she saw that Harry had not moved an inch. He stared at her, his expression a strange mix that she did not have the capacity to process. Every bone in her body felt like lead. Her hair was plastered to her face. The wind howled and pulled aggressively outside as she stared back at Harry.
‘He’s g-g-gone! Disapparated!’
She felt like she was screaming her words, but she knew her voice was soft. Weak. Worn. Her face scrunched as the dam holding her emotions back broke, and heaving sobs wracked through her chest. She crumbled into the armchair in the corner of the tent as she let what felt like decades of stress, anguish, pain, and loss flow through her – not caring when she felt Harry hesitate near her and then the presence of a soft blanket being placed gently on her shoulders.
She heard him leave. She knew he was headed to his own bunk. She knew that she should get herself together, get organized, adjust their plan, figure out their next move – do anything other than sitting as the pathetic curled-up ball that she currently was. But she didn’t care. Right now, it felt like a piece of her had died.
-x-x-
Hermione woke painfully the next morning. Her hair had dried terribly, caked on her face with a few small leaves that had gotten tangled up in the storm. Her chest hurt like she’d run a mile, her eyes were undoubtedly pink and swollen, and her body screamed at her for having sat curled up in a chair all night. Dried tear tracks and snot covered her face, arms and the blanket that Harry had placed on her the night before.
Normally she would be embarrassed by her current state. Not because she cared about appearances – no, Hermione Granger did not care about that – but because she, Hermione Granger, always kept a cool head. She never broke down like she did last night. She never succumbed to the dread that secretly filled her heart. She never gave in or gave up – but last night she had, and it was one of her lowest moments.
Stiffly she shifted into a fully upright position and blinked around the room. It was quiet, and the tent was lit with bright sunlight with the faint sound of birds chirping in the background. It gave no hint to the disturbance that had unfolded in this very space the evening before. She glanced toward Harry’s bunk and saw that his back was to her, and his shoulders moved slowly with each deep breath he took – still asleep and almost peaceful looking to anyone who didn’t know him. Hermione knew him, though, and the slight tension in his shoulders and the blanket twisted around his ankles gave way to the truth that he had slept terribly, probably as bad as she did.
Stifling a groan, she pulled herself from the chair, staying as quiet as possible and set the blanket back down. She did not want to wake Harry. He needed his rest more than he would ever let on, but in truth, she also did not have the heart or the courage she needed to face him just yet. Last night it had felt like a piece of her heart had died, and she knew that Harry would be nursing his own wounds in his own way and that she needed to be there for him. But right now, she looked down at her dirty and still damp clothes feeling a bit disgusted with herself; she needed a shower. And tea. And just a minute or two alone. Frowning at the blanket before her, still covered in her dried snot and tears, she pulled her wand from her sweater pocket and muttered a quick cleaning charm. Then, quiet as a church mouse, she crept toward Harry’s bunk.
Staring down at him, she could see that his brow was furrowed, and as she suspected, the Horcrux locket was draped loosely over his neck. It rested on the mattress next to his chest. Gently, she reached down and undid the clasp, pulling the locket away from him. Almost instantly, the crease in his brow lessened, and he breathed deeper. With a small but sad smile on her face, Hermione snuck to the tent bathroom, grabbed fresh clothes on the way, closed the door and placed the locket around her neck. Taking a deep breath, she stripped off her dirty clothes. Then she turned on the water with her wand, adding a heating spell until steam started to rise.
The shower in the tent was actually very cleverly designed. The nozzle at the top was enchanted so that tapping it with your wand activated an aqua eructo charm until the nozzle was tapped again to turn off. The bathroom was fairly small, so it did not take long until steam filled the entire room. Then she stepped into the small shower stall and closed the curtain behind her.
She showered longer than what she would ever typically allow herself. Usually, her bathing, all of their bathing actually, was utilitarian – to the point and effective. Though that was probably due to her influence of wanting them to be efficient and the general desire that they all had for not wanting to get caught by snatchers with one of them stark naked in the shower while they needed to escape and apparate quickly. Today though, she allowed herself time to scrub every inch of her body, which she knew was her attempt to scrub away the remorse, sadness, and overall feelings of disappointment from the night before.
The locket swung loosely on her chest as she bathed. It was a nuisance, and she could have left it with Harry, but Hermione had always known that she handled the Horcruxes better than the two boys combined. Harry needed to rest, and sleeping an entire night with the locket on would only make the day ahead of them more difficult than it was already going to be. Besides, she smirked grimly to herself; the locket was dirty with dark magic – it could use a bath.
She cringed inwardly at that, then pondered if the reason why the locket did not impact her so strongly could be related to the meditation skills her parents had taught her as a child. The same meditation techniques that she had religiously continued to use since she was first taught them at eight years old. She’d never mentioned it to anyone, not even to the boys, but as a child, she used to struggle with anxiety related to her insatiable desire to be the best in everything.
‘Classic perfectionist’, they’d said.
Being ‘brilliant’ had come with its tolls, and wanting to always be the best in school had left her anxious as a child. So as a young kid, her parents had taught her how to meditate. They taught her how to breathe, relax, organize her thoughts, and work through problems logically and calmly. Ironically, this skill had helped her in almost every single facet of her life thus far and very well might be the best skill she had – and yet not one person knew she had that skill. At least not for her mentioning it. She suspected several of her professors were aware it, and it was very likely the only reason why she, Harry, and Ron were still alive now. If she ever saw her parents again, if they ever remembered her again, she would thank them.
With that thought, Hermione ran her fingers through her wet curly hair one last time and rested her palms and forehead against the cool wall of the shower stall. She allowed herself two minutes of deep calm breathing as the hot water pounded between her shoulder blades, loosening her stiff muscles while the locket hung lightly from her neck – then she opened her eyes. Pulling back the curtain, she stepped out of the shower stall, grabbed her wand from the sink counter and then tapped the overhead nozzle to shut off the water. Casting a quick drying spell, she then grabbed her fresh clothes but paused when she caught her reflection in the mirror. She looked tired. Freshly scrubbed with tinges of pink in her cheeks from the heat, hair still damp and hanging in curls around her shoulder – but the tired she saw seemed to be emanating from her bones.
Her face was skinnier, not gaunt, but thinner. The whole of her was. Being on the run was not luxurious – as Ron had clearly recently concluded – and she frowned at her reflection. If they were truly to fight and win this war, they needed to spend at least a little more time trying to eat well-balanced meals. She would need to look through their supplies today and their schedule to allow more time for food collection and management.
Pulling on her clothes, an old washed-out pair of muggle jeans that showed wear marks at the knees and a long-sleeve, thin and loose-fitting charcoal v-neck sweater, she sighed before brushing her teeth and then turned to her hair. It was the usual bushy mess that she had come to accept. She arched an eyebrow cautiously at it – as if trying not to spook or upset it and thus make it worse. She cast an additional drying spell to remove the lingering dampness. Then she opted to pull it into a messy pony on the top of her head. It flopped lamely to the side – her hair was simply too heavy and thick to look cute in a high pony. So, she twisted it into a large knot and left it there piled atop her head.
Leaning back against the sink, she slowly pulled on her socks. They were purple, knitted, oversized, and warm – perfect since the weather was getting cooler with each passing day. Standing straight with determination, she grabbed her wand and turned to face the mirror once more.
Well, this is as good as it is going to get today, she thought.
Leaving the small bathroom, she heard a gentle clicking noise in the kitchen area and turned to the left, walking down the very small and very short hallway that led back to the common area of the tent. She paused at the end, looking at Harry, who had two chipped tea mugs sitting on the kitchen table with some small scones on a plate in the middle – they were the last of the scones that they had, she cataloged mentally as a reminder that they would need to grab some more.
He had heard her approaching and looked up about a moment after she had stopped moving. The air felt tense with lingering unsaid words and unsure feelings. Her left hand fiddled nervously with the bottom hem of her shirt. She did not remember ever feeling awkward with Harry in the past, but she didn’t know what to say – neither of them did.
Harry, bless his heart though, spoke first and spoke softly.
Hey,” he said, his hand nervously fidgeting with the spoon he’d likely been using to stir the tea. He was looking directly at her. His eyes were worn and unsure, and she could see the stress he carried in his shoulders.
“Hey,” she said softly as her left hand fell from the hem of her shirt to clasp her wand in front of her. She saw him relax a fraction, the worry in his eyes becoming slightly more hopeful. She could not imagine what he must be thinking.
“I made tea,” he said somewhat abruptly. But his voice was still gentle, like she was a small injured animal that he was worried he might frighten away if he moved too quickly or spoke too loud. “It got cold, though. S-So I just used a warming charm – to reheat it. It’s one milk and two sugars. I’m sorry – I hope it’s okay?”
The last part came out in a bit of a jumble, and Hermione could see the hopeful yet desperate look in his eyes. His genuine concern that his gone-cold-then-reheated-tea might not be ‘okay’ was adorable, and his attempt at ensuring they were okay was clear. Harry was hopelessly helpful and caring – and he had remembered how she took her tea.
Hermione smiled, it was tired but genuine, and her appreciation for his efforts shone through. It was ridiculous for them to feel this uneasy around each other. They’d never had this problem before, and they had been through a lot together.
“It’s perfect, Harry, thank you,” she said as she walked toward the table to take a seat opposite to the side that he was standing on and set her wand down beside her.
He grinned in relief and slowly lowered himself down to the table, patiently waiting while she took a sip of her tea first before grabbing his own gently to hold it near his mouth. Holding hers in a similar fashion, both hands on the warm mug, elbows propped on the table, and the mug hovering just below her chin, she could see the way he studied her face – trying to figure out what to say.
“It’s okay, Harry,” she said softly, removing one hand and reaching it out gently toward his.
He dropped a hand from his mug and allowed her to grasp his fingers before she placed their intertwined hands between them in the center of the table. She gave him a firm squeeze, but his eyes still searched her face, desperate for something.
“We - are okay,” she said with surety.
Harry let out a breath he had been holding, his head dropped slightly, shoulders sagging, and he put his tea mug down to place his free hand over his face. He sat for a moment, head held in his hand before he quickly propped himself back up with a deep breath, running his hand through his wild black locks. He looked briefly up at the ceiling before his eyes fell back to her face. They were slightly red now, and she could almost feel the prickle of his tears that had formed in the corner of his eyes. She felt her own sting as she stared intently back at him, both of them trying to push their eotions back down.
“Thank god,” he said weakly, with a look of sad relief flooding his face. “I’m so sorry, Hermione.”
His eyes were genuine, and he gripped her hand back.
“I know,” she said with earnest. She set her cup down as well, and they instinctively grabbed each other’s hands – now sitting across from each one another tightly gripping the other as if they might lose one another if they let go. “I – I know. I am too. I am so, so sorry, Harry.”
“You shouldn’t be,” he said weakly. “You have nothing to be sorry for. You stayed.”
He stared at her with an adoration she wasn’t sure she’d seen before.
“Thank you for staying,” he said quietly.
“Of course,” she replied, her eyes flicking across his face. “Of course I would stay, Harry. I said that I would. I told you I would be here until the end – always.”
Harry smiled at her again. With some of the tension having now left his body, he rolled his shoulders back to a more comfortable position.
“I know,” he said quietly. “But still. I know it hasn’t been easy – and I’m sorry that I don’t seem to know what I’m doing half the time. It’s because I don’t. I wish I did. But I don’t. And I’m sorry for that,” he rambled before pausing. He looked at her carefully, sincerely, and spoke the next words slowly and with meaning. “I want you to know how much I need you here. How much I rely on you. And how grateful I am that you stayed. I know that last night wasn’t easy for you – but I’m so, so thankful that you stayed.”
Hermione stared at him; their hands had risen slightly between the two of them, with Harry clutching them almost desperately at his chest. One single tear fell from the corner of her eye, and she smiled with great sadness, her heart feeling heavy, but feeling confident.
“You’re right,” she said softly. “It was hard. But doing the right thing often is – it’s not about making the easy choices or doing what we want to do. It’s about doing the right thing and doing what we need to do. I don’t regret staying. The decision was easy, so don’t you dare ever think anything different–”
Harry had opened his mouth, perhaps to protest, perhaps to thank her again, perhaps to say she shouldn’t be so absolute in her stance – she didn’t know what he was going to say, but she didn’t care. She cut him off and continued. She wanted to get all of this out and on the table now because she didn’t want to keep skirting around on eggshells in a small tent while they had Horcruxes to find and destroy.
“The decision was easy,” she said more firmly, fixing him with a solid stare. “Seeing Ron leave. That – that was hard. It was hard because it hurt. I’m sad, Harry. I’m sad. I’m disappointed. I’m upset. I’m flabbergasted that he even thought to ask me to go with him! I expected more – I expected him to stay true to his word and to see this through. I expected him to be reliable and – and I expected him to, for once, see the bigger picture and understand that this – all of this – what we are doing here – is so much bigger than any of us as individuals. That we have to continue, that we have to do whatever we must to complete this mission.”
Hermione fixed Harry with a stern look of resolve before she continued. Harry himself was quiet now, sitting in a slight lean toward her, and she could see a small glint of determination reforming in his eyes.
“I am upset about Ron, Harry,” she said to make herself perfectly clear before taking a breath and squeezing his hands once firmly. “But I will get over it. Hard times show us who we really are – they show you someone’s true character. I always knew Ron was a little bit unreliable and a bit lazy.”
She gave Harry a small smile, and he smiled gently too.
“I guess.” She paused. “I guess I just thought that when things got really bad, that when it really came down to it, that I would be able to count on him. I guess I just hoped – that he was a little different.”
Harry’s smile was grim when he spoke.
“I know,” he said, his voice rough. “So did I.”
They sat in silence for a moment, each staring at the hands still interlaced between them. Harry absently rubbed his right thumb over her knuckles in a soothing motion.
“He may still come back,” Harry said with a small smile and a tiny glint of optimism. She could feel his gaze land upon her, waiting for her to respond.
Hermione’s brow creased as she mulled this over. It was a possibility, but she found that her eyes were entranced by the small circles that Harry’s thumb was still making over her knuckles.
“Maybe,” she said slowly and raised her eyes to look at Harry again. “Maybe. But – that won’t change how I feel.”
Harry quirked an eyebrow at her as if he was looking for her to confirm what she meant by this statement, and in return, she gave him her most direct stare.
“It won’t change how I feel now,” she stated firmly. “What happened here – if he comes back. Maybe – maybe I can forgive him. Maybe we can be friends. But – I can’t look past this. I – I won’t go back to how I felt before.”
Harry looked at her carefully, a thought present in the sight furrow of his brows, and he nodded slowly to show his understanding. Harry was aware of the feelings that Hermione had started to develop toward Ron – not just because he was a keen and observant person, but also because the two of them had briefly touched upon it in conversation. Hermione had been jealous when Ron had started snogging Lavender Brown in sixth year, and Harry had helped her deal with it, telling Hermione that Ron truly was interested in her but was an idiot and didn’t recognize his own feelings. It may have been harsh and earned him a small half-hearted smack from Hermione at the time – but it was true, and Harry knew it. Ron, for all his worth, was not always the brightest. It was very likely that he only ‘liked’ Hermione because they spent so much time together. When in reality, they had absolutely nothing in common and argued often. Harry had always been the bridge between the two of them; he had always been the buffer. Given some space, Ron would probably take interest in other girls and forget his feelings for Hermione all together. But he had never said that to her.
Hermione nodded in return, and Harry squeezed her hands once more before dropping them both back on the table and putting on his best smile.
“So how about breakfast,” he said with slightly over-exaggerated cheer. “I was up all night baking these things.”
Hermione laughed, always thankful for Harry’s ability to move on and force one foot in front of the other. She reached for a scone, taking a bite and complimented him on his cooking skills before taking another sip of the gone-cold-then-reheated-tea-that’s-gone-cold-again tea that Harry had made her.
Appropriate warnings will be given at the start of every chapter going forward.
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After breakfast, the day had continued on with some sort of normality. A general air of sadness at the loss of a third of their ‘ golden trio’ still filled the tent, but the earlier tension and unsurety had now dissipated, and Hermione and Harry were able to interact at their normal comfort level.
She knew that the road ahead of them had just gotten harder and that the lingering sadness wouldn’t fade overnight. However, she felt hopeful that she and Harry could still be successful whether Ron returned or not – Merlin only knows what he’ll decide to do – and she was happy that she and Harry had confirmed their strong friendship and their commitment to move forward.
After eating her scone, she had made a silent wish to the heavens – or to whatever deity might have been listening – that during their morning conversation she had been able to successfully ward away any lingering doubts Harry might have had with her decision to stay. She meant what she said when she said it, and she didn’t want Harry wasting his time in worry over how she was coping.
After finishing their scones, Hermione had chased Harry into the bathroom to shower and fought off his attempts to take the Horcrux with him.
“It’s already had a bath today,” she’d stated firmly as she thrust clean clothes into Harry’s chest – his mouth opened in protest. “Besides,” she continued cutting off whatever he was about to say. “You slept with it all last night. It’s my turn to spend some quality time with it.”
He took the clothes she had pushed into his chest but still stood in place, obviously uneasy with just giving in to her demand and leaving her with the locket. She smiled at him and then turned away to the kitchen, intending to review their food list while he cleaned up. “You can have it again tonight if that will make you feel better; now go get clean!” She threw over her shoulder as she grabbed her purse and began riffling through it.
She heard him walk the few small steps to the bathroom and then the sound of the door as it clicked closed. Sighing in relief, she then pulled out the list she kept of all their supplies and ran through it, making notes on what items they needed to restock.
By the time Harry had finished in the bathroom – exiting wearing the set of clean clothes she had handed him and hair still as unruly as ever – it had grown darker outside, and the rain had started once more. Hermione had finished reviewing their supplies and had compiled a comprehensive list of foods and items that they needed to restock. She had since started packing up the kitchen and her belongings – preparing to move on. The riverbank near their campsite had been rising steadily over the past few days, and soon their tent would be a swimming pool. They never stayed in one place for too long, always hopping from site to site to lower the risk of being tracked and caught. Today they were due to move again, and she was going to ensure that they stayed on track.
Harry saw her packing and quietly followed suit, placing his belongings in the bag that Hermione had given him when they first left the Burrow. When they had first set up camp, she taught Ron and Harry how to properly miniaturize their belongings using reducio and how to cast an unbreakable charm to protect their stuff while it was carried within their bags. She’d given each of them a small backpack for storage, though the bags often ended up being carried within her own purse – more often Ron’s, since he tended to not want to carry his own, despite the feather-light charm she had carefully placed on all of their bags.
It took them a little over forty minutes to get everything securely stored away. Twice the time it usually takes , Hermione thought as she placed the teapot back in her purse. She knew that they were moving slowly from the night before, so she said nothing as Harry handed her the last tea mug at a snail’s pace. Taking a mental tally of all their belongings, she looked around the tent once and issued a brief nod when she was certain that nothing was missed. Then, she threw on her rain jacket and looped her purse strap over her shoulder before exiting the tent into the drizzle.
Harry stepped out a moment later, the hood of his own nylon jacket pulled up over his head. She used her wand to fold up the tent and shrunk it down before stowing it away safely in her purse. They both stood quietly in the rain, looking at the growing river bank.
“We can wait a little bit longer,” Harry said with a calm voice.
Hermione looked back the way that Ron had stormed off the night before. It was dark and empty. A tightness in her chest ached to stay, wanting to believe that Ron would show up any second, that they could erase the last 24 hours and go back to how things were. They both stood quietly, looking toward the tree line as if waiting for the familiar popping to sound. Hermione creased her brow, but it won’t go back to the way it was. It can’t. Her logic was overruling her juvenile emotions. I won’t .
It was like a switch flicked in her brain as the logical side of her took action – her strong side, the side that kept her safe, the side that protected her from the dark and dangerous things in the world, the side that analyzed and made the best decisions, the side that knew what she needed, and what she truly wanted. It collected her emotions and feelings for Ron into a neat little box. Then slapped a label on it that read ‘ change your expectations, this won’t give you what you need – directions: process the change and move on ’.
“No,” she said firmly and with resolve. “We’re not waiting. I’m not wasting my time on false hopes. What’s done is done. Let’s move on.”
With that, she grabbed Harry’s arm firmly and apparated away; the only trace of them left in the soggy wet forest was a slight breeze as their bodies vanished from sight with a faint and distinctive pop.
They landed on a windswept heather-covered hillside, and thankfully, it wasn’t raining. Stripping off their rain jackets, Harry began placing the protective charms while Hermione pulled the tent out of her purse and began to set it up. An hour later, they were seated several feet apart from each other on a large rock outside of the tent, sipping their tea, as the wind blew Hermione’s hair into even more of a mess – her top knot long since forgotten.
“We’re going to need a few more supplies,” Hermione said as she held her mug close to her chest. The wind was cool, but the sun was still warm. The weather was actually not too bad without the rain, the last of the fall season was upon them, and soon it would be cold, snow and sleet. She shivered at the thought and was thankful for the sunshine at the moment.
“Yeah,” Harry said as he placed his teacup down to lean back on both hands. His loose-fitting black t-shirt rippled in the wind. “Our whole ‘hunter-gatherer macho living off the land’ thing has been going pretty terribly, huh?”
She snorted at his attempt to keep the general mood around them becoming closer and closer to running out of food and possibly starving ‘light’.
“Yeah,” she said, mocking his tone and his pose, leaning back and turning her face toward him. “Turns out that having magic doesn’t make it that much easier to catch or collect food. Who would have thought?”
He smiled. “Well, what do you have in mind? We can’t exactly walk into a supermarket. And we don’t have any more Polyjuice potion left.”
She hummed her agreement and pulled a small folded piece of paper out of her pocket. Unfolding it, she leaned to her left to show it to Harry.
“We’re here,” she said, pointing to an area on the map. Harry nodded as if this meant something to him, though in reality, he had no idea where the hell they were. “I camped here once with my family when I was young. There is a small town a few miles to the south, on the other side of this river, with some local farms and markets. I thought – I thought we could stop there to collect some stuff once we’re packed and leaving this place.”
“Okay,” Harry said, slowly looking down at her face. “So – do you think the town is small enough we won’t get noticed, or are you about to suggest something that you from first year would have pitched a fit over?”
Hermione rolled her eyes, but clearly, Harry knew her well. She would absolutely never chance bringing them into a city, town or any other populated area after what they went through going to the Ministry of Magic. Not after seeing the undesirable posters. She doubted that Voldemort had any lackeys in this area, but she was just not willing to take the risk – Harry was right. She was about to suggest doing something that naive 11-year-old Hermione Jean Granger would have strongly disagreed with.
“You know perfectly well that I broke school rules in first year,” Hermione replied indignantly.
“Yeah, but that was toward the end of the year. Before that, it was all ‘we could have been killed, or worse expelled!’” he said, feigning concern and placing a hand to his face in mock horror.
“Oh, shut it.” She smacked his arm, her hand still holding the map.
Harry laughed but dropped his mock impression. “You’re right; I’m sorry. You were very rebellious in first year.” He winked. “So, what’s your plan?”
Hermione huffed once but began explaining her plan. They would stay here for several days – typical of their usual campsite process. Then, on the 7th night, because it was a Tuesday and the town should be quiet, they would pack everything up at 12am, and she would apparate them closer to the town. She figured it was best to apparate them to the small pumpkin farm that sat to the north so that they didn’t stumble upon any unsuspecting people. From there, they would sneak into town using some muffling charms and the invisibility cloak while sticking to the shadows. There was a small supermarket and farmer’s market on the main street, and from what she recalled, there should be a back alley running behind the two buildings. If they approached from the north, they could sneak into the alleyway undetected and break into the stores to get their supplies. She had brought muggle money along with her for the mission, so she figured they could place it in the register before leaving – so it wasn’t like they were breaking in and stealing, just breaking in.
Harry nodded after she had finished explaining the plan, using the map to point to the store location and where she thought the alleyway ran. The majority of the residential housing was to the south, so there would only be a few neighbourhood blocks that they would need to navigate through to get to the store. They both agreed that the supermarket would be their prime target. Once they had what they needed, she would immediately apparate them to a new location.
“Alright,” Harry said as he straightened up from looking at her map. “It’s a plan. We’ll just move slowly and carefully and not stick around any longer than we have to.”
She nodded her agreement. Glad that they would soon be getting some supplies and feeling more confident now that Harry had agreed that her plan should be relatively safe.
-x-x-
The next couple of days drifted by slowly, though each day their determination grew stronger, and the thought of having some fresh food over dried packaged goods kept their spirit up. A new routine started to develop between them – during the day, Hermione would read her copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard. She would take notes, read books to memorize new spells and look for information that she might have previously missed. Then, she would talk to Phineas’s portrait in hopes of gathering new information and have afternoon tea with Harry outside on their rock. Harry would also talk to Phineas’s portrait – though more often than not, it ended with him stuffing an indignant Phineas back into Hermione’s purse. With the rest of his time, Harry practiced his defence spells, gathered a few of the useful herbs that were growing on the hillside that Hermione had pointed out to him and bottled them carefully per her instructions, and he started working his way through one of Hermione’s books on defence and offensive spells.
In the evening, they always ate their dinners together and discussed through anything new that they had learned during the day or reviewed the information that was provided by Phineas. They didn’t learn anything useful over the few days that they spent on the heather-covered hillside, but Hermione liked that they had established the habit anyways. Chores and maintenance tasks seemed to divide evenly and naturally between the two of them – if Hermione prepared the food, Harry would clean up afterwards with no question. If Harry checked and set the protective spells around the campsite, Hermione would update their list of supplies and give the tent a quick clean with some cleaning charms. They continued to take turns guarding the tent at night in four-hour stints and would smile sleepily at each other when they traded places. Each day that went by, things got easier, and the to-the-bone tired feeling they’d had the night Ron left began to lessen.
They didn’t speak about Ron. His name was not uttered once during the entire duration they spent on the hillside. The wound was still a bit too fresh, and in Hermione’s opinion – she had nothing to say.
What was there to say? He’d abandoned them. He’d done exactly what she knew she should have expected from him – but it was exactly what she had been hoping he wouldn’t do.
In a lot of ways, she wasn’t even surprised it had happened. So, the topic was left untouched. Though she suspected it might come up later as time went on and it became easier to speak about it impartially. For now, though, she was content to busy herself with reading and trying to plan where to go next.
After dinner on the seventh night, Harry carried the dishes to the kitchen, casting a cleaning spell he’d learned from Hermione earlier in the week before carefully setting the dishes onto the counter.
“Did you want to try and catch some sleep before tonight,” he asked as he set the last plate down.
Hermione looked up at him. She had already pulled a book from her bag, opening it to the page she’d left off at the night previously.
“I probably should,” she sighed. “It’s going to be a long night. But honestly, Harry, I don’t think I’ll be able to. My mind is racing right now. I know this plan is safe – we’ll be okay – I just–” She stopped and grimaced slightly. “I still can’t help but be nervous – after the Ministry.”
Harry nodded; he understood.
“I know,” he sighed too and came to sit at the table across from her. “I just thought I’d offer since I know I won’t be sleeping, but – it will be fine. We’re in the middle of nowhere. Just a quick in – grab supplies – then out, and we’ll be right on our way.”
Hermione nodded and then proceeded to read her book. For the next few hours, they sat across from one another in comfortable silence, reading and waiting until midnight. Harry had started flicking through her copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard when Hermione announced it was time to pack up.
They packed with efficiency this time and had the whole tent deconstructed, neatly folded and put away within 20 minutes. They’d both changed promptly into black clothes before they’d started packing, unanimously deciding that it would be a good idea. Looking like a pair of ninjas in the night, Hermione grabbed Harry’s arm firmly and apparated them to the pumpkin farm on the north side of the town.
-x-x-
The field was quiet when they appeared, the night’s temperature significantly lower than the heat provided by the still-warm sun during the day. She suspected the warm-days-cool-nights season would not last much longer, though. They crouched together quietly while Harry pulled out his invisibility cloak from his pack, draping it across his forearm before re-shouldering his pack. As they stood, Hermione cast two muffling charms at each of their feet; then, they proceeded to creep through the dark pumpkin patch toward the town.
When they finally approached the first block of houses in the small neighbourhood to the north of the supermarket, Harry covered them with the cloak and snugged up closer behind Hermione, laying one gentle hand on her shoulder so they could move more smoothly together. Travelling with multiple people under the cloak had ceased to be easy years ago – they were no longer the eleven-year-old children sneaking around the castle library for books on Nicolas Flamel as they once were. Though Harry was not as tall as Ron or as thick as some of his peers, he had still grown into a 5’-10” tall man with broad shoulders. Hermione was petite and on the shorter side – but regardless, navigating with two full-sized adults essentially under a blanket no bigger than a double bed flat sheet was difficult.
Hermione took the lead, knowing that Harry had put her in front because she knew the area. Slowly, she led them through the neighbourhood streets toward the alleyway behind the supermarket. It took them several minutes, but they did not run into anyone along the way.
Entering the back alleyway, they moved even more cautiously. The area was small and cluttered with many different objects littering their escape path. Dumpsters, doorways, boxes, random junk, and signs left plenty of opportunity for people or random animals to hide behind – thankfully, they ran into none. Arriving at a slightly rusted door, Hermione raised her wand to whisper alohomora and unlocked it before they scuttled inside.
She supposed that they would have attempted to apparate directly into the store, but that idea was even more dangerous than sneaking in. She hadn’t been in this supermarket in years, and if she wasn’t careful, she could apparate them inside a wall and partway through a shelf. Apparating indoors to specific locations was much more tricky than broad-ranged apparitions outdoors, and they had agreed it wasn’t worth the risk when they had the cloak at their disposal.
They spent over an hour and a half working their way through the grocery store aisles collecting different foods – mostly fresh – and other supplies like toothpaste, paper, soap, and shampoos. Each item was shrunk down and carefully loaded into Hermione’s purse – each stored in a particular location within her undetectable extension charmed bag so that they could access it easily later. She preserved several of the food items so that they would keep, using charms that Harry was unfamiliar with, so that they could stock up on extra of everything. Harry was very pleased when Hermione grabbed a treacle tart, his favourite, from the bakery section and added it to the purse.
Once all their items had been safely stowed away, they approached the cash register, and Hermione carefully counted out bills from the pile she had on hand. Tapping the register gently with her wand, she left the cash inside and then closed it once more. Harry waited patiently for her to complete this task, knowing full well that she would never agree to steal the supplies – and frankly, he admired her for her high moral standards, never failing, not even in war. He also understood it. This was a muggle store, they had nothing to do with this fight, and she didn’t want them to pay the price on behalf of the wizarding world.
By this point, they both felt the stress and anxiety of their little side quest thinning, and they were feeling pretty victorious and pleased with themselves. Eager to get out into the cool night air, they made their way to the back alleyway exit door in silence. They hadn’t spoken during their shopping excursion as they both were unsure what kind of alarms – if any – a small town supermarket would have. So, they opted to stay on the side of caution and communicated with slight tugs or pulls of one another’s jacket.
Reaching the door, Hermione pushed it open with far less caution than she’d had while entering the store. They carefully stepped out into the alleyway together and closed the door silently behind them, locking it shut again. Turning to the right, she moved them away from the light that hung in the alley and any of the potential security cameras so that they could stand in the dark while Harry put the cloak away. Harry didn’t trust apparating with the cloak out, and Hermione agreed – it was far too valuable to lose.
Harry removed the cloak and stretched gratefully, unslinging his pack and dropping to his knees to stuff it inside. Hermione took a step away to stretch, raising her arms above her head and looking at the night’s sky. It was beautiful, a full moon. She rolled her neck gently and twisted her shoulders to stretch further – turning her head quickly to the right when she heard what sounded like a surprised grunt and froze.
Two large yellowish eyes stared back at her – they looked surprised, but only momentarily.
Werewolf ! Hermione’s mind screamed.
Her hand shot out, grabbing for Harry as she started to call him “Harr- UMPF! ”
Her cry was cut off as the werewolf – no longer stunned by their sudden appearance – lashed out a clawed arm at her in a swiping motion, clearly aiming to disembowel her. She saw a flash of gold before it caught her across the chest and stomach, knocking the wind from her lungs as she was thrown backward several feet down the alley. Her head hit the pavement hard, and her vision blurred black before white lights danced in front of her eyes. Her hands came up in front of her desperately; wand raised at a target that she couldn’t even see as sharp, searing pain shot through her head, and she noted that it felt warm and wet.
“HERMIONE!” Harry yelled. He’d obviously noticed the werewolf now and had thrown two stunning spells at it – but they did little to stop it as he scrambled to his feet to run toward her.
The beast lunged for his legs, mouth wide, drool flying, its eyes glowing and rolling with rage. Harry jumped and rolled to the side with no amount of finesse – barely getting his leg out of the way before the werewolf’s jaws snapped shut viciously. He threw two more spells at its face, but it only growled and bared jagged white teeth before it lunged again with a violent snarl.
Hermione managed to get herself off the ground, standing on legs that swayed with eyes that swam before she threw two stunning spells at it, and Harry dodged it for a second time. Wincing her eyes in pain, the agony screaming from her chest called her to blackout – she looked for Harry and begged her mind to focus. Werewolf, werewolf – what the fuck do I use?!
Harry was now just a few feet from her to the left, on his back in an awkward position, having landed roughly to avoid the jaws that so desperately tried to rip a piece of him off. He could barely cast counters as his main focus was dodging and saving the limbs that the werewolf seemed determined to take while he tried to keep a tight hold on his wand.
She forced her brain to calculate, to function, and then she raised her wand with a faintly shaking hand the same second the werewolf made to lunge toward Harry again – she struck it twice. Hard. Once with a strong confundo, s econd with a direct hit diffindo – she saw it rip across the werewolf’s chest and blood splattered to the ground. Pausing only for a heartbeat, she threw herself toward Harry, left hand outstretched, and she cast a final spell: confringo! The werewolf and the alley where she had aimed violently exploded, shards of debris flew everywhere – but her hand had already grabbed Harry’s, he gripped her tightly, and she apparated them away.
Warning:
This chapter contains: blood, and severe injuries.
-x-x-
The world around them had distorted violently, Hermione’s nails ripping into Harry’s skin as new surroundings started to warp into view. Grass, the smell of the ocean, dampness and a cool breeze hit her senses rapidly. The moment the grassy hills solidified around them and Hermione was sure she had completed their apparition, she let go of Harry’s hand, unable to hang on anymore, and thumped to the ground. The force of the impact pushed the air from her lungs once more as her back collided with the ground. It was dark, the grass was damp, and she had brought them to a grassy hill near the ocean in South England – she hoped. Rolling immediately to her side Hermione vomited violently, convulsing as her head pounded, feeling as though it had been split open like a melon.
There was a reason why apparition required licensure. There was a reason why you never apparated when drunk or injured – it was incredibly difficult to do and required immense concentration. A concentration that Hermione knew she barely had as she felt herself fading in and out of consciousness. A new wave of nausea hit her when her brain circled back to Harry.
HARRY! Where did Harry land! She tried to get on her knees, but her whole body was shaking so violently she slumped back down again onto her back, unable to see anything as her vision faded out once more, only hearing the sound of the waves and the smell of the ocean as a light breeze blew over her face.
“HARRY!” she called out with as much force as she could manage. He could have been flung a decent way away when she let go of his hand, and she didn’t know if he’d been injured in the last moments of their escape. FUCK! She thought, hot tears forming in her eyes. I shouldn’t have let go! She wailed inwardly, I should have made myself hang on!
Raising her hand to her chest, she flinched at the pain when she touched it and pulled her hand away quickly as she gagged from the feeling. Her eyes began to refocus, her surroundings becoming visible once more. She raised her hand in front of her face. She was unable to see the colour that stained it as it was still dark outside, but it didn’t matter – she knew it was wet. Dripping wet. In her blood.
A light flashed to her right, and she heard Harry screaming her name.
“HERMIONE! HERMIONE!” Harry’s voice was loud and desperate. “Fuck - HERMIONE!”
“HERE!” she yelled, hand raised in the air above her, hoping that Harry would see it above the tall grass.
“I’m here!” she choked out.
The light flashed in her direction and bobbed around as she heard the thumping of feet approaching. Left hand still raised in the air for Harry to see, she slowly raised her right hand and wand toward her head. It was wet too, and she felt a tear in her scalp along the back. She groaned, feeling like she was going to vomit again.
“HERMIONE!” Harry called once more as she heard him close in, the light from his wand casting over her outstretched hand. “Shit!”
Harry’s blood turned cold at the sight, a bloodied hand was outstretched from the tall grass, the blood was literally dripping from her fingers. He ran toward her at twice the speed, terrified of what he would see when he got there. He dropped to his knees when he reached her side, grabbing her outstretched hand in his and clenching it.
“Hermione – fuck, okay.” The panic in his voice made her head spin, and she felt him drop her hand and tug at the strap around her body. Her hand fell to her side limply. She didn’t have the energy to move. She didn’t have the energy to do anything.
“Harry,” she whimpered, her eyes glazing over with more tears from the pain as her head lolled to the side. She looked up at him, catching a glimpse of his face. It was wrought with worry, and fear flashed in his eyes.
“It’s okay,” he said to her, but his voice betrayed him and shook with terror. “ Diffindo !” Harry cut her purse strap and ripped the top of the bag open.
“Cle-anin - Dit-tany,” she slurred as her vision blurred, mind waving in and out. She had lost far too much blood. “Sil- sil-vr. Blo-od replensss – po-” She couldn’t get her mouth to make the sounds that she needed them to.
“Shh, it’s okay – I’ve got you.” His voice was tense, unstoppering the bottle in his hands as he spoke. “I’ve got you. You’re okay - it’s going to be okay-”
When Harry had hit the ground, he landed about three hundred feet away from Hermione. His side hit the ground – hard – and he had felt his ribs crunch painfully. Wincing, he forced himself up to his feet and looked around wildly, wand in hand, searching for Hermione. He’d caught a glimpse of her before she had lunged toward him in the alley to grab his hand and apparate them away – it was a sight he wasn’t prepared for, one he hoped he’d never see again. Her entire front was covered in red blood, and it poured from her shredded jacket. Thin tendrils of blood leaked down her face from her head and across her high cheekbones while blood caked the side of her neck.
He immediately began screaming her name, running in the direction he thought he saw her fall when the apparition was complete. He paused every few feet, listening intently, using his wand for light, then he heard his name, and his head jerked to the left. Just there to the left, he’d heard her. He knew he had heard her, and so he bolted. Running faster than he had ever run in his life, ignoring the screaming pain from his lungs while he breathed. Then he saw her hand, jutting out from the grass – ghost-white against the crimson that stained her fingers and palms, that dripped down her forearm. When he’d gotten to her, it was so much worse than what he hoped to find. His stomach twisted as he’d dropped to his knees.
Now kneeling beside her, Harry recalled what Hermione had done when Ron was splinched. He’d summoned the essence of dittany the second he had her bag open along with a wound cleaning potion, but Hermione hadn’t even heard the words leave his mouth and was still trying to mumble out instructions. With the bottle unstoppered, he first dowsed her wounds with the cleaning potion, dumping it generously over her and holding her steady when she flinched and reeled from the pain. A sound that could only be described as a yowl poured from her mouth.
“I’m so sorry, Hermione.” He winced as he dropped the now empty potion bottle to the ground. Grabbing the dittany next, he unstoppered it just as fast as he had the first bottle. He quickly placed several drops over the wound on her head. He cradled her neck gently as he lifted her head up higher so that he could apply it to the full length of the wound – shushing her gently when she moaned out in protest.
He then placed the bottle on the ground with shaking hands and tore open the shredded outer jacket she had on. He gagged, fearing he’d be sick – it looked like something from a horror film. Her chest was rising and falling rapidly. Her dark grey shirt was torn in three large lines – all of which were oozing blood through her mangled skin. Using a carefully pointed diffindo, he cut her shirt down the middle and peeled it delicately to the sides. She cried out in protest, arm jutting forward to grab his forearm tightly, nails embedding themselves in his arm.
“Si – v – rr,” she slurred out again, eyes meeting his briefly before they rolled back into her head.
“Si-v,” Harry mimicked her noise, his mind racing and ignoring the painful grip she had on his arm. “Sil-er – Silver!” he shouted, sure that this was what she meant and taking her responding groan as confirmation.
He reached for her bag again and summoned silver , unsure of exactly what would show up – but out popped a small bottle of what looked like silver powder.
“Okay – okay, I’ll put this on too.” His voice was quick, barely keeping the panic at bay as he picked up the dittany and began pouring it along her chest wounds, shaking a small amount of the silver powder on top of it. He had no idea what he was doing. He wasn’t a giant encyclopedia of knowledge like Hermione was – but he trusted her mind even when she was in this state.
Hermione cried out beneath his hands as he worked.
“I know,” he said as soothingly as he could while her whimpers continued. “I know, I’m sorry – I’m so sorry, Hermione. It’s okay – you’re going to be okay.”
He added another pass of dittany to her wounds for good measure, then capped the bottle before dropping it to the ground next to the silver powder. Finally, he summoned the blood replenishing potion, cracked the bottle open, and then lifted her head to rest on his extended leg before bringing the bottle to her lips.
“Hermione,” he said in the calmest voice he could manage. “I’ve got the blood replenishing potion. You have to drink it, okay – I need you to swallow.” He tilted the bottle, and she managed to drink a gulp of the potion before she sputtered and coughed.
Shit! he thought as he brought the bottle away from her lips. I have no idea how much to give her.
“I – I don’t know how much Hermione – please,” he stammered, a new desperation in his voice. I’m so fucking useless, he moaned inwardly, cursing his lack of knowledge and his constant dependency on the very girl who now laid limp and bloodied in his arms. “How much do I give you?”
“T-t-tooo. Bot – bot -s–” she stammered out, her eyes had fallen closed, and her body started shaking from blood loss.
Harry quickly brought the bottle back up to her mouth and coaxed the rest of it down. He discarded the first empty bottle and summoned a second and helped her drink it, muttering encouraging words to her as she went. Promising her that she would be okay, that they would be fine and that when this was all over, he was going to learn. He was going to be better. He would be prepared – he would be someone that she could depend on. When the second bottle was finished, she looked a little less pale, her breathing had evened out, and her shaking had subsided to a gentle tremor. She took a shaky breath as her eyes fluttered beneath her lashes; Harry held onto her hand gently so she would know he was there, that she wasn’t alone.
Upon a quick inspection a moment later, the wound on the back of her head seemed to be all but healed, the dittany having worked exactly the way that he knew it should – but the wounds across her chest were a different story and like nothing he’d ever seen. They were large, angry and deep. They had closed now, so she wasn’t losing any additional blood – but only just, and they looked as if a gust of wind might rip them open again if it was anything more than a slight breeze. It was too hard to see the exact extent of the damage or what scarring might be left due to all the blood that still covered her chest and the torn remains of her shirt that stuck to her skin.
The tension in her body was evident, and her hand still trembled in Harry’s with a constant steady shake. Her whole body shivered slightly against the cold ground, and her breathing was still quicker than normal. Harry knew that she needed to relax, she needed to rest so that her body could heal, and he needed to get her cleaned up so that he knew what he was dealing with. He reached for her bag and summed out one bottle of calming draught and two blankets. Rolling one up like a pillow, he gently placed it under her head and then covered her with the second.
“Hermione,” he said slowly, still gripping her shaking hand. “I’m going to get the tent set up and get you inside and cleaned up. I’ve got calming draught for you first, okay? It – it will help. I’ll only be gone a minute, okay? I promise – just a minute – so I can get you inside.”
She murmured something that Harry could not make out. It sounded like ‘ mmm’ to him, though, so he quickly tilted her head again and slowly poured the calming draught into her mouth. She swallowed diligently, and after finishing the bottle, he saw her form visibility relax. He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze before standing quickly to set up the tent.
Harry moved faster than he thought physically possible, circling the area to set up the protective wards and enchantments – one eye always on Hermione’s small form in the grass. He then summoned the tent from her purse, it flew out aggressively, and he had it set up in the shortest time he’d ever managed it. Throwing the empty bottles, remaining essence of dittany and silver powder into her purse, he collected her wand and then, using his own, carefully levitated her into the tent. She murmured only slightly at the movement, having lost consciousness while Harry was setting up the tent.
Transfiguring the now bloodied blanket into a sort of cot, he laid Hermione on it in the center of the kitchen area and then proceeded to clean her up. Using one of the spells she’d taught him, tergeo, and a damp cloth, he wiped away the blood on her hands, face, neck, and head – purposely leaving her chest for last as he was terrified to touch it. Terrified that he’d accidentally rip it back open and undo whatever he’d managed to do thus far. He forced his hands to be steady, taking deep breaths as he worked and blinked back the tears that had started to form in his eyes.
Once the rest of her was cleaned up, he carefully cut away the remainder of her shirt and jacket and discarded them to the side – he left her bloodied bra in place for the time being, despite the fact that it didn’t seem to be held together in the center anymore after having been sliced down the middle by the werewolf’s claw. He didn’t feel comfortable removing it – it felt too invasive, she wasn’t even conscious right now. He cast a quick cleaning charm on it to help clear the dried blood, deciding that he would remove it once the rest of her chest was cleaned up before he put her in a fresh shirt, and he promised himself that he would close his eyes while doing so.
Cleaning the front of her off gave a much better picture of the damage that was done. She’d received three large wounds. The first swept across her left collar bone to mid-sternum. The second started just above her left breast and cut clear across her chest down to her lower ribs on the right side – directly between her breasts, although thankfully not touching them. The third stretched from the top left of her stomach down to almost her right hip bone above her belly button.
Harry’s breath shuddered as he stared down at her. She was so small. So fucking tiny , he thought. So much smaller than he had ever realized, and now, she was marred with scars that were too large for her. Too angry. Too violent. Sure, the blood was gone, her shredded skin was ‘healed’ from the dittany and silver – but the distorted and angry red marks - they would stay. He knew they would. He didn’t know much about injuries caused by werewolves, but if the dittany hadn’t removed the scars yet – they weren’t going anywhere. A tear slipped from his eye, and he shook his head as a sob caught in his throat.
“IT’S NOT RIGHT!” he screamed out, the quiet tent rippling from the breeze in response. He threw the bloodied rag he still held to the ground as hard as he could, his breath coming in short gasps.
He reached for her bag, unable to keep his hands from shaking as he pulled out a fresh set of her clean clothes. Then carefully, so as not to move her too much, he redressed her in a pair of comfy black sweats and a loose-fitting purple zip-up sweater. True to his earlier promise, he kept his eyes closed when he removed her bra, mindful of where he placed his hands and ensuring that she was properly covered before he opened them again. It wasn’t easy, but with a zipper sweater, it was possible.
Then he levitated her from the makeshift cot to her bunk, adding a pair of her thick knitted red socks to her feet before pulling the blanket over her.
Unable to leave her side, Harry pulled a chair over next to her bunk and sat down. Grabbing hold of her hand gently, he began tracing light circles across her knuckles with his thumb. She looked calm now, her face no longer distorted in anguish. Her cheeks were rosy – having been freshly replenished with blood. Her breathing was deep and relaxed thanks to the calming draught, and the cut on her head had all but vanished.
“You’re okay,” he said softly, his eyes tracing the shape of her face, memorizing it. “I’m going to make sure you’re okay. Always.”
The sound of the ocean waves rocked gently through the tent as he continued to stare at her. He stared at her in silence until his eyes started to droop, until his shoulders started to slump and until his head bobbed and he drifted off to sleep still clutching her hand.
-x-x-
Hermione’s head pounded. It felt like someone had hit her across the back of her head with a rock or perhaps a sledgehammer. Her eyes were still closed, they felt too heavy to open, but she could hear a faint voice to her right. It was familiar – though her brain did not seem to want to function properly just yet. She was tired, so tired. Her body felt like it had been put through a garburator and her chest ached something awful. She laid there for a moment longer, trying to collect her bearings, trying to recall what her last conscious thought had been. It was at that moment that she heard the gentle waves, and she registered the smell of the ocean – and then everything flooded back to her like lightning.
“HARRY!” she screamed as her eyes flew open and she attempted to shoot up in bed.
Firm hands grasped her shoulders and supported her as she nearly collapsed from the intense pain that ripped through her chest.
“Hey, relax,” someone said. It was Harry’s voice, and it was calm. It was soothing.
She forced her eyes to focus as she allowed the arms that held her shoulders to gently guide her to lean on a pillow propped up from the bed. Harry was there, to her right – an opened book half-fallen out of his lap as he leaned over her to lay her down. His eyes looked tired and worn, but there was something else there – happiness, and he looked like he was going to cry.
“Harry, are you alright?” she asked, voice hoarse. Her brows furrowed in concern as she examined his face, neck, and chest – her eyes drifting over his body, quickly taking him in to make sure he was all there. “Were you bitten? Are you okay?”
Tears filled Harry’s eyes, and his face scrunched a fraction. She didn’t understand what was going on – then he laughed. It was more like a bark, a release of physical tension as his face turned into an anguished joy she’d never seen before, and he leant forward to hug her.
“You’re fucking unbelievable, Hermione,” he said into her hair. She could feel his tears against her cheek, and she stiffly raised her left arm to hug him back. A sob escaped his chest, and he pulled her tighter to him – but not too tight, she noted, he was handling her with restraint.
“You were mauled by a fucking werewolf, you split your head open, you almost died from blood loss, you’ve been unconscious for two days–“ his voice broke as he nuzzled his head closer to her neck. “And you ask me if I’m okay? – fuck – yes, I’m okay, Hermione – ugh.”
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled into his neck. He laughed slightly before he gently pulled away, sitting back down on his chair but leaning toward her.
“Are you okay?” he asked her, looking at her as intently as she had examined him.
“I feel like shit if I’m being honest,” she replied, a weak smile gracing her lips. Harry returned her smile empathetically, and she continued. “My head’s a bit rough, like a bad headache – I – I must have hit it a bit harder than I thought.”
Harry nodded. “You did. There was a gash along the back – it’s healed up now, but I imagine it still hurts something terrible. Is there anything that I can get you for the headache?”
Hermione nodded slowly, her head not allowing anything faster.
“Before we left, Mrs. Weasley gave me a few of her home remedy potions for headaches. She calls them headache helpers , and there should be some in my bag.”
Harry nodded.
“Let’s see.” He reached down beside him, grabbed her bag, and located the small bottle with a smile. “Here you go.”
He carefully opened the bottle and passed it to her. Hermione took the potion gratefully, drinking it quickly and returning the bottle to Harry. Harry saw the effects of the potion almost instantly, the slight furrow in her brow relaxing and her shoulders dropping a fraction.
“Better?” he inquired, eyebrow raised in anticipation.
“So much.” She let out a breath and relaxed further into her pillow – a small smile on her lips.
“Good,” Harry said, grinning widely.
Then he paused for a minute and gently took her right hand again, leaning in toward her once more. Slowly and cautiously, he raised his eyes to meet hers.
“How about your chest?” he asked softly.
“It-” Hermione grimaced, looking down at the purple zip-up sweater she was wearing. “It aches.”
The words sounded hollow, and Harry’s hand instinctively tightened around hers. She squeezed back.
“It – um – it aches in a way that I can’t even describe.” She looked up at him, despair present in her eyes. “I know it won’t heal fully,” she stated quickly, her voice switching to a matter-of-fact-strictly-business tone.
“I wasn’t bitten – just scratched – I was lucky – but injuries inflicted by a werewolf are dark magic – they don’t heal like other wounds.” She was trying to make her voice optimistic, like somehow, she had gotten the good end of the stick. “Some never heal. A lot of people bleed out before they even have to worry about being infected. I was lucky – we were lucky. It was a full moon. If we’d been bitten, we would have been infected.”
“I know,” Harry said gently, gesturing his head towards her purse. “I spent yesterday reading about werewolves and researching how to treat wounds to make sure I didn’t miss anything. You only get infected if you’re bitten when they’re in wolf form at a full moon. We were incredibly lucky. One nip on either of us, and we would have been infected. The silver powder mixed with dittany will seal the wounds so you don’t bleed to death – but they never fully heal. They always leave lasting scars. Hermione–”
He paused, shaking his head once firmly and looked at her seriously.
“If you hadn’t told me to use the silver powder – you would have bled to death. Your wounds wouldn’t have closed. I would have dumped the whole bottle of dittany over you like a fucking moron, and you would have bled out in my arms!” His voice had risen in volume, and he was clutching her hand tightly.
“Harry,” Hermione said softly. He’s angry¸ she thought, and she frowned. Angry at himself . “Harry, it’s okay, you saved my li–”
“No, you saved your life!” Harry yelled, cutting her off. He looked almost out of breath, like he’d been waging a silent inner war for the past two days. “You knew what to do, you told me , you TOLD me to get the silver powder. You were bloody half-dead, and you still knew what to do – you STILL had to help me.”
His face was broken. The hand that didn’t hold hers was flailing in the air wildly from his gestures.
“Harry, stop; you saved me that night. Without you there, I would have DIED!” Hermione was sitting up now, ignoring the throbbing in her chest.
Harry shook his head, letting go of her hand and dropping it into both of his hands before running his fingers back through his hair and sitting up straight. A look of dead seriousness had befallen his face.
“You were right,” he said quietly, his eyes gazing up at the roof of the tent. “Before, I mean. You were always right before.”
“What do you mean, Harry?” she asked, placing a calming hand on his knee.
“In school. You were right in school.” He turned his eyes to hers, and it was at that moment she registered the desperation and pain in his eyes. “We never took anything seriously.”
He was painfully quiet now, and Hermione held her breath to hear him.
“We never studied unless you made us. We never cared. I never put in enough effort. I never tried to better myself the way that I should have. I just screwed around having fun, thinking I could learn it later, or thinking that I didn’t need it at all because it was boring . I spent six years – six years surrounded by almost infinite resources! I could have learned anything! But I didn’t. I got caught up in everything going on with You Know Who, and I chose to rely on my luck instead of bettering my skill. I relied on everyone else around me. But mostly, I relied on you.” He was staring at her with such intensity she had to force herself to continue looking him in the eyes. “We’re in the middle of a fucking war, and I’m unprepared. Not only do I have no idea what the hell it is that I’m supposed to be doing – I’m also a joke. I hardly know anything that I should. I know only a fraction of what you do – I know I’ll never be as smart as you, but I am so – so god damn disappointed in myself! If not for you, I’d be dead by now. If not for you, you would have died the other night. All I did was follow exactly what you told me and do what I’d seen you do before, and I-I’m–”
He had clenched his fists angrily beside him, and Hermione was unaware of how tightly she now gripped his knee.
“I’m supposed to be some chosen one , and I’m useless – and I’m done with it,” he said, staring at her meaningfully. “Once you’re healed, I want you to teach me. I want you to show me. I want to practice. I want to learn what I need to know. Every hour we’re stuck waiting to find a clue and figure out what to do, I want to work – harder than I’ve ever worked before. I want to be someone you can be proud of. I want to be there for you, the way that you have been there for me – I – I want you to be able to depend on me.”
He reached out gently now, the anger and yelling having faded away, leaving only a lingering intensity and determination.
“Please, Hermione,” he said as he clutched her hand securely between his own, bringing it up to his face and pressing it to his chin and lower lip. “Will you help me one last time? Will you help me become more?”
Hermione wasn’t sure that she had been breathing during Harry’s rant. She wanted to tell him that he was incredible as he was, that he was talented, kind, and caring – that he had skills that she could never dream of having, and he shouldn’t be so hard on himself. He was an incredible person, and she respected and cared for him more than he could even begin to comprehend. She opened her mouth, but the words didn’t come out.
His eyes were desperate and scared. They were eager and nervous. They were hopeful, and the determination that burned in them made a shiver run down her spine.
This was about her – about what happened to her. That night had terrified Harry to his core, down to the very essence of his being. It was the first time he truly realized that he might lose her – he might lose her because of his shortfalls.
He was scared. Scared that next time she might not be able to tell him what to do, to guide him. That he might be left alone and not have the answer to the problem – that he might have to watch her bleed out in his arms. The reality of the war and the possibilities of what could come had cut deep into his soul.
She took a shaky breath and fixed her eyes firmly to his – he didn’t need adoration right now. He didn’t need his ego praised. He needed to grow, and he wanted her support to do so.
“Yes,” she breathed in a whisper, the words falling softly from her lips.
Harry’s eyes closed in relief, and he placed a soft kiss on her knuckles.
“Thank you,” he murmured.
Warning:
This chapter contains: mental aftermath of severe injuries.
-x-x-
They sat quietly for several minutes after Harry’s outburst and his request for her help in his plan to become more. Hermione was leaned back against the pillow; Harry hunched forward – elbows resting on his knees with her hand still pressed gently to his closed lips as he stared at the edge of the bed in front of him.
Hermione spoke first, clearing her throat slightly as the words came out.
“Thank you – for cleaning me up,” she said, her voice soft, and her eyes were downcast.
“Yeah, of course,” Harry said with a small smile, sitting up straight to look at her. Then he noticed the blush that crept over her cheeks, not quite hidden by her hair. Oh , he thought as the realization dawned on him. She was embarrassed. “I didn’t – I-I didn’t look!”
He stammered the words out quickly, a blush forming on his cheeks as he averted his eyes back down to the hand he still held – now realizing the intimacy of his recent actions, he felt nervous. He squeezed her hand once and then gently placed it back on the bed.
“I closed my eyes,” he continued awkwardly. “I didn’t think it was right to – you weren’t awake, and I – I didn’t look when I – erm – changed your clothes.”
Hermione’s face turned a very bright shade of scarlet, but she forced herself to look up toward him.
“That must have, um,” she said, briefly swallowing down the awkwardness. “That must have made things a little bit more difficult.”
Harry smiled sheepishly and looked up to meet her eyes.
“Only a little,” he admitted, the blush still tinting his cheeks. “But I didn’t mind. It was the least I could do, Hermione.”
“Thank you,” she said, smiling back at him.
“So, are you hungry or thirsty? Should I get you something to drink?” He looked at her with anticipation, hoping this awkwardness would go away and ready to get her whatever she needed.
“I’m actually starving,” she breathed, a genuine grin gracing her lips. “But umm, I – I need to go to the loo.”
Hermione’s blush deepened once more.
“Right!” Harry said quickly, standing up awkwardly and moving the chair out of the way as he muttered to himself. “Of course, of course – you’ve been asleep for two days.”
He stood at the edge of her bed, helped her pull the blanket off and swing her legs over the side. Standing directly in front of her, they grabbed each other’s forearms, and Hermione took a breath.
“You ready?” he asked, waiting for her to take the lead.
“Yeah,” she said slowly. Spreading her feet on the ground to a wider stance. “Okay, let’s do this – now.”
Harry all but entirely lifted her up while Hermione pushed the best she could with her feet. A loud groan seeped through her lips, and she swayed on her feet, head dropping to collide with Harry’s chest. Her grip on his forearms was tight, and she let out a raggedy breath.
“Are you okay?” Harry asked softly, ducking his head closer to her ear and her soft curls brushed his cheek.
“Yeah,” she said, slightly breathless. “Yeah – yeah, I’m okay. Okay.”
Hermione slowly lifted her head and let go of one of his arms, giving him the faintest smile. Walking slowly with Harry at her side, still clutching his one arm, they made their way over to the washroom. Her steps were slow, and each movement hurt. Once at the door, Harry let Hermione go but made her promise to call him if she needed anything – adding with a wink that he would, of course, close his eyes. Hermione snorted at him but agreed, accepting the clean clothes he handed her, as a faint blush flushed her cheeks, and she thanked him quickly and entered the bathroom.
Hermione closed the door to the bathroom behind her and took the three small steps to the loo, hand on the sink for balance. She gritted her teeth in pain, clenching her jaw to hold back a painful groan as she lowered herself to the toilet and forced herself back up afterwards.
Who would have thought that going to the bathroom would be so painful! she thought in frustration.
But succumbing to the pain or lazing about after her injury was the worst thing that she could do. Essence of dittany heals wounds almost instantly, after the healed person needs to force the newly constructed muscle and skin to adapt and essentially become one with the rest of their unharmed body. The lingering painful throbs were only her nerve endings sorting out the fact that they’d been healed and reattached – but they weren’t damaged any longer. She needed to be up and moving around, forcing the newly mended muscles in her body to strengthen and adjust, and she needed to force her mind to accept that she was healed.
That was the interesting thing about magical healing. It fixed you physically, but it didn’t exactly send a memo to your brain telling it to understand that you were no longer injured. Half the healing process for wizards was allowing time for your brain to process the pain, process what had happened, and accept it and move on.
In this case, however, she knew that the intense pain she was feeling was also related to the dark magic that now lingered in her body and the damage that it had done to her core muscles. Based on her readings, she expected the pain to continue much longer than what would be considered normal for magical healings – and the scars.... well, they would last forever.
Now finished washing her hands, she looked up in the mirror and stared at her reflection. She looked normal. A little tired perhaps, the bags under her eyes more prominent than what they used to be, though that in itself seemed to be becoming normal as well. But otherwise, aside from her exceptionally messy hair, she looked perfectly ordinary.
Slowly, carefully, she raised her hands to the zipper on her sweater. Pausing when they made contact with the cold steel tab, she took a deep breath and began to pull it down.
Her breath caught in her throat. Her eyes brimmed with tears. She scrunched them closed as a strangled sob erupted from her throat. She jammed her mouth into the inner corner of her elbow, refusing to make another noise as she shook faintly on the spot. The fingers on her opposite hand clutched the edge of the cool porcelain sink tightly.
It was hideous. She was hideous.
She stifled two more gasping sobs and forced herself to look in the full-length mirror. Sweater hanging open, she dropped it from her shoulders to fully reveal the three jagged scars. Three horrendous and violent markings – markings that would be a part of her forever. Somehow looking at them made them ache even more. She clamped her eyes shut once more and tilted her head back toward the ceiling.
It’s okay. It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, she chanted in her head like a mantra. It doesn’t matter. It’s okay. It doesn’t matter. It’s just your skin. It’s not you. She took a breath as she rocked on the borderline of hyperventilation. It’s just the outside. It’s okay. It doesn’t matter. You’re okay. You’re lucky. They don’t matter. You’re okay.
She believed the words that ran through her mind. She really did. She truly believed that the scars didn’t matter and that appearances didn’t matter. She’d never cared about that. This wasn’t any different. But a small part of her lamented over her newly mangled form, and she desperately wanted to take that part of herself and bury it. She knew that it would take time, just time, that’s all.
I’ll be okay. This is fine. YOU ARE FINE, she thought firmly, wiping her arm across her eyes and smearing the tears that had been leaking from her betraying body.
She turned around promptly, turned on the shower and shimmied out of her sweats – avoiding bending over completely before stepping into the stall.
Hermione stayed in the bathroom for a long time, taking care to clean every single part of her and wash her hair thoroughly. She touched the scars on her chest only briefly, her hand jutting away at the feel of the rough unfamiliar skin – she needed more time to accept what had happened. She would get familiar with them later when they didn’t make her want to vomit.
Harry had lingered by the bathroom door briefly after Hermione had gone inside; he was hesitant to leave her alone. He was worried about her, worried about how she would react when she saw the scars – but he knew that this was deeply personal. This was something that she needed to see and deal with on her own. She would want to be alone to see them the first time, and he suspected she would likely hide them going forward. While Harry didn’t think appearances were the most important thing in the world – and he knew that Hermione believed this to her core – he worried that she would still be ashamed of them. Insecure with her new and permanent appearance. Harry could only hope that she knew how beautiful she truly was.
He wandered slowly back to the kitchen and started to prepare food for dinner. His hands stopped moving, and his whole body flinched when he heard her first stifled sob. A chill ran down his spine and he closed his eyes tightly, tilting his head back and up to the ceiling. His heart ached for her and he found himself standing with tightly clenched fists. Taking a breath, he forced himself to continue.
-x-x-
Hermione exited the bathroom sometime later, wearing a loose-fitting dark green, long-sleeve shirt, a yellow hair tie around her wrist and a pair of charcoal sweatpants. Then she slowly made her way toward the kitchen table, her green knitted socks padded softly on the floor. Harry walked around to help her sit at the table, and she quickly started eating the food he had prepared – a plate of sandwiches, a bowl of fresh fruit, rolls, hot tea (freshly reheated), and a glass of water. She thanked him – blushing as she proceeded to eat twice the normal amount she typically would.
Over dinner, Harry told her about where he landed and how he had found her. He skipped over the gory details of her wellbeing upon being discovered and assured her that he had managed to heal his wounds. He’d healed his own ribs, using episkey, since they were only mildly cracked. He’d had a few small cuts from the debris of the explosion Hermione had cast but those he healed as well. Hermione insisted that he show her and let her check him over once for any other missed injuries. He complied easily, not taking it as an insult to his abilities and instead understanding that it was just her obsessive concern over making sure that everyone else was okay.
After she had confirmed that his ribs were indeed healed – Harry barking out a laugh and pulling away when she prodded him gently – she accepted that Harry was truly ‘okay’.
Reaching forward, Hermione grabbed for her third roll of the night, and the sleeve of her dark green shirt pulled up, revealing the yellow hair tie around her wrist. Her hand froze, and she stared at it – a sick feeling of something familiar creeping over her. Her brain started to flip through her memories like an old photo reel, faster and faster as it tried to hone in on something. She didn’t hear Harry say her name with question, as he looked at her frozen extended arm and wide eyes with concern. Then it hit her, like a flood – she saw the werewolf, the moonlight, the glowing yellow eyes. She watched as it raised its clawed arm up toward her, and then she saw the glint of a thick, gold metal band around its wrist.
“Harry!” she exclaimed, her eyes darting toward him as her heart started to race. “Harry the werewolf!”
Her mind was reeling as it tried to process her revelation and Harry looked at her concerned.
“Yes, there was a werewolf, Hermione,” he said slowly, watching her face.
“No, no, I know – Harry.” She rolled her eyes, withdrawing her hand and holding her wrist up for him to see. “I know there was a werewolf – I didn’t hit my head that hard – I just remembered the band.”
She shook her wrist at Harry, her eyes wide, and Harry looked at her dumbfounded.
“The werewolf had a BAND, Harry!” she said, pointing to the hair tie that was still on her wrist. “I remember the attack, I remember what happened – but I forgot that it had a band. I saw it – only I’d forgotten until just now when I saw my hair tie, and it reminded me. Harry! The werewolf had a thick gold band on its wrist!”
“Okay – I believe you,” he said, confusion scrunching on his face. “But why would a werewolf have a gold band on its wrist? Could it have been from before it transformed?”
“It’s highly unlikely,” she said, sitting up straighter and putting her palms flat on the table. “Typically, lycanthropes are a bit larger when in wolf form. I doubt a person would wear a solid gold band that large day to day. It would be impractical. It would be too big and fall off. It must have been put on after.”
“Hermione,” he said slowly, his hands also planted on the table now. “Werewolves aren’t exactly tame, and they don’t think like humans in their wolf form. I doubt that it would have put it on itself; that doesn’t make any sense. But you can’t exactly approach a werewolf and put a band on it.”
“I know!” she exclaimed. “I – I don’t know what this means. Someone must have banded it. The question, though, is why? Why band a werewolf, and how did they manage to do it?”
Harry shook his head in disbelief. “I didn’t even notice the band; I was so busy jumping all over the place and watching its mouth. “it’s like This is like first year all over again with that trap door. I believe you, Hermione – but – are you sure. You’re sure that you saw the band?”
Hermione nodded firmly, her eyes deadly serious.
“I’m sure, Harry. Positive. I’d bet my magic.”
Harry nodded, accepting her word with full faith.
“Okay,” he said. “Then it looks like we have another ridiculous mystery to try and work out.”
They continued eating and talking about the possible ways someone could have banded a werewolf and, more importantly, why in Merlin’s name would anyone want to do it.
Once the food was put away, Hermione started to get very sleepy, and so Harry helped her back to bed. Tucked in and propped gently against the pillow, Harry pulled his chair back over and sat next to her. They talked quietly until Hermione’s eyes began to droop more and more.
“You should sleep,” he said finally, a soft expression on his face.
“Mmm,” she replied softly. “I will.”
She stared at him sleepily, a thought forming in her eyes when they lazed over to the book that sat on the stand by her bunk, the same book that had been on Harry’s lap that morning. A sleepy smile formed on her lips, and she quirked an eyebrow at him.
“Harry,” she said, eyeing him again. “Were you reading to me before I woke up?”
Harry’s cheeks tinted the slightest shade of pink.
“Yes,” he said unsurely. “I um – I thought you might like it. That – maybe it would help you sleep well.”
Hermione’s grin split into a full smile, and she reached for his hand, he let her take it, and she gripped it softly.
“Thank you, Harry,” she said as her eyes closed as her breathing became deeper. “Thank you, for everything Harry.”
Harry gripped her hand softly, knowing she had already fallen asleep.
“Always Hermione,” he said softly before pulling the sheet up tighter to her shoulders.
-x-x-
The next two weeks went by slowly. Every morning Hermione woke to Harry sitting in his chair reading softly next to her. He helped her from bed – mornings were always the worst, and the stiffness across her chest made it difficult for her to pull herself from bed – and then they would eat breakfast together. They spent their mornings reading, discussing theories around Horcruxes and the banded werewolf, and Hermione taught Harry helpful facts and spells. After lunch, they would spend two hours walking around the tent – or outside if the weather was good – and completing several small muggle exercises and stretches to assist Hermione’s body with adjusting to the newly healed muscles. Dinner usually involved Harry asking Hermione questions and him designing a list of all the things he wanted to learn and developing a training regime. In the evenings, they would sit together, inside or out, and have tea – usually quietly discussing their plans going forward.
Hermione helped Harry with the food and the chores the best she could, and they both agreed that she would not be able to apparate for some time, that it was best not to push things too quickly and that given how far south she’d taken them they should be okay not to move for two weeks. Harry re-set the wards every twelve hours instead of their original 24-hour cycle, and they added a detection charm 300 feet out to alert them of anything entering or leaving the tent circumference. They planned to walk several miles south at the end of the second week and set up a new campsite along the coast.
As the two weeks progressed and the 9th of October approached, Hermione couldn’t help but feel like the dynamic between the two of them had shifted. She’d always been immensely close to Harry – they got along and worked well together, they mutually respected each other, they understood each other’s muggle upbringings, and they were able to have a discussion without bickering. Harry never made fun of her for being a ‘ bookworm ’, and he could keep up in their conversations and hold his own.
But something, something had changed.
It was small and gradual, and she almost didn’t notice it. The night before the day they were going to travel further south, her mind finally clicked on what it was. Harry had handed her a tea; it was their evening routine, and he proceeded to sit down next to her on a small rock in the tall grass so that they could look out at the sea. The night was calm, the waves were gentle, and the atmosphere was comfortable. What was different – Hermione’s brain noted – was how close Harry sat down next to her. It wasn’t invasive or uncomfortable. She didn’t want him to move. It was just closer than where he would have sat three weeks ago.
Everything in their movements and behaviours had started to become closer over the last three weeks. Harry would sit on the edge of her bed in the mornings now instead of his chair. Hermione would lay her legs across Harry’s to share the footstool when they read together on the couch in the mornings. Harry would place a gentle hand on her lower back if he was walking around her, and Hermione would catch herself reaching out to grab his hand or place her hand on his knee more and more often when they were talking.
She smiled at him over her hot mug while he talked about a new spell he’d discovered in one of her books – one of the books she’d borrowed from the restricted section. The spell was old and unknown to most wizards as it was very difficult to cast, required complicated wand movements and was largely abandoned due to its double-edged nature. The spell was an old protection charm, one that produced a shield that completely encompassed one’s body and would move with the caster’s movements.
If desired, the spell could even be cast on another human being or creature. The problem was that if cast incorrectly, or if cast without the utmost sincerity, the charm would produce a bubble that encompassed the caster or target but that caused harm until it dissipated.
His expression was animated, his hands showing her the wand motion the thought was required, clearly very excited to try out the new spell. She was unsure exactly what had shifted between them – whether it was just a temporary and natural shift post werewolf attack or if there was something more, something deeper that would require time to announce itself. She didn’t know what it meant, and she wasn’t sure what to do about it.
What she did know with certainty, though, was that the last three weeks had been downright terrible, this war was only going to get worse with each passing day, and that these last three weeks had cemented the fact that she never wanted to lose him. She couldn’t imagine a life without Harry in it in some fashion. She needed him to be here. She knew that despite the ambiguity attached to this new change, deep, deep down in the parts of her that she often ignored – she knew that something about it felt right. It felt natural.
-x-x-
When the morning of October 9th rolled around, Harry and Hermione got up early, prepared for a long day of walking ahead of them. The day started off well. Hermione was able to successfully pull herself from bed with no assistance. Harry laughed at her when she cheered and did a little victory wiggle, but then promptly joined in and spun her in a twirl. They both laughed and sang ‘ I got out of bed myseeeeeelf! I got out of bed myseeeeeeelf!’ and twisted in a circle together a few times – one of Hermione’s hands clutched in Harry’s, the other on his shoulder while Harry’s free hand rested lightly on the small of her back. She leaned in and hugged him tightly before rocking back to her heels and grinning widely at him. Dropping her hands, she asked him what he wanted for breakfast and headed toward the kitchen.
They ate breakfast quickly and put away the tent, having done most of the packing the day before. By 9:30 am, they were already walking slow, steady steps to the south, along the coast, with a goal of walking 18 miles – but realistically, hoping to get to at least 12. They were both rather pleased when they made it 15 miles before Hermione groaned out that she needed to stop for the day and couldn’t move another step.
The day had been long and rough, with only short breaks to eat and drink. Harry could tell that Hermione was frustrated with her lack of physical stamina and the toll that the werewolf wounds had taken on her body. He knew she was struggling, and he stood next to her and gently rubbed circles on her back, reminding her that it was only temporary and that soon, very soon, she would be back to her full strength, if not stronger.
Hermione had leaned into his hand and side, her head resting softly on his shoulder while she nodded to his words – knowing that they were true. When she stepped away to pull the tent from her bag, Harry was left feeling like his mind was both simultaneously blank and perplexed. He watched her shoulders move fluidly as she began to set up the tent.
He’d always considered Hermione to be his absolute closest friend. He’d never tell that to Ron – because he knew that it would devastate him, but it was true. He and Ron were close, sure, but they were close in a different way. Ron was like the brother that Harry never had, he loved him unconditionally, but sometimes he just wanted to punch the ever-loving shit out of him. He was a good guy who had a good heart – but Harry was never able to talk to Ron the same way he could Hermione. And frankly, Ron had a bit of a record for being a dick and flaking off when Harry needed him.
The Triwizard tournament being a prime example. Why the actual fuck Ron would have thought Harry had entered his own name into the cup still boggled Harry’s mind. He knew it was some unresolved self-esteem issue or something, but still, what the hell. Who does that ?
Hermione, on the other hand, was something different. Something more. Harry needed her. Not in the sense that he used her or that he needed something from her. No – it wasn’t like that. Harry couldn’t help but feel like he needed her a lot more like how he needed water or how he needed air. Three weeks ago, he never would have been able to imagine life without her in it, but frankly, he hadn’t even thought about that then. Hermione was always just there, and he took it for granted. Today – today he would do anything, anything, to keep her safe, and he actively thought about her presence.
Hermione had always been there for him, she’d always supported him unconditionally, and she’d always believed in him – even when he wasn’t confident in himself. Hermione had always been very important to Harry and undeniably his closest friend.
But as he watched her shoulders roll, her arms move, and her hand flick her hair out of the way to continue raising the tent, he couldn’t ignore the gnawing feeling in his gut that something had changed between them. It was in their interactions, in their conversations. It was subtle; he wasn’t sure if she was even aware of it, and he hadn’t sorted out what it meant yet. All he knew was that he cared deeply for Hermione – more deeply than he initially realized – and… that he liked the feeling.
Once the tent was set up, they ate a quick dinner, flopped into armchairs and rested the remainder of the evening before they both went to bed early. They were exhausted from their walk and knew that they needed their rest if they wanted to start implementing the new training regime that Harry had drafted out. In addition to wanting to learn new offensive, defensive, and healing spells, Harry had decided that he wanted to add some physical training to the bucket for good measure. Hermione had agreed, thinking it was a very clever and logical idea and decided to join in on his schedule.
That night they both climbed sleepily into their bunks, saying good night softly with a wave of their hand before closing their eyes – each of them pondering the shift in their relationship. Each of them thinking the other had yet to notice it. Each of them reflecting on how they liked the change. Each of them wondering, what it could mean.
Now that Hermione was able to move competently around on her own, albeit a bit slower, they resumed their usual schedule of night watches in four-hour chunks and decided to stay at the new location for just a few days before continuing further south. They both agreed that it would be best to move again sooner than later to put additional distance between them and their first campsite post werewolf attack.
Over the next four days, they got up early, had a quick snack, then ran several large circles around the tent at a slow jog. Harry was able to lap Hermione twice due to her slow speed, and she swatted at him in frustration each time, yelling at him that it didn’t count because he hadn’t been recently shredded by a werewolf. Harry laughed at her and pinched her sides lightly as he ran past, yelling in return that she was just upset because she was naturally slower . After completing their jogging loops, they did several sets of sit-ups, pushups and lunges to finish off the routine. Hermione did far fewer than Harry but was still proud of herself for struggling through the routine.
On the third day, tired and sweaty but very pleased with themselves, they laid in the grass in front of the tent listening to the waves crashing against the rocky shore.
“One of these days,” Hermione said in pants. “I’m going to outrun you – just you wait.”
Harry laughed outright; his booming chuckle was genuine and loud. He reached his right arm over to her and gently grabbed her thigh, shaking it slightly.
“Not with these little chicken legs, you’re not.” He laughed as she swatted his chest with an indignant sound. “Besides, I have infinitely more experience running than you do – I spent years running from Dudley and his gang. You’ve got nothing on me.”
Hermione laughed with a smile and rolled to her side, propping herself up on her elbow and grimacing as the wounds on her chest ached from the movement, but she bit it down to look over at Harry. She looked at his face; it was flushed red from their workout, but he was relaxed and calm – and he was looking at her with a hint of mischievous amusement in his eyes.
“Your cousin was a bit of an ass, wasn’t he?” she said, keeping her tone light as her free hand-picked at a piece of grass in the small space between them, but the undertones of a question were present.
Harry snorted lightly.
“Probably a bit of an understatement actually,” he said with a sigh, his eyes going to the sky. “He was a complete ass, terrible really – though, I’m not even sure I still resent him for it. I used to – but – he just didn’t know any better. He was a product of what his parents taught him and – I don’t know. It just was what it was.”
Hermione studied his face for a while as Harry watched a particularly fluffy cloud float by, noting how he seemed a little lost in thought now.
“That’s um–” She paused when his eyes glanced back over to meet hers. “That’s a very mature way to look at it. You never really talked about the Dursleys very much, but from the small amount you have it’s quite clear it wasn’t a good situation. I just always assumed you hated them.”
“Well,” he said, letting out a slow sigh. “There wasn’t much to say – they were awful. But I guess I just got really tired of being so angry about it and resenting it all the time.”
He paused, the glint in his eyes deepening into something different – something more mature, more worn, and something rooted in sadness.
“I’m not sure I have it in me to hate them anymore,” he said slowly as if saying it out loud made it a new realization for him. “I don’t like them. They’re not good people – but, after losing Sirius and now Dumbledore – I – I just don’t have the energy to hate people who are just too ignorant to know better, or who didn’t want to know better. It’s just not worth it. They don’t deserve my time, so I’m not going to give it to them. I won’t waste my time on hating them.”
Hermione looked at Harry, slightly stunned. While she completely agreed with what he was saying and was actually immensely impressed and proud of him for having such a mature point of view, she was surprised. The Dursleys had been horrible to Harry, treated him like how some wizards treat their house-elves, and she was sure that Harry had held back some of the more dark and disturbing stories. She just hadn’t realized how much Harry had grown, how much losing Sirius and Dumbledore had affected him. She knew it took its toll physically and emotionally on him. She’d seen it first-hand, but she hadn’t seen the effect it had on his maturity and the way he looked at the world.
She reached out the hand that was currently clutching the grass between them to grab his wrist, and she gave him a squeeze.
“I know it doesn’t mean much coming from me, Harry,” she said softly. “But I’m sorry – I’m sorry the Dursleys were so horrible to you. And – I’m proud of you for choosing to see it the way you do. It’s so much easier to hate, Harry. So – I – I guess I just want you to know that I think it’s really great that you’re choosing to be the bigger person. To be better than what the Dursleys deserve and that you’re not going to waste your energy on stupid ignorant people.”
Harry smiled and let out a breath, his expression lightening. He flipped his hand over and intertwined their fingers before he pulled her hand up onto the center of his chest and pressed it to him.
“Thanks, Hermione,” he said sincerely, before a moment later his eyes glinted back to their original mischievous amusement. “But you’re just pumping my ego because you hope I’ll let you win the race tomorrow.”
Hermione made to pull her hand away to swat him, but he held his grip tight as he laughed at her annoyed expression.
“I am not!” she exclaimed, struggling to get her hand free while he continued to chuckle. “I would never – here I am being sincere, trying to tell you that I’m bloody proud of you. And you think I’m playing at something – and it’s not a race! It’s supposed to be exercise!”
Harry laughed louder at her fragmented response and let go of her hand, rolling away quickly to miss the swat she made at him.
“I’m going to shower first,” he said with a wink as he pulled himself quickly from the ground.
Hermione let out a sound of frustration and rolled back to look up at the sky.
“You’re a git, Harry!” she yelled back at him, hearing him laugh in response as he entered the tent.
But as she lay on the grass looking at the clouds, she couldn’t help but smile. Sighing contently, she folded her arms behind her head as the ocean breeze rustled her hair. She was so proud of Harry and so impressed with his growth as a person – how he was truly maturing into a man, a man who knew where to focus his priorities and what things were actually important. Despite his teasing, she knew Harry was sincere in his thanks, and she was happy that he felt comfortable enough to share his thoughts with her. She pulled her right hand up to her chest, the one that Harry had held against his own a moment ago and hummed softly.
After taking their turns in the shower, they had breakfast and continued with their typical daily routine of reading, practicing small healing spells, discussing, planning, and thinking – occasionally taking out Phineas to see if he was willing to give them any news.
By the end of the fourth day, Hermione was feeling very pleased with her physical progress, and they agreed to try and walk 21 miles south the next morning to set up a new camp.
After pre-packing their belongings, they sat quietly outside near the edge of a small cliff that dropped down to the water. Harry had conjured a small fire in the jar that sat between them for warmth, using the spell Hermione taught him two days prior. They both stared out to the dark, starry sky that hung above the roughly moving waves. The wind was picking up, and with it, the chill from the north was rolling in. It felt ominous and hinted of a storm in the near future. They sat quietly for quite some time before Harry spoke.
“On the nights when I wasn’t shut in my cupboard early, I used to lay out in the back garden at the Dursley’s in the summer and look at the stars as a kid,” Harry said, his eyes still on the sky. “And wish that someone would come and take me away from them.”
Hermione’s heart thudded to a stop in her chest, and it took all of her self-control not to turn her head sharply toward Harry and exclaim, you slept in a cupboard!? But she bit her lip, took a quiet breath and instead just tilted her head a fraction toward him to see his face. The way Harry had spoken and the expression on his face brought a stillness and a seriousness to the night’s air. Harry never spoke much about the Dursleys in the past, she only knew small details, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that Harry’s childhood had been rough. Though, she certainly didn’t know that he had slept in a cupboard. She tried to wrap her mind around this new piece of information, trying to imagine exactly what that had been like. She waited for him to continue, knowing that this was Harry choosing to share some very dark and very intimate details of his life before Hogwarts with her – details that he probably hadn’t shared with anyone.
“After the letters for Hogwarts started showing up, they gave me Dudley’s second bedroom. The letters had been addressed to my cupboard, so I think they were pretty embarrassed,” he clarified, as if he wanted her to know that his situation did improve at the Dursleys before he continued on to what he wanted to say. “But after finding out I was going to Hogwarts, I was so happy. So happy that I finally would be able to leave them – to have a different life. Then when I met you and Ron, you two were the first friends I had ever had.”
He picked up a small rock that was next to him, turning it over in his hand before throwing it gently out into the water. She wasn’t able to see it drop, as the darkness had crept in to the point that the ocean was just a pool of black, and only the white caps were still visible.
“And then I met more people, and then I had Sirius.” He paused, his face scrunching, and when he spoke next, she heard the slight break in his voice. “But after losing Sirius, after Cedric, after what Umbridge did to everyone, after Ron was almost poisoned and after Dumbledore – I – I’m so afraid that I’m going to lose everyone. It’s like the people I let myself get close to always suffer. They always get hurt. You with the werewolf – not to mention all the other ridiculous situations I’ve dragged you into.”
He had grabbed her hand, the one that was resting in between them in the grass and was squeezing it tightly. She wasn’t sure he even realized he’d done it.
“And I just – I know you’ll say this is ridiculous – but I feel like it’s my fault, because it is. I’m responsible for this – and the worst part,” he said, his voice straining as he looked at her intently, and Hermione saw the guilt that clung deeply within him.
“I’m still so happy that Hagrid came to give me my letter that day. I – I wouldn’t want to change that.” His voice quieted before he continued, and she heard the pain in his voice. “Is that selfish? Does that make me a terrible person?”
His eyes searched her face. Looking for an answer and she felt her heart break for him. Harry – poor Harry. His life was riddled with despair and contained more sadness and more anguish than most people would ever experience in their whole lifetime – and he wasn’t even eighteen yet.
It was like his words stitched together the painful picture of his life and made all of his behaviours, words, and actions make sense. It gave the last seven years new meaning. His deep and protective love of his friends – because he’d never had any. His drive to do what’s right – because he’d been wronged and treated poorly in his own life. His wonder of the magical wizarding world – because he’d been deprived in his childhood. His surprise when people included him or wanted to be near him – because he’d been rejected and excluded up until Hogwarts. His frustration, moody attitude, and attempt to disconnect from those around him in the last two years – because he blamed himself for the deaths of those around him. He blamed himself for Cedric, for Sirius, for Dumbledore… so he had forced space and tried to alienate himself because he felt responsible. Because he felt guilty. Because he didn’t want anyone else to get hurt. And he had locked it all away inside himself, dealing with his anguish alone.
“Oh, Harry,” she whispered, her voice tight, gripping his hand back firmly. “Harry, no – no, no, it doesn’t make you selfish! These things – what’s happening – it was going to happen whether you came back to the wizarding world or not. And if you hadn’t – we would have been so much worse off – we would have lost so much more.”
She took his hand in both of hers and leaned toward him.
“Harry, I know you blame yourself, I know you feel responsible, and I know you probably won’t fully believe what I’m saying – but what’s happened isn’t your fault Harry. You’re a symbol of hope for people, and you’ve done so, so much. You’ve saved people’s lives. You prevented You Know Who from coming back several times.” Harry turned his face away scowling slightly and looking back out at the water. “I can’t even begin to understand what you’ve been through, Harry, how you feel – how much pressure you must be under – but–“
She paused and reached her left hand forward to rest on his cheek, pulling gently, and he allowed his head to turn back toward her. His eyes were bright in the small light from their blue flame.
“It’s not up to you to save the world alone,” she said quietly, running her thumb over the bone of his cheek. “I don’t care what some stupid prophecy says. I’m going to help you. Everyone in the Order is going to help you.”
She looked at him, trying to convey her sincerity to him, trying to make him understand that she meant what she said. That she wouldn’t abandon him.
“You don’t have to believe it, Harry,” she said just above a whisper. “I just want you to know it. You and I – we’re in this together. I’m not going to leave you alone in this – not ever.”
Harry closed his eyes and breathed out, a line of tension in his forehead easing slightly, but his shoulders were still tight. Then he opened his eyes to stare directly at her, they were glassy, and the air around them was heavy.
“I know you won’t,” he said quietly and he raised his own hand to cover the one that she had placed on his cheek before turning his head toward it and placing a chaste kiss on her palm.
Her heart fluttered lightly, but she ignored it. Then he gripped her hand, lowering it to his lap and holding it tight.
“I know,” he said again before sighing deeply as his shoulders dropped. “It’s just – hard not to feel responsible. I always will.”
She gave him a small smile, and he returned it.
“Thank you for listening, Hermione,” he said softly.
“Always, Harry.” She squeezed his hand stight – still holding the one on the ground she had been previously and the second in his lap where he’d placed it.
They sat for a while in silence, both hands still intertwined. Hermione looked out at the stars once more. The warmth of the blue flame warmed the space between them, and despite the rolling waves, the cliff felt quiet, and the air around them felt thicker than it had a few minutes ago.
Hermione could feel Harry staring at her, and it made her feel nervous – not uncomfortable – and not the normal typical nervous feelings she was familiar with. It was like a small ball of buzzing energy in her chest that tickled at her insides. Like she was a kid again and had gotten butterflies.
Taking a quiet breath, she slowly turned her head to look at Harry. Their eyes met, and he held her gaze for several heartbeats before he tilted his head a fraction to the side. He was looking at her with almost a sort of curiosity.
“I’ve never told anyone that before,” he said gently, still holding her gaze.
Hermione felt her cheeks flush at the expression on his face and parted her mouth to respond, but then closed it. She didn’t know what to say. It hadn’t been a question, it was a statement, and the way he said it made the butterflies in her stomach buzz more noticeably. It was his eyes, something in his eyes that was pulling at her chest.
“We should turn in,” he said quietly, just above a whisper.
She nodded in return, but they both continued to sit, gripping hands and watching each other’s eyes, tracing each other’s faces in the flicker of the light as the ocean rolled on and the stars danced above them.
Hermione felt her stomach twist, but not from pain, not from nausea, not from the anguishing emotions and feelings that had recently been ruling her body. It was something different – something tight and warm. A nervousness rolled through her, and she felt her chest tighten. Time felt like it had slowed down, and they’d slipped into a world of slow motion. She didn’t know what to do, what to say, she felt like she was searching Harry’s face and he was searching hers in return, but neither of them had an answer for the intense atmosphere that had wrapped around them. The twisting feeling in her stomach was quickening and tightening, and she was afraid of what would happen if she didn’t move.
Abruptly she looked away, hoping that the darkness would hide the blush she knew claimed her face.
“Yeah, we should turn in,” she echoed, ignoring the slight waver in her voice as she dropped Harry’s hands and turned to get up from the ground.
Harry stood with her, helping her up by the elbow even though she didn’t need the assistance anymore. Once standing, Hermione realized how close they were; the heat from Harry’s body was radiating off of him, his hand was still on her elbow, her left side just a breath away from his. Eyes level with his chest, she raised her head to look up at him and felt her heart thump louder when she looked in his eyes.
He was looking at her with a look that she had not seen before – a deep, careful, longing, if not slightly confused look, as if he was seeing her for the first time.
Her brain wasn’t working, her brain always worked, it never shut up and it constantly analyzed – but staring up at his bright green eyes her breath caught in her throat, and she couldn’t function. Her right hand tightened around the hem of her shirt, rolling the fabric gently between her fingers as time seemingly slowed down even further.
Harry shifted, his head tilting ever so gently to the left, and he slowly, painstakingly, began to lower his head towards hers. Hermione stiffened, her heart thudded, and her fingers stilled on the edge of her shirt. She didn’t blink, she didn’t look away – she just watched as his face slowly lowered towards her until – he stopped. He stopped a mere inch away from her face, and she could feel his breath on her face. She wasn’t breathing. She’d stopped breathing the second he started lowering his head. Then, he turned his head and ghosted his lips gently across her cheek before placing a small but firm kiss on her cheek.
He lingered a moment before pulling away, and she was certain he could hear the drumming of her erratic heartbeat.
“Good night, Hermione,” he said in a whisper before letting go of her elbow and turning to walk slowly toward the tent.
Hermione stood on spot, unmoving. Her body was a furnace, her cheeks were blazing, her heart was thrumming, and her mind had all of a sudden started working again.
What the fuck just happened , she breathed internally. Her mind was racing, trying to calculate what had just happened, what it meant, and why her body was reacting the way that it was. Why did she feel so flustered? She’d kissed Harry on the cheek in fourth year, and it had definitely NOT felt like this. She stayed rooted to her spot watching Harry’s back as he walked toward the tent. It was her turn for first watch tonight, but she stayed where she was instead of moving to her usual spot just a few feet from the tent.
A cool breeze from the ocean brushed past her face, and she shivered, stepping toward the warmth from the blue flames that flickered by her feet. After Harry disappeared into the tent, she slowly reached down to pick up the fire and move toward her watch station, her steps slow and thoughtful. She didn’t know what to make of what just happened or how it would affect her relationship with Harry going forward, and she particularly didn’t know what to make about how she’d reacted to it – about how, despite the nervousness, she’d liked it.
-x-x-
When Harry came out to take her place for the last shift of their night’s watch, he behaved normally; nothing between them was different. Hermione thanked him and gratefully went inside to grab a quick four hours of sleep.
The next morning, they ate breakfast in their usual fashion and looked at the map that Hermione had of the coastline. Then they agreed that they should try to get to a small cove about 21 miles to the south as the winds had picked up and threatened upcoming bad weather. Quickly they disassembled the tent and then began walking at a brisk pace, stopping twice for a quick break, snacks and water.
Eight and a half hours later, the wind was raging, the sky was dark, and the ocean was violent – but they’d reached their destination. Approaching the small cove, they spotted a highly set cave. It looked a little ominous, but thankfully, it was uninhabited, so they decided to set the tent up inside to get additional shelter from the storm. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and Hermione saw a flash of lightning over the water. Harry looked at her knowingly and went out to set the wards, enchantments and alarms while Hermione finished setting up the tent. By the time Harry returned, it had started to spit, and Hermione was placing sticking charms on the tent pegs to ensure that they did not get ripped from the ground in the violent gusting winds that were rolling off the ocean.
Harry helped her with the last two pegs, and then they quickly got inside as the downpour hit, thankful for the extra shelter offered by the small cave. After eating a quick dinner, they both dropped exhausted into the armchairs in the center room. Hermione had been worried that the event from the night before would cause stress or add awkwardness to their dynamic – but it hadn’t. There was no tension in the room, and Harry was just Harry, his normal self. The only thing different was the thoughts that now filled Hermione’s head when she tried to sort out what it meant and how she felt about it. But seeing Harry’s calm relaxing demeanour put her at ease. That night they both agreed to sleep without needing to keep watch as Harry had added two alarm circles at 300 and 900 feet out from their tent – and given the storm, it was unlikely that anyone would be out and about.
Hermione made for her bunk, having just washed her face and brushed her teeth. Harry bid her goodnight, and she returned the gesture kindly before crawling into bed and rolling over to face the tent wall. The rain pounded outside, and the wind hammered the fabric of the tent loudly. She closed her eyes and tried to calm her mind, trying to steady the low simmering guilt that seemed to be building throughout the day. With everything that had been going on, sometimes it felt like she couldn’t keep track of everything and tonight, her brain finally circled in on the main reason for her unease with the previous night’s events .
Ginny.
Hermione couldn’t shake the guilt she harboured for the feelings that had been rolling through her. Yes, Harry and Ginny had broken up at the end of the previous school term – but Ginny was her friend, and she felt awful about whatever it was that had been going on between her and Harry. Even though, to be fair, nothing had actually happened between them, and she didn’t even know if the nothing that had happened meant anything – she still couldn’t help but feel guilty.
Despite her angst and unease of the situation at hand, sleep claimed her quickly, exhausted from the eight and a half hours walk during the day.
-x-x-
The next few days proceeded per their usual schedule, except that the weather was absolutely horrendous, and it limited them to their tent the majority of the time. They got creative with their exercise routine and jogged on spot in the tent, did jumping jacks, burpees, and stretches since they were not able to run outside.
Hermione taught Harry ferula , and anapneo so that he would be able to bandage or splint broken bones and prevent someone from choking.
Harry showed Hermione more details on the shielding charm, and she helped him refine his wand movements based on the description in the book. She agreed to help him try it after they spent a little more time researching it – nervous that they might cause themselves injury if they cast it incorrectly. Harry agreed and pulled another large textbook from her bag to continue his reading.
Hermione found an interesting chapter in her book on ‘bonding’ magic and was convinced it could be helpful with the werewolf mystery. She told Harry about it, telling him her suspicions – that someone may have banded the werewolf for ‘use’ and implemented some kind of a bonding mechanism. It was dark magic and may have even involved blood magic. Harry frowned at this but agreed and asked her to keep him updated on what she found as she continued her research.
Five days later, the weather hadn’t let up, the rain continued to pour, and the wind continued to ravage the area. After a particularly gruelling workout, both of them being a little tense from being trapped inside the tent for days had gone extra hard in their workout routine, Hermione was showering and pondering the still occurring small and somewhat intimate touches that happened between her and Harry. The water from the shower was hot, and it helped to work out the knots in her tight muscles.
Her hands ran over the scars on her chest, and she didn’t flinch. She’d finally gotten used to the touch of them against her fingers. She hated it, resented the unpleasantness of her now rough, bumpy, and hideously discoloured skin – but it no longer made her feel sick to her stomach. As she stepped from the shower and saw her full reflection, she reacted the same way that she did every time. She frowned. Then covered herself with a long sleeve high-necked shirt to hide any view of the scars. She was sad to admit that she’d transfigured a good number of her shirts to have a much higher neck. She never had revealing clothes to start with, but her top scar started just above her left collar bone – so anything other than a turtleneck or high-necked shirt showed the tip of the scar. This time she opted for her newly transfigured deep red sweater and a pair of comfortable jeans.
After trying to do something with her hair – which was essentially leaving it as is but using a small clip to keep it from falling in her face – she made her way out to the kitchen to find Harry seated at the kitchen table staring intently at the Marauder’s Map. Going over to join him at the table, she noticed that he was staring at the Gryffindor Tower, and particularly at Ginny’s name.
Hermione slowed as she approached and felt a small part of her sadden at the sight – as guilt hit her hard in the stomach. Trying to swallow it down, she made for the seat opposite Harry.
“Hey,” she said softly, taking her seat.
Harry jolted as he looked up at her. Obviously, he had been lost in thought and hadn’t heard her approach.
“Hey,” he said, more brightly than she expected. “Good shower?”
She snorted and smiled at him.
“Yeah, all clean now.” She looked down at the map and saw Ginny’s feet circling in the common room near Neville’s. “You, um – you must miss her.”
Her voice was quiet, and she tried to keep the tone light and unquestioning.
“Yeah, of course,” Harry said sadly as he looked back at the map. “I miss all of them – I hope they’re okay.”
“I know,” Hermione said slowly, making sure to keep her hands to herself and resisting the urge to reach out and grab his hand. “I’m sorry that you haven’t been able to see her.”
Her words were sincere. Hermione truly meant it. She truly felt awful that Harry and Ginny’s relationship was tainted by the ongoing situation with Voldemort and that it had ended so that Harry could go gallivanting around to try and save the world. They had seemed to get along really well, and it was just another reason why this war was absolute shit. It destroyed everything good and ripped people apart.
“So am I,” he said, raising his eyes to meet hers. “I know you must miss her too, and Neville, and Luna, and everyone else.”
Hermione’s mind started calculating again – Harry truly seemed sad that he was separated from Ginny, but it was not with the same feelings she had expected. He seemed equally sad to be away from everyone else, which was odd. Harry must have seen the confusion on her face, and he mirrored it only briefly until his own brain realized what she was confused about.
“Oh,” Harry said, almost somewhat sheepishly as a blush formed on his face, and he started to get awkward. “I forgot you didn’t – um, I miss her, yes – but um – Ginny and I – we uh – well we’re not together anymore.”
“Yeah,” Hermione said slowly as she looked at him with genuine curiosity but tried to seem nonchalant in her question. “But – I assumed you two were going to – you know – get back together when all of this was over.”
Harry shifted awkwardly in his seat; his eyes glanced nervously down to the map as if it could hear the conversation.
“Yeah,” Harry said slowly. “About that.”
Hermione sat up straighter at his response and quirked an eyebrow at his behaviour, completely thrown by the tone he had just emanated. She had thought that he still loved Ginny, that they would be together when the war was over – but based on Harry’s posture, tone, and uncomfortably awkward expressions, she felt like she was missing half of a story that she didn’t know existed.
Harry scratched the back of his head awkwardly while avoiding her eyes.
“It’s um, it’s not really my place to say,” he said, finally looking her in the eyes. “But – it’s not like that. We aren’t like that.”
Hermione shifted and propped her head up on her hand, crossing her legs under the table and tilting her head.
“Harry, I don’t understand,” she said. She wasn’t annoyed – just genuinely confused. “What do you mean it’s not your place?”
Harry sighed and ran a hand through his hair and then leaned on the table with both elbows before speaking.
“Look, I don’t think it’s a big deal, and I fully support it, but–” Harry looked at her intently. “But I need you to promise not to talk about this with anyone. It’s Ginny’s business, and she will tell people when she’s comfortable. It’s not my place to tell anyone, but I’ll tell you – only because I know that Ginny trusts you and she already told me why she hasn’t told you yet, but that she was planning to before we left, she just ran out of time.”
“Of course, I won’t say anything, Harry.” Hermione nodded, unsure of where this conversation was heading.
“Hermione – Ginny is gay,” he said, looking her straight in the eyes. “And our breakup was completely mutual.”
Hermione sat quiet, floored by what Harry had said – not because she gave a crap that Ginny was a lesbian, she didn’t care about that – but because she hadn’t known and that Ginny hadn’t told her. Obviously, Ginny didn’t owe her anything. She wasn’t obligated to explain herself to anyone. Hermione was just surprised.
“W-What?” she asked, her mouth had been hanging open. “I – I didn’t know.”
“I know,” Harry said sheepishly, giving her a small almost sympathetic smile. “She was nervous to tell you.”
“Why would she be nervous to tell me? You know that I support Ginny, that I support the LGBT community and gay rights and gay people – she knows that!”
“Yeah, she does.” Harry patted her hand gently before grabbing for his glass of water. “She was nervous because she didn’t want you to feel awkward around her. And because she’s been having a bit of a time adjusting to the realization herself.”
Harry then proceeded to tell Hermione what had actually happened in sixth year, how Harry, upon first kissing Ginny, had felt so proud and so excited. How Ginny had been so thrilled to finally be with the ‘ love of her life ’ and the one man she thought she was destined to be with. Except that after a few weeks of snogging and trying to feel comfortable with each other, they both started to realize that they weren’t.
Harry had assumed that he was attracted to Ginny because he had strong feelings for her. He thought that he was in love with Ginny because he cared for her deeply. But after a few weeks together, he started to realize that it felt awkward and wrong, and frankly – he wasn’t attracted to her in that way. Harry did care deeply for Ginny – and he always would – but the truth was that he cared for her like a sister. The same way that he cared for Ron and loved Fred and George, that was how he cared for Ginny. He was protective of her because she was his family – because she was his sister. He realized that he’d confused his love for her as romantic love and then started to worry about what to do next.
Ginny, well Ginny had admitted to him that she was never attracted to any men in the whole of her life. She was obsessed with Harry from a young age, and that obsession grew into an infatuation that she had assumed was romantic. She thought that the reason why she wasn’t attracted to Dean Thomas was because she was only in love with Harry. She thought that the reason why she didn’t feel anything when Dean kissed her or ran his hands over her body was that she didn’t actually care for Dean and was really only dating him to make Harry notice her.
But to her surprise, she found that nothing changed when she was with Harry. She cared about him and treasured him, and she wanted to feel the way you were supposed to feel when he kissed her. But she didn’t. Once the excitement of finally getting Harry wore off, she was left with the same empty feeling she’d had before.
After lamenting over it for weeks and getting some help from friends, Ginny finally realized that she was lesbian, and that was why she never felt like her relationships fit – why she was never interested in any of the guys around her. She confronted Harry about it, and Harry had confessed that he did not have romantic feelings for Ginny either. He had told her that he wanted her to be happy, and he wanted to remain her friend. They were both relieved to find that the other had been unsure about the relationship and felt awkward being together.
At Ginny’s request, Harry agreed to keep up the facade of dating while she sorted through her feelings. She was nervous about telling her family, about her friends finding out and was still trying to wrap her head around her new self-discovery. Breaking up before Harry left to go hunt for Horcruxes was easy and actually ended up being a good way to establish their breakup with friends and family without raising any eyebrows. Their plan had been that during Harry’s time away, Ginny would be able to re-establish herself as the woman she wanted to be, become comfortable with herself and start telling her family when and if she wanted to.
Harry finished talking and stared at Hermione, waiting for her to respond.
“Wow,” Hermione said softly, her eyes concerned. “I can’t even imagine what’s going through her head, realizing that, the war, worrying about telling people – oh Ginny.”
She shook her head and lowered it into both of her hands.
“She shouldn’t be worried about what people think; her friends and family will support her – but I know that’s easier to say than to be the person who’s experiencing it.” She looked up at Harry and fixed him with an amazed stare. “You’re a great person, Harry, to do what you did, to keep her trust and be there for her. I just hope Ginny knows that I wouldn’t ever feel awkward around her, that this would never change anything between us.”
She sighed, running a hand through her own hair.
“I’m so happy for her though,” she whispered as a genuine smile broke out across her lips. “I’m so glad that she’s realized her truth and she can be happy and find whoever it is that she truly loves – and that she didn’t get stuck in a relationship with a guy because that’s what she thought she should do or because she never realized her true feelings and why things didn’t feel right for her.”
She sat back, and Harry smiled at her.
“Me too,” he said sincerely. “She’s much happier now and has actually been sort of seeing someone since our breakup. I think that’s helped.”
“Well, I can’t wait to meet her.” Hermione beamed. “If and whenever she is ready to share. I won’t say a thing, Harry – I promise, I won’t say anything, and I will wait for her to feel comfortable enough to tell me herself.”
“Thanks, Hermione,” Harry said, and he got up to grab some snacks. “I know she won’t mind that I told you – she wanted to tell you after the wedding before we left so that you’d know. But given what happened and how we left – there wasn’t exactly time. I feel guilty telling you without her direct permission, though – I’ll be sure to tell her I told you when we see her next.”
Hermione smiled at him as he handed her an apple.
“You’re a good friend Harry.” She took a bite of the apple, munching it with a smile as she thought about her friend finally finding her happiness. It made her heart explode with joy.
“It wasn’t anything, Hermione.” He said, tossing his own apple up and catching it quickly. “She deserves to be happy, and I’m glad that she’s happy now, that she’s found the sense of belonging that she’d been missing.”
Hermione remembered the conversations she’d had with Ginny about Harry – how desperate Ginny was to get Harry’s attention, to be with him. It made sense – it really did. Her desperation was linked to her need for acceptance and her trying to find her place when she felt like she didn’t belong. Always being worried about why she wasn’t normal and worrying about why she wasn’t interested in the boys like female classmates were. Thinking that Harry was the solution, that the only reason why things didn’t feel right with Dean or why she wasn’t attracted to any other men was because she was only attracted to Harry.
Hermione slowly ate her apple, so happy that Ginny and Harry had handled their relationship well – so happy that Ginny was on route to true happiness, toward a relationship where she actually felt something and could feel like she belonged.
After finishing their snacks, they both settled down in the armchairs to read, and Hermione noticed that the guilt she’d been carrying about the dynamic between her and Harry had started to lift from her shoulders. She turned the page of her book to read further on the bonding magic she suspected someone had used to band the werewolf but stopped to eye Harry over the top of her book. His eyes were focused intently on the page in front of him, his hand resting in his messy hair while he read. She smiled, happy to be here with him – grateful to have him in her life. A slight blush dusted her cheeks when she recalled the closeness between them nights before, and her heartbeat increased. She looked back to her page. She was happy, and for the first time in a long time, optimistic.
Note: This chapter is technically not required in order to follow the main story that I am telling about Harry and Hermione – it is a flashback to 6th year, so you can skip it if you’d like to. That said, I think you should read it as it is important to the overall story.
[Background: I thought writing this chapter was important and added some depth and additional background to Harry and Ginny’s relationship. I hope to make this story more believable by showing Ginny’s experience – I didn’t want my story to be all ‘oh Ginny is conveniently just gay, so she’s out of the way’. I want it to be believable because I genuinely believe that this could have happened in canon. I wanted to give some substance to my basis and give some love to Ginny (who, honestly, I thought was a good character but was massively underdeveloped in canon). The pick-up point is page 499 in HBP.]
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Harry looked around; there was Ginny running towards him; she had a hard, blazing look in her face as she threw her arms around him. And without thinking, without planning it, without worrying about he fact that fifty people were watching, Harry kissed her.
Ginny’s heart exploded. Her mind was going a thousand miles a minute – Harry Potter had just kissed her. HARRY POTTER. The boy she had loved for so, so long. The only one she’d ever been interested in had finally seen her, and he had now wrapped his hands around her waist and was holding her closely.
When they broke apart, and she heard the whooping shouts of her peers in the common room around them, and she turned to see the confused look on her brother’s face. She smirked – the idiot had never clued in how she felt about Harry. He just assumed that she was infatuated with him in a harmless way. But when Ron tilted his head in acceptance to Harry, she beamed.
The creature in his chest roaring in triumph, Harry grinned down at Ginny and gestured wordlessly out the portrait hole.
Taking Harry’s hand, she led him out of the portrait hole and down to the school grounds. They spent the next several hours walking, talking, holding hands and snogging their faces off. Her heart was racing as the excitement coursed through her. She couldn’t believe that this was happening; it was surreal. Between winning the Quidditch match and now sitting on a bench and kissing the one man she knew she was meant to be with – it was a dream come true.
Harry was telling her about how he’d noticed her a little while ago, and he was tracing his fingers over the back of her hand. She smiled at him as she heard the words, in complete disbelief to find that he’d felt the same way as her for a while. She told him that Dean was just a way to get him to notice her and that she never really cared for him in that way – she admitted that she felt guilty about it.
When it was so dark that they could hardly see, they finally made their way up to the Gryffindor tower to head to bed – Harry kissing her gently but firmly before going to his own room. Ginny grinned beneath his lips. She was fairly certain that this was the happiest she had ever been.
That night when she laid in bed, her heart fluttered at the thought of having what she wanted, finally . Things were starting to look up, and for once, things were starting to make sense. Over the course of her time at Hogwarts, she had spent hours each week laying in this very bed wondering what was wrong with her. Growing up, she’d never had much interest in the boys around her – mostly because she thought that they were all stupid and annoying – but she just didn’t understand why all her female friends found them so interesting.
She loved having boys as friends. They were funny, energetic, and far more fun to play with than several of the girls that her mother had introduced her to as a kid. Except perhaps for Rosa, Ginny had always liked Rosa very much. She was kind, thoughtful, beautiful, and caring – but otherwise speaking, she’d preferred having boys for friends, and she never found them attractive in any other way.
When she met Harry Potter, she’d been star-struck. He was a legend, and Ginny was positively fascinated by him. She’d read everything that she could about him and asked her mum a bunch of questions. The idea of knowing him or being friends with him was a dream. So, when she found out that her brother Ron had somehow managed to make friends with Harry she was beyond excited.
Once she arrived at Hogwarts, nothing changed. She still didn’t find the boys overly interesting, except to hang out with them or get up to no good with them around the castle – she always felt awkward sitting on her dormitory bed while the girls she stayed with in the dormitory talked about who was cute. When asked by Maisey, a petite and pretty blonde girl she shared her dorm with, who she liked, Ginny had panicked and blurted out Harry’s name. The girls accepted her answer and then cooed over how handsome he was and how pretty his eyes were. Ginny supposed that she agreed with them – he did have nice eyes. It was after that that Ginny started to think of her interest in Harry as romantic. It made sense, didn’t it? That would explain why she was so interested in him after all, right?
So, over the next couple of years, she focused on all the qualities and things about Harry’s appearance and personality that she liked and started to subconsciously associate them with liking him. As time went on, though, Harry didn’t seem to pay her any mind. She was just Ron’s little sister. It made her nervous around him, and she started to get worried that she would never be able to have the type of relationship that her dormmates often talked of – that she might not ever get to be with the one boy she was destined to be with. The only boy she’d ever felt anything for. She confided in Hermione in her fourth year, looking for guidance and hoping that she might be able to give her some kind of insight as to what to do. Despite Hermione being annoyingly proper and an absolute bore at times with her book references – she was a brilliant witch, and Ginny appreciated her feedback. Hermione had told her to relax, to just be herself, and that Harry would notice her once she was more comfortable around him. She suggested that she try dating other people and just become comfortable with herself while she waited.
Ginny did just that. She forced herself to calm down around Harry and just be herself. She forced herself not to stress over the fact that she felt like she would be royally fucked if Harry never noticed her, doomed to be alone forever. And she tried dating other people to help appear more normal and calm, and like she wasn’t hanging her entire future on Harry’s acceptance.
Dating Dean had been excruciating, though, and to be honest, she felt a decent amount of guilt for doing it. He was an okay kisser, she guessed. But every time he leaned in to kiss her, her stomach knotted – and not in the romantic, exciting way that Maisey had described she felt when she kissed her boyfriend. Snogging Dean made her feel uneasy. It made her anxious, and it made her feel slightly dirty like she was doing something wrong – doing something she knew that she didn’t really want to do.
Dean was nice and funny, and a good person – Ginny did like him. She just didn’t find him attractive in that way and didn’t want him to touch her. His hands on her body just made her uncomfortable, and she did not see the appeal of his clumsy fingers coping a feel of her breasts.
In their make-out sessions, she often felt her mind wandering to other things. Thinking about Harry, about Dumbledore’s army, about a new spell she wanted to try – the snogging was boring and unexciting, and when she crawled into bed each night, she felt a bit sick with herself. Like something wasn’t right, and her body was rejecting the contact. The only thing that gave her any semblance of calm was thinking about how if Harry ever did notice her, things would be different. She’d feel the heat that Maisey described, the tightening in your stomach and the sense of urgency that made you want to snog your boyfriend’s face off for hours.
She closed her eyes and let out a sigh. Things were good now, and they would be good. Ginny finally had Harry – she was finally with the only person she liked. She would be normal now; she’d be able to fit in with the rest of her friends and finally feel that thrill of excitement that they often talked about. The sick and wrong feelings would go away, and she would be engaged, present, and wanting. Turning over, Ginny went to bed, excited for the new day.
-x-x-
Over the next few days, the excitement continued. People were talking and gossiping about them. Ginny was with Harry every moment she could be, and the two of them were happy. They laughed about the gossip, Ginny found it outrageous that somehow, they were more interesting than the dementor attacks that were ongoing, and she smirked any time Ron looked awkward or uncomfortable with them together. Serves him right after all the disgusting snogging he’d been up to with Lavender, she thought. Her opinion doubled over by the fact that he was a moron not to notice how it upset Hermione.
One afternoon when she went to go meet Harry outside for a walk, she bumped into Susan Bones – literally – and Susan’s books fell to the floor.
“Oh shit,” Ginny said as she quickly bent over to help her pick up the books. “I’m so sorry, Susan. I wasn’t even paying attention.”
Susan smiled back at her as she collected a few papers that had come loose from the pages of a book she had been carrying.
“That’s okay, Ginny,” she said, smiling genuinely. “I haven’t seen you in a while – it’s not like the Dumbledore’s Army days anymore. How have you been?”
“I’ve been well.” Ginny grinned. She had always liked Susan, she was very kind, pretty, and had a laugh like music. “How about you? Are you still keeping up with your defence practice?”
“Yeah, I am!” Susan grabbed the last paper and slowly started to stand up. “I actually practice sometimes with some of my dormmates or Luna. But otherwise, I’ve mostly been trying to prepare for end of term – I know it’s early – but I’ve always struggled with exams, so this year I want to be prepared.”
“That makes all of these books make sense then,” Ginny said with a cheeky grin.
Ginny looked Susan up and down, now standing just an inch or two taller than her; the change in Susan was incredible. Though a year older than Ginny, she’d met Susan through Hermione. Susan had always been a very insecure and shy girl – Ginny had noticed it almost immediately when she met her in her first year. As the years went on, Susan grew taller and started to come out of her shell. It turned out she was a very caring person, and she had a good sense of humour that Ginny always appreciated.
After joining Dumbledore’s Army in her fifth year, Susan had really come into her own. No longer harbouring the baby fat in her cheeks that she used to back in second year, Susan had grown out of her awkward duck footedness into a lean girl with bright honey-coloured eyes and wavy strawberry blonde hair that always seemed to shine in the sunlight. She stood with poise and confidence she never used to have and seemed much more confident in herself than most of the other girls her age.
Susan looked at Ginny, a small and curious smile forming at the corner of her lips.
“I uh – I heard you and Harry are dating now.” Her voice had quirked up at the end, and Ginny grinned wider in confirmation.
“Yeah, we got together just a few days ago.”
“That’s great!” Susan exclaimed, a full smile forming on her lips, and she looked at Ginny warmly. “Harry is a very lucky man.”
She extended her hand out toward Ginny, palm open, with an expectant look in her eyes.
Ginny’s eyebrow quirked up, and she pondered the statement briefly.
Well, that’s different? she thought to herself. Usually, when her female classmates asked her about Harry, they always mentioned how lucky she was to be with him – not the other way around. She stared down at Susan’s open palm dumbly, then back up at her face.
Susan chuckled gently, and her eyes crinkled as her smile widened.
“My notes?” she said gently, gesturing with her head down to Ginny’s hands which held a cluster of papers and books that she’d gathered from the floor.
“Oh!” Ginny said, her face flushing as she started to feel a bit stupid. “Sorry, apparently my brain isn’t working today, here.”
She extended her hand toward Susan’s and gave her the papers and books; their fingers brushing momentarily as Susan collected them, and Ginny’s heart fluttered.
“Thanks!” Susan said as she tucked the papers under her arm. “Hey, I’ve got to get to the library to meet up with someone – but – I’ll see you around, okay Ginny?”
With that, Susan smiled one last time and headed off to the library. Ginny stared after her shouting out a much-delayed goodbye before looking down at her hand.
What the hell? she thought as her heart still raced. She shook her head to clear whatever was happening to her body. She hoped it was just a case of being excited to go see Harry or being flustered about looking like an idiot in front of Susan – and not that she was coming down with some sort of illness. That was the absolute last thing that she needed. Having attempted to shake the feeling from her body, she quickly walked out the main steps to go greet Harry.
As she approached Harry, they grabbed hands before heading down toward the lake. Ginny smiled as she looked up at him, but it faltered a fraction when she realized that her heart was no longer thrumming in her chest, and she felt particularly calm around Harry. She frowned inwardly; maybe she was coming down with something – perhaps she should stop by the Hospital Wing afterwards to get some pepperup potion just in case.
-x-x-
Over the next few days, Ginny split her time between classes, spending time with her friends, studying, and spending time with Harry. But as each day passed, she started to get more and more concerned. Her classes were going fine, her friends were well, and her exam prep was going great thanks to Hermione’s help – damn that witch could build a study guide!
The problem was with Harry.
Actually, the problem wasn’t Harry. There was nothing wrong with Harry; he was a perfect gentleman – in fact, he was everything that she thought he would be. Kind, caring, funny, smart, and he never treated her like she needed help. So she couldn’t figure out why the initial excitement that had coursed through her body when Harry first kissed her seemed to have disappeared completely. She still loved Harry; she knew that she did – she cared so deeply for him and always wanted to make sure that he was safe. But when he kissed her now, she felt nothing… just like before. She was starting to get more and more concerned as each day passed. She’d been to Madam Pomfrey twice in the last week for pepperup potion, and it didn’t seem to do anything to shake this deeply rooted anxiety that gripped her chest.
Yesterday, when she and Harry were snogging by the lake under the privacy of a large tree, he’d gently traced his hand up her side and grazed under her breast before running a thumb over her – and she felt nothing. No excitement, no build, just that familiar blank feeling she’d grown accustomed to when dating Dean, and her heart plummeted. She had tensed as the anxiety hit her and Harry withdrew his hand. They ended up just sitting in each other’s arms in silence, staring at the lake. She’d slept horribly that night as a result, playing the scene over and over in her head, knowing that Harry had pulled his hand away when he felt her tense, and she worried what he might be thinking.
She’d tossed and turned all night as the anxiety turned to a familiar sick feeling. ‘ What the fuck is wrong with me’, coursed through her head the remainder of the night as quiet hot tears escaped the corner of her eyes. She wiped the forearm of her pajama shirt across her eyes, willing the tears to stop while hoping that her dormmates wouldn’t hear the small sniffle that escaped her – she couldn’t stomach the thought of having to come up with an excuse for why she was crying behind her bed curtains at 3 am.
How is this happening to me , she mourned internally as she stared up at the canopy above her. She had Harry, the only guy she’d ever loved – the only guy she’d ever actually wanted, the missing piece to her puzzle of why she never felt like she fit in. Closing her eyes, she willed her mind to still and begged for sleep to come.
The next day Ginny sat at the bottom step of a lone tower in the castle, miserable, head in her hands while a light spring breeze blew in through the open window and mingled with her hair. She’d been there for over an hour. This was the spot she came to when she needed to think, when she needed answers – but today, she found none. She was too overwhelmed with exhaustion and dreading what was going to happen.
Am I just incapable of feeling feelings like that? she pondered as she sunk her head even lower into her hands.
The sound of light footsteps coming down the stairs behind her made her raise her head, and she turned to look behind her only to see Luna descending the stairs.
“Oh, hello Ginny,” Luna said in her traditional, whimsical voice and sounding a thousand miles away.
“Hey, Luna,” she said softly as she turned her head back around and propped it up in her hand.
“You seem like you’ve got something important on your mind,” Luna said as she slowed her steps and stood next to Ginny.
“You could say that,” Ginny spit out, her head ached from lack of sleep, and she didn’t really feel like having a conversation with anyone right now.
Luna seemed unfazed by Ginny’s tone, either having not registered it or having decided it wasn’t directed at her. She looked thoughtfully at Ginny for a moment before sitting down next to her, propping her head on her hand in a similar fashion.
“Anything I can help with?” she asked lightly, her face sincere and full of kindness.
Ginny sighed. She shouldn’t have snapped out her words at Luna like that, she didn’t deserve it, and she was too bloody nice to call Ginny out on her attitude, as proven by Luna’s willingness to sit down next to her and offer help. She never took Ginny’s venom personally.
“Not unless you can explain why I’m a broken person,” Ginny said with sarcasm, but she turned her head toward Luna and offered her a small smile.
Luna’s head tilted to the side as she looked over Ginny’s face curiously.
“You don’t look like a broken person to me, Ginny.” Her eyes had glanced over Ginny’s full form before settling on her gaze once more. “Tired maybe, and perhaps a bit confused, but you certainly don’t look broken.”
Ginny snorted quietly and tucked her hair behind her ears, shaking her head before looking back at Luna.
“That’s because I’m broken on the inside, Luna,” she said in a much softer voice than she’d intended. A much sadder one, and she winced at the small break she heard. “My emotions don’t seem to work the way they’re supposed to. I–”
She grimaced sadly at Luna before she continued.
“I’m not feeling how I thought I would – how I’m supposed to.”
“What is it that you’re not feeling?” Luna asked quietly.
Ginny rolled her eyes, frustrated that she was even having this conversation. She liked Luna, but getting advice from her felt like a waste of time.
“I’m not feeling anything!” she bit out angrily, voice raised in annoyance as a hot tear fell down her cheek. “It’s like I’m emotionally blunted. I thought I’d feel happy, I’d feel excited, that I – that I would feel some kind of pull, some kind of want. Anything . But I just feel fucking nothing – just like before. This was supposed to be different.”
Ginny looked down at her hands, angry with herself for yelling, angry with herself for being a broken, emotionally blunted person. She could feel Luna looking at her with that misty yet piercing gaze she had, humming quietly as she pondered Ginny’s words. They sat quietly for several minutes before Luna broke the silence.
“Have you considered that perhaps you feel how you feel and that maybe your perception of what you’re supposed to be feeling is what’s really broken?” Luna’s eyebrow was quirked in question when Ginny looked up at her. “It seems like your emotions are working just fine to me.”
Ginny stared at her, not really sure what to say. Luna always said loony things – that’s why she had gotten the nickname that she had.
What the fuck does my perception being broken even mean? The confusion must have been evident on her face because Luna smiled gently at her before squeezing her arm and standing up.
“I think that if you listen to your heart, you’ll find that your emotions have always been working just fine,” she said, smiling again as she looked down at Ginny. “Maybe you just haven’t been listening to them. Maybe you’ve been looking in the wrong places for them.”
She reached down toward Ginny’s hand.
“Let’s go to the kitchens,” she said softly. “A cup of tea brewed with lavender and some dark chocolate will help clear your head.”
Ginny stared up at Luna, her mouth hanging open and her emotions a mess – but she raised her hand slowly anyways and Luna took it gently, Ginny smiled. They walked in silence down to the kitchens to get their tea with lavender and dark chocolate. Ginny pondered the words that Luna had spoken. They didn’t really make sense, but yet she couldn’t help but feel like they resonated with a part of her deep down. She didn’t understand what to make of it, but she really appreciated Luna’s friendship and how she never judged anyone – always just accepting people for who they are. She spent an hour with Luna in the kitchen’s drinking their tea – which tasted… interesting, and they talked casually about exams, wrackspurts, and their favourite summertime smells.
-x-x-
Harry sat in the armchair in the Gryffindor tower with Hermione and Ron, thankful that Ron had finally shut up so that he could stare at his book in peace and pretend to be reading while his mind raced through the last two weeks with Ginny. A deep weight sat on his chest, which made it hard for him to breathe and function normally. He loved Ginny, he knew that he did, but he couldn’t help but shake this lingering feeling of wrongness he had when he was with her.
At first, he had blamed it on being unsure of Ron’s acceptance of their relationship. After all, Ginny was Ron’s baby sister, and Ron was his best friend. But as each day passed, Ron seemed more and more comfortable with them together – while Harry felt less and less okay with it. When they had first kissed in the common room, he was so proud and so excited to finally have Ginny. But as the days passed, the feeling started to fade, and he began to feel uncomfortable with the intimacy between them.
Harry had wondered if perhaps his feelings of discomfort were because he was just nervous about being physically close with Ginny, that he’d been longing for it for so long that he’d built it up in his head, and his nerves were getting the best of him – that he was just stressing out and getting stuck in his head about it. So, a few days ago, when they had been down by the lake snogging, he thought that he would try to push his comfort level by touching her more intimately. Bite the bullet, so to speak.
But as he kissed Ginny and started to move his hand up her side, it started to tremble and a knot formed in the pit of his stomach. He pushed forward, bringing his hand up under her breast and then brushed his thumb over her. His hand jerked ever so slightly, and he felt the knot in his stomach twist into a sick feeling. Ginny stiffened, and he panicked, thinking that she had felt the tremble in his hand and the jerk after he’d touched her. They ended up just sitting by the lake quietly in each other’s arms while Harry’s head spun.
He felt awkward, uncomfortable, and wrong. It had been like touching a friend, a sister, and that thought made him want to gag. He didn’t know what to do. Ginny was now his girlfriend. He cared for her, he loved her – but he didn’t think it was in the way that he was supposed to. The way that he had thought that he did. And now, he felt trapped and terrified. He couldn’t exactly break up with his best friend’s little sister and say, ‘oh so sorry, my bad, I made a mistake – I actually don’t like you… like that…’ . That thought made him about as sick as the thought of staying with her and forever feeling like he was groping at his sister. He knew that Ginny cared for him – she would do anything for him, and he didn’t want to hurt her. But he knew that he couldn’t stay either.
Fuck, this is a mess, he thought.
-x-x-
Ginny sat in the quiet back corner of the library. It was Saturday, and Harry was currently serving detention with Snape. She’d piled several large volumes to her left to block her view of the library aisle, and she was hoping that they would send the fuck off vibe that she was currently feeling to anyone walking by. It’d been over a week since her conversation with Luna, and she still couldn’t understand what the hell she meant, and she still didn’t feel anything when she was with Harry. The whole situation was frustrating her so much that she was actually looking forward to Harry being in detention today. She hated faking being comfortable around him when she really just felt awkward– and knowing that in turn made her feel awful, guilty, and sad.
Elbows on the table, head held in her hands, she squeezed her eyes shut as tightly as she could, hoping that maybe she could reset her brain. But all it did was give her a headache.
What the FUCK am I supposed to do?! she screamed inwardly before letting her head fall through her hands to thunk loudly and painfully on the table.
“Ughhh – fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK!” she groaned out at the table as she gently thumped her head once more.
“So, it’s that kind of day, is it?”
The voice was friendly and familiar, and Ginny slowly raised her head from the table’s surface, lamenting internally that she didn’t build her book wall higher as she didn’t want to talk to anyone before she turned her head toward the aisle.
“Oh, Susan!” she said quickly, sitting up straight and rubbing her forehead with the sleeve of her robes to try and smooth out the red mark she could feel forming in the center.
“Hey Ginny,” Susan said happily with a warm smile as she placed a hand on the edge of the table. She tilted her head to the side before her face turned to a more serious and curious expression. “Everything – uh – okay?”
“Uh–” Ginny looked down at the table, feeling a bit stupid for being caught swearing at it as she bashed her own head. She frowned, then answered bluntly. “No, not really.”
Susan frowned in response before moving two steps toward her on the opposite side of the table but being careful with her spacing so as not to crowd Ginny. Ginny sighed internally, another thing that she always liked about Susan – her situational awareness was killer, and she really knew how to read the people around her.
“Anything I can help with?” Susan asked gently, raising a brow in question.
Ginny looked up to her bright honey-coloured eyes. There was a lighter, almost golden ring around her pupil that was really quite stunning. She wondered if it was genetic. Realizing that she’d been staring at her, she cleared her throat and then looked back down at the table.
“Honestly, probably not, but I appreciate the offer.” She grimaced and twisted her hands into a knot in front of her. “I just haven’t been having a good last few weeks. I’ve felt a little bit – off.”
“Oh.” Susan took a tentative step closer to her. “Have you gone to see Madam Pomfrey – she makes a mean pepperup.”
Ginny sighed. This was exactly why she didn’t want to talk to people. She either had to pretend like nothing was wrong or have people think that she was sick and needed the hospital wing – though to be fair, that’s what she had thought initially, too. She just didn’t feel like explaining to half the school that she was dating Harry fucking Potter and still felt alone, lost, confused, and like she didn’t belong.
“Yeah,” Ginny said, forcing a smile and looking up at Susan. “I’d been by this week already, but maybe I should go again. I’m sure it will help.”
Her smile felt weak, and she felt defeated inside.
“Mhmm,” Susan said slowly, studying her more closely. “Ginny, you know if you ever want to just – talk – I’d be more than happy to lend you my ear. While going to see Madam Pomfrey is a great idea when you’re sick, I get the feeling that this might be something else – that maybe you’re just sick of feeling a certain way?”
Ginny’s eyes widened, and she stared straight into Susan’s eyes.
“I -uh.” She faltered. Susan was appraising her in the most knowing way anyone had ever looked at her, and it made her stomach tighten. “I guess you could say that.”
Susan smiled gently and took a seat quietly on the other side of the bench, a foot closer to the aisle than where Ginny sat.
“It’s okay to feel lost and unsure, you know,” she said softly. “I used to, all the time. And while I’m not sure what it is that you’re going through exactly – I do know what it feels like to be alone and confused.”
“What did you do about it?” The words were out of Ginny’s mouth before she could stop them, and she wanted to kick herself. So much for not talking to people , she thought.
“Well, everyone’s situations are different, but I really found that talking to a close friend that I could trust was really helpful.” She smiled again, propping her chin on her hand as she leaned on the table. “For me, that friend was Luna – she’s very intuitive and very kind. I think she knew what was going on and what I needed before I had even realized it.”
Susan laughed softly as she spoke and her smile grew kinder as she thought fondly of Luna.
“That’s funny,” Ginny said as she smiled back. “Not what you said. Just – I actually talked to Luna a week ago. Though, I think it just made me more confused.”
Susan laughed gently at the look on Ginny’s face, brows slightly furrowed with a general dusting of confusion.
“Yeah,” Susan agreed, shaking her head. “Sometimes Luna can be a bit cryptic. She never wants to tell you anything directly. She believes that everyone should come to their own conclusions. But, if you can decode what she said, I think you’ll find it very useful. It took me over a month to figure out what she said to me. But when I did, I realized that I was actually just decoding my own heart and that Luna’s advice only pointed me to something that had been there the whole time.”
“Wow,” said Ginny, mouth open a fraction. She shook her head in surprise and awe of Luna’s skill. “And how do you feel now?”
“Great,” Susan said as she sat up straight. “I feel much better, more confident, I know what I want now, and for the first time in probably my whole life – I accept myself. I learned to love myself for who I am.”
Ginny smiled genuinely, and she wondered if Susan’s conversation with Luna coincided with the change that she’d seen in Susan – the change into a strong and confident person.
“I don’t suppose you have any tips for decoding?” Ginny asked lightly, arching her eyebrow. “I’m not sure I want to spend a month trying to sort this one out.”
Susan laughed again, and it was like music to Ginny’s ears. She could feel her cheeks flush slightly, happy that she’d been the one to make her laugh in full.
“No,” Susan said, still chuckling. “No – I doubt it. Luna is pretty mysterious. Even if I knew what she said, I doubt I could decode it – her messages are always meant for the person they’re delivered to. I’m afraid I probably wouldn’t be much help.”
Susan gave her a sympathetic look before slowly standing up from the table.
“But,” she added as she collected the books she’d set down. “If you ever need someone to talk to, just let me know, okay?”
Ginny watched her movements, the gentle fingers that picked up the books, her honey-coloured eyes, which were filled with genuine concern and how she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear as she pulled the books tighter to her chest.
Ginny’s chest tightened, and for reasons that she would spend the rest of the weekend trying to comprehend, she blurted out words for the second time that day.
“She told me that maybe I feel how I feel – that maybe my emotions aren’t broken, but my perception of them is, and uh – maybe I haven’t been looking for them in the right places.”
The words tumbled out of her mouth, and she felt the flush on her cheeks deepen, embarrassed that she’d just dumped Luna’s words out on the table like that. It wasn’t like Susan was her best friend. Maybe that was too much all at once.
Susan’s eyes widened, and her grip on her books tightened ever so slightly before she regained her composure, and she looked Ginny over gently.
“Any uh – any ideas on what that meant?” Ginny asked sheepishly, grabbing her elbow with her opposite hand.
Susan’s movements were slow, and she was looking at Ginny as if a light switch had just flicked in her head.
“I uh.” Susan looked torn, like she was deciding what to say. Like she was holding something back. “Ginny, I don’t think I’m the right person to tell you – I don’t think I should assume anything – I think this is something that you need to figure out on your own.”
Ginny frowned, at herself really, and diverted her eyes down to the table.
“You’re right. I’m sorry, Susan.” She wanted to melt into the ground – her normal strong Gryffindor confidence and pride melting away. She’d been such a mess with her feelings over the last few weeks that she really didn’t feel like herself anymore. She felt pathetic. Her fiery attitude felt like it’d been snuffed out. “I shouldn’t have asked you – there’s no way you’d know what that meant. I’m just really confused. Sorry.”
She could feel Susan hesitate, feel her staring at her, and she forced herself to look up.
For Merlin’s sake, Ginny! She cursed inwardly. You will not be pathetic as well as an emotional disaster. You will look at people when you talk to them. She met Susan’s eyes and saw only kindness, if not a little bit of pity.
“Ginny,” Susan said softly. “You’re a brilliant witch. I know you’ll figure it out faster than I did.”
Ginny felt her stomach flutter at her words, and she saw Susan’s finger twitching on her book just slightly.
“Maybe,” Susan said slowly, giving her a knowing look. “Luna’s advice isn’t as coded as you think. Maybe she meant exactly what she said – that you should spend some time listening to your emotions. Not just the bad feelings – but the good feelings too.”
With that, she gave Ginny a final smile and said goodbye, saying she hoped to see her soon. Ginny echoed her words and then sunk slowly deeper into her seat at the library table.
Listen to the good feelings too , she hummed to herself, and she twisted sideways to lean against the castle wall.
Ginny spent as much of the remainder of the day as she could pondering over both Luna’s and Susan’s words. She forced herself to smile when Harry came to get her from the library and joined in on the conversation at dinner – though secretly, she just wanted to go to bed so she could be alone with her thoughts. After what felt like an appropriately normal amount of time in the common room with Harry, Hermione, and Ron, she excused herself to bed, claiming she was tired from studying and was thankful that Harry accepted her excuse without question, noting that he almost looked relieved.
Putting a pin in that observation for later consideration, she got ready for bed and crawled under her sheets before drawing her bed curtains closed. She then spent the next several hours trying to wrap her head around the conversation with Luna and the words that Susan had spoken. She felt like she was surrounded by hints and that the solution, the answer, was just floating in front of her face like a cloud of smoke, but every time she tried to grab it, it just vanished. Eventually, she drifted off to sleep.
While she slept, Ginny dreamt. She dreamt of nonsense and fragmented memories – some real, some imaginary, some spliced together. She dreamt of Harry, but every time she touched him, he slipped out of her fingers like he was a slippery bar of soap, and he just kept shooting out of her hands. She chased him down the hallway, but he continued to just keep sliding away.
Her dream changed, and she was playing Quidditch, but her broom wouldn’t take off the ground. She ran around the ground with it between her legs, yelling at her teammates – but they couldn’t hear her from so far up in the air. The dream changed again, and she dreamt of running into Susan, but when they collided, the pages Susan dropped exploded into bright gold feathers that fell around them, and Susan stood in the middle looking more radiant than ever. She dreamt of the Quidditch World Cup and the first time she saw the Veela dance. They were memorizing, and she wanted to tell them how beautiful they were. She stood up from her seat to go tell them, but Ron asked her why she was leaving – so she sat back down. Too afraid of Ron knowing that she wanted to go see the Veela – that she thought they were beautiful.
She dreamt of the Burrow and chasing her childhood friends Thom and Rosa around the yard with a gnome she’d caught from the garden – until it bit her so hard she’d cried. She dropped the gnome and ran away from Thom and Rosa, afraid that they would see her crying and laugh at her. She hid behind a large oak tree and looked down at her bleeding finger. Rosa found her first, coming quietly around the tree to see if she was okay. Ginny tried to look brave, to stop crying, but her finger really hurt, and so Rosa gave her a hug. Her hug was warm, and Rosa smelled of wildflowers. Ginny buried her face in her hair, and it was soft. Rosa asked her if she wanted a kiss to make it better; Ginny nodded and held her finger out – but Rosa didn’t kiss her finger. Rosa kissed her straight on the lips. Butterflies rumbled in Ginny’s stomach, and she smiled brightly, but then she heard Thom laughing loudly as he came around the tree. Rosa yelled at Thom to go away, but Thom continued to point and laugh, calling them weird , saying that they were gross , and Ginny started crying again and ran back to the Burrow. She dreamt of golden feathers again before waking up feeling like she’d fallen into her bed.
The sheets were twisted around her ankles, and she was sweaty and cold. She looked up to the curtains drawn around her bed. It was still dim; it must be early morning. Pulling herself from bed, she went to take a shower quietly – careful not to wake her dormmates.
The hot water felt good against her skin, and it helped to wash away the daze that hung over her mind from her dream. The images danced around in her head as she tried to make sense of them. As the steam and heat woke her senses, she pulled her body wash from the shower rack and started to scrub herself clean. It smelled of wildflowers, her favourite, and she hummed pleasantly to herself before her head snapped up violently and her eyes went wide. Bottle still held in her hands, she stared down at it slowly, her heart beginning to race as the images of her dream started to sort themselves into neat little piles.
In one pile, the weird and inaccurate parts of her dream that were definitely not real – like her broom not working. In the other pile, the memories and events that were absolutely real – like her wanting to tell the Veela they were beautiful and… the long and forgotten, yet very very real memory of Rosa kissing her.
Her mind blanked, and she stood still for what must have been minutes, body wash in hand, half covered in soap while the hot water pounded down in front of her. How had she forgotten it?
It was my first kiss , she thought. She’d been so ashamed of Thom’s teasing, so confused by how her heart had been racing that she’d taken the memory and buried it deep, deep down in the darkest part of her to be left forgotten. She’d never told anyone about it. She was only nine years old at the time, nearly ten, and she’d assumed that Thom’s reaction meant that she’d done something wrong. After that, she played with Rosa less, even though it made her sad, and she never talked to her parents about what happened.
Ginny stood dumbstruck, overwhelmed by the feelings that were surging through her body. The emotions that she’d been pushing down and burying deep within her, the memories that she’d been intentionally blocking out were all pouring out of her like a burst pipe, all at once, fast and unforgiving. How she’d found the Veela attractive but was nervous when she realized that Hermione hadn’t. How she remembered thinking Luna was c ute when she had first met her. How she loved the sound of Susan’s laugh and how her heart fluttered whenever she was near. How Rosa had given her her very first kiss – and how at the time she’d been so happy and excited and that she’d liked it.
“Fuck.” The word slipped from her mouth quietly as hot tears started to pour from her eyes.
Luna had been right. She had been feeling things. She had been feeling things all along, but she had been taking each and every one of those feelings and shoving them into a deep dark pit and leaving them to die there. She’d been taking pieces of herself and qualifying them as not suitable and trying to make them disappear.
Ginny cried. She cried for what felt like ages. Whole body sobs wracked through her, her full body shaking with each one, and she crumpled to the bottom of the shower and held her knees to her chest. The hot water poured onto her head, and she continued to clutch the body wash bottle in her hand. The smell of wildflowers still filling the stall.
After a long while, Ginny slowly pulled herself from the floor tiles and forced herself to wash herself off. She was exhausted. She felt like a piece of her had died with this realization – she wasn’t sure if it was because she was heartbroken at her own neglect of self or if she was dead in anticipation of what she knew she needed to do next. Either way, she knew that today was not going to be a good day.
After her shower, Ginny crept back to her bed, it was only 9 am, and her dormmates were still snoozing happily. She grabbed a warm, comfortable sweater and a pair of dark pants and slipped them on. She glanced in her mirror and saw the puffy redness of her eyes – but she didn’t care. She knew that what was coming next was going to be devastating and that she needed to go do it now before she lost her Gryffindor courage. So she didn’t bother to try and hide her already exhausted appearance.
Leaving the girls’ dormitories, she crept into the common room, hoping that Harry would already be awake – Hermione had put the boys on a study program, or at least she had attempted to, and it usually involved them being up and about by 9 am. She didn’t fancy the idea of seeing anyone else but Harry right now – but this couldn’t wait.
The common room was mostly empty; two younger students sat in a corner playing chess, another was in a chair reading by the window, and Harry and Hermione sat by the fire reading. She snorted inwardly, unsurprised to see that her brother was not out of bed yet.
She walked quietly up to Harry and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. Hermione had seen her approaching and looked up with a smile, which quickly turned to a frown when she saw Ginny’s eyes, and she made to get up from her chair – probably to come over and ask what was wrong – but Ginny shook her head silently. Hermione remained in her seat, looking concerned but nodded back. Harry turned to look up at her, and his smile faded quickly.
“Gin,” he said quietly. “What’s wrong?”
“Wanna go for a walk?” Her voice sounded hoarse and strained, like she’d been wailing in the shower for the last hour – which she had been.
“Yeah,” he said as concern wrapped his face. And he put his book down and stood up quickly. “Yeah, come on, let’s go.”
Ginny led him silently out the portrait hole, through the castle and out the main doors down toward the lake. The whole way, Harry did not try to touch her or comfort her, and he didn’t ask her what was wrong. She thanked him inwardly for that – Harry was such a good guy, and he could tell that she wanted space.
When they reached the large oak tree by the lake, Ginny stopped and turned to face Harry. The wind had picked up, and it was starting to spit, the grey clouds in the sky darkening ominously. She looked at Harry, and his expression was filled with worry, concern, love, and kindness. She stared at him, and she felt tears start to prickle at the corner of her eyes.
This hurt.
She was about to hurt Harry Potter.
She loved him; she knew she did – just now, she understood that it was in a different way, like how she loved Hermione or how she loved her brothers. This morning it’d hit her like a bludger that she would never feel anything more than that for Harry, and it killed her. She knew she was about to break his heart, and he deserved better. He was an incredible guy. He was so kind, so thoughtful, so brave, and just the best guy she knew.
She closed her eyes tightly, calling on her inner fire – the one she knew was still there. She’d let it fizzle, she’d dumped water on it each time she hid a part of herself away and ignored the emotions that she didn’t want to see, but she knew it was still there. Opening her eyes, she looked at Harry with determination. Ready to tell him, but Harry spoke first.
“Ginny, I’m sorry.” His voice was quiet but urgent, and it held a sense of anguish in it.
“What?” She faltered, a look of confusion crossing her face. “Wait – why are you sorry?”
Now Harry looked a bit confused, and he shuffled awkwardly on the spot as fat raindrops started to fall.
“I thought you might be upset with me,” he said, hesitating a moment. “That I – that I’ve been a bit distant.”
Ginny’s eyebrows shot up.
“That you’ve been distant?” she said incredulously.
“Yeah,” Harry said slowly, the confusion on his face growing. “I thought you noticed I’ve been a bit – erm – off this last little while. I thought I might have upset you. I thought that you were annoyed with my – uh – with my hesitating with – with – um – being close to you.”
Ginny was in disbelief. If she was being honest, she didn’t notice him being distant. She had been too preoccupied with her own emotions. She hadn’t been paying attention. But looking at Harry now, he looked nervous, scared almost, and an anxiousness filled the air around him. His hands twisted into the fabric of his sweater, and his hair was hanging wet on his face.
“I uh.” He hesitated again, looking down at the ground before taking a deep breath. “I’ve been having a little bit of trouble being close to you – in that way – I care about you, Ginny, I really do. I’ve just been a bit uncomfortable – I don’t know how to describe it.”
A loud clap of thunder jolted Ginny to her senses and the situation that had unfolded in front of her. She looked at Harry – his awkward nervousness, blatant discomfort and unease, and she couldn’t help it as a small laugh escaped her. She couldn’t believe this. She shook her head; Harry was uncomfortable with being close to her.
Harry looked at her more concerned than before, obviously unsure why she had laughed. But as rain ran down her hair and soaked through her sweater, she smiled at Harry, a genuine and warm smile from the deepest depths of her soul.
“Harry,” she said slowly with the smallest hint of a smile on her face. “Harry, I wanted to talk to you because – well, because I also feel awkward and uncomfortable – because Harry, I think I’m gay.”
There.
She’d said it.
She’d openly said she was gay for the first time in her life – and she’d said it in front of her boyfriend, Harry Potter. It felt like the weight of the world had been lifted off her shoulders; everything felt surreal, and her soul felt lighter. Lightning struck brightly over the Quidditch field with another loud boom of thunder.
Harry looked at her in surprise, almost with disbelief. He opened his mouth and shut it twice before shaking his head and laughing with a lightness she hadn’t heard in weeks.
“Ginny, I–” He at her and his eyes shone. A grin split across his face as he looked at her anew, taking her in. “Thank you for telling me, for sharing that with me.”
Ginny smiled genuinely, and she reached out and took his hand.
“I’m sorry, Harry,” she said quietly through the rain. “I – I didn’t know. I didn’t know until recently. I think I always knew. I guess I just – I didn’t realize. I’d pushed it all down. I would never have gotten into a relationship with you if I’d known I just – I just thought it was you, Harry. I thought I only loved you, and that’s why I never liked any other guys. And I do, Harry! I do love you, I care for you so, so much, and I know that I always will. It’s just – not in that way. I love you like my brother Harry. And I really hope – I would really love it if we could stay friends?”
Ginny looked at Harry with anxious anticipation, a hopeful shine in her eyes that he would accept her offer.
Harry positively beamed and she could see his shoulders visibly relax. He squeezed her hand tightly in return before he spoke.
“Ginny, I love you – so, so much. But over the last few weeks, I realized that I love you like you’re my sister. That’s why I’ve been distant – because I’ve felt uncomfortable and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to hurt you.” He looked into her eyes, the emotions pouring out of them. “Ginny, I would love to be your friend.”
Tears poured down Ginny’s face, and she pulled him into a tight hug. They stood in the rain as Ginny sobbed and held Harry tightly, telling him how much he meant to her, how sorry she was, how happy she was to have him in her life and thanking him for accepting her. Harry held her with equal tightness and stroked her hair gently, telling her how wonderful she was, how strong she was for telling him, how happy he was for her, how he wanted her to find happiness and how he was so happy to have met her and to have her as part of his life.
When they finally let go, the rain had stopped, and the sun was peeking out. The world felt quiet and calm again as if the storm had only been there to echo the release of their emotions. Hands held together firmly; they slowly walked their way back up to the castle. They both agreed that they were officially broken up, but Harry agreed to remain Ginny’s boyfriend optically so that she would have time to further accept her new self-discovery and so that they could come up with a way to mutually breakup to their friends.
Ginny wasn’t ready for the school to know that she was gay – which Harry fully supported – and she didn’t want to answer any questions about their breakup while trying to study for her OWLs. They both agreed to keep physical contact to a minimum until they ‘broke up superficially’ – as neither of them wanted it, so they would stick to hand-holding or a quick kiss on the cheek if possible. They also agreed that each of them was free to go pursue whoever they wanted to with no hard feelings.
When they reached the portrait of the Fat Lady, Ginny turned to Harry and kissed him gently on the cheek, squeezing his forearm firmly. She thanked him for being so understanding and accepting. Harry patted her gently on the back and thanked her for understanding his feelings and wanting to remain friends.
Then they turned and climbed through the portrait hole to change out of their wet clothes. Hermione gave her a concerned look when she saw her, but it lightened into a smile when she saw that Ginny was beaming. Ginny went and took her second shower of the morning – this time though, she felt relaxed, calm, and thankful. She closed her eyes and soaked in the smell of wildflowers.
Hermione awoke to the sound of the wind whipping at the tent with vigour and the small sound of rain pitter-pattering against the tent, most of it evidently still being blocked by the cave. It had been two days since Harry told her that Ginny was gay and exactly one month since she was attacked by the werewolf.
She rolled onto her back, the golden locket weighing heavily on her chest as she turned. It felt heavier now than since she was attacked, and she suspected that it had something to do with the dark magic that would forever linger in her body. The Horcrux didn’t bother her mood any more than usual; it just felt physically heavier, and wearing it for extended periods of time made her more exhausted. She wasn’t exactly sure what the reason was for that, but she kept it to herself and wore the locket her fair share. She’d done some reading on it, and from what she could find, it didn’t seem like there was anything to be concerned about – no actual long-term effects, just short-term exhaustion. Every time she took the Horcrux off and handed it to Harry, it was like a literal weight had been lifted from her, and she felt fine again. So, she opted to sleep with it or wear it while they read, and Harry had worn it while they walked or exercised.
It was still dark out, the light in the tent was dim, but it was her turn to take the second watch by the entrance of the cave. So far, the area around them had been completely deserted, but they’d been there for a week now, and she didn’t want to push their luck. It was time to move on to a new location, somewhere far from the South-West coast of England. Hermione rolled out of bed with ease and turned to look at her bunk triumphantly, hands on her hips and a wide grin spread across her face. She was so pleased with her physical progress and her healing. She was confident that she would be able to apparate now.
A light shone over her, and Hermione looked up to see Harry enter the tent, wand in hand and looking right at her.
“Good morning,” he said with a brightness that didn’t match the weather that he’d been sitting in for the last four hours. He looked her over and a small grin formed on his face. “You look mighty pleased with yourself.”
Hermione realized that she was still standing in triumph next to her bed with a stupid smile on her face. She blushed and dropped her hands from her hips, awkwardly grabbing her elbow with the opposite hand instead.
“I was just pleased with my progress,” she said, sounding a little embarrassed.
“You should be! You sure showed that bed who’s boss!” He grinned at her and headed to the kitchen table.
Hermione rolled her eyes but couldn’t help it when a small chuckle passed her lips.
“So, what put you in such a good mood this morning? I can’t see how it was the weather.” She quirked an eyebrow at him as he shucked off his outer rain jacket and hung it on the kitchen chair.
“What? Rain, rain, and more rain? Who doesn’t love that?” He grinned at her as he walked toward her, carrying with him a small jar containing a blue flame. He handed it to her gently. “I’m just excited that it’s your turn, and I get to go to bed now. Saved my flame for you.”
“Thanks,” Hermione said with a smile, taking the glass jar from Harry. “I do have some good news, though.”
“Hmm, what’s that?” Harry had already sat down on his bunk and was pulling on dry socks, looking up at her curiously.
“I think I’m healed enough to apparate. I know you’ll miss the rain – but I thought we could apparate to a new location tomorrow. Put some solid distance between us and the last few camps.”
Harry stopped putting on his socks to look at her fully, appraisingly, a hint of concern in his eyes.
“I know the rain sucks, Hermione, but I actually don’t mind it. Are you sure you’re okay to apparate?” He had risen from his bed and walked to stand back in front of her, placing a hand gently on her upper arm. “You look good – I mean, your physical progress has definitely improved, and you look much better. I just don’t want you to rush anything. But you know your body – so only if you’re sure?”
Hermione blushed lightly at his words. She loved that Harry was always so concerned about everyone else, but she nodded firmly.
“Yes, I’m sure.” She pulled the blue flame a little closer to her chest when Harry’s thumb moved comfortingly against her arm, and her stomach tightened. “I know I can do it. I’ll be fine. I’ve been keeping tabs on the level of my fitness, and I’ve been checking the wounds. They’re fully healed, and I think I might actually be in better shape than when we left – thanks to your fitness routine.”
Harry smiled at her warmly and dropped his hand. She noticed the void it seemed to leave and how her arm now felt cold. She shook her head to clear it. Harry had touched her plenty of times before; she wasn’t sure why recently it seemed so much more impactful.
“Okay, if you’re sure, then I trust you.” He turned to head towards his bunk. “Wake me up if anything happens out there. It’s still pretty awful, so I doubt anything is out and about, but – you know where to find me.”
With that, they smiled and said goodnight to each other, Hermione turning to exit the tent and take up the post at the edge of the cave. She made sure to grab her repaired rain jacket on the way – thankful for it as soon as she stepped from the tent. The wind had picked up, and it whirled around violently, the ocean raging and the rain still falling. She settled on the small rock by the entrance of the cave, cast a warming charm on herself and held the jar tight to her chest. It was dark and damp, and it made Hermione miss the heat of the summer days after the wedding.
Her watch was uneventful, the storm raged on, and the sun, although rising, was barely visible behind all of the clouds. Hermione sat quietly, lost in thought regarding Harry, Ginny, Horcruxes, and the werewolf band. She’d spent the last two days thinking heavily on what she was going to do about these strange feelings that seemed to be surfacing – and the closeness that had grown between her and Harry. Knowing about Ginny had at least squashed the guilt that she had been harbouring over it, but she still wasn’t sure if the change in dynamic was simply just because they’d been stuck in a tent together for months and their hormones were getting to them, or if it was something deeper finally bubbling to the surface. After all, she and Harry had always been close.
Regardless of what it was, though, Hermione had pretty well resolved herself to do nothing with the emotions – they were in the middle of a war. She and Harry needed to focus on Horcruxes. They needed to hone their skills and practice, find the sword of Gryffindor and figure out a way to destroy these things – not to mention locate the remaining ones. She didn’t exactly have the time, nor did she really think it was appropriate to be dwelling on feelings for her best friend. Especially when the feelings may very well just be pent-up sexual tension – she’d never been one to succumb to urges, but she was human. There were more important things to do right now – so it would be best to just ignore the closeness and perhaps try to add some more space between them. Still mulling things over, she didn’t hear as Harry approached her and laid a hand on her shoulder when her watch was over, and she jumped with a start.
“Sorry,” Harry said softly, giving her an apologetic look. “I made some breakfast and tea – come on in and warm up.”
“Thanks, Harry.” Hermione smiled up at him, handing the jar of flames to his outstretched hands and getting up to follow him inside.
They ate breakfast together and looked over the map to determine where to go next. Hermione selected a remote wooded area in the northern end of England where she had camped with her parents. After a quick shower, they packed up their belongings and then started to disassemble the tent. It took a little bit longer, what with having to remove the sticking charms and with the wind trying to pry everything away from them, but they managed to get the tent packed securely into Hermione’s purse.
After handing the locket off to Harry, Hermione stood beside him and reached out to grab his hand. She stood there holding it firmly, taking a few deep breaths to calm her nerves – she was nervous to apparate for the first time in a month, especially considering how rough that last time had been. If she wanted to do it without injury, she needed to focus.
Harry squeezed her hand, and she looked over to him.
“I trust you,” he said as he met her eyes evenly. “You can do this.”
She smiled back in return, feeling a warm buzz of confidence in her chest, and she matched his grip. Taking one last deep breath, she closed her eyes and apparated them away.
They landed in a wooded area, exactly where she planned to bring them, but the velocity of their landing was a bit fast. Hermione stumbled abruptly as her feet landed, and she began to fall forwards, but a pair of strong arms wrapped around her waist to catch her fall and pull her back.
“Woaahhh – careful,” Harry said by her ear. He’d managed to grab her tightly before she fell on her face, he pulled her back toward him, and her back thumped gently against his chest.
“Thanks,” she said a little breathlessly. “I guess that took a little more out of me than I expected.”
She looked up over her left shoulder towards him. His hands were still wrapped securely around her waist, albeit less tightly now that she was standing straight on her own, and he was looking down at her with concern. Hermione’s heart skipped a beat.
“You okay?” he asked, his voice quiet as he looked at her.
Hermione stared at him, her eyes widening as she felt her breathing hitch. He was so warm, and a strange heated feeling was washing over her body from the contact between them. She could feel the heat rising to her cheeks.
“Hermione?” His eyebrow raised as he looked at her more intently.
“What? Yeah – no, I’m fine.” She could feel the burn of a blush, and she looked away quickly. “I’m fine, sorry. I just, that was a bit more difficult than I thought. Are you okay?”
She stepped away from Harry to look at him, and he let his arms fall. She needed to put some distance between them and get control of her body’s reactions.
“Yeah, I’m alright.” He smiled at her. “You did perfect. I knew you could do it.”
She beamed at him and flushed again before pulling her purse off her shoulder to get out the tent. They set it up together and then placed the wards, enchantments, and alarms. Within an hour, they were seated on a small rock outside of the tent drinking tea.
The forest was much cooler than south England, and a cold breeze blew Hermione’s hair from her face as she sipped the hot tea. It was getting to the end of October, and the chill of November was already upon them. Her body was tired. She had been able to successfully apparate, and for that, she was incredibly proud, but she felt exhausted as if she’d run a mile and completed their workout routine. The forest was quiet. The only sound was that of the leaves blowing in the trees and the dead ones that fell to the ground. Her eyes started to droop, and she found her body slouching – then, after a moment, it sagged to the right until it gently leaned against Harry. Her insides churned with anticipation and sleepy butterflies, and the logical side of her brain told her to stop and sit up straight – or if she was that tired, then to just go to bed. After all, she’d decided earlier that day that it would be best not to dwell on these emotions or do anything else to instigate further closeness between them, given the situation.
But she was so, and her dead feeling body was winning out and quieting the constant chatter in her head. She opted for whatever was most comfortable and most warm – and Harry was impossibly warm next to the cold air. She kept her eyes from Harry, though, staring out into the woods, hoping that he wouldn’t think the action was anything more than just an exhausted friend leaning on him for support – because that’s all this was, she stated firmly to herself.
After a moment, she felt him move, and then his left hand slowly and cautiously snaked around her waist. She felt his hand on her opposite side, and her heart fluttered lightly when she felt his fingers grip her steadily so that she could lean her full weight on him. Too sleepy to overthink it, she leaned into him further, and he pulled her closer, holding her more tightly. Her head now fully resting on his shoulder, her eyes slouched half-closed, she breathed in a deep breath and could smell the familiar scent of the forest mingling with Harry’s. He always somehow smelled of fall, like the crisp cool air and a deeper smell that she couldn’t name – it was just how he always smelled, and it made her feel calm and safe. They sat in comfortable silence for a while before Hermione spoke.
“Harry?” she said quietly, her voice laced with sleepy undertones.
“Mmm?”
She felt his head turn, and she assumed that he was looking down at her.
“I was thinking we should practice some spells and duelling to help with our reflexes – but also my stamina. I think that’s why apparating hit me so hard. I’ve gotten rusty.”
“You’ve gotten better, you mean,” Harry said gently. But then she felt him nod. “But yeah – I’ve been thinking that too. I was waiting until you were ready. It’s a good idea.”
Hermione nodded into his shoulder and took another sleepy sip of tea.
“We can start tomorrow,” he said gently, giving her a squeeze with his arm.
Hermione smiled and closed her eyes, and she burrowed her face slightly into the sleeve of his thick sweater to warm her nose. She felt him chuckle gently.
“You should go sleep for a little bit,” he murmured into her hair, stroking her side with his hand.
“I suppose so,” she sighed. She had thought about fighting it, but she knew that Harry wouldn’t accept it. Besides, she was no use to them exhausted and half asleep.
Slowly Hermione leaned away from Harry, her body shivering from the cold that quickly filled the gap between them. Smiling at him, she made him promise to wake her up for late lunch and not let her sleep the day away. He laughed gently but agreed. Then, bidding him goodnight, she sauntered slowly into the tent and collapsed on her bunk, falling asleep immediately.
Harry kept his promise and woke Hermione up for a late afternoon lunch. She awoke feeling well-rested, and they spent the remainder of the day reading and planning which spells they would practice during the following week. Then over the course of the week, Harry and Hermione resumed their four-hour watch shifts, their physical exercise routine, reading, researching, discussing possible locations of the sword of Gryffindor, and they added in two to three hours of spell practice in the afternoon.
Hermione practiced her Patronus, several explosion spells, disarming and stunning. Harry worked on his disarming, several hexes and explosion spells, and reviewed his healing spells with Hermione’s guidance. They even threw in some practical duelling exercises using strictly disarming and leg locker curses. Each of them ran amongst the trees dodging, jumping, rolling and shielding to avoid getting hit by the other. By the end of the week, they had to add a time limit to their duelling training as they were unable to hit each other with anything.
On their last day in northern England, they ate breakfast together, and Hermione noticed that Harry seemed oddly quiet and perhaps a little nervous. She was spooning another scoop of oatmeal when he finally broke the silence that had been stretching between them.
“I want to teach you sectumsempra. ” Harry met her gaze determinedly when she looked up from her spoon that now hung limply in front of her mouth.
“What?” The word fell out of her mouth with no emotion, and she eyed him with some confusion. “Harry, that spell is dark magic – you saw what it did to Malfoy.”
“Yes, I know Hermione, but please just hear me out, okay?” He looked at her hopefully, eyeing the spoon that stood poised in front of her, the eyebrow that she had raised and the look of slight disbelief that covered her face. But, he noted, she hadn’t cut him off in a lecture or said no outright, which was a good sign – so Harry continued slowly.
“I know it’s dark magic, Hermione. I’m not denying that, and I’m not asking you to use it. In fact, I hope that you or I never even have to consider using it. I just want us to be prepared.” He looked at her evenly. He had been planning what to say the entire week since the thought first entered his mind. “After the werewolf, after what we have seen – the Death Eaters, You Know Who – they’re not going to fight fair. If that werewolf was banded to stay in wolf form or banded to serve as you’ve suspected, then our situation just got even worse. I don’t want to use the spell, Hermione – I just want to know that if we get stuck, if we reach a life or death situation, that we have something that could save our lives. That you have this as a last resort.”
Hermione frowned at him, put her spoon back into her bowl and crossed her arms over her chest. What Harry said was true, and she knew it – she just didn’t like it. Earlier in the week, Hermione had told Harry about an interesting article she had come across on banding experiments from the 1800’s. It turns out that a wizard named Tolipkins had been experimenting with banding magic and discovered a way to blood bond people with the use of a golden band so that they couldn’t harm him and were forced to do his bidding. Almost like a form of the imperius curse but much longer-lasting.
Trouble was the person died after several months of servitude. If her suspicions were correct, she figured that someone else had found the article and had been experimenting with it on werewolves. Since they knew that the werewolves were already sided with You Know Who, she began to suspect that the subjects must either be unwilling or muggle. Muggle werewolves were rare. Usually, they bled out when bitten, but if someone was collecting muggles and changing them on purpose in a controlled way – then Harry was right. They were in a lot of trouble. A Death Eater wouldn’t care about changing a muggle over, and they would create as many as they deemed necessary – and likely keep them in wolf form permanently until they died.
“Harry,” she said quietly. “That spell does irreparable damage.”
“I know,” Harry said, eyeing her cautiously. “But so will a Death Eater if they catch you. I only want you to know it for an absolute worst-case scenario – I would never ask you to use it otherwise.”
Hermione bit her lip, pondering it over. She knew that he was right, but she hated the idea of knowing a dark spell, let alone using one. They were supposed to be fighting this war in the right, in the good – not sinking to the level of the Death Eaters. She sighed and dropped her arms to run a hand through her curls. The Death Eaters were willing to die for their cause, to kill for their cause – Am I ? The question hummed within her mind.
She knew that she was ready to die for the cause, and she would fight until the very end – but she wasn’t sure if she was willing to kill for it. The thought made her sick, even though the logical side of her told her that she needed to be ready for that. Obviously, she didn’t wish for it – but if the Order, or anyone else fighting in the war for that matter, didn’t take it seriously or didn’t match the tenacity of the Death Eaters and you know who – they were doomed to fail.
“Fine,” she said with the sound of unease laced in her voice. “You’re right. Fine – I’ll learn it. But I’m not using it, Harry. I won’t use it. I plan to fight this war with dignity and in the right, not with dark magic.”
She took a breath and picked her spoon back up.
“But you’re right, Harry – it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.”
Harry’s shoulders dropped, the tension and anxiety finally leaving his body. He sighed and gave her a small smile.
“Thank you, Hermione,” he said with sincerity.
She waved him off with her spoon and took another bite before speaking.
“Let’s get it done after breakfast before we leave. Done and over with.”
Harry nodded and picked up his own spoon, eating in a much more normal fashion.
Once the tent was packed, they stood in the forest wands ready. Harry showed her the lashing motion required to cast sectumsempra and went over the pronunciation with her. She frowned while he taught her but didn’t complain. Once she had the spell down Harry, went and grabbed a large fallen branch and dragged it over to her before standing back. She stared at the log and held her wand nervously. Then, somewhat reluctantly, she cast the spell at the log – flinching when it split violently in half. Harry approached her cautiously and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. She remained still and stared at the fragmented log.
“That’s surprisingly easier than I thought it would be,” she said quietly after a moment.
Harry looked down at her and saw the frown deepen across her face.
“I would have thought it would have been more difficult – that maybe I would have felt something – felt something wrong, or dark, or anything. ” She looked up at him, and Harry was surprised to see what looked like sadness in her eyes. “What does that say about me, Harry?”
“Nothing,” he said gently as he stroked her back. “Hermione – it’s different when you see it, when it’s cast against another person. Trust me – you being able to cast it easily is just because you’re skilled. Seeing a log break in half is much less impactful than seeing a person sliced to bits. You’re fine. If you ever have to cast it at someone – it won’t be easy like this.”
Her scowl remained, but she nodded once before dropping her eyes.
“We should get going,” she said, quickly changing the subject and grabbing Harry’s arm firmly.
“Alright,” he said before she apparated them away.
-x-x-
Hermione apparated them to an area of rolling hills at the edge of a forest. They were somewhere in the middle of England, and the weather was dim, damp and rainy. They set up camp just inside the woods in silence, Hermione still frowning over her use of sectumsempra , and they settled into their normal routine of reading. Hermione had found that the second apparition was easier – she didn’t stumble when landing, and she also didn’t need a nap. Sitting quietly and reading, they opted to skip their normal fitness routine due to the weather and tried to talk to Phineas instead. Before having to shove his portrait back into Hermione’s purse, they learned of a constant low-level mutiny at the school, that Ginny had been banned from Hogsmeade and that Snape had reinstated Umbridges’s old decree forbidding gatherings of three or more students. They figured that Ginny and Luna had likely started up Dumbledore’s Army again – and this made them very pleased.
They took their evening tea inside, sitting in the plush armchairs and listening to the light rainfall around the tent. It was cool, so they both cast warming charms. Harry sat to Hermione’s left, and they both shared the footstool in the middle – though Hermione only had her toes perched on the edge of it as she’d brought her chair closer to it and had her knees bent up to her chest. After several moments of silence, Harry spoke.
“I’m sorry for asking you to learn that spell, Hermione, I just – I just don’t want you to get hurt again. I want us to be prepared.” He looked at her with concern brimming in his eyes.
Hermione sighed and felt the crease that’d been between her brows all day fall away. She knew that she’d been particularly abrasive the whole day after using sectumsempra , and that wasn’t fair to Harry, who was just trying to be practical.
“No, Harry,” she said as she brought her teacup down to rest on the top of her knees. “Don’t be sorry. I’m just – I’m just being an immature child. You’re right, and your reasons are practical – just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s not true. I’m sorry for being so stupid and moody about it. You’re just trying to be prepared; you’re taking this seriously.”
Harry smiled at her softly.
“So – we’re good?” His eyebrow had quirked up with his question.
Hermione laughed and smiled at him, letting the last bit of tension she’d been holding fall away.
“Yes, Harry. Yes, we’re good.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry – I shouldn’t have been so immature and pouty about it.”
“Well.” He laughed before grinning at her. “You were pretty pouty about it.”
She nudged his feet with hers, aiming to push them off the stool, but Harry reacted too quickly and instead tangled his legs around hers so she couldn’t move them. She scowled again.
“Must you be so good at everything?” she asked as she tried to pull her feet free, but they just twisted aimlessly between his calves.
“Well, I am the chosen one,” he said with a humorous glint in his eyes.
Hermione groaned and rolled her eyes but stopped twisting her legs and instead settled in deeper into her chair.
“You’re incorrigible,” she said, giving him a look of disbelief before she took another sip of her tea.
Harry laughed outright and reached over to grab his book from the small table between them, flipping it open with one hand to pick up where he’d left off earlier. They sat quietly, Harry reading and Hermione just sipping her tea, enjoying the warmth from the cup and secretly enjoying the warmth from Harry’s legs which were still intertwined with hers. She pushed aside the worry that sat in her stomach of the flutters she got from the closeness and instead reached for her book to read.
After an hour, Hermione went to bed first, leaving Harry for the first watch with the locket and gripping his shoulder softly as she passed by him. He’d reached up to her hand and squeezed it in return, giving her a caring smile before she let go. She wasn’t sure why she did it – perhaps because she wanted to ensure Harry knew they were still fine. But when she crawled into her bunk, she clutched the hand that she’d reached out to Harry tightly to her chest before falling asleep.
Warning:
This chapter contains: descriptions of scars.
-x-x-
Over the next three weeks, their routine remained steady. They each took their night shifts, took turns with the locket, they prepared meals, cleaned the tent, read, discussed locations for Horcruxes, exercised intensely, practiced spells, practiced healing, ran, dodged, jumped, rolled and duelled – even in the rain. They were both in the best shape they’d ever been in and their confidence was growing. Hermione felt strong – and she liked it.
She could now easily cast her patronus, and they’d both mastered deprimo, expulso, incarcerous, and a nifty little shock spell which could be used to restart someone’s heart. Harry’s ability to recall and use healing spells had improved drastically and he now felt confident that he could heal and treat most wounds. They reviewed through the contents of Hermione’s purse and she explained how to determine how much blood replenishing potion someone needed by casting a quick and simple diagnostic charm – which Harry could now also cast and read. He felt comfortable with her entire potion set and collection of herbs and pastes. Harry felt capable and useful – and he liked it.
During the three weeks they moved locations four times and each day Hermione tried to calm her nerves regarding the closeness which had continued to grow between them despite her resolve to do nothing with the mixed emotions that coursed through her. She lectured herself inwardly for her behaviour. She could hardly pretend that outright and intentionally tangling her feet with Harry’s every time they shared the footstool now was helping – though she tried to convince herself it was only for warmth. Now that they were well into the middle of November it was always cold, and the tent was chilly – but she knew her excuse was still weak.
She couldn’t ignore how they now sat precisely beside each other outside every night for tea, shoulders and upper arms touching. When the weather was bad and they had their tea inside, she caught herself either intertwining their legs on the footstool or resting her knee against Harry’s under the kitchen table while they sat opposite to each other. She found it hard to ignore how Harry leaned into her shoulder when he laughed, or how she rested her head on his shoulder if she was tired from the day’s workout. And how when she did rest her head on his shoulder, he would snake his arm around her gently to hold her and pull her closer.
She also couldn’t forget how two weeks ago when she wasn’t feeling great after her night watch in the rain Harry got her some pepperup potion from her bag, insisted that she stay in bed, and ended up crawling onto her bunk to spend the day sitting with her. He leaned against the large tent pole that ran up alongside the middle of her bunk, Hermione sat propped against her pillows and Harry held her legs over his own, sitting perpendicular to her. He got her books to read, insisted he bring her food and complete the next night’s watch himself so she could rest fully and prevent herself from getting sick. Her stomach still fluttered when she thought about how he’d stroked her knee absently and checked her forehead gently with the back of his hand to make sure that she didn’t have a fever. His face had been so close to hers that she hadn’t breathed, and he lingered a moment before pulling away.
It was also difficult not to notice how one night, she’d held his hand while they sat outside looking at the stars. It was cold and dark, and they were on the peak of a cliff in Northern England. She’d grabbed his hand when she spotted a shooting star and squeezed it excitedly – pointing to the sky with her free hand. Harry grinned widely when he saw the next one that fell and squeezed her hand in return. They sat and watched the meteor shower, hands held tightly,huddled close together with the blue fire containing jar sitting across both of their laps. When the meteor shower ended, neither one of them let go and they sat in silence and continued to look at the sky in silence. Harry traced small circles into the back of her hand with his thumb, and she found herself gripping him far more tightly than what was necessary – especially given it wasn’t even necessary to be holding his hand to begin with.
Hermione had looked up at him under her lashes, only to find that Harry was looking directly at her. They stared at each other in silence before Hermione forced her eyes to look away and she stood up to take their well-worn tea cups inside. Harry had been looking at her with 'that look', the one that she had started to become familiar with over the last few weeks. The one that made her stomach knot. Her heart was positively hammering in her chest by the time she’d made it to the kitchen and her hands clattered the cups onto the counter roughly. It was impossible to ignore the tight coil of heat that was forming in her lower abdomen – and she knew that she was in deep trouble.
Between this and the constant and continued small touches, how Harry had gently pushed a strand of her hair behind her ear after their most recent duel which had made her heart flutter – she didn’t know what to do.
Part way through the next week Hermione apparated them to a field of grass along the North-East coast of England. They were nearing the last week of November and the sleet and snow had started. They quickly set-up the tent and ran out to place their circumference alarms before running back to the tent for cover. It was cold, frosty and wet. When they entered the tent, they each took off their soaking wet jackets and cast several warming spells before starting a fire between the two armchairs in a large bowl. A habit they had started once the cold weather had sunk in. They both huddled around it to warm up before making themselves lunch and Hermione ignored her inner voice once more and tangled her legs with Harry’s.
-x-x-
On the fourth day camping in the field of grass the weather let up ever so slightly and the sleet had turned mostly to fat fluffy snow – with it the weather felt milder. Hermione was feeling pent up, antsy and tense. With the weather being as particularly horrible as it was the past few days, they hadn’t completed their usual duelling, running and exercise routine, instead doing as much as they could within the tent for the last three days. But it was nothing in comparison to the intensity that she had become accustomed to. She found herself pacing the tent after lunch while Harry was in the shower. She’d seen the tension in him too and knew that he was itching to burn off some pent-up tension.
Harry emerged from the bathroom with a cloud of steam, rubbing a tower through his wet hair, to see Hermione walking circles in the tent.
“Feeling a bit pent-up?” he asked, smiling knowingly.
“Yeah, you could say that,” She groaned and stopped her pacing to turn and look at him. He looked fit in his dark green sweater and blue jeans. She flushed lightly and looked at the floor. Don’t be ridiculous, she thought to herself with irritation. “I just need to burn off some steam.”
“Yeah tell me about it,” he muttered with a frustrated sigh as he lightly tossed his towel over the back of a chair to dry. With that he walked to the entrance of the tent and looked outside. “It’s not too bad out, want to go practice a few spells?”
Hermione smiled and grabbed her coat immediately, almost knocking over the chair as she pulled it towards her.
“Absolutely! Dry your hair so it doesn’t freeze,” she walked toward him with her wide grin and touched his side gently as she passed. “I’ll be outside warming up.”
Harry smiled and went to grab his jacket, drying his hair with a quick drying spell as Hermione had suggested. They used water-repelling charms on their jeans and shoes to help keep themselves dry and spent the next hour out in the mild fluffy snowflakes casting spells and running and dodging.
It felt great and Hermione’s heart surged with joy as she ducked one of Harry’s leg lockers in a quick roll, ignoring the coolness of the snow that fell down the back of her jacket and popped up quickly to throw a disarming spell. Harry lunged to the right and rolled out of the way with ease. Hermione rolled her shoulders before throwing two more as Harry continued to dodge, the smile on her face was contagious and Harry couldn’t help but grin after he had to dive into a small snow pile to escape her relentless attack.
They’d both been practicing their non-verbal magic over the last month and could cast most spells without uttering an incantation. They still required them for healing and more complex hexes, but their progress was undeniable. Hermione couldn’t help but feel as though they had become completely different people from who they were the day Ron had left and she revelled in how they meshed together and worked together better than she could have ever anticipated. She could read Harry and he could read her. They both zigged and zagged and ducked and rolled as if it were a dance. They were in sync, they were united, they were partners – and they both marvelled in how powerful and prepared it made them feel.
After their time limit ran out they both walked back to the tent entrance to grab a drink of water, and Harry turned to Hermione with a glint in his eye.
“I want to try the new shield charm,” he said it as a statement, but she could tell he was looking for her approval.
“Okay,” she said, puffing slightly as she drank from her glass. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Harry positively beamed and darted in the tent to grab his book and notes, returning to present them to Hermione with a look of pride. Hermione sat on a small rock next to the tent and flipped the book open to read about the spell and skim the notes that Harry had prepared. They’d spoken about it often over the last month so she was already familiar with most of what she was reading. Her eyebrows raised, he had been extremely thorough - and she was impressed. Her reaction didn’t go unnoticed.
“Not just a pretty face huh?” Harry grinned and poked her with his elbow gently, having squatted down next to her. “I have some book skills too.”
Hermione snorted and rolled her eyes, but then she grinned up at Harry. Fat flakes of snow had been collecting in her hair.
She looks like Christmas, Harry thought.
“These are actually great notes Harry,” she said with praise. “I think you’ve got everything here – really what this will come down to is ensuring the precise wand movement and focus. You need to really want to shield the person you’re casting the spell on – whether it’s you or someone else.”
“I’ll cast it on myself to try it first.” Harry nodded in agreement. “Worst case – you can patch me up afterwards.”
“Don’t say that Harry.” Hermione looked at him firmly. “You’re going to get this. You’ve done the work. We’ll just go slow.”
Harry nodded and they both stood to review the precise wand movements several times until Harry was comfortable making the flick with his wrist before dipping the wand down and then up in a swished counterclockwise circle. He repeated the movements 6 more times before they went through the pronunciation. Hermione had agreed with Harry’s interpretation of the text and the importance of the inflection in the lo-co portion of the spell. After several more repetitions Harry stood several feet away from her and prepared to cast the spell. He stood quietly and unmoving, his black jacket a dark contrast to the snow that was falling around them.
“You can do this Harry,” Hermione said calmly mimicking the motions with her hand. “Just remember, it’s Plenus-Protego-corPus-LoComotor. You really have to hit that P and C.”
“I know,” Harry said nervously, shaking his arms out as he repeated her word and then looked up at her. “Well – here goes nothing.”
He took a breath and Hermione clenched her jaw.
“Plenus-Protego-corPus-LoComotor!” he cried, making the wand movements in sync with his words and focusing his attention on his own body.
Harry’s wand shot out a dark purple spark with a bright white light in its center, it immediately turned back toward him and expanded rapidly, encasing his entire body. Harry stood frozen as the spell circled him fully – it looked like he was encased in a Harry shaped bubble that was slightly larger than him, still a deep purple shade until – it vanished. Harry didn’t move, he wasn’t breathing, and he slowly raised his hand to look at it. It looked perfectly normal. He turned his head toward Hermione who was watching him anxiously.
“Are you okay Harry?” she asked, stepping closer to him and gripping her wand tightly at her side.
“Yeah,” Harry said slowly as he took a step forward. “Everything – sounds a little funny. I can feel the presence of something around me – like a small hum. I think it might have worked – hit me with a disarming spell.”
Hermione raised her ward and pointed it at Harry’s chest, he looked at her anxiously, excited but tentative.
“Expelliarmus!” she called it out loud so that Harry would know when to expect it, her spell hit him firm in the chest, but nothing happened, and a smile broke out on her face. “Harry, I think you’ve done it!”
Harry beamed, a wide smile stretching across his face.
“Go again, hit me with another – try something else this time.” He looked at her eagerly.
“Petrificus Totalus!” She stepped forward as she cast the spell to ensure there was no room for a miss.
Again, nothing happened, and her spell just disappeared as it reached Harry’s chest.
“Harry this is incredible! Try moving.” Hermione gestured with her head and Harry nodded before running off to his right with a huge grin on his face.
She cast two more disarming spells, a bat bogey hex and two leg lockers at Harry as he ran in a slow line away from her. Each of her spells being absorbed by the shield that still encompassed Harry. She noted that the shield did not deflect spells – they just disappeared when they hit the shield, rendered completely ineffective. As Harry increased the speed of his running the shield stuck with him and didn’t fail to protect him. He was able to run, jump, dodge, duck and roll and it did not falter. They found that it lasted about 7 minutes, Hermione ended up hitting Harry with a disarming spell right when he noticed the humming sound disappeared. She returned his wand to him and they both grinned ecstatically. They both agreed that they needed to be careful using it as 7 minutes was a decent time to cause damage if Harry was to be trapped inside a miscast spell. Not to mention that the spell was long and the wand movements had to be precise. This was a spell to cast in advance where possible, not something that could be done while on the run.
Casting on another human would be risky Hermione had explained to Harry – every living creature has an underlying desire to preserve one’s self, so being focused and truly desiring a shield for yourself was less likely to fail. However, if you cast the spell on someone else it is possible that you may not mean it, even if you think you mean it. Any unresolved feelings, agitation or discourse between you and the individual could result in a harming bubble. They both agreed to only cast the shield on themselves.
Hermione then went through the wand motions and practiced the pronunciation with Harry before attempting the spell herself. She was successful, her spell lasting approximately 5 minutes before Harry hit her with a leg locker curse. She fell face-first to the snow mid-stride and tried to lessen the impact of her landing with her hands.
“Fuck,” she groaned out softly as she tumbled into the snow-covered grass.
“Oh, shit – Hermione!” Harry ran toward her wand out and quickly cast the counter-curse. “I’m sorry!”
He reached out to her and she grabbed his hand, he tugged her up from the ground gently and the loose snow that had collected on her fell to the ground. The snow was thicker now, and she noticed that she could hardly make out the tent that was just a few dozen feet away from them.
“It’s okay Harry,” she breathed, and she steadied herself on her feet next to Harry, before looking up at him with a huge grin. “Bad timing is all – but I figure I’ve got 5 minutes. Harry – this spell is incredible!”
Harry grinned at her, still holding her arm and pulled her into a warm hug. She hugged him back tightly, laughing happily.
This feels amazing, she thought. They finally might have an advantage with this new protection spell, something that could buy them time or give them an edge – something that at the very least, no one would be expecting.
“Harry this is fantastic, this will be so useful,” she looked up at him while he still held her tightly and met his eyes. They were bright, optimistic and happy.
“Thank you, Hermione,” he said with a grin as he looked down at her. “I wouldn’t have been able to do this without your help. Thank you for believing that I could do this.”
“Of course, Harry,” she said quietly, her eyes filled with emotion. “I always believe in you, you’re a brilliant wizard. You figured this one out all on your own.”
Harry laughed, tilting his head back a bit before he looked back down at her, still clutching her firmly to his chest. His warmth was spreading through her.
“You give me too much credit,” he said quietly. “You’re the brilliant one.”
Hermione’s heart fluttered in her chest and she could feel her pulse quicken. Oh no, she thought. She couldn’t look away from his eyes, and now the stupid big smile that he had on his face had shifted into something that looked like caring as he stared down at her. She felt her fingers involuntarily grip the back of his jacket tighter and Harry’s own snugged her closer in turn. Her heart beat faster, and she knew she wasn’t breathing. Shit, she thought as panic started to set in at the back of her mind, now’s not the time, you need to focus.
Hermione saw the look in Harry’s eyes deepen into something else, something darker, something with want. She could hardly hear the logical side of her brain anymore as she looked up at Harry and her silly smile fell from her face as a look of wonder mixed with confusion settled in. She could hear her heart beating and feel the tension in the air tighten as the air grew thicker and warmed between them. Despite the snow which still encased them, she felt impossibly warm, and she knew that her cheeks must be dusted in a light blush.
She noticed that Harry’s face was closer to her now, his eyes darkened with intensity and she could make out the different shades of green speckled within them. His face crept infinitesimally closer and her eyes widened. The wind picked up and blew a cold gust around them, she shivered – but she knew it wasn’t because of the wind. It was because of the closeness and the look in Harry’s eyes, the look that said more than she wanted to know, more than she ever expected to see. The look that gave way to so many possibilities that it scared her.
With a last ditched effort from her reasonable side, she tore her eyes from Harry’s and dropped her forehead to his chest. She took a deep breath and then dropped her hands and stepped back from him. The cold encircled her and she shivered once more. Harry let her step away, dropping his arms slowly to his sides, but his eyes followed her. His head was tilted to the side and he was still looking at her with the same wanting eyes – though a veil of curiosity had settled over his face.
“I’m starving,” Hermione spat out pathetically as she looked away again and focused her eyes back to the tent, which she could barely make out through the thick snow. “I’ll go make us some dinner.”
With that she started toward the tent, leaving Harry in the snow-covered grass. He didn’t enter the tent until Hermione had dinner already set out on the table. While preparing the food she remembered that she had been saving three bottles of butterbeer in her bag for a special occasion and still had a large piece of treacle tart. She had completely forgotten about them – it was crazy how living in a tent, moving places every few weeks or days, and being away from civilization made it hard to keep track of time or think about luxuries like butterbeer and sweets. She set two bottles out on the table along with the treacle tart slice just as Harry stepped into the tent.
“Dinner’s ready!” she called over her shoulder as Harry approached the opposite side of the table. She tried to ignore the blush that she knew still covered her cheeks and the slight nervous tremble of her fingers. “And, I have a surprise! I’ve been saving some butterbeer and treacle tart for a special occasion Harry – and after today, with the new shield charm - well it seemed like the perfect occasion.”
She turned to Harry with a nervous smile, fully expecting him to be back to his normal self just like how they behaved after every previous intimate moment – after every touch, every look, and even after their hand holding and lingering moment outside on the cliff by the water. But her heart skipped a beat when she saw that Harry still had the same look on his face as he did outside. The same wanting, dark and curious look that made her stomach turn over and her pulse race once more. Hermione bit her lip – Harry’s eyes tracked the movement and lingered on her mouth for a moment before slowly moving back up to her eyes. She looked down at the table quickly and took her seat.
It was impossible not to see it, the look of desire in his eyes. Breathe, she thought as she tried to calm herself.
“Thanks Hermione,” Harry said quietly before taking his seat at the table, his voice was deeper than usual, it had never sounded like that in all the times he’d spoken to her before. It sounded almost husky and it made her stomach knot. “I can’t believe you’ve been hoarding butterbeer this whole time.”
Hermione laughed awkwardly and forced herself to look up into his eyes, the eyes which spoke volumes.
“Yeah, I sort of forgot about them,” she twisted the sleeve of her sweater with her hand nervously before looking back down to her plate.
She was kicking herself inwardly for her pathetic antics. She was sitting with her best friend Harry at dinner – something that she had done literally thousands of times before – but now with that look in his eyes she couldn’t control her heartbeat or her thoughts. Her mind raced, trying to determine what to do, how to act, what to say.
The tension and thickness from outside the tent had crept its way inside. Every time previous they’d resorted back to their normal function. They'd resumed their normal behaviour and their normal unemotional, un-intense, non-heart thumping atmosphere. But now, her stomach fluttered as she grabbed a roll from the bowl in the center of the table.
I should have made more space, she thought inwardly as she took a bite of her food. It felt like everything from over the last few months had all of a sudden come to a head and she couldn’t process it, she couldn’t manage it. She did not know what to do with it. She’d been burying everything deep down over the last few weeks and convincing herself that his touches and their shared looks and the moments between them weren’t anything special – they weren’t a big deal.
But as they ate dinner more quietly than usual – Harry thanking her for the treacle tart with a look that smouldered so hard she dropped the roll from her mouth – she knew it was a big deal. It was all a fucking big deal, her mind supplied.
Giving up on her roll she pushed some peas around on her plate before she looked up toward Harry’s burning gaze and she felt a familiar knot tighten in her stomach. The one she had started to become accustomed too, the one that came with warmth, a blush and a heat in her lower abdomen. The one that reached deep within her core. She continued to pick at her meal lightly, too nervous to eat, and began talking fast about some of the reading that she had been doing regarding potion brewing in unorthodox situations – reciting books always made her feel more calm.
She had been counting on Harry going back to his normal behaviours – this wasn’t her plan, she’d made no backup.
When Hermione finished explaining her reading she sat quietly looking at her hands as her thoughts spun quickly. Then Harry spoke.
“Dinner was delicious, Hermione.” His voice was still deep and he spoke quieter and slower than normal. “Thank you.”
“Of course,” she glanced up toward him and the remainder of her sentence died in her throat at the expression on his face. Her heart began to thud loudly and she realized she wasn’t breathing again.
Averting her eyes completely from Harry's, she once again decided to abandon ship and she stood to clear the dishes, grabbing the plates and walking them to the kitchen to set them on the counter.
She placed both hands firmly on the edge of the counter, closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She willed her racing heart to calm down. She tried to breathe, compartmentalize, use her meditation and control her thoughts and emotions – but she felt like her insides were the raging snowstorm that had formed outside. The tent rippled gently around them from the wind and the knot in her stomach doubled. She raised her wand to clean the dishes but froze, eyes shooting wide open and she tensed as she felt Harry approach behind her.
His movements were slow, giving her time to react or move away, again, for the third time that day. But this time – she stood still on her spot, pulse racing and hand clamped tightly on her wand. Her breath hitched in her throat as he closed the space between them. She could feel the heat of his body behind her, he was just an inch away and she felt the air thicken further. He slowly reached his right hand around her and closed it over her wand hand, lowering it back down to the counter.
“It’s my job to do the dishes,” he said quietly, his voice rumbling gently in her right ear as he leaned next to her. “You made dinner.”
A shiver ran down her spine at the closeness and the deep baritone of his voice, she turned to face him – and immediately realized that this was probably not the greatest idea. Facing Harry, she could see the intense look in his eyes. He was searching her face, curiosity written in his eyes, as if looking for the answer to an unasked question. Hermione took an unconscious step backward, her hips collided gently with the kitchen counter behind her and it prevented her movements further. Her eyes widened and she stared at Harry intently as her chest constricted. His eyes were bright, the green shining and the intensity suffocating. He took a step toward her, his left hand coming to rest lightly on her hip while his right raised up toward her face.
She wasn’t breathing. She was sure her face was burning bright and the heat within her body grew.
He stepped the final half-step toward her to close the distance between them, and she could feel the heat radiating from his body. His right hand was resting gently near the left side of her face and he brushed a loose curl behind her ear – without thinking she leaned her head into his hand. Her eyes followed his as they roamed over her.
Words were lost to her. She couldn’t hear herself think.
“Hemione?” he said just above a whisper as he leaned forward towards her.
“Yes, Harry?” The words that came from her lips were so quiet he wouldn’t have heard them if he wasn’t mere inches from her face now.
“Do you want me to stop?” His words were clear, but his voice was husky. He was so close to her that she could feel his breath on her face.
The room felt small, the air was tight, her chest had constricted, and her brain was short-circuiting – providing nothing but nonsense. She couldn’t stop the hot tight coil that had wound up in her lower abdomen, that burned from her core. Before she even realized that she’d said it, the words fell from her lips.
“No.”
Then Harry kissed her, closing the inch between them and capturing her lips with his. His lips were soft, and they moved against hers gently, slowly, with a sense of uncertainty. She inhaled sharply as their lips met. He broke contact with her briefly only to lock his lips more firmly to hers.
Heat flooded through her body, her heart was hammering, and her legs started to tremble. Harry stepped into her, gripping her hip with his left hand and stroking the side of her face with his right before turning his head to kiss her more deeply. She placed one trembling hand on his chest, clutching the fabric of his sweater tightly in her fist and her opposite hand grabbed the side of his sweater.
Her mind was blank, her body was stiff with nervousness, her heart pounded and her insides burned with the heat that was emanating from her core. Their kiss quickened, becoming sure and desperate. Harry traced his tongue along her bottom lip and she opened her mouth to him, allowing him entrance. He took his time, tasting her, running his tongue over the inside of her mouth, familiarizing himself with her and she let out a soft moan into his mouth.
His grip on her hip tightened at the sound and he stepped forward once more, pressing himself up against her, pushing her hips into the counter behind her. He groaned when she nibbled his bottom lip softly and the intensity of their kiss escalated. Both now grasping each other tightly, Harry’s hand tangled in Hermione’s hair as she clutched desperately at his sweater, her knees weak as she clung to him. He parted her legs with his knee and pushed his thigh between hers.
Another moan fell from her lips. She felt like her whole body was on fire, she burned at their contact but she craved more - needed more. The tight familiar coil at her core wound further. Harry kissed her deeply, passionately, and it became more aggressive with each breath. Hermione tangled her tongue with Harry’s clutching him tightly like she was afraid to let go. Harry’s hand moved from her hair to her neck, his thumb rubbing small circles into her as it went. The feverish pace of their kiss made her feel like she was on the edge of an explosion and she felt an old forgotten pulse between her thighs. Harry’s leg pushed into her again and she groaned out desperately against his hard body, her core aching for more closeness. Harry’s hand on her waist gripped her tighter and his thumb slipped under the hem of her sweater. He slowly brought it up her side until it grazed across the scar on her ribs.
She flinched violently as she felt his thumb drag over her middle scar and the twitch of his hand. He’d touched the scar that ended just over her right ribs and their kiss broke. She dropped her head down, breathing hard and fast, having let go of Harry’s sweater to clutch at her own chest. Her legs were trembling and she shook slightly.
“I’m sorry,” she breathed quickly, afraid to look up. Her heart was hammering and the heat between her legs was throbbing, begging for Harry to press into her again - but her mind had been ripped away by the touch against her scar and a new wave of emotion started to pour through her. She felt sick.
“Hermione,” Harry said, his voice ragged, his hand already removed from her side to rest gently on her upper arm. “I’m sorry – I – I wasn’t thinking, I’m sorry – I got carried away.”
He had known as soon as he’d done it, the second he’d felt the rough skin under his thumb he knew he'd made a mistake. A stupid, stupid mistake. He groaned inwardly, dropping his head and giving it a shake. She was still looking at his chest, breathing uneven, chest rising and falling rapidly, shoulders dropped and unmoving.
“It’s okay,” she said quietly as the hand on her chest twitched.
“No,” Harry said with a sigh, taking a step back and dropping his hands from her. “It was stupid on my part, I’m sorry Hermione. I wasn’t thinking.”
Slowly Hermione raised her head to look at him, she gave him a small and broken smile. Harry’s heart dropped – her eyes were glassy. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips red and swollen and Harry couldn’t help but think she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen – and yet his heart felt like it was breaking as he looked at her. He’d done this. He’d brought those tears to her eyes. I’m a fucking idiot.
“It’s okay Harry,” she said feigning confidence. Dropping the hand that clutched her chest to stand a bit straighter she cleared her throat. “I – I’m just still, not used to them being there. They’re not – I don’t – It’s not–” her voice was starting to falter, and her eyes averted down once more.
“I don’t look the same – they’re not pleasant – it just – it made me remember it all. I’m sorry - you didn’t do anything wrong,” the words poured out of her quickly and he could see her shoulders start to shake.
Harry took another step back to give Hermione space and ran a hand through his hair in frustration, he had no idea what the fuck to say.
“I uh, I’m going to go shower,” she said quickly as she stepped away from him and walked on unsteady feet to the bathroom.
Hermione closed the bathroom door quickly behind her and sunk against its backside – while Harry stood in the kitchen with both hands clenched in his hair before dropping his head heavily to the kitchen counter in frustration.
Fuck, they both thought.
Hermione ran both hands over her hair. Her heart was still hammering and she felt dizzy as the realization of what just happened hit her.
She touched her lips cautiously and pushed off the door to look in the full-length mirror. Her hair was a mess from Harry’s hands, her cheeks were flushed, and her lips puffy. Her sweater hung lopsided, sagging to one side so she could see the top scar peeking out just above her collar bone. Her eyes narrowed at it as a wave of anger and sadness hit her and she felt the hot tears she’d been holding back begin to fall down her face.
Angrily she ripped her shirt off over her head and she stared back at her reflection. It was horrible. It was unchanged from the day she awoke after the attack. Ignoring the ball that tightened at the base of her throat she raised a trembling hand up to run her fingers over the marks. Her skin was rough and bumpy – with raised and lowered places where the torn skin had healed unevenly due to the dark magic. Her stomach lurched and she screamed inwardly at the reflection of her scars. FUCK these fucking scars! Goddammit! Her chest was rising and falling rapidly, it ached, and she retched as a sob escaped her.
When Harry had touched her distorted skin, it raised a wave of panic like a tsunami. She’d flinched as her body remembered the pain, the agony, the blood, the fear, lying in the grass thinking she would die, the look in his eyes when he saw her and her deep disgust with her permanent markings. The disgust that she had been able to ignore and pretend wasn’t there up until this point.
She turned toward the shower and turned it on more aggressively than necessary, casting a quick heating charm before she rapidly removed the remainder of her clothes and entered the shower stall. She spent several minutes in the shower angrily scrubbing herself and cursing her scars before she started to calm herself down. Forcing herself to breathe and meditate.
When her breathing finally regulated she worked her way through her emotions. She was frustrated, angry, upset, sad, confused and now absolutely sexually pent-up from the intense kiss she’d just shared with Harry. She groaned in frustration, dropping her head heavily against the stall wall. Her emotions were raging like a loose bludger inside her head and it was making it ache. So much for doing nothing with the situation, she thought pathetically as she rinsed her curls out under the water. More so than that – so much for not caring about my scars, she spat angrily.
As she washed, her mind raced with a hundred questions over what just happened. What would this do to their relationship? How would this impact their mission? What did he think when he touched them? What did this mean? How would they behave now that they’d kissed? What would have happened if I didn’t stop – if I didn’t have these scars that made me stop? It had been so intense, so passionate, so heated. Hermione had never kissed anyone like that before. She remembered Viktor’s clumsy lips when he had kissed her in 4th year. It had been wet, sloppy, and inexperienced and her body had not reacted like this.
Nothing she’d ever experienced had been like this.
The questions raced through her head as the hot water continued to pour over her. She briefly tried to convince herself that it wasn’t a big deal, they were both just sexually pent up from being in a tent. In her heart though, she knew that wasn’t the case. Of course it’s a fucking big deal, she seethed. She knew that there was something deeper going on – and that made her feel even worse. If what happened mattered, then it meant that she had to acknowledge that there were real feelings. Real feelings, her feelings, that could get hurt. What if Harry doesn’t want me because of my mangled chest? What if he is disgusted by it? I’m disgusted by it – because it’s fucking DISGUSTING! This made a part of her feel like it was dying.
She dropped her head in her hands as her shoulders shook and the hot water poured down her back, pooling at her feet. She never considered herself an overly attractive girl to start with, but now it killed her to think of what must have gone through Harry’s head when he touched her, when he felt it. When his hand twitched, she remembered with a pain in her chest. She knew Harry wasn’t judgmental on looks but… everyone had limits. She wasn’t exactly going to be anyone’s top pick. And his hand had twitched.
She had been concerned about this moment the second she saw the scars – at the time she didn’t think it would happen with Harry – but she figured it would happen eventually. She knew that someone would see it, someone would touch it - eventually. She groaned, she knew it was pathetic, immature and vain – but the truth was the scars had shattered her self confidence in her appearance and made her anxious about being intimate or exposed with anyone. She was still confident in herself and her ability and so long as she kept her sweaters on, she was able to forget that the scars were there and just be herself. But Harry’s touch had brought everything racing back – all of it – not just her anxiety and insecurity about her appearance but also the memories from the night she was attacked and it had thrown her more than she could have ever anticipated. She thought that she had dealt with this, but now she was realizing that she’d only pushed everything down into a dark corner of her mind.
Finishing her shower, she dressed slowly, back into her same clothes – having been too focused on escaping the kitchen to remember to grab a new set. So, she opted for a quick cleaning charm before putting them back on.
Standing with one hand on the bathroom door she thumped her head gently against it. She didn’t know what to do. She’d just snogged Harry Potter - her best friend – rather intensely, she noted. And I liked it, she thought – a lot. She didn’t know where they both stood. She didn’t know how he felt. She didn't know how to walk out of this bathroom and look at him - and she didn’t know what to do about it.
Her hand trembled slightly as she held the doorknob and she tried to push everything back down. Including her new memory, the one of Harry’s hand twitching as he touched her, the moment he felt her scar. She thumped her head one last time loudly before she twisted the doorknob to exit the bathroom.
Harry stood hunched over, elbows on the counter with his hands weaved tightly through his hair. He could hear the water running in the bathroom and he was mentally berating himself.
Fuck, fuck fuck, fuck, fuck! SO fucking stupid! You are so fucking stupid! He sighed heavily and stood up looking to the ceiling, chest tight with frustration. I can’t believe I just did that. I can’t believe I touched her without thinking.
Harry groaned outward and slammed his fist into the counter. After everything that had happened, all the moments between them – the touches, the looks, the closeness – he had finally kissed her. She had finally not run away. And then, he thought, I completely fucked it up like a major arse.
Since the night on the cliff when he had shared with her that he slept in a cupboard at the Dursley’s house he knew that the relationship between them had changed – at least it had from his side. He’d never told that detail about his life to anyone, never trusted a single person enough to tell them that he blamed himself for the deaths of those around him but yet wanted to stay in the wizarding world. He’d never told anyone how terrible he felt about it, how blatantly guilty. The second he had stared into her eyes – he knew. He knew that he would never be able to look at her the same again.
He had wanted to kiss her right then and there, but he had held back, and kissed her cheek instead. He was unsure of his new feelings and nervous that she might not feel the same. Hermione was incredibly logical, reserved and controlled, and Harry highly suspected that she would have reservations about acknowledging any feelings – whether for him or otherwise – while in the middle of a war. He was also concerned that the feelings might be one-sided.
So, Harry decided to watch Hermione. He watched her behaviours, cataloged her touches, her looks and her expressions – and slowly over the last month he began to notice a pattern. And he began to think that she might actually feel something too.
She’d touch his arm when they spoke, sit close to him, lean her head on his shoulder, tangle her legs with his, blush and look to the ground when he complimented her, and he often saw her looking at him out of the corner of his eye while he read. When she let him crawl onto her bunk and sit with her while she was not feeling well, he took a risk and decided to run his thumb over her knee after she rested her legs across his – trusting her to object if she didn’t want the contact. But she didn’t object. When she took his hand during the meteor shower, his confidence in her feeling the same grew even further. It was impossible not to notice how the air got thicker around them, how time seemed to slow down and how her pulse quickened.
So, when they had successfully tested the shield spell, he was so ecstatic that he couldn’t stop himself from drawing her into a tight hug. He’d felt her heart racing as he held her, saw the blush creep over her face, the look in her eyes while she stared at him – and then he was certain, he knew that she felt it too. He was going to kiss her out in the snow if she let him, but he saw the panic rise in her face when her mind registered what was happening and she chickened out and ran back to the tent.
Harry had stood in the snow for several minutes thinking, wondering what to do, how to proceed. Every time that happened previously, he had spared her nerves and pulled his face into a calm and typical expression before looking at her again. He gave her room because he didn’t want to push her. But today… well today, he wanted to confirm his suspicions. He wanted to know, he wanted her to acknowledge the situation that had developed between them and he wanted to see if she would accept an advance. He would never push her into anything uncomfortable, and he would never make her do anything she didn’t want to – but he wanted to see if she would acknowledge what was going on between them. So, he resolved to go back to the tent exactly as he was – to show her his emotions in full, to show her what he wanted.
During dinner she had been adorable, nervous and flustered and he thoroughly enjoyed the butterbeer and treacle tart she had placed out for them. When she abandoned ship for the second time that day to take the dishes to the counter, he could see the tension in her shoulders and feel the inner battle she was clearly waging. So, he decided to see what would happen if he pushed once more, gently, while still giving her room to escape if she wanted too. If she ran away again, he would drop it until this mess of a war was over.
But she didn’t run – she stayed. As he had approached her, closing the distance between them his heart was pounding and his body was rigid with nervousness. When he asked her if she wanted him to stop, the tension was palpable and he felt his heart was hanging in the balance, he didn’t know if he would be able to handle it if she rejected him. He’d respect it, but a small part of him would feel like it had been snuffed out. When he heard her say “no” – he couldn’t close the distance between them quick enough. She tasted like hope, like a cool drink on a hot summer day.
He moved slowly against her first, afraid to startle her away, afraid to push her too far and make her uncomfortable, terrified that this unreal dream would vanish before him. He wanted her to be sure. But the second he heard her moan, any nerves he’d been feeling faded away, pushed to the back of his mind quickly and their kiss escalated. It had been… well, it had been like nothing he had ever felt. His kisses with Ginny had never felt like this, his kiss with Cho was a joke in comparison. Honestly, he didn’t even think he could count that kiss with Cho as a kiss anymore. This was heated, desperate, passionate, like gasping for air after being held underwater. He needed her, wanted her, had to be closer and wanted to soak every inch of her into him.
Then without thinking, he ran his thumb under her shirt and over her scar – the second he felt it, his mind skipped, and he jerked his hand. Not because of the texture, not because he cared about them – no – no, it was nothing like that. His hand jerked because he felt a pang in his heart as he touched it and he knew he had just made a mistake. He’d felt her start to flinch the second his thumb grazed it and momentarily he thought if he moved his hand away quick enough, he would be able to do some damage control. But she’d flinched hard and pulled away so fast that he knew it was a lost cause. Instead she left his lips feeling lost and hungry while his mind chastised his action.
And then to top it all off she apologized to him first. She fucking apologized to me, he raged as he paced in the kitchen back and forth along the counter. When I was the one who fucked up and made a mistake!
She had nothing to apologize for, nothing. He was the one who got caught up in the moment, caught up in the feel of her body against his, the heat between them and the intensity of their kiss. He was the one who had touched her without thinking, without considering how it would make her feel. I’m lucky she didn’t have a full-blown panic attack, he thought bitterly as he thumped back into his kitchen chair and thought about how she had reacted. He’d been concerned about Hermione since the day the injury happened. She had healed well and was stronger than ever – but wounds are more than physical. And based on the high-necked sweaters she continued to wear day and night he didn’t doubt that she still struggled with her appearance and acceptance of the scars. Not that he ever expected her to parade them around – but she took exceptional care in ensuring that they were always hidden.
What am I going to do? He’d dropped his head back into his hands again, elbows now resting on his knees.
He needed to apologize to her, he needed to explain to her that he didn’t care about her scars – he didn’t care how she looked. He had only just finally kissed her… and he did not want to ruin it because he had screwed up. He needed to explain how he felt to her, he needed her to know that he was there for her, always, and that the scars didn’t matter. He wanted her. He wanted to know what could happen between them.
He knew the conversation would be difficult. Honestly, he wouldn’t be shocked if she stayed in the bathroom all night. He couldn’t imagine what was going through her head – and if she did come out, she would probably try to dismiss it and avoid talking about it. He’d considered this, but he needed to talk about it. They needed to talk about it. They couldn’t live together in a tent hunting Horcruxes and walking on eggshells around each other. They needed to have the communication lines open, trust each other and work together. If Hermione never wanted to touch him again going forward – fine, he could deal with that. It would be painful, but he would manage. But he was absolutely not willing to sacrifice and hurt their relationship over this. After everything they had been through together this was not going to ruin their incredible dynamic. He needed to ensure she wouldn’t be worrying that he might be disgusted by her scars – which was absurd.
He finally heard the water shut off as his mind settled on his course of action. I’m not a fucking coward, he thought with determination. I will not fuck this up further, I will fix this.
He stood quickly and walked to the sink, grabbing the kettle, filling it with water and tapping it quickly with his wand to get it boiling. He reached in the cupboard and grabbed two clean mugs, throwing tea bags in them and then dumped the magically boiled water into each cup. He added one milk and two sugars to Hermione’s before adding a single sugar to his own. He had the mugs settled on the table and he was seated in his chair, back straight and determined when he heard the bathroom door open.
-x-x-
Hermione stepped out of the steaming room and walked on trembling legs toward the kitchen. She wasn’t sure what to expect, how Harry would be behaving, if he would be still in the kitchen or if he’d be out somewhere else. She honestly had no idea how to behave. She kept her eyes on the floor until she approached the table to see Harry stand up from his normal chair. Two steaming mugs of tea sat in the middle – she felt her heart thump painfully and noticed that he looked determined and slightly desperate.
“The shower is free,” she spoke quietly as her eyes flittered around Harry’s. She didn’t know where to look, she was nervous, and she felt her wand hand tremble. She grabbed the hem of her sweater gently, running the fabric between her thumb and finger to try and calm her nerves.
“Hermione,” Harry said. His voice was soft but firm and called her eyes back to his with force. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have touched you like that without asking first.”
“Harry – it’s fine, it’s not a big deal I-“ she responded quickly waving her hand to dismiss him but he cut her off.
“No, it’s not fine. Nothing about it was fine Hermione.” He was looking at her intently and had walked around the table to stand several feet in front of her. “I know that you’re uncomfortable with your scars, I know they make you self-conscious – I wasn’t thinking. I was so caught up in – in whatever this is that has been going on between us that I didn’t think. I didn’t think about how touching you might make you feel.”
Hermione hadn’t looked away from Harry, she was still snared by his gaze, but she flinched slightly as Harry mentioned her scars. She tried to dismiss the conversation, she didn’t want to hear excuses – she’d felt him flinch, she didn’t want to talk about this. She didn’t know what it was that she wanted but she didn’t want to talk.
“Harry it’s fine, really, I don’t want to talk about this,” she had wrapped her arms around herself, defensively covering her chest.
“But I do Hermione.” He stood his ground firmly in front of her, ensuring that he gave her plenty of space. “I’m not going to let what happened ruin our relationship, I’m not going to let this sit and fester – I want you to know that I don’t care about your scars.”
Hermione snorted, scuffing the tent floor with one socked foot before turning her eyes to the ground.
“I don’t,” he said firmly, and she could feel the intensity of his gaze on her. “Do you think I’ll ever forget what you looked like lying in the muddy grass Hermione. The image of you torn open haunts my dreams – I’ll never un-see it. It fucking killed me to see you like that. I thought I was going to lose you.”
Tears had started to form in her eyes, her vision wavered as she stared down at her thick fuzzy blue socks. She knew Harry had seen them, but he had still flinched when he touched her. She didn’t want to hear this – she didn’t want to talk about this. She didn’t even know what this was.
“I’ve already seen them – I treated them, I had to pull the shredded bits of your shirt and jacket out of them. I saw what they looked like at their worst, I’ll never forget it, and I still want you,” he said. Hermione twitched at this – but she shook her head as her shoulders began to tremble and Harry pushed forward, his voice rising slightly. “I don’t care about what your scars look like. The only thing I care about is you, Hermione – and the fact that I’m a fucking idiot and didn’t consider how you would react, how you would feel when I touched you. It’s not like I haven't noticed that you’ve transfigured every shirt you own into a high neck sweater, I have no excuse for not thinking about it, I just got caught up in the moment. I only pulled my hand away because I realized my mistake and I felt you flinch – I knew I couldn’t fix it. But I touched you because I wanted to.”
At this Hermione’s eyes shot up to Harry’s as a single tear fell down her cheek. Harry was looking at her with a look of agony and Hermione’s heart stuttered in her chest. He flinched because he was, concerned? Her mind reeled over his words and she found herself trying to wrap her head around the possibility that Harry hadn’t flinched in disgust.
“You don’t have to believe me Hermione – but I need you to know that I want you, I want to figure this out and I don’t care about your scars.”
A small sound escaped her lips that sounded like a suppressed sob and Harry stepped toward her slowly as Hermione continued to clutch herself. Her chest was constricting again – no, she thought, how could he want me.
“I don’t – I don’t know how you feel Hermione, I don’t know what’s been going through your head these last few weeks, but I feel like things have changed between us.” He clenched his hands tightly at his sides and his nerves hit him as he approached the real crux of his speech. “And I know you’ve felt it too. I’ve seen it on your face… in how you look at me.”
His voice dropped lower as he stepped only but a foot away from her now and Hermione dropped her eyes to stare into his chest, unable to breathe.
“If I’m wrong, or if you aren’t comfortable with anything – if you don’t want anything – that’s okay Hermione.” He tentatively reached a hand out to touch her shoulder and she could feel a slight tremble in his fingers. “I don’t know what shifted between us. And I don’t know what this means for us going forward – but I need you to know that I don’t care about your scars Hermione. I just care about you and – and I want to see where this could go.”
A sob broke through her lips and Harry barely heard the quiet words that escaped her.
“…I’m disgusting...”
Harry let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding and pulled her shoulder gently towards him, and she let her head fall on his chest. Her arms were still clutched to her own body and they were now pinned between them as he circled his arms tightly around her and rested his lips to the top of her head.
“Hermione,” he breathed out in a hush. “You are not disgusting. They are not disgusting.”
He felt her tremble slightly and her head shook gently against his chest. He pulled her tighter and leaned his lips down toward her ear.
“Hermione, you are perfect. You’re – you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known.”
She stiffened but stopped shaking her head against him and he heard her inhale quickly.
“You’re just saying that,” she whispered.
“No, I’m not.” He pulled her tighter to his chest and breathed out a long low sigh. “I swear to you, I’m not just saying that. I know you don’t believe me – not yet – but I’m not lying. And I’d like the opportunity to show you how little I care about them.”
Hermione stood still against him, the last words he spoke were barely above a whisper and they made a chill run down her spine. Her stomach knotted, he’d spoken in that voice – the deep baritone that had made the heat in her core ignite earlier. She shivered against him, his words and his voice were convincing, they made her body respond and believe that he meant what he said.
She buried her face into his chest, breathing him in. It calmed her. His warmth and the tightness with which he held her made her feel safe. She trusted Harry implicitly, she always had, and she desperately wanted to believe him – it was difficult against the chant of how could he want me? that was circling at the back of her head – but she forced her mind to stick to logic, to facts. He had already seen them, she knew this, and he did touch her anyway. He had noticed the closeness between them and allowed it to grow while knowing she was mangled. He’d touched her, held her, and been close to her all the while knowing that she was hiding under her transfigured sweaters. She willed the voice in her head which kept claiming he must have forgotten how bad they were and was reminded when he touched them to shut the hell up and worked to clear her mind.
This was her problem, and she knew it. She knew Harry, she trusted Harry and he wouldn’t be holding her like this and speaking with that voice if he didn’t mean it. She wanted to believe him – had to believe him, or at least give him the benefit of the doubt until proven wrong. She needed to deal with her low self-confidence regarding the scars on her own – this was her problem to resolve.
Her stomach knotted a little as she nuzzled her nose against him softly. She’d enjoyed the feel of Harry’s body against hers – obviously. My moaning is a testament to that, she thought somewhat embarrassed. She’d never made those sounds before. She’d liked the way he tasted, the way he'd moved against her, and the way he’d held her and pressed into her. She too wanted to see where things would go – except that it scared her.
They were in the middle of a war, they had a huge responsibility to find Horcruxes and destroy them before Voldemort got stronger, before things got worse – and they had no idea where to start. They needed to be focused, they needed to practice and be prepared. She didn’t think it was appropriate to explore a change in their relationship right now – no matter how badly she wanted to, or how right it felt. That was the whole reason why she had resolved to do nothing. This kiss, no matter how pleasant, was distracting. Anything more than snogging would be even more distracting – and they could not afford to be distracted. That would be irresponsible – and Hermione was nothing if not responsible.
Harry had stood holding her while her mind sifted through her thoughts, it was several minutes before she spoke again with a tremble in her voice.
“Harry I – I’m afraid,” she breathed out against him, her voice but a mummer against his sweater. “I’m afraid of this – I don’t want to lose what we have. I – I don’t want to get distracted from our mission and what we need to do, but –“
The words caught in her throat and she trembled slightly against him. She knew what she wanted to say but her courage was faltering. Harry had just all but laid his heart out on the table to her – Don’t be a coward she thought as she tried to settle her racing mind.
“I’m afraid that you won’t actually want me if – if you saw it. I know what you said, and I know that you’ve seen them – I know that this is my problem and it’s in my head – but I can’t help it. I can’t help but be terrified that you’d change your mind. W-when you touched me it – it made me panic,” she said, and her voice shook again before she continued. “It brought everything back Harry, all of it, and I – I don’t know how to be comfortable with it, or how to deal with it.”
Cautiously she raised her head to look at him and he loosened his grip so he could pull back to see her face more clearly.
“Harry, I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know what this is – we’re in the middle of a war – we need to focus but I – I–” She looked at him desperately before speaking in a low whisper. “But I can’t help but want you too.”
Harry’s heart hammered in his chest and his hands gripped her more firmly – she’d said that she wanted him too.
“I don’t know how to process this Harry.” She took a step back but gripped the front of his sweater gently with one hand. “Harry what happened was… it was intense I – I don’t know if we can – I don’t know if it is a good idea. Not that I don’t want to, I do – I’m just not sure that we should – we need to focus and be responsible. We need to find these Horcruxes. I’m worried that if we do anything, anything other than what we have been it will be a distraction. And I clearly need to deal with these scars and with what happened. I don’t want to fuck this up Harry.”
Harry nodded slowly, he understood. It made his heart ache a little, but it was exactly what he was expecting. While he didn’t know if they were destined to be with each other forever, he did know that he cared for her in a way that he had never cared about anyone previously – not even the way he thought he felt about Ginny.
“Hermione,” he said gently, moving his thumb gently over her upper arm. “It’s okay. I get it – things are all over the place right now.”
She nodded slowly, still gripping him tight and searching his face.
“I don’t want things to change between us.” He looked at her intently and then gave her a small smile. “I’ll be right here, always, whenever you need me – whenever or if ever you want me. I won’t ever push for anything Hermione and I promise to give you space to deal with what you need to. But – I want you to know I…I would like to figure this out, to see where this goes. This, Hermione, is exactly why we’re fighting. It’s exactly why Remus and Tonks – and Fleur and Bill are together as they are even though we’re at war. It makes them stronger – it gives them something to fight for… just something to think about.”
Hermione’s hand twitched slightly against his sweater and her eyes dropped. She hadn’t thought of that. The only thing that had been running through her mind aside from her panic over her scars was the danger of her and Harry being too close while they were on a mission. She had never considered that allowing closeness could be seen as a benefit. She’d only ever considered the negative.
“Let’s have some tea,” Harry said gently as he pulled himself away and she let his sweater slip through her fingers. She felt cold again, without him near and watched as he backed up toward the table, giving her an encouraging smile.
Harry sat down lightly in his seat, ensuring that his feet were tucked neatly under his chair. There, he thought as he reached for his tea mug. I made the first move, I’ve confirmed that she feels it too, and now it’s her decision how we go forth. I won’t push anything else, I’ll leave this to her.
Slowly she walked toward him to take her seat. True to his word, she noticed that his knees did not bump hers under the table – it feels empty, she noted. Harry reheated the tea mugs with his wand and fished a small bag of biscuits out of her purse before taking a bite of one himself.
They ate and drank their tea somewhat quietly, Hermione nibbling the biscuits and listening to Harry talk about how he thought he could work to extend his protection charm. She nodded her head and responded to the conversation, but the thoughts in the back of her mind churned on a different topic. She couldn’t stop herself from mulling over the possibility that being with Harry and seeing what was between them, might - maybe not be a bad thing during these terrible times.
-x-x-
The next week passed rather uneventfully and their typical schedule was unchanged. Hermione and Harry resumed their exercise routine, read, researched, practiced spells, duelled, ate, slept, guarded the tent in turns and managed to increase their shielding spell time by 2 minutes each. Harry could now produce a full body mobile shield for 9 minutes and Hermione could manage 7 minutes before the hum disappeared and they were once again left vulnerable. Harry had been right, the stronger they became physically, the easier the shield was to produce as the shield seemed to be linked to their overall stamina. Hermione had suggested clearing their minds before casting it almost as a sort of meditation to ensure focus on the target and intent. That seemed to make the spell more potent – she noted that the dark purple became deeper the better their concentration was, and it contributed to its duration as well. They determined if they kept at it they should be able to continue to increase the duration of their shields and made a goal of each reaching over 10 minutes.
Outside, the snow continued to fall and gathered deeply around their tent. Seeing as it was the last weekend in November, they fully expected the weather to continue to get worse – so they opted to use more water-repelling charms and warming charms while they practiced outside, unwilling to sacrifice their training due to bad weather.
One thing that had changed, Hermione noted, was the touches and closeness between them – or rather, the lack thereof. Harry had not faltered on his promise to give her space. He no longer sat exactly right next to her while they had tea, and instead sat a friendly distance away. He didn’t touch her lower back when he walked around her or reach to grab her hand while they spoke. No, Harry had consciously worked to ensure he kept his hands and feet to himself. He even stopped using the footstool so that Hermione could have the thing entirely to herself.
As the time went on though Hermione couldn’t help but miss the contact. While she appreciated Harry giving her space and staying determinedly focused on their mission – she was actually finding it more distracting having to think about her actions and keep her hands to herself than it was to simply let herself be near him naturally. She found herself thinking that their closeness and previous behaviours had felt normal whereas this artificial distance between them was what felt off and strange. She didn’t speak anything about it to Harry, but she mulled it over as each day passed. She missed his warmth, she missed feeling his laugh reverberate through her as he leaned against her. Their interactions were still warm and kind and her feelings were still obviously present, it was just as if someone had put up a barrier between them… and she found that she didn’t really like it.
As they rounded to the second week Hermione started forcing herself to not only stare at her scarred reflection in the mirror when she went to shower but also to touch the scars gently. She repeated this process whenever she changed clothes as well. She had gotten used to tolerating the scars while she showered but she had never actually spent any time with them to accept them. After her excessive reaction to Harry’s touch – she could no longer ignore the fact that she had not spent a sufficient enough time actually dealing with what happened and accepting her injuries, so she resolved to correct that regardless of whether or not anyone would ever see them. She forced herself not to frown when she looked at them – instead she forced her lips into a smile while reminding herself of the things that she liked about herself and the things that she was happy for. I’m glad I didn’t die, was the first thought she conjured.
After that a string of others ran through her head and she found that day by day it was easier and easier to think of things. I’m happy I didn’t lose any limbs. I’m happy that the scars run in between my breasts and not through them, that would have been much worse. I’m happy that there are no lingering dark magic effects. I’m happy that it wasn’t my face. I’m happy that I can cover them if I want to. I’m thankful that I still have my magic. I’m glad that the redness and distortion held so close to the scars themselves and that it didn’t span out to cover more of my skin, so it’s just three distinct lines. I’m thankful that they healed and won’t break open again. I’m happy that I’m physically fit and able to still move around without hindrance. I’m glad there is no permanent damage to my body that disadvantaged me.
By the time December 5th rolled around Hermione was standing in front of the mirror thinking, I’m happy that I still look decent. And at that, she found herself smiling the first genuine smile she had made during this exercise – no longer having to force the smile to her face while she stared at the marks which covered her body. Perhaps she’d just become more accustomed to them, more used to them being there from staring at them intently over the last week and a bit – but she couldn’t help but feel like they didn’t look quite as bad anymore. She grinned at the foggy mirror and then reached for her long-sleeved dark charcoal grey sweater, it used to be a modest v-neck, but she had transfigured it to a turtleneck after the attack. She rolled the fabric through her fingers. She hated this long-sleeved shirt as a turtleneck, mostly because she wasn’t a big fan of turtlenecks, but also because this shirt’s fabric always seemed to itch her neck a little more than her other ones. She shrugged her plaid pajama pants on while she stared the long-sleeved charcoal sweater down, pausing her hand as she grabbed to put it on.
With a moment's hesitation she transfigured the sweater back to its original shape and threw it on, pausing only a moment when she caught her reflection in the mirror – you could see the top scar cut across the bottom of the v-shaped neck. Not by a large amount, but it was plainly visible. She quickly grabbed a hair clip and clipped her hair out of her face. She was tired of sleeping in turtlenecks and high-necked shirts – they were uncomfortable and always made her feel like she was being choked while she slept. She wanted to be comfortable. It was over 2 months since the attack, and frankly she thought, I’d like a night of sleep where I don’t have dreams of being choked or smothered. She turned to the door before she could change her mind.
When she walked into the kitchen to have her nightly tea with Harry he looked up as he heard her approach – his eyes only just briefly registering her v-neck shirt. His eyes flicked to her chest, then up to her eyes and a look she couldn’t quite decipher crossed his face. Her stomach rolled over nervously as she started to regret her decision and her dark grey socked feet slowed – immediately becoming self-conscious, her hand instinctively raising to grab the collar of her shirt. But then she realized that Harry was grinning at her – beaming would probably be a better way to describe it. His eyes were on hers, not her chest, and he didn’t look away from them as he spoke.
“Made your tea,” he said with happiness, she noted a slight edge of excitement in his voice.
Hermione took a breath and forced her hand to lower from where it hovered in front of her chest with fingers still outstretched mid grab, and then she made her feet keep walking. Harry’s eyes remained on her face only.
“Thank you.” Her voice was a bit reserved with nervousness, but he saw her shoulders relax a fraction as she took her seat.
“Of course.” He continued to grin at her but grabbed his own mug and took a sip. “So, I went through our supply list while you were in the shower.”
Hermione smiled as she grabbed her own mug. Harry was probably the only person she would trust to properly update and catalogue their supply list and she was very pleased that he’d taken the initiative to look at it himself. Prior to Ron leaving she seemed to be the only one concerned with ensuring they had food and supplies. But now… well, now Harry was a very different person. They both were.
“Thanks, Harry, we’re going to need to do another run again aren’t we?”
“Yeah.” Harry nodded at her.
“I figured as much, I’ve been keeping track of it mentally,” she sighed as she held her mug tightly in her fingers. “I suppose we should do that before we leave this hillside. There is a small town just to the East. We can slip in tomorrow night before we leave and get supplies.”
“That’s what I was thinking as well.” Harry had pulled out her map and spread it on the table. “If we pack up around midnight, we can walk there by 2 am and gather whatever we need.”
They discussed through the plan and agreed they would leave the snowy hillside they’d come to three days ago tomorrow night. Hermione couldn’t help the nervous tremble that overtook her hands as they continued to plan their approach – they would be breaking into a chain grocery store located in a small plaza at the edge of town. She sincerely hoped that her face didn’t betray her and express the anxiety that she had over what happened last time they went to get supplies.
As she went to go take first watch Harry gently grabbed her arm. It was the first time he had touched her since they’d kissed two weeks ago, and her body responded desperately. She could feel her pulse racing as she looked into his eyes.
“Hermione, we’ll be okay.” he was looking at her intently. “We’re better prepared this time. Nothing is going to happen tomorrow night. I promise.”
“I know,” she said. Her voice was quiet and sounded unsure, so she added a firm nod to show her agreement.
Harry smiled and squeezed her arm firmly before he turned to go to his bunk. Hermione stood there for a moment before she realized that she was holding the upper arm that Harry had touched with her other hand. Shaking her head, she grabbed her winter jacket and went to stand outside the tent for her first watch. Her heart was racing, and her stomach was knotted. Harry’s touch had done this, and the look that had been in his eyes when he promised that nothing would happen made her shiver. She sat on a small tree stump and cast a warming charm before curling into herself a bit. She was still nervous – she couldn’t help it. But Harry was right. They were far better prepared if they were to be attacked and she felt confident that they would keep each other safe. She trusted Harry, she trusted her own abilities and she knew that they would be fine.
-x-x-
The next day passed like a blur. They’d gathered and packed early and spent the afternoon practicing some defensive and offensive magic. It helped calm Hermione’s nerves as she waited for midnight – she was anxious to get this done and over with. When midnight finally arrived, they packed up the tent quickly and efficiently and began walking toward the town. Harry’s estimate was almost bang on, they arrived at the plaza just before 2 am.
The plaza was deserted, and the fluffy snow fell heavily around them. When they got within 200 meters of the plaza they’d covered themselves with the invisibility cloak before proceeding through the empty parking lot and around to the back alleyway to enter the emergency exit door. They were both tense, and Hermione gripped the back of Harry’s jacket tightly at the collar as he led them through the alley and then unlocked the door. It was quiet, calm and beautiful out – but Hermione knew better than to trust it. She knew better than to let her guard down. Not this time, she thought as they crept through the door.
They spent over an hour in the store, following the same routine they had the last time they got supplies. Gathering much-needed food, toiletries, soap, and necessities. Hermione grabbed extra of everything, filling every container she had and using her food storage spells so things would keep longer. She wanted to avoid having to make any more supply runs than necessary. Hermione tallied the cost of their items as they went, and they stopped at the cash register to deposit their money prior to leaving. As they crept through the back exit to return to the alley they both moved cautiously, slowly, and kept their eyes and ears open for any sign of movement – but nothing happened. They reached the outskirts of the parking lot and quickly removed the cloak. Hermione held Harry’s shoulder as he crouched to put the cloak away in his bag. She’d immediately slipped her hand down the collar of his jacket before he had even bent over – you needed direct physical contact to side apparate and she would be damned if she wasn’t prepared for a second attack. She didn’t move an inch from him, and he could feel her leg next to his side as he tucked the cloak away. The second it was secured he gave her the signal.
“We’re good,” he said quickly, not even bothering to stand up. Hermione gripped his shoulder more tightly and apparated them away to a forest before he could even move a muscle.
The forest she brought them to was in central England, but still remote and deserted. They both breathed a sigh of relief as Hermione dropped her hand from his shoulder and stepped away from him to grab her purse and locate the tent. Hermione’s skill with apparition had improved to the point that he hardly felt anything, they’d shown up exactly as they left the plaza, Harry crouched by Hermione’s side. Standing slowly, he had to resist the urge he had to hug her and instead gave her a huge grin.
“See,” he said as he touched the side of her arm once gently. “Nothing happened.”
She grinned back at him, suppressing the urge to hug him as her stomach fluttered. Harry dropped his hand and slung his pack over his back and then her eyes narrowed as she started to turn her head.
“Harry do you hear-” She didn’t finish her sentence, the hair on the back of her neck stood up and she saw a flash from her peripherals. Knowing there wasn’t time to grab Harry directly – what with their thick winter jackets – her mind quickly calculated, and she chose the next best option.
Hermione shoved Harry back with more force than he thought was physically possible. Someone so small could not possibly be that strong, he thought briefly as he fell backwards and the ground between them exploded.
He drew his wand and saw that Hermione already had hers out, she was crouched several feet away in front of him as she’d rolled backwards to dodge the explosion. Turning his head to the left he saw the shape of two wizards running towards them in the darkness and one creature that was hunched over and moving much more quickly than the rest.
Fuck.
Warning:
This chapter contains: blood, violence, injury, and death.
-x-x-
Hermione had fired three spells before Harry had even rolled to crouch facing their attackers. She hit one of the two wizards square in the chest, and he crumpled to the ground instantly as the stunning spell knocked him out. The other was more agile and had managed to dodge her second and third attacks by rolling to the right. More concerning, Harry noted, was the large werewolf that was galloping towards them – eyes enraged, snarling – and with, Harry noticed it this time, a glint of gold reflecting from the band that circled its front wrist with every step it took.
Hermione and Harry simultaneously hit the werewolf with a stunning spell before they had to roll and dodge a second explosion that the remaining wizard had cast. The werewolf faltered, its front legs going limp momentarily as its face bashed into the ground before the creature regained its balance and lunged towards them – forcing them to dive further apart. Hermione cursed the distance between them and the cold weather. Had Harry not been bundled up for the winter, she could have grabbed him much more easily to apparate away before this happened. Though then again, she knew that if she had apparated right away, there would have been a risk that the explosive spell the snatcher had cast might have gotten caught up in her apparition.
Which would have been devastating.
There was no way to know for certain, and running what-if scenarios wouldn’t get her anywhere. Right now, she needed to focus, and she needed to get them out of this situation. She pushed her panic down as she rolled instinctively to the right to avoid a flash of white and heard the sound of a chain wrap tightly around the tree behind her. Whoever this guy was, he clearly hadn’t decided if he was trying to kill them or capture them.
The werewolf had turned its attention to Harry, and he was currently dodging and running and jumping away from its claws as he cast spell after spell towards it. His reflexes were faster and more accurate than the last encounter, and he didn’t allow the werewolf to catch him on his back like the one in the alley had. Instead, he lingered in a crouched position as he dodged and attacked – moving further and further down the slight incline of the forest ground.
Hermione cast two stunners and a disarming spell at the wizard before running up the slight incline and jumping high over a fallen branch and one of the snatcher’s explosive spells. She landed hard and rolled to her feet before casting an explosion at the tree that the snatcher had ducked behind. It detonated forcefully, and Hermione internally thanked her ability to cast non-verbal spells – the advantage was greater than she’d appreciated while just practicing with Harry.
Non-verbals were quicker and gave her the element of surprise. Unlike the snatcher who cried his disarming spell as he recovered from the explosion that had knocked him several feet away from the tree. She was ready for it, though, and she rolled forward under the bright red light before managing to catch the side of the man’s face with a carefully aimed diffindo. She heard him cry out as his right cheek split open and blood splattered the snow-covered ground next to him, leaving behind a vibrant red streak.
His eyes were wild, his hair a disaster, and she noticed a gold glint from his wrist as he raised his wand. She saw the words begin to form on his lips before he could even get them out, and she lowered herself, building energy in her legs before pushing off to roll to the left as he cast a killing spell at where she had been standing.
Fuck! she thought as she rolled behind a tree stump, her back thumping hard against the surface as she stayed crouched low to the ground. The bright green flash streaked by, and her heart hammered hard in her chest.
This had escalated, quickly, and her adrenaline was making her brain and body work double-time to keep up. She tossed a leg locker and a stunning spell around the tree stump before throwing herself further left to avoid the next explosion sent by the snatcher. He’d missed, hitting two feet away from where she’d been, but the debris flew violently into the air and thudded hard into the ground as she hunched behind a larger tree, hoping that the flying snow and bits of tree stump might cover her location for a moment. Her mind was racing. She needed to get to Harry, needed to apparate them away from this place before they got hurt. Everything was happening so fast they hadn’t even been able to use their shield charm. She knew there was no way they would be concentrated and calm enough to cast it with everything that was going on.
She could feel her frustration building. They’d been so careful and so vigilant during their supply run only to run into snatchers and a werewolf at the first place they landed?
This was just unbelievably bad fucking luck, her mind raged.
Hearing the snatcher advancing from her left, her eyes quickly glanced down the slight incline toward Harry, who was still fending off the werewolf, and she noticed that his left arm hung somewhat limply at his side. He ducked another lunge from the werewolf and rolled to his right further away from her, and clutched his arm briefly as he rose back into a crouched position before casting a diffindo at the creature and slicing it across its side. It was in that moment that a small amount of light from the almost completely cloud-covered night’s sky managed to sneak through the trees and reflect off the snow that she saw the wet red stain that spattered Harry’s arm and the pained expression on his face.
Time seemed to slow down. Her eyes widened as she saw the werewolf stumble briefly from the injury but turn quickly to face Harry. Harry stepped back, and his foot caught in a branch on the ground. She knew what was going to happen before it did – Harry was going to slip, and the werewolf would be ready.
And something inside her snapped.
“NO!”
The word was screamed from her mouth before she had even realized it. She felt rage boil up from the deepest darkest depths of her soul, and it coursed through her like nothing she’d ever felt before. Her heart hammered, her face contorted, her eyes hardened – and in that moment, Hermione took her empathy, her emotional side, and her constant need to do what was right and stuffed it into a small little box in the corner of her mind. And she closed it tight. For empathy had no place here. Then her body moved before she even knew what she was doing.
She heard the snatcher approach beside her and start to cast an explosive spell, but she’d already pushed off the tree behind her, throwing herself forward, rolling once before she popped up to her knee and turned back to the snatcher. Her eyes flashed with raw anger, her wand moved before her brain connected the dots, and the word screamed from her mouth.
“SECTUMSEMPRA!”
The snatcher’s eyes went wide as his wand arm was torn violently from his body and a huge slash ripped his chest open – but she’d already turned her wand back to Harry and the werewolf. He was on his back, the werewolf was on top of him, and Harry’s left forearm was latched in its mouth. He aimed his wand and hit it with another cutting spell across the chest, its blood pouring down onto him.
Hermione’s wand was pointed while her mind immediately ruled out another sectumsempra or diffindo for fear of hitting Harry and instead latched on to what she knew would work. She focused her rage, her fear and her desire to stop the creature – then cried out.
“Plenus-Protego-corPus-LoComotor!”
A dark red spark with a white-hot center shot from her wand and flew at the werewolf, encasing it before it became completely invisible.
A desperate roar of agony erupted from the werewolf as it dropped Harry’s arm and collapsed, withering on the ground next to him. Hermione’s ears felt like they were bleeding from the horrific sounds that poured from its muzzle as she pushed off the ground and tore down the incline toward Harry. He’d rolled away and stood up before pointing his wand at it and slitting its throat with a muttered spell.
“HARRY!”
Hermione quickly closed the distance between them, running faster than she thought possible and leapt over a broken branch before skidding to a stop at Harry’s side. She grabbed his outstretched wand hand, aiming her own at the creature’s body as rapid, shuddering breaths wracked through her.
“I’m okay,” his breath came in rasps, and he leaned into her side, not taking his eyes off the now quiet werewolf. “It’s dead.”
She dropped her wand slowly before turning quickly to face him.
“Are you alright? Harry – your arm.” She was running her hands all over him, his chest, his arms, his face – ensuring he was alright everywhere else before immediately refocusing on his left arm. Her eyes examined the shredded material on his left side, and he winced as she began removing his jacket to see the damage.
“It’s not that bad,” he grimaced as she removed his sleeve with a seam-splitting spell and peeled away the jacket. “I managed to cast a shield.”
“You cast a shield?” Hermione’s hands had momentarily stopped moving over his arm as her eyes locked desperately and incredulously to Harry’s. “When did you cast a shield!?”
He laughed gently as she resumed inspecting his arm and quickly pulled a cleaning potion, essence of dittany and silver powder out of her purse.
“It wasn’t a very good one.” He winced again as she dowsed his arm in cleaning potion and charmed away the excess blood that covered his body to see the wounds better. “I – I wasn’t able to focus enough, so it was weak but, I cast it just as I felt my foot get stuck – before I fell. At least it stopped the werewolf from actually taking a bite of my arm.”
“Harry,” she breathed out as she now covered his arm in essence of dittany and silver powder, being sure to cover every single portion of his open wound before she looked up at him again. “Harry’s that’s – that’s – I can’t believe you managed it! I thought – I thought it bit you. I – I thought I might lose you!”
Her eyes watered as she threw her arms around his waist and pulled him into her tightly. He groaned a bit painfully into her neck but patted her gently on the back with his wand hand before she stepped back quickly and grabbed and held the front of his jacket tightly.
“Sorry.” She winced as she looked at him. “I was so worried. I thought that you’d been bitten – I – I wasn’t sure I’d get to you in time. You’re sure you weren’t bitten?”
“Nah, not this time.” He grinned at her. “Just a scratch. But I think my forearm where it had me is bruised something bad – because holy hell, it hurts like a bitch.”
Hermione’s gaze travelled down his arm, confirming that there were no puncture wounds. She smiled up at him, still clutching his jacket firmly as her eyes poured over him, devouring his features like she hadn’t seen him in years. She reached a hand up to the side of his face and stroked his cheekbone gently, the intensity of her eyes making his stomach turn over. Before he could do anything else, though, he saw her eyes sharpen as her mind flicked like a switch and refocused.
“Harry, sit here. The wound on your arm is closed – you won’t keep bleeding, but grab some blood replenishing potion from my bag okay? I need to look at your wounds more closely, but I need to go take care of the guy we stunned first – I’ll be right back.”
Harry had only just started to nod when she turned and started running back up the slight incline, muttering lumos so she could see better. Snow had begun to fall again, and the forest seemed eerily quiet and gave no hint of the battle that they had just waged. Only the broken and shattered trees and the large gaping holes in the ground provided any evidence of what had occurred. She cast a quick detection spell as she went to ensure there would be no further surprises – but nothing appeared.
She reached the stunned snatcher quickly, having cut across to the right at a run to locate him. He lay face down in the snow rather awkwardly over a dead branch. She hit him with another stunner, and then a petrificus totalus before she rolled him over and obliviated his memories. Searching him quickly, she noted that he carried nothing useful on his person, just the wand that was still gripped tightly in his hand and a few loose coins. Her movements were robotic as she checked his pockets and then straightened to run over to where the second snatcher was.
He wasn’t hard to find.
As she approached, she could see the crimson of blood soaked deeply into the snow – small patches slowly being covered by the new fluffy flakes that gathered on the ground. Her heart stammered, and her pulse quickened as the pool of blood got larger. Then she saw the stub of the snatcher’s arm, bone protruding awkwardly from the broken flesh, and his motionless body stiff as it lay in the cold snow. His eyes were open, and they stared blankly at the sky.
They’re blue, she noted as her gaze traced over his face.
She didn’t need to check or cast a diagnostic to know that he was dead. Her stomach lurched, and she clamped her mouth shut with her hand as she gagged slightly. Thankfully, there was no smell – just the surreal image of red against white in a deathly quiet forest as his empty eyes looked up at nothing.
Willing herself not to throw up everywhere, she lowered into a crouch and brushed her fingers over his eyes to close them. She robotically searched his body, ignoring her unease and hoping to find something useful. She came across two scraps of paper and a ticket stub. She pocketed them quickly before standing up to scan the area. Her legs trembled when her eyes landed on the detached arm laying several feet from his body and she saw a thin gold bracelet on the wrist. Forcing her stiffening legs to move, she walked toward it.
-x-x-
Harry sat on the small broken branch watching the light from Hermione’s wand bob around on the hill before him. He’d cast a quick diagnostic charm and determined he needed to drink half a bottle of blood replenishing potion. He’d drank it quickly, repacking the bottle before turning his own lit wand to examine his arm. It wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been, and nothing in comparison to what Hermione had gotten during their last werewolf encounter – he would have lost his arm had his full body shield not formed fast enough. His arm still ached and hung awkwardly from his shoulder. He frowned at it before casting a second quick diagnostic charm that Hermione had taught him.
“Ahhh,” he said with a grimace. “Well, that makes sense.”
He’d broken his humerus. He had fully expected that the wounds would continue to ache terribly for the next little while as he healed, but he had been sitting there wondering why his arm still hung pathetically, and he couldn’t move it around very well. And now he knew why. He looked back up to see Hermione’s light lingering in one spot just up the hill for a while – he would get her to fix it when she returned. He didn’t trust himself to do it while in so much pain, and he didn’t want to set the bone wrong and leave Hermione with the task of rebreaking it. The light lingered still longer, and he was just about to call out to her when it finally started bobbing its way back to him.
-x-x-
Hermione’s face was tight and tense when she stepped into the light of Harry’s wand. He noticed that her eyes looked hardened and closed off, but yet her hand gently trembled as she reached to inspect Harry’s arm.
“Harry, I think your arm might be broken,” she said with focus, but he didn’t miss the slight quiver that her voice held as she spoke.
“It is,” he said calmly, grabbing her hand with his right and stopping her movement. “Hermione, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said quickly, pulling her hand away and refusing to meet his eyes. “I’ll fix your arm.”
“Hermione.” He caught her wrist again and held it firmly. Staring at her intently until her eyes finally met his. “We’re not doing this, okay? We’re not shutting down – talk to me – tell me what’s wrong. My arm’s already broken. It’s not going anywhere. We have time.”
She stood still and unmoving, her eyes searching his as her jaw clenched and her fist balled at her side.
“Harry, I–“ She faltered, and her eyes dropped down to his chest as her arm shook. “I killed him.”
Harry dropped her wrist and reached for her shoulder, pulling her into his chest. She didn’t cry. She wouldn’t cry – she honestly wasn’t even sure that she could cry for a snatcher who followed You Know Who, but her emotions still felt all over the place. She was desperate to never let go of Harry again. Her stomach knotted over the bloodied image of the dead snatcher. Her soul ached from worry that she’d almost lost Harry, and her mind was racing as her heart pounded from the adrenaline that had been coursing through her body. She felt disconnected and disjointed, as if her brain couldn’t process what she’d done.
“It’s okay, Hermione,” he said gently to her, stroking her back with his hand. “It’s okay. You didn’t do anything–”
“But I did, Harry.” She cut him off, surprised by how even and level toned her voice was. “I did do it – it wasn’t an accident – I used dark magic, Harry. I – I used sectumpemra. I had to… I did it intentionally, Harry. This wasn’t a misfire.”
“Hermione,” he said as he pushed her away from him gently to look at her face. “You didn’t do anything other than what you had to.”
Her eyes softened, and she eyed him warily. He could see the unease in her stance, the desperation and turmoil inside her as she tried to process the situation. On one hand, she had just killed someone, intentionally. On the other hand, she’d helped save them, and it was hard to mourn the death of one of You Know Who’s followers. One that would have killed them if she hadn’t gotten him first.
“If you didn’t do what you did, we might not still be here. I’m not saying that we should be proud of using every tool that we have to fight this war – some take a toll, and some are just terrible. But they’re tools, and you did what you had to do. We’ll work through this together, okay? I – I used it too.” His voice dropped at the last sentence, and Hermione’s eyes shifted to the dead werewolf a few feet away from them. Its head was almost completely detached from its body – and she knew that a diffindo would not have been strong enough to do that sort of damage.
“I know,” she said quietly, her eyes turning back to his. “I’m sorry, Harry.”
“Me too,” he said, and he meant it.
She stared at him for a moment longer, knees getting colder in the snow as she knelt before Harry’s sitting form. The desperation was still evident in her face, but her eyes finally travelled back to his arm.
“I’ll fix your arm quickly – and then let’s get out of here.” Her eyes refocused as she pushed the inner turmoil back into the depths of her mind. She needed to remain focused and get them out of here. Now was not the time to be a pathetic or naïve child. She’d boxed that up earlier to do what needed to be done – and she would keep it boxed until they were safe.
She cast her own diagnostic spell quickly to assess the break and then healed it just as fast. Harry smiled as he noted that his arm didn’t hang limply from his side anymore, he could move it, but it still ached. She clutched his hand firmly before meeting his eyes again.
“Before we go, just one more thing.” She didn’t let go of his wand hand and instead pulled him to his feet.
Her eyes were determined, and she walked them both toward the dead carcass of the werewolf. Grabbing her purse with her only free hand, she summoned a black metal box and opened it with her wand – inside was a slim gold band. Carefully, she then used her wand to remove the golden band from the werewolf’s wrist and placed it inside the box with the other – never once touching it directly. She closed the box with her wand and placed several protection spells on it before stuffing it back into her purse.
“There,” she said with a strange amount of brightness. “I’m going to take a look at those and see if I can figure out how they work later. But for now – they’re safely stored.”
“Even in battle, you’re always thinking ahead,” Harry said, and he couldn’t help but look at her with pride.
She snorted and eyed the area around them with visible disdain.
“Obviously not enough though, we were still caught off guard.” Her voice was low with frustration.
“We’ll fix that, Hermione,” Harry said quietly, and her eyes darted to him, her brow creasing at the seriousness and determination that she heard. “It won’t happen again. We won’t let it happen again.”
She nodded firmly and gripped Harry’s hand tighter. He had noted how she had never let go of him since they got up from the log, and she was standing impossibly close.
“I know where to take us next,” she said determinedly. “It won’t be pleasant – but it will be safe.”
With that, Hermione stepped into Harry, gently cradling his injured arm between them, wrapping her hand around his waist and gripping his good hand firmly. Then she apparated them away.
-x-x-
With a crack, they landed in what Harry thought must have been the middle of a blizzard. The area was rocky, cold and still dark with the little remaining night. She’d brought them to a small rocky mountain so far North Harry figured they might be in Scotland. Immediately upon landing, Hermione cast a detection spell before walking them toward a rough slightly covered rocky area, where they then set up the tent.
Setting up the tent was difficult, not only because of the wind but also because Hermione did not want to let go of Harry’s hand. It took them twice as long to erect the tent and for her to secure the pegs with sticking charms. Begrudgingly, she finally did release her hold on him after she ushered him inside to rest while she went out to set the alarms and detection spells. She’d fished out a clean and warm pair of his flannel pajama pants and a t-shirt for him before she turned to leave.
She set four alarms and detections: one at 50 meters, one at 100 meters, one at 300 meters and one at 500 meters out from the tent. The small cracking sounds of her apparating to each location went unheard along the mountainside, disguised by the raging wind. While she worked, her mind was racing, her stomach nervous, and her eyes flicked quickly side to side with anxiety – wand clutched tightly in her hand awaiting any attacks. Images of the dead snatcher’s blue eyes kept popping up in her head; she’d shake it to refocus and then continue to push on.
She would need to deal with what had happened – she knew this – but just not right now. Right now, she needed to ensure that they were safe, that Harry was safe. So, she wandered the dark, snow-covered mountain with determination, her hand twitching every few steps, pulse racing as she flinched every so often – afraid that she’d heard something. Her twitching and trembling body was tense, every sense on high alert as she shivered in the frigid cold.
Closing the small distance back to the tent, she set the final wards and enchantments which would conceal their tent and keep them safe. The wind clawed at her face. The sleet and snow stung her eyes and cheeks. At the last ten steps, she felt her energy drain from her body as if someone had just placed the weight of the world on her shoulders. The adrenaline that had been coursing through her drained away, and now she only felt heavy from exhaustion, sore and numb. She found herself thinking that the only thing she wanted to do was just curl up in Harry’s arms.
She knew that they’d talked about what was going on between them and that she had been the one to say that now wasn’t a good time. She knew that she was the one who said the war complicated things and that she said allowing the closeness was irresponsible.
I don’t care though, she thought as she pushed the tent open and came inside to remove her jacket and boots. She looked up to see Harry seated on his bunk, changed into the pajama bottoms and loose-fitting black t-shirt she’d given him before leaving. He looked up at her and smiled – he looked like shit.
She stripped off her jacket, hat, and boots before moving toward Harry. Her body felt like it was a hundred years old and full of lead. She was sure that tomorrow she would wake up to a bunch of fun and interesting bruises from rolling around in the forest and dodging to save her life. But right now, she couldn’t care less. Sluggishly she knelt before Harry to inspect his arm.
“You were lucky,” she said, voice heavy as she ran her fingers over the freshly healed skin.
“Yeah, it really only nicked my arm,” he said, his eyes following hers as she turned his arm over to inspect the back. “I think most of the damage was the break, to be honest. That and the bruising from when it bit my forearm – but at least the shield prevented its teeth from puncturing my arm. I only felt the pressure.”
A thin, jagged, angry red scar stretched from the tip of his shoulder down to his elbow. The werewolf’s claw had caught his shoulder, breaking the humerus with the downward force of impact, and it had carved a thin line several inches before Harry had managed to push it back. Harry was right, deep blue bruises were starting to show on his forearm, but there were no punctures. Most of the blood on his clothes had actually been the werewolf’s from several well-placed cutting spells, and Hermione expected that Harry’s recovery would not take nearly as long as her own had. Though, like hers – the scar would remain forever.
Hermione summoned her purse and pulled out a balm she had to help with the bruises and proceeded to gently rub it into his forearm. It smelled minty, and it made some of the tension release from his shoulders. After putting the balm away, she sat before Harry and realized that she was holding Harry’s hand between her – tracing his fingers and running her hands over his knuckles. She didn’t want to let go. She didn’t want to leave him. Her mind was blank. She felt dead on her knees, and she could feel his warmth spreading through her hands; her eyelids started to slouch.
“Hermione,” he said gently as he ran his own fingers over her knuckles. “You should get some rest.”
Hermione nodded slowly, her mind churning like an old, slow wind-up clock. She raised herself from the floor and squeezed Harry’s hand before walking towards her bunk and pulling out her own red flannel pajama bottoms and a dark grey sweater.
“I set four alarms and detections, so we will be able to get some sleep without anything sneaking up on us,” she said. She heard Harry agree and the creak of his bunk as he laid down gently.
Pattering softly to the bathroom, she found that she didn’t have it in her to shower, so instead, she quickly brushed her teeth, cast a drying charm on her hair, washed her face and cast a cleaning charm on herself after throwing her hair up in a sagging ponytail. The golden locket hung loosely around her neck, and she was thankful that they didn’t lose it in the battle. She would wear it for the next few days while Harry recovered.
Her movements were languished, her thoughts thick and heavy as emotion weighed heavy on her heart. Twice now, twice, they’d come so close to losing each other. She didn’t want to lose him – she couldn’t. When she exited the bathroom, the lights in the tent were still lit, and she moved quietly back to her bunk, dumping her worn clothes on the ground by her feet. She didn’t even have the energy to laugh at how ridiculous it was for Hermione Granger to drop clothes on the floor. She stood stock still, staring at the empty and cold-looking bunk before her. The raging winds outside rattled the tent, and the fabric pulled viciously with each gust. She wasn’t worried the tent would dislodge – she knew it wouldn’t; she had been careful with the sticking charms. But the noise and the cold placed an eerie edge to the bizarre calm haze she felt herself in.
She shivered as she continued to stare down at her bed. She didn’t want to crawl in it. She didn’t want to be alone. Slowly, she turned to look at Harry. His eyes were closed, and he was lying on his back. She wasn’t sure if he was sleeping or not yet. He was as exhausted as she was and injured, so he may have fallen asleep quickly while she was brushing her teeth. She shivered again. Her eyes drooped, and her right knee buckled under her weight – but she couldn’t stop looking at him. She couldn’t make herself turn away to face her bunk. She felt like her heart was aching. It had been too much; today was too much – she couldn’t do this… she couldn’t do this alone.
Unable to think, to process, to even begin to consider or care about the consequences, she took a step toward Harry’s bunk. He was lying closer to the tent wall, his injured left arm almost touching the fabric as it rippled in the wind. Her feet padded softly as she took the ten or so small steps between their bunks, and she saw Harry’s eyes crack open sleepily at the sound of her socked feet approaching.
Without saying a word, he reached his right hand out to her; she took the last two steps to his bunk, grabbed his hand and pulled back the blankets before lowering herself onto his bed. He shuffled over another inch as she laid down next to him, head beside his on the pillow, and rolled onto her side to face him. Her hand intertwined with his, and he rested it on his chest. She nuzzled in closer until she could feel his side against her chest before covering herself with his blanket.
“I don’t want to be alone,” she whispered, the words barely audible above the storm that raged outside.
Harry’s hand tightened around hers.
“You’re never alone,” he breathed out in a whisper. “I’m always right here.”
She smiled as she gripped his hand tightly in return, flicking a finger to turn off the lights in the tent. Then darkness overtook her, and she fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
-x-x-
Hermione woke to the sound of the tent moving around them. A dim light cast strange shadows against the fabric, and she knew it must be the start of the afternoon despite her eyes still being closed. It never got bright anymore now that they were into December, and the snow fell heavy. She did a quick mental check of their wards and could feel that they had remained undisturbed. Her body ached, sore from the battle they had faced the night before. She groaned as she made to roll to her back only to realize that her leg was stuck.
Hesitantly, she opened her eyes and saw thick dishevelled black hair. Her mind took a moment to process the image before it linked to the warmth that she felt against her chest and legs – to the sleeping form of Harry that lay next to her.
Her hand was still clutched firmly to Harry’s on his chest, her fingers had gone numb, and her right leg was tossed over Harry’s right one and weaved underneath his left. She froze for a moment as the cold of the night before, the loneliness, the fear, the exhaustion and the desire to not be alone settled in. She’d wandered back to his bunk after staring at her own for several minutes. She didn’t want to leave him. She had wanted to be near him. She still did.
She raised her head to look at his face. His features were loose and calm. Hermione couldn’t remember the last time that she had seen him sleep so peacefully. Usually, he slept in a fit and got tangled in his sheets – but he had not moved an inch from where he’d passed out.
Makes sense, her mind supplied. He’s probably exhausted from last night. She stared at him a while longer before noting, Harry is incredibly handsome, as a blush crept over her cheeks. In the last two years, he’d really filled out. Broad shoulders, strong arms and legs, his jaw had become more defined, and it gave him the image of a strong and capable man. No wonder the girls at school had always fawned over him, she thought. She’d never really given it much thought or allowed herself to look at him, like really look at him.
But now that she had, she had to admit that he was – rather dashing.
Hesitantly she craned her neck a bit further to peer at his left arm. It looked okay, still sporting a red and angry scar that peeked out from his shirt sleeve but otherwise, it remained fully sealed and did not pose any immediate problems.
Dropping her head softly back to the pillow, she contemplated her escape. Though tired, she did not want to sleep anymore and frankly, she was positively ravenous. Soon her stomach would be growling, and she didn’t want to wake Harry up. She also wasn’t sure what he would say when he realized that she was in his bed... but when the image of him outstretching his hand to her circled around in her head, she blushed further. She decided that he probably wouldn’t mind her being there... but still. This had definitely pushed past the agreed distance she had all but requested they make.
And she’d been the one to breach it.
She rolled this thought over as the tent rippled again from a strong gust. She felt warm here next to Harry. Safe. She didn’t want to leave. She didn’t like the distance that had been made between them. She didn’t like forcing space, and she didn’t ever want to let him go. They’d been attacked last night – unlucky as she unknowingly apparated them into a disaster zone. She’d made a mental note that she would need to look at a map and see if she could figure out what the hell had happened and if there might be a pattern between where the first werewolf attack was and this one. A note she planned to follow up on today. Right now, though, her brain couldn’t stop thinking about how for a second time in just four months, they’d come so close to dying.
She didn’t like it.
She hated their situation, and it made her think more about Harry’s words. How he had said that this was what they were fighting for. She pondered a while longer before she felt her stomach rumble. Deciding to think more on it later but making a mental commitment to stop behaving how she thought she should around Harry and instead go back to how she wanted to. Then, she started to gently pull herself out from his grasp. First detangling their hands and then slipping her leg out. She had just gotten her calf out from under his leg and was gently pulling it across his right thigh, half sat up and resting on her elbow when Harry moved, and she froze.
His eyes fluttered open, dazed only for a second before they circled and landed on her. She felt her cheeks flush, and her brain faltered. Her face must have looked like a kid caught with their hand in the cookie jar because he smiled and let out a low gravelly laugh that made her chest tighten.
“Hey,” he said as he looked up at her with bright eyes. Not moving and not mentioning anything about her trying to sneak from bed. Or the fact that she was in his bed, or that her thigh was still resting on his.
“Hey,” she said in a low whisper as if nervous someone might hear her.
“Is this how you feel all the time, having to look up at people?” His eyes danced as he spoke.
She opened her mouth, closed it, and furrowed her eyebrows. At first confused by his statement as he laughed again, then realizing that he was making a joke and probably trying to lighten the mood, clearly sensing her tension.
“Are you making fun of me for being short!?” she sputtered as she thumped his chest with her free hand, the other still holding her halfway up.
“Ow – hey! Stop!” He caught her wrist gently. “I’m injured.”
She narrowed her eyes at him but could not stop the small smile that formed on her lips as she looked down at him. His head was relaxed on the pillow, and his grin made it look like he didn’t have a care in the world.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” she said; the words fell from her mouth before she had the chance to gain control of her voice.
It came out soft with worry, and she blushed as she started to feel just how close she was to him. Leg still lain over his, the entirety of her front was pressed against his side, and her hand was now once again held tightly in his on his chest. She lowered her eyes to their now laced fingers.
“I’m glad you’re okay too.” His voice was soft, and at the words her eyes darted back to meet his. It was impossible not to see the emotion that shone in them.
“I’m sorry about your arm, Harry,” she said quietly, and her eyes held sadness.
“It’s okay,” he said slowly as the grin faded slightly from his lips. It was replaced with a softer, much more intimate smile. “Now we match.”
She felt her chest constrict and her heart beat hard against her rib cage. She couldn’t look away from his eyes. She couldn’t stop her pulse from quickening. She untangled her hand from Harry’s and slowly brought it up to his face, resting it on his cheek and stroked her thumb over his cheekbone. He leaned his face into it ever so slightly as he blinked up at her slowly.
Hermione could feel her mind shut off, as if she was physically in there herself and simply closed the door on her thoughts. Then slowly, oh so slowly, she lowered her head to his.
Hermione kissed him, her lips grazing his gently. She heard him breathe in at the contact, and he responded to her with equal care. It was slow, deep, and warm. Despite her racing heart, she didn’t feel nervous. This wasn’t desperate and heated like the last time. This – was different.
It was unhurried, heartfelt, and deep. Her lips moved against his, gentle but firm as she tried to convey every ounce of her being to him, every string of emotion she held for him – what she knew but couldn’t say. That she needed him, cared for him, respected him, wanted him – that she loved him. The kiss made her core burn and her heart thrum, but she kept the pace steady and sure, enjoying the feel of his lips moving against hers in such a slow and agonizingly intimate way.
Slowly, she pulled away from him, her lips left feeling cold and alone. She leaned back on her elbow and looked into his eyes. Harry stared up at her, his eyes a mirror reflection of her own – conveying immeasurable unspoken intense emotion. She felt a blush creep across her cheeks, and she lowered her eyes somewhat bashfully to his chest before pushing herself up to sit on the edge of the bed as her hand dragged slowly away from his face.
Harry didn’t stop her as she moved to get up and walk toward the kitchen. He didn’t try to turn the moment into anything more than it was. He didn’t speak, but his eyes watched her move, and he smiled quietly to himself. He would never question Hermione about the kiss. She would never have to explain what it meant. He would never worry about what it might mean, he would never wonder what was going on between them, and he would never feel unsure of what it was.
Hermione didn’t have to tell him anything – he already knew.
Warnings:
This chapter contains: explicit smut (which can be skipped without missing out on main plot)
*******************************************
The next week that passed was rough and each day moved slowly. On the first day, as per her plan, Hermione examined the map and noticed that the werewolf encounters seemed to be circled around Birmingham. One had occurred to the North of the city and the other to the South. Using Birmingham as the center Hermione made a circle on her map with a radius equal to the distance that the two encounters had occurred. She marked the area as a ‘no apparate zone’ and they both agreed not to go anywhere near it for the rest of their Horcrux hunting.
The remainder of the first day was spent mostly lounging around the tent, both Harry and Hermione were simply too exhausted from the Battle on the Hillside – as they agreed to call it – to accomplish much else. They had eaten a quick breakfast and each showered to remove the remaining grime from the night before – Hermione cleaned Harry’s bunk thoroughly while he showered given that they had both slept in it without washing the night before. Then in the afternoon Harry laid on his bunk and read the books that Hermione brought to him while she curled up by his knees, leaning on the tent post similar to how Harry had stayed with her while she was sick – only this time she held his hand as they each read quietly.
Their workouts and training were difficult to complete due to the weather. The snow and sleet were relentless and slammed the tent viciously and allowed for very little visibility outside. With being on the side of a mountain it was too dangerous to practice outside, so they did what they could inside the tent while ensuring not to damage anything or accidentally explode the tent furniture. Harry completed their fitness routine too, albeit a bit more slowly, in order to ensure that his newly healed muscles adjusted to his body. Hermione teased him any time she was able to complete more reps than him and pinched his sides when she completed more pushups than him on the third day before Harry quickly swatted her hands away and made a promise to get her back once he was at full strength.
The tent was frigid and despite the warming charms and multiple fires that they had set in jars around the tent they couldn't quite take the cold bite out of the air. Regardless, they both agreed to not apparate anywhere else for the week or until Harry was closer to being fully healed. The unwelcoming nature of the mountain and its remote location made it the safest place that they could possibly stay while Harry rested. Both as a result of the freezing cold tent and the commitment Hermione had made to herself to stop trying to act a particular way around Harry, she allowed the closeness between them to reform. They sat exactly beside each other every night for tea, intertwined their legs on the footstool, touched hands while talking and often found themselves curling up on a bunk together to read with a throw blanket draped across them as they huddled for warmth. Hermione noticed that Harry never pushed – he simply accepted any closeness and physical contact she instigated, mirrored it, and allowed her to set the pace and the boundaries of their interactions.
She smiled inwardly at that, thanking Harry internally for not over-complicating things, or asking her for explanations – and instead just understanding her intent and respecting her internal struggle.
She wanted to be close to Harry. She wanted to see where things went and she already knew Harry’s position on the matter as he had blatantly stated it. Her kiss with Harry when they both woke in his bunk after the attack was meant to show him that she cared and that she was open to allowing the closeness between them to grow – that she cared for him more than she could even wrap her head around it. But she still couldn’t shake the nervousness that she felt about acting on her feelings and allowing their relationship to develop into something else.
She still caught herself second-guessing it until she forced her mind to calm down and just let things be – so, she appreciated that Harry seemed to intuitively understand both her want and her hesitation. He allowed her to just be herself and take things slowly and instead of worrying about what she should do, she resolved to just do what felt right.
As he healed Hermione refused to allow Harry to take any night watches and insisted that he get a good night’s sleep to ensure that his healing process progressed as quickly as possible. With the additional wards and alarms that Hermione had set, and the terrible weather, night watch was not truly required – though, Hermione still insisted upon taking a 4 hour shift each night where she sat alone at the entrance of the tent until the wee hours of the morning. It remained unspoken between them, but they both knew she was having trouble sleeping after killing the snatcher on the hillside.
She hadn't broken down, cried, or developed any major PTSD symptoms after the battle – but she did often see the snatcher’s vacant blue eyes when she lay in bed and closed her own. She found that sitting in the cold and staring into the endless snowstorm helped calm her nerves and gave her ample time to meditate and work through her breathing techniques to help process what she had done. She did not mourn the death of whoever the man was, she didn’t regret what happened and she didn’t linger on the fact that she had ended a life. Instead, what hit her hardest was her own shattered naivety and the realization of how brutal and how ruthless war was. And how quickly she was being forced to lose the last remains of innocence she had left in order to survive.
Up until the Battle on the Hillside, she had managed to get by with making small sacrifices and losing only parts of her naivety. She’d always understood that war was difficult, that the things that happened during it would have long term effects and leave lasting scars – she’d just never fully appreciated what that meant. She hadn’t understood.
But she did now.
She had jinxed the DA contract and hurt Marietta Edgecombe, she’d broken school rules, snuck out after curfew, played with time, put herself and others in danger, broken laws, battled Death Eaters in the Department of Mysteries and even severely injured others while in the fight – but despite that she had always clung to a rather naïve and somewhat childish view of the war where she thought that good would win. That somehow everything would end up okay simply because it had to.
But not anymore.
Hermione felt a strange feeling settle over her as she stared out into the blizzard before her, as she thought about what she had done, what she would do, and what she had to do to get through this. She wasn't a kid anymore. That ship had sailed. This war had changed her. She had always been serious, responsible and studious – but this was different. This was the cold, unemotional acceptance of what the situation really was. This was the solemn recognition that even if they won, things would not go back to how they were – that she would not go back to who she was. This war was a part of her now, it had stolen time from her, hardened her, it had taken from her and would continue to take until one side fell – and she would take all of it, every step, every action and every struggle forward with her for the rest of her life.
She spent many of her night watches thinking about Ginny and the other DA members still at Hogwarts and wondered if they knew what was coming – what might be asked of them. If they were prepared for battle, for sacrificing pieces of themselves or taking the lives of others. She thought of Ron and wondered how he would have handled the battle, and if she ever saw him again if he would be mature enough to actually participate in the war the way they needed to. She could sense the shift in her maturity. She hadn’t appreciated what was coming up until now. Harry had... he had lived it already. He watched Cedric die, he saw Sirius disappear behind the veil, he’d been tortured with the cruciatus and he’d continuously lost so much. She wasn’t sure if everyone would be ready – but she resolved herself to be, and she took some solace in knowing that Harry understood how she felt and that they would work through whatever happened next together.
On three of the nights during their week on the mountainside she’d crawled into Harry’s bed after the night watch. The first time that it happened she had laid in her bunk for an hour, unable to sleep and unable to shake the unease that filled her mind as she closed her eyes and saw only the blood-spattered snow. The second night she knew as she retired into the tent that she would not be able to sleep and had lingered next to Harry’s bunk briefly before giving in and crawling under his blankets. The third time it happened she didn’t even try to fight it and immediately crawled into his bunk and rolled into his side for warmth. His even breathing and presence calmed her racing thoughts and allowed her to sleep.
The first time it had happened she snuck out of bed before Harry woke – or at least while he pretended to be sleeping so she could maintain her composure about leaving his bed uninvited. The second time it happened she woke to Harry making breakfast in the kitchen for her. She wasn’t sure how he slipped out without her noticing, but he never mentioned anything about her crawling into his bunk uninvited and they ate breakfast rather comfortably around a large blue flame before beginning their exercise routine.
The third time it happened she awoke in Harry’s arms, he was awake and reading next to her – one arm draped lazily around her, her head tucked into his shoulder, leg thrown over his and snuggled deeply into his side. He had given her a gentle squeeze when he saw a light blush creep over her face and what he figured might be a small amount of mortification based on her wide and avoiding eyes. He kissed her gently on the top of her head before murmuring “Anytime you need to, Hermione” softly against her hair. She had stayed next to him for several long minutes, enjoying his warmth and letting her mind wander before finally detangling herself from him to climb from bed and start making breakfast.
As she cooked breakfast her heart raced from the previous closeness and she felt her eyes prickle as a wave of emotion washed over her. Her relationship with Harry was both the most complex and confusing thing while also being the most simple and comforting thing she had ever been a part of. She would never be able to express to him in words how much it meant to her that she could just be herself around him – and not worry about defining anything or deciding anything. Things were a mess – they were a mess, and yet Harry was her constant and being able to be with him in whatever way felt right when they needed it kept her sane and gave her hope. Though it did make her mind wander back to Harry’s words… about how being together would make them stronger and she found it harder and harder not to think about it.
As December 14th rolled around Harry was almost to his usual stamina, their shield charm ability remained strong, Hermione had taught Harry how to cast a disillusionment charm, Hermione’s many interestingly shaped bruises had healed and she figured it was about time to move on. She awoke that morning from her own bunk, the cold from the tent nipping at her nose as she groaned internally wishing for warmer weather. So far into December she knew it would be cold no matter where they apparated, so she decided to bring them to a Northerly cliff on the Eastside of Scotland next – knowing that the weather would be disastrous and provide ample cover like their current location.
Forcing herself from bed she cast a quick warming charm on herself, praised her ridiculously thick knitted socks for being so effective and started on breakfast. After Harry woke, they ate, agreed apparating to a new location would be a good plan for the morning and quickly packed up the tent. As they stood on the freezing mountainside Hermione moved close to Harry, he wrapped his arm around her waist tightly and she placed her ungloved hand gently on the back on his neck. She swept her eyes over the mountainside briefly before closing them to apparate them away. Leaving the mountain felt like she was leaving her old self behind and moving forward as an older, worn, harder and hopefully wiser person.
-x-x-
A loud crack split the air as they landed next to a steep cliff that dropped down to the North Sea. Hermione remained close to Harry, hand on the back of his neck as they both crouched down quickly and cast homenum revelio and a quick detection charm with a 100 foot radius before they stood slowly and began to set up the tent. Harry and Hermione went together to set the wards, alarms, detection spells and enchantments. It took a bit longer this way – but it was safer, and they had agreed to take no more chances before they left, becoming much more militant in their approach.
By the time they both ducked inside the tent they were shivering, despite the multiple warming charms, and Hermione’s hair was coated in snow. They both had tea to warm up, then completed a quick exercise routine before they took turns in the shower, ate lunch and settled in their respective armchairs around a particularly large blue flame to read. Despite the fact that they were now more South than before it felt colder. Probably because of the humidity, her brain supplied. With being so close to the water the wind chill was cutting and the air was damp with a deep cold that they could not seem to shake.
After an hour of reading she found herself stealing glances at Harry over her book as her mind wandered back to their intimate kiss in the kitchen. She had intertwined her legs with Harry’s when they first sat down and in the last several minutes she had started fidgeting them to keep warm. Harry had obviously noticed and had started to gently rub his thick sock-covered foot over hers to warm her feet. At first the movement had only felt kind, welcoming and warm to Hermione – but the longer he did it the more distracting it had become and now she found her mind wandering to places that still made her nervous, and thinking about the pent up frustrations she had been feeling all week.
Biting her thumb as a distraction, she looked back down at her book and turned the page to look at a very interesting – except not really interesting right now – instructional diagram on how to assemble a charmed multi-potion brewing station. She thought about the warmth of Harry’s legs, how close he had been when they kissed and how the heat had radiated off of him. She shivered in her chair.
Fuck this cold is going to my head, she thought as she bit her thumb harder to try and distract herself. It’s so fucking cold… and Harry is so warm. She hadn’t noticed that she had started to gently rub her legs over his in response to his warming motions and instead was now recalling the feel of his lips against hers.
I wonder if that will ever happen again… I mean we’ve kissed again since – but not like that. That was… well, that was something else entirely. A small blush crept over her cheeks as she thought about it, the heated urgency between them as he had pressed his body into hers.
She would be lying if she said she hadn’t thought about that kiss a fair amount, it crept into her mind often. She would also be lying if she said she didn’t want it to happen again. Though, she wondered how something like that would come up again. Last time it was initiated by their closeness, their excitement over the successful implementation of the shield spell, and the built-up sexual tension – let’s be real though, the sexual tension is still there, she thought. Despite the acknowledged but ignored continued sexual tension, sitting in a freezing tent wasn’t exactly the most enticing atmosphere. She shivered again. So damn cold.
After several minutes her wandering mind slowed as she felt the familiar prickle of being watched and her eyes darted up and over to Harry’s chair. His book was still open in front of him on his lap, but it was held in laxed hands and he was fully staring at her. Rather intensely. The light blush on her face darkened and her eyes darted away from him down to her book before she realized that her thumb had still been lightly resting between her teeth. Pulling it away she shivered once more before glancing nervously up at him.
“What?” she asked, not able to hold his gaze and instead letting her eyes dance around his face, hands and book.
“Nothing,” Harry said slowly, his voice a little deeper than usual. “I was thinking of making some hot chocolate – you look cold, do you want some?”
“Yeah, that’d be lovely.” She smiled over at him.
Slowly Harry detangled his legs from hers and stood up from his seat. She shivered at the loss of his warm legs and pulled her own close to her chest as she watched him walk to the kitchen.
“So,” he said as he pulled down two old mugs and looked over his shoulder at her. “Reading anything interesting?”
Hermione’s blush deepened. She knew Harry was not a skilled legilimens, but the sound of his voice made her think that he might somehow know what she was thinking about.
“Sort of,” she said as she turned more in her chair to face him. “Just a neat detail on how to assemble a charmed multi-potion brewing station. Thought it might be useful to brew up some replacement potions.”
Harry poured the freshly boiled water into the muggle hot chocolate mix that Hermione had grabbed from their last supplies mission. She was glad that Harry didn’t mind drinking it – it was much more convenient to make than homemade or even wizards hot chocolate – and she had been annoyed when Ron complained about the dry powder mix being used to make steamy hot chocolate when they had some in early September.
Harry nodded as he approached her with the steaming mug and spoke as he handed it to her and sat down on the footstool in front of her.
“Must have been a difficult charm, since you were staring at the page for over 20 minutes.”
“I –“ Hermione’s voice caught as she looked down at her mug and then back to Harry as a deep blush grazed her face. “I was not – I was just thinking – what, were you watching me read?”
Harry laughed as he took a tentative sip of his hot beverage and then grinned at her.
“It was a bit hard not to, what with your constant fidgeting and small sighs.”
“I was not sighing,” a look of flustered indignation crossed her face.
“Mhmm.” He raised an amused eyebrow at her. “I must have imagined it along with the dazed yet slightly frustrated expression you had.”
Hermione swatted at him before turning her face away and took a sip of the deliciously hot beverage.
“I was just distracted,” she said quietly into the mug.
“Mhmm.” Harry grinned again as he stood up and wandered back to his chair.
Hermione rolled her eyes at him but continued to hide her small blush as she ducked her head over the mug she held. Is Harry teasing me? she thought as she blew on the drink to cool it down. Or… flirting? Was that flirting? Or is he hinting that he knows what’s on my mind?
She pondered it as she flipped her book back open to look at the potion charm diagram. Maybe being stuck in the tent for the last week was getting to her more than she thought, they both needed some air and a chance to burn off some energy. Or maybe she had just been incredibly obvious in her musings and Harry had noticed. Which is embarrassing, she thought. Or, maybe it was her rubbing her legs over his – she wasn’t sure. Either way, the familiar heat in her core seemed to have reignited and she felt a small churn in her stomach as she stole a glance at him and smiled over her mug. Then she tried to force herself to concentrate.
Though it seemed like Hermione’s mind had other ideas. Despite her best efforts and resolve, she found herself still distracted an hour later. Except now – she felt pent up, confused and frustrated. Annoyed with her lack of discipline and unsure why she felt so on edge she groaned outwardly and slammed the book closed before getting up from her chair. Come on Hermione get it together, what the fuck has gotten you so riled up!
Harry jerked at the noise and looked up to see Hermione stretch in frustration in front of him. Noticing how her sweater lifted to show an inch of skin at her waist. Hermione looked down at him.
“I’m not sure hot chocolate was a good idea, I can’t concentrate – I’m so pent up from being in this tent all week from the weather and now I have all this energy from the sugar – and I just–“ Hermione groaned outwardly as she shook her head. “I love reading, I love researching – but this is ridiculous, I need to do something.”
Hermione was looking at him with no small amount of desperation and he could not help himself but laugh.
“What?” she asked, with a hint of annoyance in her voice.
“Sorry,” Harry said as he covered his mouth with his hand to hide his second chuckle. “I just never thought that I would outlast you with reading – I thought that I would crack first.”
Hermione scowled at first but then found the corner of her lips tugging upwards at the amused look on Harry's face.
“I just feel so constricted without being able to practice.” She smoothed her hands over her hair and turned to face him fully. “I didn’t realize how much I enjoyed practicing duelling or being active until I was, now I just feel so pent up. How are you dealing with this?”
“I’m not,” Harry replied honestly with a smile and he also stood from his chair. “I’m just as frustrated, I just thought if I complained you would tell me to be more studious and patient. So, I’ve sort of been pushing it down and just gritting through it.”
Hermione found she couldn’t even roll her eyes at that one. It was a fair assumption so instead she shrugged a little sheepishly.
“Yeah,” she said with a sigh. “That sounds like me. Look what you’ve done to me… made me active.”
Harry laughed outright at her use of the word active, having made it sound like the worst possible trait, or like she had caught an infection.
“Alright,” he said, grabbing his arm chair and moving it to the side. “How about we cast some shield charms around the tent and have a small duel with only leg lockers and disarming. We can draw two small circles across from one another – we each have to stay inside them – and then we can practice our close combat dodging. How’s that sound?”
“Fantastic,” a huge grin split across her face as she quickly grabbed her chair and moved it next to Harry’s.
They cast several general shield charms around the tent to create something similar to a small boxed in arena and then drew two 4 foot diameter circles on the floor of the tent just over 10 feet away from each other. Then each standing in a circle, they proceeded to duel.
It was immensely difficult. Trying to dodge while not stepping outside of the circle was awful. Hermione overstepped her circle 4 times before she started to get used to it. Despite the small quarters and lack of running around the exercise proved to be challenging, engaging, and a physical work out. Hermione ducked, jumped, leaned and found herself utilizing poses she didn’t know she was even capable of making. She made a mental note to add stretching to their exercise routine as it would definitely prove useful in close quarters. They went at it for over an hour before Hermione hit Harry with a leg locker and he tumbled backward to the ground with a heavy thump.
“Sorry Harry,” she called as she left her circle and crossed the small distance between them to cast the counter-spell on his stiff legs. “You okay?”
Harry accepted the hand she reached out to him and pulled himself from the ground.
“Absolutely.” He was grinning from ear to ear. “This was a good plan, I think it will be really helpful! We should just leave the circles on the ground, what do you think?”
Hermione nodded her agreement as she started to take down the protective shields that they had placed around the tent. Nothing was broken, the drill had been successful and now they had a new training routine to use in terrible weather. She could not wipe the smile from her face as they both talked strategy for how best to dodge in a small circle while they began to prepare dinner.
Hermione noticed the way Harry lingered at her side, she couldn’t help but bump his elbow playfully and then swat him when he mimicked one of her more ridiculous dodge poses. Their jovial conversation continued non-stop while they ate, their laughter ringing out in the tent more than it ever had in the past as their joking turned to funny stories from their past. Harry told her about the time at the zoo with the python, Hermione told Harry about how she had accidentally turned her mother’s hair green as a small kid, and Harry told Hermione about how Mr. Dursley had gone insane when the Hogwarts letters started arriving. Although it had upset him at the time, the image of his uncle muttering and behaving erratically now made him laugh with amusement.
At some point during their conversation they agreed that two separate armchairs were simply impractical and ridiculous with the cold weather – so Hermione transfigured one of the chairs into a large love seat. The second chair sat next to it and held a large jar of blue flames. They were both now sitting on the love seat, close together, a throw draped over their legs, holding tea mugs while they spoke animatedly to each other. Hermione had turned on the love seat to face Harry, her leg folder underneath her and he was angled toward her, his back resting on the armrest of the couch.
“So what did you want to be when you grew up, before you knew you were a wizard?” Hermione asked as she sipped her tea. Not noticing how she leaned toward him as they spoke.
“Oh hell,” Harry said with a laugh. “I have no idea! I never knew. I mostly just wanted to get out – but I guess I always wanted to do something good. I didn’t want to be a cop necessarily, but I wanted to work toward making the world a better place and stopping bad people. I know that sounds sort of pathetic.”
“No that’s not pathetic at all!” Hermione replied as she placed her tea mug on the footstool. “When I was a kid, I sort of always thought I might become a dentist – because both my parents were – they never pushed me toward anything, but I just always had this feeling that’s where I would end up. But it wasn’t what I wanted. I – I wanted to make a difference. I never knew how, I just knew I wanted to stand up for injustice – and fight for things that mattered, for things no one else would fight for. So maybe a lawyer or something. I never put any more thought into it after I got my Hogwarts letter.”
“That makes sense, you definitely always stood up for those who couldn’t do it themselves. I still have my S.P.E.W. badge.” Harry grinned at her as he also placed his now empty mug on the footstool. Catching the way Hermione’s eyes narrowed at him he quickly continued. “No – no, it’s a good thing! S.P.E.W. was great Hermione, and I mean that – really, you would have been an amazing lawyer fighting for people’s rights.”
Hermione grinned at him as a small blush flushed her cheeks and she looked down at her hands that were clasped in her lap.
“Thanks, Harry,” her voice was soft as she spoke.
Harry grabbed her hand and clutched it in his own before bringing it up to his mouth to place a small kiss on her knuckles.
“You will be great at whatever you decide to do after this,” he said gently, but his words were firm as he looked at her and held her hand in his lap.
“That’s a strange thought isn’t it?” she said as her eyes drifted back up to his. “The war being over? Being able to actually just be ourselves and have normal lives.”
They both laughed at this, and Hermione shuddered slightly from the cold draft in the tent.
“I’m not sure our lives will ever be normal,” Harry said as he reached forward and ran his hand up and down her upper arm to warm her. “But – I am excited for this to be over – for whatever comes next.”
They both smiled at each other and Hermione felt the small coil in her stomach tighten. Harry was always so optimistic, always so sure that things would resolve themselves and that they would win. Tonight was one of the few nights where she wholeheartedly believed it and dared to allow herself to hope for a future that didn’t include being on the run or constantly running into people who wanted them dead. His bright green eyes poured out nothing but hope, and it was – beautiful, her mind offered up.
A small blush crept over her as she continued to look at Harry, and she dropped her eyes to his chin when the coil in her stomach twisted again. The heat from his hand on her arms and his leg against hers was so welcoming. The dark that had consumed the tent was now only battled by the flicker of the blue flame behind her and their position now started to feel rather intimate. Harry’s hand rubbing her arm slowed and he squeezed her once before dropping his arm. She caught it though, lacing her fingers through his and pulling it to her chest as her eyes moved up to his. He was looking at her the same way he had before he kissed her, the same way he had when she woke up next to him – the same way that made her breath hitch in her chest.
The brutal wind howled outside the tent, but the air between them was still. Hermione stared into his eyes, she knew her cheeks were flushed, she knew her eyes showed the desire she constantly tried to keep in check – but tonight, she wanted him to see it. She shivered as Harry’s grip on her hand tightened, but she didn’t look away from his eyes. She wanted him, she wanted to be closer to him, she wanted to feel the heat that poured from his body.
As the thoughts of having him closer passed through her mind her nerves started to wake up. She didn’t know how to be close to someone in that way. Hermione was a bookworm for Merlin’s sake, not some popular girl who had been surrounded by schoolboys and learned the subtle art of relationships or seduction. Which was ironic, considering that she had spent her entire time at Hogwarts surrounded by two schoolboys – constantly. But it had never been in that way and as a result she had no idea what she was doing, she felt unprepared to deal with her wants and she silently berated herself for not reading up on it beforehand. She had had ample time to do so while stuck in a fucking tent for the last few months.
Her eyes drifted to Harry’s lips, they were ever so slightly parted, and she wet her own unknowingly before her eyes drifted briefly over his chest and shoulders – they were lean and strong – before they circled back up to his face. His eyes had darkened while she had been studying him and she felt her pulse quicken at the sight. She was terrified to make the first move, but felt her body lean intuitively toward him another inch.
As if on cue, sensing her desire and knowing she was nervous, Harry leaned toward her slowly and let go of her hand that he still held in his lap to bring his hand toward her face, brushing his thumb over her cheek as he leaned in. Hermione’s breath caught, but she didn’t panic, and she didn’t pull away. He was only just inches away from her now, eyes still locked to hers as he stroked her cheek with the soft pad of his thumb. Hermione felt herself inhale as she realized that he’d paused, and the small inches between them remained. Understanding dawning on her that he would not make a move unless she requested it or instigated it – as he had said he wouldn’t.
“Harry,” the words were a whisper almost lost between them.
“Yes, Hermione.” His voice was that familiar deep baritone that made her core wind tighter and the heat between her legs warm.
“Kiss me.”
The words had only barely left her lips before his were on hers. Her eyes closed shut at the contact and she breathed out sharply as his warmth flooded through her. She tilted her head to the right as her free hand clutched onto Harry’s thigh, the other hand still held tightly between them at her chest. It was a deep, wanting kiss and it made her insides roll over in anticipation. The hands between them split and then his came to rest firmly on her side and she clutched at the front of his sweater.
She moaned when his tongue entered her mouth, brushing over hers and exploring each nook and cranny as she ran her own tongue over his. He tasted sweet like the tea that they had just been drinking and she leaned into their kiss further as she felt his fingers tighten on her side. Their breathing became quicker as she pulled him toward her by his sweater and his hand slipped behind her head and tangled into her hair. Harry’s other hand slipped around her back and pulled her to his chest as he deepened their kiss further and the urgency increased. Her hands switched between clutching the fabric of the back of his sweater and running her hands along his broad shoulders, memorizing their shape as her chest was pressed tightly against his.
Her heart skipped when she felt herself leaning backwards on the couch under Harry’s weight. Her head came to rest on the armrest of the couch with Harry’s hand bracing her neck as his other hand slid back to her side. He was tangled between her legs and she groaned at the warmth of his body pressed heavily against her, pinning her to the couch as their lips moved desperately against each other.
This, she thought as she nibbled on Harry’s lower lip, was what I needed. As much as she hated to admit it, because it made her feel a bit ashamed to be so affected by such baser instincts – this was what had been causing her so much tension throughout the week.
Harry pressed into her gently, running his hand up her side and being careful to stay above her sweater, and Hermione groaned out against him as his lips moved to her jaw, then her neck. It was hot, Hermione felt hot for the first time in what felt like weeks as warmth spread over her body. The heat between her legs doubled as she felt Harry’s stiff length between them, pressing into her thigh. Her heart raced and her stomach fluttered, it was a new feeling that made her both terrified and excited. She obviously knew all about erections, her two best friends were boys for Merlin’s sake – but she had never felt one pressed up against her, never felt a heat and excitement burn at her core at the thought of what it could mean.
Harry groaned against her neck as she tentatively pushed her hips against him and weaved her fingers through his hair. Not letting herself overthink, emptying her mind and just allowing herself to feel and her body to act on instinct. His lips crashed back against hers and she felt a new urgency to them, a deeply rooted want that he had been keeping at bay. Their intensity was fierce, and Hermione didn’t even realize that she had spread her legs wider and that she matched the small grinding motions that Harry was making into her hips. She felt something building, a pressure at her core that had long since been forgotten.
Sure, she had masturbated previously, but it was never often, and she usually had trouble reaching climax as her mind would get in the way. Always thinking about homework, the boys and her friends, or some other task that needed to be done – she had always found it difficult to concentrate and get anywhere with it. With Umbridge in 5th year, the disaster that was 6th year, and now the war where she spent every hour with boys in a tent… it hardly seemed appropriate and there hardly seemed to be a good time to try it. But now, with the heat, the want, the intense atmosphere that circled around them – the tight coil and the building sensation felt surreal and filled her with a wonderful sort of anticipation.
Hermione moaned loudly when Harry ground into her, his stiff length pressing right between her legs directly against her core as their lips fell apart. Her hand clenched his hair tightly between her fingers as her head fell back against the armrest. She’d sounded animalistic.
A wave of embarrassment fell over her, Shit! She knew that she was wet, her panties would be too and if not for the thick jeans she was wearing it would be painfully obvious. Her eyes fluttered open, catching Harry’s and then she dropped her own down to his chest breathing heavily. She could feel her face aflame. They’d stopped their grinding motions, and Harry now lay precariously between her legs – still hard, still pressing into her thigh. Fuck, she thought as she closed her eyes tightly and then forced them back open. She had never done this before, never made a noise like that in front of anyone before and she felt almost mortified. It was the most intimate noise she’d ever made in her life, and it had fallen so easily from her lips. The noise had stirred her thoughts and brought her mind back into the equation as she realized the position they were in.
She forced herself to glance up toward Harry. He was looking at her almost curiously, eyes lust-filled and hazy as his breaths came in quick shallow reps. His hand was still tangled in her hair at the base of her neck and his other hand was still clutching her side as he rested on his elbow. It was as if her sound had also brought his mind back into the conversation as he realized what was happening and calculated what to do next. She felt mortified, she knew that was a bit ridiculous – what they were doing was perfectly human and natural after all – but she couldn’t help her embarrassment.
“Hermione,” he breathed out slowly as he lowered his head to rest his forehead against hers.
“I’m sorry,” the words spilled out of her mouth before she could stop them.
Harry’s body froze as he drew his head back a fraction of an inch to look in her eyes.
“What? Why are you sorry?” His eyes searched hers quickly, but the remainder of him was still.
“I-“ She looked away, then back to him. Her eyes flicked around his face and she wanted to curl into herself and disappear. “I- sorry, I just, I’ve never – I didn’t mean to make that noise, I just-“
Her voice stopped as Harry pressed a soft and gentle kiss to her lips.
“Hermione,” he said quietly as he pulled back to look at her again. “Do not apologize for that. You are incredible, and the sounds that you’re making – they – they make me worry I’m going to lose my self-control.”
The coil in Hermione’s core wound impossibly tighter at his words and the raw lust that shone from his eyes. She connected their lips again and reignited their passionate kiss, Harry’s hand moving above her sweater to gently cup her breast. She groaned softly at his touch as she explored her front over her clothes and moved to kiss her neck again.
“Harry, will – will you touch me?”
The words were almost a whisper and Harry stilled against her, raising his head from her neck to look into her eyes. He pressed a gentle kiss to her lips before speaking.
“Tell me when to stop, Hermione, okay?”
She locked her eyes to his and nodded nervously. She was nervous, that was a fact – but she was also excited, pent up, turned on, and she wanted him to touch her. She wanted Harry to be able to touch her body without her freaking out. She wanted to fully move on from her scars and know that she was in control of her body.
Slowly, his eyes still on hers, he slid his hand down her front to the hem of her sweater and hesitated before she nodded to him again more confidently. Leaning down to kiss her with an agonizingly sweet and tender kiss he slipped his right hand under her sweater. He moved slow, his thumb pressing gentle circles into her skin as his hand crept up her left side. She flinched slightly when his thumb brushed over the marred skin of her lowest scar just at the top of her stomach below her breast. He stopped, kissing her more reassuringly until she relaxed, and then he continued to move his hand.
It was slow, and Hermione’s body convulsed involuntarily each time Harry’s thumb and fingers brushed over her damaged skin. Each time the panic shot up in her mind she forced it down and leaned into the steady and reassuring lips that moved against hers – drawing strength from the fact that Harry never faltered, he never flinched and he did not pull away in disgust. Instead, if anything, he kissed her more deeply and with more passion when his hand caressed her chest, over her breasts and up to the collar bone. Touching each and every one of her scars gently and without judgement.
When Hermione finally seemed to become fully relaxed under his hands and confidently kissing him in return he slowly pressed his hips into hers and she let out a low moan. Harry smiled against her neck as he dropped his hand beneath her bra and ran a thumb over her taut nipple. Her breath hitched at the contact and he sucked gently on her neck as he rolled her nipple over between his thumb and finger before gently massaging her breast. He could feel the heat between them intensify again as she pushed up into his hips and nipped at his ear.
He responded by lowering his hand down her side – marvelling at how she did not flinch when his thumb ran over her scars – to come to rest firmly on her hip. He pushed into her hips again as he gripped her hip firmly, pinning her to the couch and dipped a thumb beneath the waistband of her jeans. She responded by shivering deliciously against him and latched her lips to his neck. He hissed out at the feeling, shifted his weight to her side and brought his hand to the center of her pants and undid the button before slowly pulling down the fly. Pressing into her once more Hermione moaned but then her hand fell from where it had been tightly gripping his back to grab his wrist gently.
“I-I’m not sure I’m ready,” Hermione said in a breathless whisper, her lips breaking from his neck as she looked toward his face. “I- I don’t know if I’m ready to – to do that.”
Hermione looked at Harry and was a little surprised to see that he smiled. She hadn’t been sure what would happen if she put the breaks on their situation but she hadn’t exactly anticipated him smiling about it. She knew Harry wasn’t pushy – but still.
“Hermione,” he said as he leaned forward to kiss her once gently. “I wasn’t planning for us to do that, I was just going to touch you – if you want me to. But we don’t have to do anything else, or anything that you don’t want.”
Hermione’s mind blanked as his words. He was going to touch me, her heart raced and she felt a deep red blush consume her face as she realized what he had meant. She hadn’t even thought about doing other things, her body thus far had just been reacting instinctively to everything that had happened. She’d only even thought about where things were headed when she felt the button of her pants undo and a brief wave of panic hit her as she urgently realized that she wasn’t sure if she was ready to have sex. She turned her eyes away from Harry’s instead looking at his right ear. She didn’t know what to say now. The truth was that she did want Harry to touch her. She was impossibly wound up and wanted to know what it would feel like to have him touch her – but she felt incredibly embarrassed to say that out loud. And incredibly selfish. She flicked her eyes back to his, bit her lip and then looked away again as her mind mulled over formulating an appropriate response.
“It’s okay, Hermione,” he said gently as he started to pull his hand away. “I won’t do anything.”
Hermione’s grip tightened and she stopped his hand from pulling away completely. Her eyes were downcast and she felt embarrassed as the next words slipped through her lips.
“No I – I want you to.” She glanced back up at him under her lashes, nervous to see his expression.
His eyes darkened at her words and she saw lustful desire cross his face as he slowly smiled. She let go of his wrist and shakily brought her hand back around his back as her heart hammered in anticipation in her chest. He kissed her lips, then her jaw, then the sides of her mouth before latching his lips back to hers.
“Just relax,” he breathed against her lips as his hand moved back to the waist of her pants. “And tell me if you want me to stop.”
She nodded against his lips and then clenched the fabric of his sweater between her fingers as his hand slipped slowly below her jeans. His hand was warm, and he gently pressed it against her mound above her panties. His movements were paced, giving her plenty of time to stop him as he ran a finger over her slit above her wet panties. She shuddered beneath his touch, inhaling sharply at the intense and pleasant wave that rolled through her. He continued to gently tease his fingers above her panties, rubbing her gently and eliciting small moans and intakes of breath. Then kissing her deeply he slipped his hand below her pantiesand traced a finger along her slick folds.
Hermione’s mouth fell open as a deep moan escaped her and her head fell back once more. He traced her slit again, feeling her unconsciously push up against his hand as her body craved more contact. He complied and gently stroked her, circling his fingers until he found the small nub toward the top of her slit. Hermione’s breath caught as a strangled moan came from her lips. He grinned against her neck as he began to stroke and circle her clit, pressing gently against it to match the rocking of her hips.
Hermione’s mind was filled with the sensation of Harry. His lips against her neck, his hand that propped her head up and added gentle pressure at the base of her neck, his fingers – Oh god his fingers – she cried internally as he flicked her clit gently again. Fuck, fuck, shit, holy shit! Her internal monologue of profanities continued to pick up the pace as her hips rocked more quickly against his fingers and Harry stroked her wet folds with a precision that she didn't even know was possible. She thanked any deity that might be listening for his skilled fingers, and marvelled at how quickly he had started to pick up on her cues – listening to her breath, watching her motions, gauging her reactions and constantly adjusting his pressure and his touch to give her what she wanted. The profanities and partial words that had been streaming through her head fell from her lips as she panted into his ear and Harry continued to work his fingers over her.
“Oh fuck, Harry,” the words fell out of her mouth and she clutched his back tightly as the pressure that had been building at her core compounded to an impossible level. She felt like she was going to explode, the coil was wound impossibly tight – too tight. “Har – Harry I – I think I’m going to – fuck – Harry – I“
Her words were lost to another moan as her brain seemed to stop functioning and Harry kissed her deeply as his fingers worked more quickly against her clit, pressing intent small circles over her.
“Let go Hermione,” he said as his head dropped down to her ear and he pulled her tighter into him and worked his hand more intently. “Let go – and come, come for me.”
His voice reverberated down her spine as his finger pressed down on her clit and he stroked her more quickly. Her body shuddered and she convulsed against him as a deep, desperate, moan ripped from her throat. She clung to him as she came, her hips moving against his hand as she rode the wave that washed over her, white flashed in her eyes as she closed them impossibly tight. Her mouth fell open as she sputtered more profanities and praise against his ear as she dropped her head to his shoulder. His hand slowed against her, gently stroking her down from her high as she melted in his arms.
She felt like a decade of stress had just vanished from her body. She was warm, relaxed – she felt like her bones had disappeared and her bone was completely limp in Harry’s arms as he pulled his hand away from her center to rest it gently at her side. He kissed her lips, her face, her eyes and her nose – and she lay there like an incapable sack of potatoes.
Slowly she opened her eyes to look up at him, he was smiling down at her, and she felt another blush creep over her face as the intimacy of what happened started to sink in. She was too tired and much too calm and relaxed to react, but still she felt a bit self-conscious about coming harder than she ever had under Harry’s touch.
“Hey,” he said softly as he stroked the back of her neck with his thumb that was still bracing her head.
“Hey,” she said breathlessly as she continued to stare up at him with hazy eyes.
“Feel better?”
“Yes,” the word left her lips with the slightest exhaled laugh. She did feel better, far less tense, far less pent up and much, much, happier. She wondered if Harry had been intending to help her with her stress and pent up frustration all along.
He grinned down at her before placing a lazy kiss on her lips.
“I’m glad,” he said, looking over her face and noticing how her eyes blinked heavily as she looked up at him. “Want to go to bed?”
Hermione’s heart fluttered at the thought. Harry had just voluntarily touched her – almost everywhere – accepted her scarred body, and just relieved her of her earlier tension and pent up frustration. And he did not ask for anything in return, just if she wanted to go to bed. A part of her wanted to repay him, to feel more of him, maybe see if she could do something to help him relieve his own pent up tension. But her breathing was slow and her eyes felt like lead after her intense orgasm, and going to bed sounded like the best thing in the fucking world. She smiled at him and kissed him sleepily before agreeing.
They detangled themselves from the couch and then not bothering to button up her pants she staggered sleepily to the bathroom to quickly brush her teeth, wash her face and use the loo. She pulled on the plaid pajama bottoms that she had brought with her, fuzzy socks and a thin tank top. She was still impossibly warm, and she did not feel like wearing a heavy sweater to bed. Besides, she thought sleepily as she opened the bathroom door, Harry had said ‘want to go to bed’, not ‘you should go to bed’. And she had no intention of sleeping alone tonight.
Hermione crawled into Harry’s bunk while he was using the washroom. She had worried that if she crawled into her own it might not send the right message and he may not know to come join her. Message sent, she thought as she snuggled up under the blanket and waited for him to return. The loose-fitting tank top that she wore revealed her top scar most prominently – but tonight, it wasn’t even a thought. Her eyes had already drifted closed when she heard Harry come from the bathroom and felt the bunk sink as he sat on the edge before climbing in completely and pulling her to his chest.
She snuggled into him, back against his chest, face toward the tent wall as she fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
Warnings:
This chapter contains: explicit smut (which can be skipped without missing out on main plot)
******************************************
Harry woke feeling warm and cozy. It was definitely one of the better sleeps that he had ever had while camping in this godforsaken tent during the winter and he actually felt rested. He could feel Hermione’s body pressed up against his, her deep breathing and limp limbs suggested that she was still fast asleep and unaware that Harry had woken up beside her.
While he held her firmly to his chest his mind raced over the events of the night before. They had been having fun, it was probably one of the first times that they’d had fun since the wedding, they had been laughing and talking and enjoying each other’s company. It had been so nice – he hated using such an overused word to describe it, but honestly it was the truth. The whole of the evening had been pleasant and wonderful, and it had been comfortable to just sit and enjoy spending time together – to talk like normal humans instead of discussing the war and Horcruxes like they usually did. At some point the conversation had turned personal and things had gotten more intimate, yet the atmosphere had remained comfortable.
When Hermione had grabbed his hand and pulled it to her chest the air had felt thick and her eyes had shone with desire. It had made his heart clench in his chest, he hadn’t known what she would want or what she would be willing to do with her own feelings. So when she leaned forward toward him, he couldn't stop himself from closing the distance further and reaching out to touch her face – though he maintained his promise to not initiate anything physical between them without her doing it first or without her asking him to.
If nothing else, Harry Potter strived to be a man of his word. He wanted to be honest and reliable – and he did not want to be known as a liar. Harry had faced enough of that bullshit in fifth year to make his skin crawl. That bitch, Rita Skeeter, had labelled him a liar, a fraud and had tried to disgrace his name. Between the articles and the Ministry, even some of his peers had begun to mistrust him and they had refused to believe him about Voldemort.
As a result, Harry understood the importance of integrity and he planned to keep his through and through. He would never give anyone any reason to truly doubt him or mistrust his word – so no matter how badly he wanted to kiss her, he wouldn’t. Not without her asking him to do so or without her starting it first, because that was the promise he had made her.
So when she had asked him to kiss her, his heart had felt like it was going to explode in his chest from excitement and he was elated and eager to comply. It took every ounce of his self-control not to ravage her mouth and touch her intimately. He’d strained to keep himself composed, understanding the important delicacy of the situation and not wanting a repeat of what had happened in the kitchen when they’d kissed the first time. So, he moved slowly and cautiously with every touch and every movement.
So when she’d asked him to touch her, he was positively ecstatic.
He had honestly not expected her to come around on the idea so quickly after the last incident. So not only was he excited because he got to touch her – obviously he was excited about that, he’d wanted to touch her for weeks and he was thrilled at the prospect of finally feeling her skin against his - he was also so incredibly happy. Happy because her request was proof of her coming to terms with her scars and proof of the trust that she held in him.
It sounded weird to say it – but Harry felt honoured by her request and endeavoured to ensure that she enjoyed everything. Each touch was gentle, each movement carefully placed and slow as he felt her flinch under his hands until eventually, she calmed and was able to enjoy their closeness without physically reacting to his touch in such a jolting way. He’d worked patiently over her skin, watching and listening intently in case she told him to stop – but much to his delight, they worked through her insecurities together and Harry was able to run his hands fully over her chest with no hesitation from Hermione. Her only reaction had been the soft moans leaving her lips that had made him want her even more.
After that… things escalated quickly.
He was ridiculously hard against his jeans the whole time. She’d tasted like the sweet tea they had been drinking and she smelt like parchment, fresh cool air and something else he couldn't identify. It made his stomach turn over and his cock hard as it strained against his pants. Grinding against her had been pure bliss, but from the start he’d never intended to do anything more than that. He did however, hope that he might be able to get her off and help reduce some of the visible tension and stress that she had been carrying around for the last few months.
Harry wasn't overly concerned about his own ‘problem’, he could take care of that alone later in the bathroom. He was a man after all and masturbating was not an issue for him. He’d been doing it semi-regularly for the whole duration of their camping Horcrux hunting adventure – particularly when he found himself getting too tense. It wasn't a daily thing, he wasn't like some of his friends.
Ron, he thought with an internal eye roll. That boy and some of the others couldn’t get by a single day without wanking. No – Harry had self-control when it came to personal pleasure, but he did it often enough to prevent his stress and tension from becoming a problem. But, he suspected that Hermione did not based on her ever-increasing tension. Knowing her, being a bit uptight as she was, he suspected that she had issues letting go and finding release. He highly doubted that she had touched herself once since they set-up the tent and started this quest. Then again, it was possible that she’d never touched herself at all – he wasn’t sure. He didn’t want to pretend like he knew anything about females or their habits – but she’d never been one to let go or let loose and he’d always suspected that she was uncomfortable with sexual contact.
So, as he touched her, he made sure to watch her expressions and the sounds she was making. He concentrated on her breathing and worked to bring her closer and closer to release with each stroke. She had already slick when he slid his hand over her panties and it had made him even harder. In a lot of ways stroking her until she reached climax was like reaching his own little high. He’d felt accomplished and pleased as he watched her eyes squeeze shut. A shiver had run down his spine as he’d felt her convulse against him, gripping his sweater tightly and shuddering as she rode out her orgasm to completion. It had been intoxicating, like a drug and he knew he was hooked. She was beautiful when she came undone, and he had held back a groan at the sight of it.
Fuck he wanted her.
He wanted to explore her whole body. He wanted release. He wanted to be with her in every sense of the word and he never wanted it to end – but the sleepy haze in her eyes was evidence of her exhaustion. He could tell that she was in a daze from her intense climax and he knew that tonight was not the night. So he’d held her relaxed and limp form close to his chest and smiled to himself in contentment. Besides, he didn’t want to rush anything with Hermione. He understood that their situation was complicated and precarious and that she had some reservations about ‘being together’ due to the war. Her progress in accepting her marred body and allowing him to touch her at all – let alone enjoy it, was more than enough.
They had time, and they could move on to other things together when the moment felt right. When they were both ready for it.
Instead, they went to bed. Not wanting to be blue balled and uncomfortable for the remainder of the night Harry had finished himself off in the bathroom before crawling into his bunk next to Hermione. When he hit his climax, he’d been picturing her wriggling under his touch and the expression on her face when she came undone. He had done that. He had made her come, he had made her feel good and that thought was enough to send him over the edge.
As he had exited the bathroom, he wasn’t sure where she would be, in his bunk or in her own. If she had decided to retire to her own bunk he had resolved to sleep in his, alone, and to give her the space that she would have clearly been requesting. So when he’d walked around the small corner from the bathroom and saw the lumped blankets of his bunk in the dim light and the untouched sheets of her own, he couldn’t help but smile. He wasn’t sure that he’d ever been more excited to crawl into bed.
Now snuggling his nose into the back of her neck he sighed out in happiness. Despite everything that was going on – the werewolves, the stress of trying to find Horcruxes, the impending war – despite not actually having a damn clue what he was doing, he had hope. This gave him hope. This motivated him to be better, to be more and to continue fighting no matter how bad things got.
Harry wanted to know what a future with Hermione might bring. Whether their intimacy would only ever remain in this tent, whether it progressed past anything that had happened tonight or not, or whether it continued into the future for however long – it didn’t matter. Regardless of what happened he knew that Hermione was more important to him than he could possibly define. And he would do whatever it took to keep her safe, to ensure that they had the opportunity to figure things out between them – because this was worth fighting for.
-x-x-
Hermione woke to the smell of bacon and eggs. Rolling over in Harry’s bunk she saw him in the kitchen preparing breakfast and she could not stop the smile and the blush that broke out on her face. Images from the night before rushed through her mind and she buried her face into the pillow. Last night was, well… last night was fucking incredible, she thought as her face grew warmer under her blush. Everything about their conversation, their touches, their snogging, and Harry’s hands roaming over her body had been surreal. She couldn’t believe how relaxed she felt, and she couldn’t believe that Harry had touched her there in that way and had actually made her orgasm.
She could feel her blush intensify as she kept her face firmly planted in the pillow. She had never been touched by anyone but herself before and she had certainly never been touched like that before. It had been so incredibly intense and exciting and – she really had no words to describe it. It was like nothing she had ever felt or experienced before.
It felt so good, she groaned internally as she shook her head against the pillow and her stomach twisted over in both excitement and embarrassment at the thought of it. She didn’t regret it, regardless of how nervous she felt right now. More than anything her anxiety was centered around one thought: now that she’d had it – she’d want it again.
It took several moments for Hermione to collect herself and roll out of bed to go help Harry with the breakfast. Their interactions were normal – except that when she approached him she placed her hand softly on his side and he leaned toward her and kissed her gently on her temple when she stood next to him at the counter to pull out plates. She blushed deeply at the action and then they ate breakfast in their usual fashion before continuing with their normal workout routine. The weather was still horribly cold, but at least the sleet and snow had stopped so they were able to practice outside and complete a full duel. They returned back to the tent nearly 3 hours later, panting, exhausted, soaking wet from their own sweat and pleased with the fact that they had managed to increase their shield charms by another minute each.
The afternoon was quiet. They ate a quick lunch, and then Harry read while Hermione started to examine the gold bracelets that she had collected off the werewolf and snatcher. She had attempted to read at first but found herself too distracted thinking about the night before and wondering what was going through Harry’s mind. He hadn’t mentioned anything about their activities – so she decided not to either and instead began a task that required more concentration and mental capacity than reading.
She was extremely careful not to touch the bracelets herself or allow them to touch anything other than the inside of the black metal box that she had originally stored them in. The box had been given to her by Alastor Moody during the summer before he was killed. It was a special charmed metal that did not allow any curses to propagate through it and when closed it kept the objects inside completely sealed, undetectable and untraceable. Moody had told her that he used it as an Auror to store items taken off his targets that looked ‘interesting’ but likely ‘possessed the potential to make your insides melt or your heart explode from your mouth while your eyes boil out’.
Hermione was not sure exactly what objects Moody had put in the box before her and frankly, she did not enjoy thinking about her insides melting, her heart exploding from her mouth, or her eyes boiling – but she had accepted the gift anyway as she thought it might prove useful in the future.
As she worked, she conducted several detection charms, trace charms and tested the metal to confirm its material make-up. She was able to determine if the bracelets had any core or embedded materials. She kept a notebook open next to her to record her findings and she managed to work the entire afternoon with no distracting thoughts until Harry gently touched her shoulder and told her that dinner was ready.
It was late, past 9 pm and her stomach growled loudly as she carefully packed up the bracelets and locked the chest for safety. She had been so focused that she did not realize how late it had gotten, though she was glad that she had spent the afternoon productively instead of overthinking the previous night’s activities. She joined Harry at the table for some shepherd’s pie and veggies, thankful that Harry had been paying attention to the time and remembered to feed them while she started to tell him about her findings.
“So, I’m pretty sure that the bracelet involves either blood binding or soul binding magic, and there seems to be a core in the bracelet. I still have to determine how to access it without damaging it though as it seems to be embedded,” Hermione said as she held another bite of pie on her fork.
“How will you determine which one it is?” Harry asked after he swallowed his own forkful of pie.
“Well, I have to do a bit of reading on that – there is a spell you can use but it’s complicated and the results might not be accurate. There may be a test potion I could brew as well or possibly a diagnostic. I’m going to look at that this week and try to get this sorted out. Honestly, though – I sort of hope it’s blood magic,” Hermione said with a grimace as she finished her pie and took a drink of water. “Soul binding is incredibly difficult and rare – and dangerous. There just isn’t a lot of information on it because it is so complex. Blood magic – although typically dark magic – can sometimes actually be good, like the protection your mother gave you – and there is a lot more research documented on it. It’s possible that if this involves blood magic that it could become useful in another way. I might be able to repurpose it – IF I can figure it out.”
Harry grinned at her widely and jostled her knee gently under the table with his own.
“You are so brilliant, Hermione,” Harry said sincerely, not a single hint of teasing in his voice as he looked at her with slight awe. “Of course you would be looking at this while trying to figure out how to use the bracelets and blood magic for good. You blow me away sometimes, you know that? If there is anything I can do to help let me know.”
Hermione blushed lightly at his compliment and gave him a shy grin.
“Thanks Harry,” she said as she started to collect the empty plates on the table into a small pile. "Of course I will let you know.”
“Hermione,” Harry said quietly, his eyes catching hers as she looked up from the stack of plates that she’d made. “About last night.”
Hermione visibly tensed, her hand frozen over the now-empty pie dish. She looked at Harry’s bright green eyes and a wave of panic hit her.
Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, she thought desperately as discomfort started to shift down her spine. I don’t know what to say about last night, and I don’t want to have ‘the talk’ about our relationship because I don’t know what this is!
Her thoughts were racing, and her heart started to pound. She had hoped that Harry would understand that she was unsure of things given the war and that she was nervous to try and define anything when they were living in undefined uncertainty. She had thought that Harry understood. Yes, last night had been incredible. No, she could not deny that she had feelings for Harry. Yes, she wanted things to continue. Yes, she wanted to do that again. No, she didn’t know what this was. No, her position on them having a relationship hadn’t changed since their last conversation. And Yes, she desperately wished that things were simpler and she could just admit to herself and him how she truly felt.
“Harry, I–” She started nervously, but Harry cut her off.
“I know you’re still unsure and you don’t want to define things,” Harry interjected as he reached out to take her still hovering hand in his own and placed it on the table between them. She watched as he rubbed his thumb over her knuckles and felt a soft shudder run through her body. His touch always did that – it always affected her and she could feel her heartbeat start to increase. “I’m not going to ask you to change your position on that. I just wanted to make sure that you are okay with everything that happened last night.”
Hermione’s mouth fell open slightly as she stared at him in disbelief.
Of course I’m okay with it, she thought as her heart continued to race. He had been there, she had asked him to do it and he had seen her fall apart in his arms. He didn’t really think that she’d not wanted it, did he? She realized as she watched him that he must just be checking in to ensure she didn’t have any regrets about it – like buyer’s regret, her mind supplied and she nearly laughed at her brain’s choice of words.
“Yes, of course Harry.” She blushed furiously as she forced herself to maintain eye contact as relief flooded her body. She was glad that Harry still respected her position but she wanted to make sure he knew she was okay with it. She swallowed and blushed deeper as her voice dropped lower. “I asked you to.”
“I know,” Harry said, blushing a little himself as he glanced down at their intertwined hands before looking back at her. “I just wanted to make sure that you didn’t regret anything this morning. Because – well – I certainly enjoyed myself… and it sort of looked like you did to. I just wanted to make sure that you were still okay with it, that's all.”
“Of course,” Hermione said firmly and slightly more loudly than necessary. “I don’t regret it – not at all.”
Her blush deepened as she squeezed Harry’s hand. So, she thought, this was about ‘buyer’s’ regret.
“I really enjoyed it actually,” she said, looking up at him from beneath her lashes. “You were – I mean, it was really good and I uh – I – thank you, for doing that. And for not pushing for anything else. I – I’m sorry you were, erm, you were – that I didn’t return the favour.”
Harry laughed at this as he blushed further and he brought her hand up to his mouth to kiss the back of her knuckles again gently.
“Don’t worry about that,” he said with a wink as he placed their hands back on the table once more. “I’m just fine. But, I’m glad Hermione – I’m glad that you enjoyed it. I promised you before that I wouldn’t push for anything, and I won’t – I won’t ask you to change your stance on defining anything. I’m happy to have what we do, and I’m happy to be with you in any way that you’re comfortable. I know that things are a bit crazy right now, I get it – we can talk through stuff later – if you want, of course – when things are less uncertain.”
Hermione’s heart thumped painfully in her chest. It felt like she had been stabbed in the heart and his words were melting her resolve, making her both incredibly happy and incredibly sad – and almost guilty.
Harry was being so accepting. He was so willing to take whatever she would give and not ask for anything in return. He was so open to give to her and place his heart in her hands all while she told him she didn’t want a relationship. It pained her, and she hated it. She knew that physical closeness was emotional too and that what happened between them was affecting him as much as it was affecting her right now. All the turmoil in her head made her want to crawl across the table to kiss him and tell him that she wanted him forever – but her logical side still doubted, still cautioned and still warned against making any such commitments in a time of war. She squeezed his hand tightly as she smiled at him sadly. She wished she could give him what she knew he wanted but wouldn’t ask for, but she wasn’t sure that she could. She didn’t want to make a mistake, she didn’t want to regret things later or compromise their mission.
Harry’s words from their conversation weeks ago crept back into her mind – he’d said that this was what they were fighting for and that closeness was strength. Her mind drifted to Remus and Tonks, and then of Harry’s own parents who had stood together to try and save him – leaving him with the ultimate protection as a result. But all that did was make her heart ache more as she felt entirely torn. It wasn’t that she didn’t want him. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel for him. She did. She was just afraid to do anything about it.
She stared at him for a long moment, a nervous shiver running through her body until she wondered if maybe she could give him something. Maybe Harry would appreciate some middle ground, and maybe if she was more blunt in announcing her feelings it might make him feel more comfortable.
“Thank you Harry, for respecting my position,” she said slowly, her eyes darting from his face to his chest as she felt her own constrict tightly. “I know I’m probably frustrating you. I really don’t mean to be difficult – I need you to know that I do care about you. More than anything but I – I’m just worried that this could compromise our mission and be a distraction. And I’m worried about making commitments while in the middle of a war – ones that we might not be able to keep. But – I – I can’t pretend like I don’t have feelings for you Harry. I – can’t pretend like I don’t want you when I do.”
She looked nervously at their hands for a moment as Harry waited for her to continue. She desperately hoped that Harry understood that her hesitation wasn’t about him. It was about the war and only the war – it was about making a commitment that they might not get to keep if this ended badly. Because being together meant having so much more to lose.
“I don’t want to confuse you Harry, or send mixed signals or stress you out. So if being close physically is too much I understand that and I won’t initiate anything else. But I do want to be close to you, and I – if you’re okay with just allowing things to be as they are – to just be ourselves however it feels right – I’d really like that. And – I want you to know that it’s okay if you – if you want to kiss me.” She looked up at him slowly and saw that he was staring at her intently. “I know that’s a lot to ask of you and I promise that when the war is over and things are less crazy we can talk and figure things out. I truly don’t mean to be so difficult and I know that what I’m asking for is unfair so if it’s easier to just drop this then that’s okay too.”
Hermione looked at him in anticipation, waiting for him to reply as she clutched his hand now with both of her own.
“Can I touch you?” Harry asked, his gaze fixed to hers. His voice had dropped down into the deep baritone that made her stomach curl and he was looking at her in that intense way that made her pulse quicken.
“Yes,” she breathed as a shiver ran down her spine. She hadn’t been expecting that response, at all, and the reply slipped from her lips before she could even debate it.
Harry squeezed her hands tightly before dropping his eyes to the table and taking a deep breath. When he looked back up his eyes had lightened some and it looked like he had regained some self control.
“Hermione, you’re not being difficult,” he said in a softer voice, though the deep rumbling baritone was still layered beneath it. “I do understand. You’re worried that being together means having more to lose – and frankly you’re right. I just look at it a different way. I see it as having more to fight for. You’re locking your feelings up to protect yourself from getting hurt and to protect those they are for, and I respect that. I know you’re not the type to lead people on or to do something like last night without it meaning something. So don’t worry about that – I know you well enough to know that you’re not using me.”
Harry smiled at her before he stood to collect the plates from the table and brought them to the kitchen counter. When he returned to the table though, instead of sitting down in his seat opposite her, he walked around to stand behind her and ducked his head close to her left ear.
“I’m more than happy to accept what you’re willing to give me, Hermione,” he said softly against her neck and Hermione felt a shiver run down her spine. “We can sort things out later when it’s less complicated if that’s what you want. But for now –”
Harry inhaled slowly, placing a small kiss on the side of her neck just below her jaw and Hermione felt her body flush with heat.
“I do want to kiss you.” His words were a whisper and Hermione could feel herself becoming wet as he spoke. She felt him place his hand tentatively on her right side. “And I do want to touch you.”
Hermione turned her head toward him and locked her lips to his. Her movements driven by pure instinct and need as she reached up to place her hand in his hair. Their angle was awkward but not uncomfortable and as Harry leaned down from behind her to kiss her lips intensely she all but melted beneath him. His hand on her side grazed her skin at the hem of her sweater before coming up the side of it and tracing across her stomach where he grabbed her other side, firmly locking her between his arm and his chest. She groaned as his other hand gently traced along her neck and the side of her face as he continued to kiss her deeply.
After several moments he broke away and Hermione was left breathless and panting, eyes hazy as she stared at him wantonly.
“Well, it’s getting a bit late,” Harry said with a false nonchalance as he dropped his hand from her neck and rubbed the back of his head. “I’m going to go get ready for bed.”
With that Harry turned and headed to the bathroom, and Hermione was left sitting in disbelief. Her hand clutched the front of her sweater and her heart was positively racing.
Shit, she thought and she stifled her groan as the bathroom door closed.
Harry was right. She was hiding from her emotions, refusing to admit to them because admitting them made them real. Which then meant she had more to lose. So she was avoiding making any of this real by keeping things undefined, open and unlabelled. Her pull toward Harry was undeniable, she’d just told him that he was allowed to touch her and kiss her and yet she was pretending it didn’t mean what she knew it did because she was afraid to lose Harry. She was afraid to lose what they had. And Harry, being Harry, was willing to accept her bullshit, her fears, her doubts and utter ridiculousness about the situation and just take her as she was.
She sighed and dropped her head to the table with a thud. He’s going to get me riled up and snog me into submission, she thought with a snort. But, on the bright side, at least he understood her intentions and he didn't think that she was unsure about him or using him in any way.
Several minutes later Harry exited the bathroom and Hermione went to get ready for bed. They each slept in their own bunks that night. Harry fell asleep quickly, exhausted from the day’s duel and pleased with how his conversation had gone with Hermione – especially the way it had ended. Hermione didn’t know it – but he figured that in her own time she would come to terms with her feelings and eventually accept them and stop viewing them as a weakness. Meanwhile, Hermione listened to the sound of the waves of the North Sea crashing against the rocks as she laid awake pondering their relationship. Thinking about how Harry chose to see things and whether or not that might be an acceptable way to start viewing her own feelings.
-x-x-
The next three days passed quickly. They prepared meals, took turns with the night shift watches, cleaned the tent, worked out, duelled intensely, practiced their shield spells, and completed their new close-quarters circle drill inside the tent. Hermione spent her spare time flipping between studying her copy of Tales of Beedle the Bard and examining the bracelets while Harry read and practiced some healing spells.
They didn’t talk any further about their relationship, but they both accepted the agreement to just be themselves and to allow physical closeness when it happened naturally between them. It gave Hermione comfort to not actually acknowledge the relationship that was developing between them, it let her feel safe and allowed her to protect herself and Harry. Meanwhile Harry appreciated the closeness that he now had with Hermione and felt entirely confident in Hermione’s outright declaration that she did care for him and she did want him.
They also snogged two times – and Harry did touch her once more.
The first kiss had happened the first day after their conversation. Hermione had hit Harry with a leg locker curse during their duel and she’d laughed at him as he toppled over into a particularly deep snowdrift. After climbing in to cast the counter-curse and help fish him out she kissed him softly as the snow started to fall around them. It was an innocent kiss, gentle, sweet and slow – and it only lasted just over a minute before she pulled away and they returned to the tent to warm up.
The second kiss was much more… intense and it happened after dinner on the second night. Hermione had been cleaning the dishes in the kitchen when Harry stepped up behind her and placed both hands on her hips – effectively pinning her to the counter. He had lowered his head down next to her ear and told her that she was ‘incredible’. Hermione hadn’t been sure what she’d done to deserve his words that day – she didn’t do anything spectacular or have any profound moments of insight, but they’d ended up kissing rather aggressively.
And that was the day he touched her once more.
Harry’s left hand had travelled up her stomach and across her chest to gently massage her right breast as his right hand travelled down, low, toward her hips. His thumb trailed along the top of her jeans, brushing against her bare skin lightly until it dipped just below the fabric and caused her breath to hitch.
She’d murmured the words “Harry, pl-please – touch me” in between their kiss and groaned loudly when he compiled. He’d unbuttoned her jeans and slipped his hand between her legs only moments later and her body had ignited with want.
She could feel his hard erection pressing into her backside and it only turned her on further as Harry’s fingers found her clit and began tracing small circles over it. His left hand moved to her neck as he kissed her deeply and stroked her wet folds. He’d pressed his hard length into her, and she’d naturally pressed her hips back into him with want as she nibbled his lip and moaned against him. The coil in her core had wound tighter with each stroke of his finger. He kissed her deeply – nipping at her neck as she pressed herself against his hard body and drew small groans of pleasure from his lips.
When she finally climaxed, she came hard, gripping the counter for support while Harry clutched her tightly to his chest to keep her from falling as her knees buckled beneath her. He spun her around, pushing her back into the counter and kissed her slowly, deeply and with a want she had never felt before while she came down from her high. The whole experience had left her feeling light-headed with a tingling sensation coursing through her body and they’d parted slowly as if in a daze.
They spent the remainder of the evening curled up on the couch with hot tea, Hermione leaning against Harry, his arm wrapped around her and both reading quietly. Before they went to bed Harry kissed her gently and it left her mind pondering her decision to continue leaving things undefined and pretending like nothing had changed when it so clearly had. Things were still comfortable between them. Nothing about what was happening felt awkward, or weird, or forced, or strange – if anything it was the opposite and she found that she felt even more comfortable with him now that she was letting herself be close to him without overthinking it.
Yet there was a part of it that still made her anxious and it had nothing to do with Harry.
It had everything to do with her and the conflicting desires and logic that were racing through her mind. Her goal had never been to leave herself room for escape later in case she changed her mind about him. She knew how she felt about him even if it terrified her and she knew it wasn’t going to change. She wasn’t only interested in the physical contact either – nor was she the type to look for a relationship without commitment.
If anything, she was the opposite. She was an incredibly dedicated and loyal person. She loved the idea of being with someone that she trusted so fundamentally and if she were to ever have a ‘relationship’ she wanted the bond to be unbreakable – she wanted to be with someone she respected and she wanted her partner to respect her in turn. What she wanted, and she laid there trying not to admit to it – was Harry.
Over the last three days her heart had been bursting with more feelings for Harry than she’d ever realized she had, and it left her wondering how long the feelings had really been there. Which only made her plan to avoid acknowledging her feelings all the more difficult. She couldn’t deny them. She knew that the only reason she didn’t want to make their relationship ‘real’ because she could not stand the idea of having even more to lose in this war.
Though, she was finding it difficult to continue convincing herself that she and Harry weren’t a ‘thing’ and she was starting to realize that choosing not to talk about it or label it wouldn’t keep it from being ‘real’. It wouldn’t stop it from hurting. Her remaining denial of their shift in relationship was her final and last desperate attempt to avoid admitting that it would kill her if she lost him. That she was terrified of screwing things up and wrecking the incredible relationship that they had. That even though she knew she wanted him – she couldn’t and wouldn’t allow herself to have him in full.
It was too risky.
It was too foolish.
They were in a war.
But as she stared at the ceiling and watched the tent ripple, she knew that he mattered more to her than anything else in the world regardless of whatever label she slapped on it. She knew that her feelings were even deeper than she let herself acknowledge and she knew that as much as it terrified her – that truth would remain the same even if she didn’t say it out loud.
So, as she inhaled deeply and closed her eyes, she began to wonder why she was so afraid of outwardly acknowledging it.
On the 17th of December Hermione was sat in her circle on the tent floor surrounded by a large pile of books when Harry approached her.
“Hermione?” His voice was curious, but sounded a bit hesitant.
“Hm?” she looked up from her copy of Tales of Beedle the Bard as Harry sat down in front of her next to a particularly tall stack of books. She eyed him curiously when she saw him fidget with his fingers, it was rather odd behaviour for Harry. They had become extremely close over the last few months and she could not remember the last time he looked nervous like this before talking to her.
“Hermione,” Harry said slowly. “I’ve been thinking – and I know that you’re probably not going to like this, but I want you to hear me out okay?”
Hermione closed the book, keeping her page with her finger and sat up a bit straighter to give Harry her full attention. Harry’s nervous look made her a bit anxious. She recognized the look in his eyes from when they were both kids and he was about to ask something that might be dangerous or would go against their safety rules because he thought whatever the thing was, was worth the risk. She pushed down her anxiety and took a quick breath before nodding. She trusted Harry and she knew that he wouldn’t ask for something that made him nervous like this unless it was important.
“Okay,” Hermione nodded, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees as she looked up to him. “Then I have a question for you after – so, let’s hear it.”
“I’ve been thinking. I – I want to go to Godric’s Hollow.”
Hermione sighed quietly as she rubbed her eyes tiredly with her hand.
“Yes,” she said with a sigh. “Yes, I’ve been wondering that too. I really think we’ll have to.”
“Really?” Harry looked at her with disbelief.
“Yes,” she laughed gently as she ran her hand over her hair to push it out of her face. “I’m starting to run out of ideas as to where else to look for the sword. It will be dangerous, but frankly the birthplace of Godric Gryffindor is starting to sound like a better and better idea each day.”
Harry nodded as a small chuckle escaped his lips.
“I’ll be honest Hermione, my reasons for wanting to go are two-fold. I want to see my parents’ graves – the house – I – I want to be there, to see it. And the second is the sword. I was doing some reading and Bathilda Bagshot lived in Godric’s Hollow. I thought it’s possible that she might know something – assuming we would be able to find her.”
“Harry, it's possible she might even have the sword,” Hermione said with more enthusiasm. “Dumbledore knew her, it’s possible that he left her the sword or that maybe he told her something. Maybe he expected us to go there because he knew that you would want to.”
Her voice softened and she placed a gentle hand on his knee before she continued.
“It’s only natural for you to want to see your birthplace Harry, and I think you should. Though – I do worry that that in and of itself will make it more dangerous. You Know Who is going to expect you to show up at some point. We’ll need to be extremely careful.”
“I had some thoughts on that actually,” Harry said as he placed his hand over the one Hermione had left on his knee. “We still have some Polyjuice potion leftover from when we invaded the Ministry – we could snatch some hairs and arrive under disguise. Combine that with our shield charms and some disillusionments and – if we’re cautious, I think we’ll be alright.”
Hermione nodded slowly in agreement.
“Okay, we’ll have to stop at a town at some point and grab some hairs – I don’t have any spares, so it will be a good idea to grab several extras for future use while we’re at it and a few more supplies as well. We can plan that out for this week,” she withdrew her hand from Harry’s to re-open her book and turned a page toward him. Harry shuffled over to sit next to her so he could see it more clearly.
“This was what I wanted to ask you about, Harry,” she said, pointing to a symbol at the top of one of the pages. It looked like a triangular eye whose pupil had been crossed with a vertical line. “It’s been inked in, look, someone’s drawn it there. At first I thought it was just an image above the story like some of the other chapters – so I didn’t notice it right away. Have you ever seen this symbol before? I’ve been looking through my old notes and texts and it doesn’t seem to be a rune or a symbol.”
“I’m not sure,” Harry said as he frowned and looked at the symbol. “Wait – wait, isn’t it the same symbol Luna’s dad was wearing around his neck at the wedding?”
“That’s what I thought too!” Hermione said as she turned to look Harry in the eyes. “But I didn’t get a good look at the wedding, so I wasn’t sure, and wanted you to confirm.”
“Then it’s Grindelwald’s mark.”
Hermione blinked, surprised by the confidence at which Harry spoke.
“What?” Hermione asked, looking at him blankly.
“Sorry – Krum told me, I never even thought to mention it, I’d completely forgotten,” Harry said somewhat sheepishly as he rubbed the back of his neck with his hand.
Harry recounted the conversation he’d had with Krum at the wedding, how the mark belonged to the dark wizard Grindelwald – who killed many people including Krum’s grandfather – and how he was very powerful until he was defeated by Dumbledore. Harry had no idea why Xenophilius would be wearing the symbol of such a horrible wizard, and he only hoped it was because Xenophilius did not realize what the mark meant. Hermione found the entire thing rather irritating as there was not a documented connection between the symbol and Grindelwald in any text she had seen. There was also no reason for a dark mark, if Krum was to be believed, to be written in a children’s book. They agreed it was odd and likely had been intentionally added to the pages by someone – though it was unclear if the marking was by Dumbledore himself.
They agreed to look for the symbol in a few of the restricted section books from the Hogwarts Library that Hermione had been carrying around while they prepared for their trip to Godric’s Hollow. Hermione was hesitant to go until they could both produce a shield charm lasting over 14 minutes each, and they needed to collect some hair from unsuspecting muggles – which meant a trip to town during the day.
Over the next week, they practiced their duelling intensely. They worked on their shielding charms and completed a very quick in and out mission to a nearby town to collect several hair samples while disillusioned and holding hands so that they would be prepared for a quick apparition away if trouble arose. But as luck would have it, the trip to town was so uneventful that Hermione and Harry even managed to grab a few extra supplies from a small store before heading back to the tent.
Each hair sample collected was carefully bottled with a label attached describing the person who it belonged to. Hermione was pleased that she had managed to snag an additional six different samples so they would have plenty of new disguises if the situation ever called for it. On one of their preparation days Hermione mastered a simple spell to vanish footsteps in the snow. She taught Harry how to do it, and they practiced it outside for half an hour before they began their duelling exercises.
After a week, Hermione and Harry felt prepared to go to Godric’s Hollow. They had their disguises ready, disillusionment charms perfected, they could vanish their tracks, and they felt at the top of their game regarding physical shape and duelling abilities. They could even successfully implement their shield charms for fifteen minutes each. They agreed to apparate to Godric’s Hollow in the evening to avoid any major crowds but still be able to potentially locate Bathilda since knocking on an old woman's door in the middle of the night seemed inappropriate. So, they ate a quick dinner, cleaned up, packed everything up including the tent and then choked down the disgusting brew that was Polyjuice.
Harry transformed into a balding, middle-aged muggle man. He felt himself get just an inch shorter and he looked over at Hermione who had turned into his small rather mousy looking wife. They laughed at each other’s appearances nervously and Harry tried to tame the rolling of his stomach when he thought about where they were going. Casting their disillusionment charms they stood close to each other, Hermione’s transformed hand holding Harry’s tightly before they apparated away.
-x-x-
They landed in a snowy lane under a dark blue sky in which the first stars were already glimmering feebly. Cottages stood on either side of the narrow road, Christmas decorations twinkling in their windows. A short way ahead of them, a glow of golden streetlights indicated the center of the village. Harry and Hermione stood stock still with their wands outstretched as they quickly looked around – hands still clamped together. There would be no homenum revelio or detection charms here, they already knew that they were surrounded by people.
They wandered cautiously down the snowy lane, looking at each cottage with uncertainty. Hermione and Harry both vanished their steps as they went, maintaining their disillusionment despite their use of Polyjuice potion. They had no idea where Harry’s home was or where Bathilda might live and being so exposed in such a public place made them both uneasy. The lane they were walking on curved to the left and at the heart of the village a small square came into view. They slowed their pace to examine the square. A small war memorial was visible in the center, surrounded by a Christmas tree, a post office, several shops and a little church across the square. Several villagers cut across the square walking quickly through the snow to their destinations. One muggle opened the door to a pub, and they heard the faint sound of laughing as Christmas carols started up at the church. Hermione cast a muffliato around them before speaking.
“Harry, I think it’s Christmas Eve!” Hermione exclaimed and she clutched Harry’s hand tighter. “I was so caught up in getting prepared for today I completely lost track of my days.”
She turned to look at Harry, or where the balding middle-aged man which was Harry should be standing next to her. She could make out the small shimmer of his disillusionment, but she could not see his face.
“Happy Christmas, Harry,” she said gently as she squeezed his hand.
“Happy Christmas, Hermione,” Harry responded softly, as he returned the squeeze.
They stood quietly for a moment before Hermione started leading them toward the church across the square.
“Your parents Harry, they might be there,” she said quietly as they neared the small crowd in the square. Harry nodded, unable to speak, so he squeezed her hand again in confirmation.
His heart raced as they worked their way across the square. Being this open and exposed and surrounded by people made him on edge – he knew it would be a long while until he acclimatized himself to being in public after the war ended. Each movement or voice from a passing muggle made them both twitch as their eyes darted from side to side. The quiet of living in a tent for the last few months had made every sound from the village seem like it was coming from a loudspeaker and it filled his heart with unease.
Crowds left them open to attack from any which way, so they moved cautiously and ensured that they vanished their footsteps completely. When they passed the center of the square Harry glanced at the war memorial – no muggles seemed to notice it so he assumed that they must not be able to see it. They continued their walk across the second half of the square slowly, and Harry could feel his disillusionment charm wearing thin. So, as they passed through the gates along the side of the church to the graveyard, he pulled out his invisibility cloak from his pack and draped it over them.
The graveyard was quiet and still, snow-covered the many graves that sat in neat little rows and low hanging trees buckled under the weight of the snow. They moved in silence, up and down each small row of graves looking for the Potters.
As they looked, they noticed a gravestone for Abbott – possibly a relation to Hannah – it was interesting to think that her family may have also been from Godric’s Hollow. When they came across two particularly old looking white gravestones Hermione pulled Harry to a stop and they crouched down to get a better look. One was for Kendra Dumbledore, the other for her daughter Ariana. Small letters graced the bottom of the stone and read: ‘Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also’.
“Dumbledore never mentioned that he had family here, did he?” Hermione asked as she looked at Harry from under the cloak. Their disillusions had worn off so she was able to see the balding muggle man next to her.
“No,” Harry said with a frown, shaking his head. “He never mentioned it.”
Hermione frowned in response before they stood up to keep looking. Several rows later Hermione pulled him to a stop excitedly and they both ducked down under the cloak again to get a better look.
“Harry, I think this says Potter,” she quickly dusted off the snow and old dead moss, but her movements slowed as she realized that the name on the grave read Ignotus. “Oh, sorry, the snow made it look like it might have been your family.”
“It’s okay, Hermione,” Harry said kindly as he helped her to her feet. “We’ll keep looking.”
As they walked past another two rows of graves Harry could feel his heart start to drop. What if they’re not here, he thought with agitation. Hermione must have sensed his tension because she squeezed his hand reassuringly.
They rounded toward the back of the graveyard and he spotted a white gravestone, like the Dumbledore’s, under a low hanging tree. It was separated from some of the others in the yard and the area around it felt still. He pulled Hermione toward it and as they approached, he was able to make out the words clear as day.
James Potter, born 27 March 1960, died 31 October 1981
Lily Potter, born 30 January 1960, died 31 October 1981
The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death
Harry stood quiet and unmoving, any words he might have had died in his throat as he looked at his parents’ grave. Hermione raised her wand under the cloak and charmed a Christmas wreath, then placed it gently in his hands. Harry dropped to his knees with a small thud and placed the wreath in front of the gravestones as hot tears poured from his eyes. She knelt next to him and leaned her head on his shoulder – and without thinking he wrapped his arm around her and pulled her tightly to his side, placing a gentle kiss on her temple.
“Thank you for being here, Hermione,” he said in a whisper, the strain of his emotion evident in his voice. “Not just here today right now – but always. Thank you. Thank you for coming with me everywhere, for helping me, for being there when I needed you. I – I couldn’t do this without you. I wouldn’t be here without you – thank you for agreeing to come.”
Hermione nodded against his shoulder and clutched his hand again tightly. She could not even begin to imagine how Harry felt in this moment, what must be going through his mind. So she just sat with him quietly, allowing him to feel everything that he needed to feel and to feel close to the family he never got to meet.
“The quote on their grave is nice,” Hermione spoke quietly as she sat back a bit to look at Harry. “The idea of defeating death by living beyond it.”
Harry nodded next to her before giving her a small sad smile. with his eyes bright with tears, he pulled them both up to their feet. As they moved their way back out of the graveyard they both could not help but feel as though they were being watched, and Hermione jumped when she thought she saw movement to her right.
“Harry,” she said quietly, as they paused at the edge of the square. “I think I saw something, and whatever saw us could have seen us at your parents' grave.”
Harry nodded next to her and they locked hands more tightly, wands drawn and ready.
“Okay, let’s duck around this way,” he said as he pulled her down a path to the right. “I don’t fancy being in a crowd of unknown people, cloak or not – we’ll get out from here and look for Bathilda, but apparate away immediately if we see anything again.”
Hermione nodded her agreement and kept her wand pointed as they moved down the dimly lit street. Despite the dark they actually felt safer being away from the crowd – knowing that there was less chance for someone to sneak up on them and being comforted by the idea that they had room to fight or escape if necessary. After passing several cottages and looking around they started to wonder how they could possibly be successful in locating Bathilda. They were just rounding a corner and quietly discussing breaking into the post office to try and find her address when Harry froze.
A dark mass stood out in front of them to the left, it looked like the remains of a house. Harry pulled them toward it as his heart thumped loudly in his chest, the fidelius charm must have ended, but the house still stood. They approached and saw the remains of rubble still littered the yard, a large and wild-looking hedge grew out of control at the front, but most of the cottage still stood.
The top floor was blown apart and seeing it made Harry’s heart ache. He knew that it must have been from the attack – and he realized that perhaps he would not be handling this so well if not for Hermione gripping his hand so tightly. His heart felt heavy, overweight with exhausted. He had not anticipated how emotional this was going to make him feel and it felt like someone was unravelling him like a ball of yarn.
Harry laid his hand on the gate as they stood in front of the house and a small sign raised up, with words still visible on the old wood:
On this spot, on the night of 31 October 1981, Lily and James Potter lost their lives. Their son, Harry, remains the only wizard ever to have survived the Killing Curse. This house, invisible to muggles, has been left in its ruined state as a monument to the Potters and as a reminder of the violence that tore apart their family.
Sixteen years-worth of messages had been inked and carved on the sign. The words varied but the messages were largely the same, ‘Good luck, Harry, wherever you are’, ‘If you read this, Harry, we’re all behind you!’, ‘Long live Harry Potter!’
Harry could feel his chest tightening as he read the words and looked back up to the top half of the exploded house. He was entranced by it until Hermione tugged his arm and he immediately felt it too. They were being watched. Raising his wand he turned to see the stooped figure of an old woman approaching. She was looking at them, and back at the house. She must have been a witch to be able to see them and then she began beckoning them with her old crooked finger. Harry tightened his grip around Hermione as he spoke.
“Are you Mrs. Bagshot?” he asked as he kept his wand trained on the old lady.
She nodded slowly, pointed at Harry and then motioned for them to follow her as she turned to walk down the street.
“Harry,” Hermione said cautiously as she watched the old lady wobble away. “Do you think we should go? We need to be careful.”
“We’ll go,” Harry said in a whisper. “Keep your wand out, and if anything suspicious happens we get the hell out of here. But we need to at least try – she could have the sword.”
“Okay,” Hermione nodded once in agreement. “But don’t you dare let go of my hand.”
They followed her down the lane that she had come from, staying several steps behind the old woman. As they walked, they passed several cottages until they rounded on a small one with a metal gate. Following her up the path she led them to the front door and then struggled with the key before swinging it open and allowing them entrance. The door was too narrow to allow them to walk through it together under the cloak so, begrudgingly, they removed it and Hermione stored it in her bag quickly as Harry walked into the house first.
The first thing that Harry noticed when he stepped over the threshold was the god-awful smell. The house smelt like it had been closed up for months and that something had possibly gone bad in it. Harry wondered if anyone had been by recently to check on the old woman as she walked into the front hall and pulled out some matches. Bathilda’s hands were blue and mottled, her eyes thick with cataracts and sunken into the folds of her pale skin. She looked positively ancient, her face dotted with liver spots and broken veins while she moved slower than molasses.
After lighting two candles she reached up to remove her black shawl and revealed a head of white hair underneath. The room was dark, the flicker of candles cast eerie shadows on the walls and Harry noted the thick dust that seemed to cover everything in the small entrance room. As if it hadn’t been touched in years. The golden locket around his neck twitched against his skin making his heart jump as he looked around the room – perhaps the sword was here. Bathilda then moved into the next room with the matches in hand.
“Bathilda?” Harry called out to her as he heard more matches being struck.
Hermione and Harry stood fixed to their spot and looked at each other nervously. Best case, Bathilda was not a talker – worst case, there was something wrong. A knowing look passed between them before they both were startled by Bathilda’s voice as it rang out from the other room.
“Come,” Bathilda called to them.
Harry reached out and took Hermione’s hand again before moving into the room that Bathilda had entered. It was the front sitting room, and the smell in the next room got worse as they approached Bathilda. Similar to the last room everything was coated in dust, the room was dark, the candles provided a disturbing vibe and Harry’s gut rolled over. He did not like this – he did not like this at all. But as the locket twitched lightly against his chest again, he knew that they needed to stick it out – they needed to get Bathilda to talk and see if she had the sword.
The rotting smell made the back of Harry’s throat gag, as the quiet that settled in the room seemed to thicken. Hermione gripped him like death, and he knew that she was obviously just as uncomfortable as he was. They needed to speed this up and get out of this place.
Bathilda was lighting candles by hand again but now risking her lace sleeve catching fire. Harry sighed inwardly with a groan and pulled Hermione with him to step toward Bathilda and offer to light the candles. Taking the matches from her quickly he then used his wand to light six more candles as Bathilda trundled over to the fire pit and began struggling with the logs. When he had lit the last candle, his eyes glanced over a large chest of drawers covered in framed photos. Casting a quick tergeo, he looked over the pictures before picking one up as his back stiffened. It was the golden-haired man from his dreams who had perched on Gregorovitch’s window seal – the same man he had seen in the Life and Times of Albus Dumbledore from Rita’s book.
“Mrs – Mrs – Bagshot?” Harry stammered as he held up the photo. “Who is this?”
Bathilda was unmoving in the center of the room, and she did not look up toward Harry until the fireplace flames had ignited. Hermione glanced nervously between Harry and Bathilda and gripped her wand more tightly.
“Mrs. Bagshot?” Harry asked again, his voice tight as he started to lose his patience. He dropped Hermione’s hand and stepped toward Bathilda and held up the photo for her to see. He felt Hermione shift uncomfortably behind him and he wondered if Bathilda was either deaf, senile or being forced into this situation.
“Who is this person?” Harry demanded as he shook the picture in front of her. They needed to cut the crap so they could get out of here as quickly as possible.
Bathilda stared at him solemnly but still did not respond.
“Do you know who this is?” Harry repeated much more slowly than normal this time. “This man? Do you know him? What’s his name?”
Hermione could see Harry becoming more frustrated with his questioning as Bathilda refused or was unable to respond. She was not sure why he was so fixated on the picture when they were here for the sword.
“Harry what are you doing?” she asked him quietly as she nervously looked between the two of them again. “We’re here for the sword, remember? What’s with the picture?”
“This picture, Hermione – it’s the man I saw, the thief, the one who stole from Gregorovitch.” His eyes never left Bathilda as he spoke. “Please, Mrs. Bagshot, who is this man?”
“Mrs. Bagshot, you asked us to come with you – was there something that you wanted to tell us?” Hermione asked as she slowly approached the old woman from behind Harry. She understood Harry’s urgency now. The man had been in a dream, well, vision really, that Harry had seen from You Know Who. They needed answers and then they needed to leave – now. The longer they stayed in the house the more nervous she became and the more she figured this was a trap.
Bathilda however, ignored Hermione and her words completely. She started gesturing again at Harry and then toward the door to the hall.
“Do you want us to leave?” Harry asked her.
Bathilda shook her head vigorously and then started to point again between herself and Harry and the hallway.
“Oh – I – Hermione, I think she wants us to go upstairs.” Harry said, glancing toward Hermione quickly and back to Bathilda who nodded.
“Okay,” Hermione said slowly as she took Harry’s hand and they started to step toward the hall only to have Bathilda shake her head again and point meaningfully at Harry.
They stopped and looked at each other for a moment as the realization of what Bathilda was asking for sunk in.
“I think she wants only me to go upstairs,” Harry said stiffly, looking at Hermione with concern.
Neither one of them liked this, something was wrong and they knew it – they just didn’t know what. Possibly an ambush? Possibly a set-up? It was difficult to find the old woman threatening when she could barely walk around but something was definitely not right.
Perhaps her silence was out of fear. Or perhaps someone had threatened her, or hurt her and she was being forced to assist for fear of her own life. The house creaked eerily around them and the air seemed thick with darkness. Hermione looked down at Harry’s wand and then quickly back to his eyes and nodded once firmly to Harry and he understood. They needed to get whatever information they could from Bathilda and then get the hell out of this house.
“Okay,” Harry said slowly as he looked back to face Bathilda. “I’ll come with you upstairs, and Hermione will stay down here and maybe see if she could make us some tea.”
Bathilda seemed to get the message and she turned to start walking toward the hallway. Harry and Hermione quickly side-stepped out of view of the hall and Hermione cast a non-verbal muffliato around them. Then Harry cast his shield charm faster than she had ever seen him do it – the dark purple glow encasing him quickly before disappearing from sight.
“Five minutes,” Harry said firmly as he grabbed her hand. “If something happens, we will disapparate separately back to the cliff by the North Sea – I’ll meet you there.”
“Okay – but if you’re not down in five minutes, I’m coming to get you. I’ll cast my own shield charm as soon as you’re gone. I’ll see if I can find out what the hell is going on down here – call me if something happens.”
Harry nodded firmly and squeezed her arm before turning to quickly rejoin Bathilda as Hermione cast her own shield charm and removed her silencing spell.
-x-x-
Harry followed Bathilda up the stairs. By the speed she was moving he was worried that his shield charm might run out before they even got to the top of the damn staircase, but he had set a timer with his wand as he approached the hallway so he could keep track. When they finally reached the top of the staircase he had eleven minutes left on his shield.
“You are Potter?” Bathilda whispered to him when they finally stood in a small low ceiling bedroom at the top of the stairs. The room was dark, and smelled disgusting – Harry couldn’t help but wrinkle his nose as he cast a lumos to see. Everything about this situation was disturbing, the house felt like death and if not for the slightly twitching Horcrux he would have already left.
“Yes, I am.” He responded quickly, his eyes never leaving her form. She nodded slowly, but made no motion to do anything else.
Oh for fuck’s sake, he thought as his temper started to flare once more. He did not want to be here, he did not want to be separated from Hermione and he did not understand why Bathilda would only speak to him. Dumbledore had left stuff for Hermione in his will too, so surely Dumbledore hadn’t wanted to withhold information from her. His only thought was that maybe Dumbledore had said something like ‘this is for Harry’ and Bathilda was the one who interpreted it as a secret.
“Have you gotten anything?” he asked her with a tone of frustration. “Please, Mrs. Bagshot – did Dumbledore leave you with anything to give me?”
Bathilda closed her eyes and Harry tensed as the Horcrux against his chest twitched so physically that his sweater moved and his scar prickled. The dark room wobbled in front of him as he felt a bizarre leap of joy course through his body as a cold voice echoed in his head.
Hold him!
Harry swayed on his spot and steadied his footing. What the fuck?! He thought as he looked at Bathilda to see that she was watching him intently. This needs to end now.
“Have you got anything?” he asked more intently as his hand tightened on his wand.
“Over here,” she finally responded to him and pointed to the corner. Harry raised his wand to see a cluttered dressing table beneath a curtained window and moved slowly toward it, not taking his eyes off Bathilda as he went. He noted that she did not move to lead him this time. He checked his internal timer and noted that he now had just under 6 minutes left on his shield.
He reached the side of her bed and could make out what looked like a tangled laundry pile from his peripherals.
“What is it?” He asked impatiently as he kept his wand outstretched, not trusting to look away from her.
“There,” she said as she pointed to the shapeless mess.
Fuck, Harry swore inwardly and he quickly darted his eyes to the pile, looking for a hint of the sword or literally anything that would be useful and justify the risk that they were taking. His stomach was in knots with nerves and the hairs on the back of his neck had started to stand up as the rank smell agitated his senses. The second he looked away from Bathilda he saw her move strangely from the corner of his eyes and he immediately returned his gaze towards her.
A wave of horror and panic washed over him as the body of Bathilda Bagshot seemed to melt and drop away to the ground like a suit and a great snake began to pour from the body’s neck. Harry opened his mouth and yelled without a second thought.
“HERMIONE GO!”
The words tore through his throat in a loud bellow as he non-verbally cast two stunners and a diffindo in quick succession. The snake faltered only slightly from the impact and Harry rolled to the side quickly to dodge as its great tail took a swing at his midsection. Fuck! Harry thought as he rolled to his feet, I have to watch both fucking ends?!
He could hear Hermione barreling up the staircase as he went to strike the snake again – this time intending to cut it in half with sectumsempra then apparate away when all of a sudden, his forehead felt like it was split open with a hammer.
He faltered, nearly dropping his wand as his hand instinctively rose to his forehead. He couldn’t see, his vision was blurred as his heart started to race wildly out of control with joy. He was flying – flying without a broom or a thestral and he felt mad with excitement. A hard hit to his chest jolted him out of the rush of emotions that were washing over him and he fell to the floor hard, cracking his head as he landed. He meant to apparate away, but he simply couldn’t – his mind was not his own, his body was not under his control. Everything was clouded and messy and unfocused. The smell of death overwhelmed him and he gagged at the taste as his eyes searched blurrily around the dark room. Suddenly, it felt like a troll was seated on his chest and he raised his arms in front of his face protectively before he felt a sharp pressure on his arm. It was bearing down on him hard until he felt a sharp pain in his arm and a small crack.
“SECTUMSEMPRA!”
He heard Hermione bellow the words but he could not see her as she burst through the door loudly, powerful as a hurricane and struck the snake hard. It dropped the arm it had been biting and Harry groaned as his broken limb fell to his side with a thump. Harry rolled to his right toward Hermione’s voice – his vision was coming back in waves as he cast two more non-verbal spells in the direction of the snake and Hermione did the same. Bright colours lit up the small room as Hermione fired spell after spell, relentlessly hurtling her full artillery at the creature.
The snake was crashing and thrashing around the room, attacking and lunging wildly while trying to avoid both his and Hermione's spells. He could hear it hissing, “NO! NO! I must hold you!” over and over as it attacked.
“HARRY!”
He heard her call and he jerked his head as the snake lunged between them, he jumped back before throwing himself over its coils to get to the same side of the room as Hermione, closer to the door and away from the window. Then his head burst open in pain once more and he could not stop the scream which raged from his mouth.
“HERMIONE!” He called blindly, his hoarse voice desperate as he managed to focus his eyes to see three red spells cast in quick succession fly past his right side as the wall behind him exploded violently. “We have to go – NOW – HE’S COMING!”
He heard her footsteps, three of them, and could make out the shadow of her next to him followed by a very loudly shouted Confringo. Then he saw and felt Voldemort in full force. He was livid and violent and reeking of death. He burst through the curtained window across the room from them – white hand outstretched, wand ready. Harry saw himself, through Voldemort’s eyes – a balding muggle, with his mousy wife grabbing the back of his neck with a look of fearless determination as they vanished from sight with a loud pop.
He screamed in rage, exploding the opposite side of Bathilda’s house as his anger flared and scorched the walls of the house with wordless magic. Harry’s mind was lost, lost in memories and visions and thoughts that weren’t his. It felt like his head had slipped below water and he was unable to come up for air. Everything had gone dark as the images and memories assaulted him. He was screaming, writhing in pain and he saw his family – his parents. He saw them die, he was crying and shaking, and angry with fear. He was Voldemort. He stood in the broken home of Bathilda Bagshot and raged at the thought of Harry escaping his clutches. Then he saw the photo on the ground, the thief – the man he had been looking for.
-x-x-
Hermione landed roughly in the Forest of Dean, Harry dropping with a soft thump into the snow beside her. She crouched next to him, hand still on his skin as she cast several quick detection spells and alarms spells in rapid succession. They all came back negative, showing no threats in the area. Homenum revelio showed nothing either – they were completely alone, back to the quiet snow-covered forests and deserted locations that they were used to.
They were safe for the moment.
She grabbed Harry and rolled him over in the snow, he was twitching and muttering and moaning in agony but otherwise, he seemed okay. The snake’d had Harry’s arm in its mouth as she entered the disgusting bedroom, but similar to the werewolf attack – there were no puncture wounds, just deep bruising. She cast a diagnostic on his arms and saw the small fracture from the pressure of the creature’s bite. It ran along the length of his forearm – they would need to see if there was any way to strengthen the shield against physical blows and not just prevent punctures and magic. Broken bones are still a nuisance when in a battle, and the more protection they could have from their shield the better.
She quickly mended his arm before casting another diagnostic and checking over his entire form. The Horcrux was physically stuck to his chest, like it had melted into his skin. She had to use a severing charm to dislodge the cursed thing before throwing it around her own neck and using some dittany on his chest to try to prevent any scarring. As she searched his body for other injuries her heart fell – his wand was snapped in half. She gathered the remains carefully and wrapped them in a small cloth she summoned from her bag. Once she was satisfied that he was okay, at least physically, she grabbed her bag and fetched the tent to set it up.
One hour later the tent was safely pitched, the alarms were set, the wards were placed, the enchantments were made, and 6 detection spells were strategically cast around the grounds. She had levitated Harry into his bunk and she now sat by his head in a chair with a book. She shivered as she looked down at him and gently brushed some loose strands of black hair from his eyes. He was still for the moment at least. She had seen Harry like this before in the past, and she knew immediately when she saw the glassy-eyed way he had looked on the floor of Bathilda’s house that Voldemort had been in his head.
As a result, Harry was almost incapacitated by the connection and he was clearly in excruciating pain. She stared at him sadly as a single tear dropped from her eye and she took his hand in hers, abandoning the book in her lap. She worried for Harry. She worried about the connection that he shared with Voldemort – not only because of the implications and what it might mean, but also because it put him at risk. The connection had made him almost defenceless against Nagini’s attack because he’d had no control over his body or mind and she doubted that he could even see anything. If she wasn’t so sure that the snake was not actually trying to kill him and was instead trying to hold him for Voldemort, he might actually have died.
They needed to do better. They needed to spend more time meditating and working on his occlumency or the next time this happened it might be the end.
She shuddered as she thought back to the sight of Voldemort crashing through the window and looking at them with such hatred and rage. His blood-red eyes had bore into her, his anger was like a physical presence in the room that made her sick to her stomach. She couldn't understand how anyone could stand to be near that unbearable man. If one could call that thing a man.
She had apparated them away quicker than she had ever done so in her life and the only reason she wasn’t panicking was because she knew that Harry would be okay. She knew that he would come to on his own and she would be there for him when he did. Panicking wouldn’t do them any good. She needed to focus and problem solve. She needed to research ways to better their shielding charm and better prepare them still. This run-in with Nagini and Voldemort had chilled her to her very core, she felt like she had tasted death as he stood before her – he was rank with it, it pooled off of him in waves. The power he emanated was fearful and limitless, and it made her doubt that they would prevail.
But as her mind raced, she could not look away from Harry. She could not stop stroking his hair, fidgeting with his blankets to make sure he was properly tucked in, holding his hand and checking his forehead for a temperature to make sure he was okay. She stared at him for what felt like hours as her hope flittered, her stomach tightened, and her heart felt like it was breaking and healing and breaking all over again.
They had once again, in just a few short months, almost died. They had once again almost lost everything. She had once again almost lost Harry – and the acknowledgment of her feelings for him or not, had had absolutely no impact on how she felt. She felt the same. She felt the dread, the fear and the worry. She felt the panic and the agony over what had happened regardless of whatever label she slapped on their relationship. She felt the terror just the same – she knew that her feelings for Harry were set. Refusing to acknowledge them for what they were made no fucking difference.
Harry was right.
This was it. Harry was worth fighting for. They were worth fighting for, and it would not make her weaker to acknowledge it.
Hermione’s eyes fluttered open as the small noises from Harry began to get louder. She must have dozed off at some point while sitting beside him. The book she had been holding fell from her lap to the floor as she reached out to grab Harry’s hand. He was twitching in his bed muttering ‘no’ over and over.
“Harry,” she said gently as she took his hand and stroked the hair from his damp face.
“No – No I dropped it,” he muttered as he began to stir more aggressively. “I dropped it!”
“Harry, it’s okay – we’re safe,” Hermione whispered to him as she held his hand firmly. “Harry, it’s alright – you’re alright.”
Harry’s eyes flashed open and he stared around the tent in confusion as he twisted away from her touch until his eyes locked onto hers and she could visibly see the tension fall from his face.
“Hermione,” he whispered, his voice hoarse.
“Hey,” she said quietly, as a gentle smile pulled at her lips as she looked at him. Cautiously she reached out to brush his hair from his face and then knelt down next to his bed, bringing them closer to eye level. “We’re safe, Harry.”
“We got away?” His eyes never left her face as he spoke, and she could feel his hand grasping hers in return now.
“Yes,” she replied steadily as she held his gaze. “I managed to apparate us away. Harry, are you feeling okay?”
Harry frowned at her question, not at Hermione, but at the words that he did not know how to answer.
“I don’t know,” he said slowly as he averted his eyes to the ceiling before taking a breath and forcing himself to look at her again. “How am I supposed to even answer that?”
His voice broke slightly as he spoke, his throat no doubt sore from all the screaming the day before. She could see the sweat clinging to his body as sat there and his face grew exhausted.
“I was almost useless, Hermione,” Harry said quietly, frustration and pain visible in his eyes. “He was in my head, he had nearly complete control – I couldn’t do anything.”
Hermione watched as Harry let out a tight sigh and ran his hand through his hair. She knew that he was upset, not just about what had happened with Bathilda but with what had happened with Voldemort. That’d he’d been vulnerable and open to such an attack.
“I wouldn’t have been able to get out of there without you,” Harry said quietly, turning to look at her once more. “I saw things, Hermione. When he was in my head – I saw my parents die. I saw that night, the whole thing, clearly as if it were happening before my eyes and I was there. I was Voldemort.”
Hermione gripped his hand tightly as Harry quieted. Her eyes searching his face as she tried to figure out what to say. Shit, she thought to herself in frustration. How am I supposed to comfort him? He just watched his family die in front of him – we need to talk about finding a way to practice occlumency again – but obviously now’s not the time. She decided to wait on bringing up occlumency as she did not want to come across as scolding him, and instead she settled on moving closer to him and resting her elbow on the edge of his bed to prop up her head.
“Harry, I’m so sorry,” she spoke sincerely as she continued to carefully watch his face. Her heart was twisting into a painful ball as she examined his exhaustion and sadness. Why is it, she thought, that Harry always has to suffer so much?
“It’s fine,” Harry said as he cleared his throat and closed his eyes briefly as if to blink away the memories. “It sounds weird – perhaps a bit disturbing, but I’m glad I got to see them. I’m glad I got to see that night. I think it’s better to know.”
He paused briefly as Hermione nodded her head in understanding before his eyes brightened and he began speaking with more urgency.
“You Know Who wanted that picture, Hermione – the one of that thief. He was excited about finding it. He’s been looking for him, but I don’t know why – I wasn’t able to tell from what I saw. He was absolutely fucking livid that we got away – and Bathilda wasn’t Bathilda,” his brow furrowed a fraction now as he recalled the events of the cottage. “It was Nagini, somehow she was inside her body – I – I don’t know if Bathilda is dead or if they somehow made a copy of her, but Nagini poured out of Bathilda’s neck the second I took my eyes off her. Bathilda’s body just crumpled to the ground – it was as if she was wearing a Bathilda suit. I – I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“She was dead,” Hermione grimaced as she spoke. She had been planning to wait to tell Harry until later, but it seemed like now was as good of a time as any. “I was looking around the main floor after I cast my shield charm. I went to the kitchens and everything there was spoiled. Bathilda must have been dead for some time for things to be that rancid. The smell was worse by the pantry door so – so – so I opened it.”
Hermione stuttered on her words and clutched Harry’s hand tightly before she continued. The image of what she had seen in that pantry was going to haunt her dreams forever and she knew it. It was etched into the back of her mind and made her shudder to recall it.
“Bathilda’s – well, her – her innards were stuffed in the pantry, Harry. It was like someone had skinned her and her carcass was just left there – but it had gone rotten. There were flies everywhere – there had been a spell cast on the door a while ago to keep things at bay, but it was poorly done and I think it was starting to weaken and that’s why the house smelled so rank.”
She forced the rest of the words out of her mouth quickly as images of Bathilda’s rotting flesh floated through her mind. The flies, the flies had been everywhere – there had been maggots too, crawling out of her red and black rotted flesh. The worst part had been that her face was still visible – or what was left of it. The empty eye sockets and remains of her mouth and nose. Hermione’s stomach rolled over as she clenched her jaw, willing herself not to throw up. She’d become acquainted with death over the last few years – and specifically the last few months – but not like this. Never like this. This was a different level of sadistic, disturbing and heartless methods displayed by Voldemort and his followers.
“Hermione, I’m sorry,” Harry said gruffly as he forced himself to sit up in bed against his pillows and he pulled her up from her knees and into his chest.
She sat on the edge of his bunk and laid her head on his chest as he held her. His sweater was damp on her face from his sweat, but she didn’t care – she felt dirtied by the images in her mind anyways and she knew that she would be scrubbing herself viciously in the shower later to try and rid herself of the rank smell and disturbing scene. She took a few deep breaths and tried to rid her mind of the images of Bathilda’s rotting and skinless body from her mind. She wasn’t crying, her eyes were not even remotely wet – but they had been widening in disbelief and slight shock as she had been recalling what she found to Harry.
She closed her eyes tightly now, and clutched Harry’s sweater with her hand. Fuck, she thought as she continued to empty her mind and clear her thoughts. This is what Voldemort and his followers are willing to do. Skin an old woman and leave her corpse in her own pantry. Hermione had little doubt that the old woman was probably alive when it happened, and this made her stomach lurch once more. How do we fight people willing to do this – willing to commit such horrendous and despicable acts. She turned her face further into Harry’s sweater as she felt detachment wash over her. This was another thing that she would need to deal with later, on her own time. For now, though, she needed to stay focused and be there for Harry.
“How long was I out?” Harry asked gently when her breathing had evened out, in hopes of trying to bring the conversation around to something slightly less terrible. Which seemed a daunting task given the situation they had been in only moments ago.
Hours,” Hermione spoke softly before she pulled herself from his chest to sit back and look at him. She handed him his glasses from the nightstand but her hand remained on his chest, tightly gripping his sweater between her fingers as if she was worried he would slip away from her grasp. “It’s early morning now.”
Harry nodded as he put his glasses on and his eyes searched over her face, looking for traces of the disturbed and shocked expression she’d had a moment ago when she recounted finding Bathilda. But Hermione looked more in control now – she’d obviously packaged those feelings up and pushed them aside.
“The Horcrux was stuck to you, I had to use a severing charm to get it off of you,” Hermione said quietly as she finally released his sweater and pointed to the spot on his chest where the Horcrux had been. “I used some dittany so hopefully it doesn’t scar – but there could still be a mark there after it heals. Dark magic is different – like the werewolf scars, so it may not work. I fixed your glasses – they were cracked in the attack. I thought it would be a good idea to have some spares so I made some duplicates and charmed them to keep them protected, they're in the purse in case we need them.”
“Thank you, Hermione,” Harry said gently as he reached up to grab the hand that hovered above his chest and then held it tightly in his lap. He didn’t even bother looking at the place where Hermione had pointed. He knew that she would have done everything that she could to fix the burn, whatever remained was going to be what it was going to be. As for the glasses he wasn't surprised – it wasn't the first time that they'd broken in a battle and he was sure it wouldn't be the last. But making spares was a good idea, during their training they'd been practicing odd spells and charms and Hermione had already mastered a simple Gemino spell. Of course she would think to create spares just in case.
“Your arm was broken from Nagini – I healed it – and thankfully her bite didn’t pierce your skin. I figure we should probably look into a way to improve the physical integrity of the shield charm to better protect against physical attacks,” Hermione said as she looked away from Harry and nervously started to fiddle with the hem of her sweater with her free hand.
“What is it?” Harry asked her as he sat up straighter. He knew her antics, and he knew that she was holding something back from him as she slowly revealed more and more details of last night. “What happened, Hermione?”
“Your wand, Harry,” she spoke so quietly that he almost didn’t hear her.
Harry’s face went blank, and Hermione could see the tension in his jaw as she glanced back up at him. Her expression pained as the next words fell from his lips.
“What of my wand?”
“It was broken in the attack, Harry – I’m so sorry – I tried to repair it, I’ve got all the pieces, but I wasn’t able to do it. I think it might have been me – when I cast that blasting charm and it destroyed the house – I – I must have hit it. Harry, I’m so sorry!” She looked at him desperately and winced as his brow furrowed and he shut his eyes.
She could hear his sharp intake of breath as he processed the information and she felt her heart sink with guilt. She couldn’t even imagine losing her wand and what it must feel like to find out you’ve lost your connection to magic, your ability to cast spells. Her chest was tight with anxiety, she knew it was very likely her fault that Harry was now wandless, and it was killing her. She clenched her jaw nervously and squeezed his hand until he opened his eyes again – they were clear and calm.
“It’s okay,” he said firmly as he looked at her directly. There was not a single trace of anger or blame on his face.
“Harry, I –” but Harry cut her off before she could even finish her sentence.
“You don’t know for sure if you broke it, Hermione,” he said calmly as he squeezed her hand in return. “Nagini could have hit it, I could have fallen on it – I couldn’t see what was going on. Either way it doesn’t matter. It was an accident and we’ll deal with it. Thank you though – for trying to fix it and keeping the pieces.”
Hermione nodded solemnly and kept her jaw clenched. She would feel guilty regardless of whether or not Harry blamed her.
“We’ll just have to share your wand until we come up with something.”
“I’m sorry, Harry,” she said softly as her eyes glazed over.
“I know,” Harry said as he pushed himself off his pillows and leaned toward her. “I am too but it’s okay, Hermione – I promise. It’s fine – we’ll figure it out.”
Hermione’s lips twitched at his words and a faint blush crept over her face as he leaned forward and kissed her gently on the temple.
“I’m going to go shower though,” he said with a small laugh. “I’m thoroughly disgusting.”
Hermione stood and helped Harry from the bed then she watched as he walked toward the bathroom with clean clothes in hand. Her heart thudded painfully in her chest as she watched him go. This evening had been another that was simply too much – but the truth was, it was all too much and it was starting to make her wonder if she would be able to take it. Once she heard the shower turn on, she sat back down on his bunk and dropped her head into her hands and allowed silent tears to fall from her eyes as she listened to the water run.
She wasn’t even sure what it was she was crying about – whether it was for Bathilda, the realization that Voldemort and his followers were capable of actions far worse than she thought, that they had almost died yet again, that Harry had been so quick to forgive her for possibly breaking his wand, or that she worried that he might actually be upset with her for it and not tell her. Her heart still ached at the thought of losing him, and she knew that it was just the compounded stress of everything and the lingering effects of no sleep.
It’s for everything that’s happened, she thought as the tears streamed soundlessly from her eyes.
After five minutes she steeled her face and wiped the tears from her eyes on her sleeve. Then she forced herself up from the bed to go and make breakfast. Her heart felt lighter, like she had allowed herself to empty her body of the emotions and turmoil that constantly seemed to fill it and she refocused her mind to the task at hand. She still needed to show Harry the book that she had snagged from Bathilda’s house before Nagini had revealed herself and they still needed to discuss their occlumency practice.
Harry exited the bathroom just moments after she had everything prepared and set on the table. They sat and ate their porridge, berries and tea. Harry rested his knees gently against hers under the table and she smiled at him as he talked about how he figured out how to modify their duelling and exercises now that they only had one wand while he was in the shower. Then, to her surprise, he said they needed to meditate more and add more occlumency practice to their routine to try and prevent what happened from happening again. He smiled at her as he dropped more berries on his plate and nudged her knee gently with his own before taking a sip of tea. Her heart raced at the contact and she felt herself smile more genuinely.
Yes, she thought peacefully as she watched him eat with purpose and continue to talk about his new plans. This is worth fighting for, and we are going to be just fine.
After breakfast Hermione pulled the copy of The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore out from her purse and showed it to Harry. She explained that she had taken it from the living room of Bathilda’s house after Harry had gone upstairs. The book had a note from Rita Skeeter in it, her familiar acid-green spiky writing leaving them both with annoyed scowls on their faces. Rita was such a bitch. The book had clearly never been opened before, evident by its stiff spine.
They abandoned their seats at the kitchen table to go and sit on the transfigured love seat to look through the book together. They were both caught by surprise when they realized that the man from Harry’s vision and in the photo from Bathilda’s house was Gellert Grindelwald. They worked their way through the book, learning that Dumbledore had left Hogwarts in a blaze of glory. That he had returned to Godric’s Hollow to care for his sister and brother after his mother’s death, that Dumbledore’s sister was apparently frail and ill but possibly a squib being kept locked up, and that Grindelwald was Bathilda’s great-nephew.
The book contained a rather shocking letter allegedly written by Dumbledore to Grindelwald which made them both uncomfortable. Then Rita recounted how after two months of friendship Dumbledore and Grindelwald parted ways until they met again for their legendary duel. Rita had noted that their falling out may have been due to Dumbledore’s sister’s death, and they also learned that Aberforth, Dumbledore's brother, had fought with him at the funeral.
When they finally finished reading the book it was well past noon and Harry had a deep scowl that ran across his face. Hermione’s chest tightened nervously – this was a lot to ask Harry to take. He had held Dumbledore in the highest esteem and now this book was burning every opinion that he’d had of the man to the ground. It had been difficult to read, difficult to swallow and it painted Dumbledore in a light that made even Hermione’s brow crease similarly to Harry’s.
“Harry,” she said cautiously, as she gauged the expression on his face. “I know that the book isn’t pleasant – but you have to remember that this is Rita Skeeter’s writing.”
“Yeah,” Harry said in a clipped tone. “Except that we both read that letter from Dumbledore to Grindelwald. That’s hardly Rita’s writing.”
“I know,” Hermione spoke softly as she tried to choose her next words carefully. She could tell that Harry’s confidence in Dumbledore had been shaken by what they read and she would be lying if she said that her own wasn’t. “I know Bathilda thought that it was all just talk but, ‘For the Greater Good’ became Grindelwald’s slogan – it was his justification. It was carved at the top of Nurmengard.”
“What’s Nurmengard?” Harry asked, his eyes still glued to the book in front of them.
“It was the prison that Grindelwald created to house his enemies – to imprison those who stood opposed to him,” she answered, watching the side of his face as she spoke. “Dumbledore imprisoned Grindelwald there himself once he defeated him. I know that this looks bad Harry, but it seems like they only knew each other for a short while. It’s awful that Dumbledore’s ideas may have helped Grindelwald rise to power but–”
“But what?” Harry asked her tightly. He didn’t yell and he wasn’t angry, instead he just looked blank and lost, and somehow that was worse. She knew that it wasn’t directed at her, but her chest tightened just the same.
“But they were young, Harry,” she started softly before he cut her off again.
“So are we,” his voice was eerily light as he spoke, and she knew that this was cutting him deeper than he would ever say. “We’re young, Hermione – we’re the same age as he was and we’re fighting against the dark arts.”
“I know,” Hermione took a breath to steady her voice as Harry looked up at her. His eyes held a sadness that made her heart ache. “His mother had just died, he was alone–”
“He wasn’t alone, he had his sister and brother,” Harry cut in again. “We’ve lost people too, Hermione.”
“Harry, I’m not trying to defend Dumbledore’s actions,” Hermione said tightly, unable to stop her voice from rising as she grabbed the book, closed it firmly and tossed it on the footstool next to them. “I wasn’t there – I can’t say what was going through his head at the time he befriended Grindelwald. I don’t know if he meant to help or just helped inadvertently – I’m just saying that there is more to the story than what was written by Rita Skeeter in this stupid book. You know as well as I do how she twists words and facts and only uses the information that paints the picture that she wants. Maybe – maybe Dumbledore fucked up, maybe he made a mistake – maybe it took losing his sister for him to realize that he’d been an ass. I don’t know Harry, because I wasn’t there. I just don’t think that we should jump to any conclusions from a book written by that bitch.”
Harry was sitting quietly staring at her with slightly widened eyes as she continued to rant, and her voice grew louder.
“I know how much you respected him, Harry – I can’t even begin to wrap my head around how hard it must be for you to read this. For you to find out that he may not have been who you thought he was. But Harry, he cared for you, he loved you, he spent every year that we knew him fighting against You Know Who and believing that muggles and muggle-borns are worthy. People make mistakes Harry, people change. Maybe he was someone different when he was young – but we know who he was at the end, what he fought for, what he believed in – and isn’t that what matters?”
Harry sighed and dropped his head into his hands for a moment before lifting it and running his fingers through his dishevelled black hair.
“Yes,” he groaned out in pained frustration. “But if I ever get the chance to speak to his portrait, I’m going to ask him – and he better give me some answers. Every day that goes by I feel more and more like I didn’t know him. That he didn’t actually prepare me – that he kept things from me and intentionally withheld details that would have been helpful to know.”
“Yeah,” Hermione snorted gently in agreement. “Yes, you’re right. He certainly had a way of being secretive when it would have been much more helpful to just tell us what the hell was going on.”
Harry sighed again and forced himself up from the couch to start walking toward the kitchen.
“Do you want some lunch?” he asked over his shoulder as he reached for Hermione’s beaded bag on the table. “My body feels dead and I think we should split that last butterbeer.”
Hermione grinned at Harry and got up to join him in the kitchen. They ate a small lunch and passed the last remaining bottle of butterbeer between the two of them. After eating Hermione then showered quickly, scrubbing herself thoroughly to remove any lingering smell of Bathilda’s house from her body. She felt thoroughly disgusting from having sat so long in her clothes from the evening before and was glad that they spent the remainder of the night curled on the couch reading. The day had been exhausting and she could see that Harry was just as mentally taxed as she was from reading the book Rita had printed. They skipped dinner and opted for a light snack before they both went to bed. Feeling safe with the alarms that Hermione had set they decided that for tonight no watch would be required – they both needed rest after the events at Bathilda’s and they knew it.
As Hermione walked into the room after washing her face in the bathroom, she saw Harry sitting at the edge of his bunk with his head in his hands. He raised his head as she approached and watched her as she placed her dirtied clothes into their small laundry basket and began to dim the lights in the tent. Wordlessly he rose from his bunk and walked toward her. Hermione had just turned down the blankets on her bed as he closed the distance between them, and she turned to ask him what he wanted – but he had circled his arms around her before she even had time to open her mouth.
He kissed her slowly, with care, and pulled her close to his body. It wasn’t heated or desperate, and she understood his meaning. She leaned into him and let his tongue enter her mouth as she gripped his sweater tightly. Harry needed her. She had become his one and only constant in this war. He had lost so much – the close support of the Order, Ron, his wand, his faith in Dumbledore. She ran her hand up his chest to rest at the base of his neck before he pulled away slightly. He rested his forehead against hers, eyes still closed, and his words came out as a whisper.
“Stay with me tonight?”
His words ghosted across her face and she could not help but shiver as her heart fluttered at his words. She knew that Harry was hurting right now, and it brought a warmth to her heart that she could not explain that he wanted her near him. She nodded against his forehead and allowed his hands to lead her to his bunk. They both crawled in, Harry nearest the tent wall and Hermione nearest the edge of the bunk as they usually were when they shared the bunk. Harry wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tightly to his chest, nuzzling his nose into her neck as she closed her eyes and snuggled back into him. It crossed her mind fleetingly that it was now Christmas day and she was snuggled with Harry in his bed. She smiled softly as she nuzzled her head into his pillow.
“Happy Christmas, Harry,” she said softly as she wriggled her foot gently against his.
“Happy Christmas, Hermione,” Harry breathed against her neck as he squeezed her tightly in his arms.
-x-x-
The next morning, they ate a quick breakfast and dressed warmly before they went to start their modified training outside. Hermione was thankful that they began their training right away before her mind lingered too long on the warmth of sleeping in Harry’s strong arms, his breath against her neck and the way that his touch made her heart flutter. Harry’s modifications to their training routine included taking turns with the wand – the person who had it would fire leg lockers and stunners at the person without a wand while the person without the wand would dodge, duck and run to avoid being hit. They switched every 10 minutes and Hermione had to agree that completing this exercise was worth it and she was glad that they did not decide to forgo training now that Harry was without a wand. The exercise made them much more resourceful at evading spells; she started to realize how often she would allow herself to be potentially hit because she knew she could shield or deflect an oncoming spell. Without a wand, she was far more in tune with her movements, positioning and her surroundings as she knew that she needed to truly evade spells and not just block them.
They practiced this way for the better part of 2 hours before they both slumped down by the tent to take a breather and drink some water before they started on the next part of their modified training. This involved them each taking turns using Hermione’s wand to blast more dangerous spells at some unsuspecting dead tree trunks. They then worked to improve their non-verbals and even tried to cast sectumsempra without words. Harry was able to get a single small scratch in one trunk while Hermione was able to get two. Then, Hermione put her wand away and they worked on wandless magic for over an hour. Hermione had been able to lift a leaf off the ground with a wordless and wandless wingardium leviosa, while Harry had been able to conjure a tiny small blue flame.
Hermione had no illusions that they would magically be able to cast defensive spells wordlessly or wandlessly on their first day and she laughed internally at her own pun. But she was pleasantly surprised that she had been able to make the leaf hover for several seconds before it dropped back to the ground, and that Harry had managed to light a small blue flame – even if it did sputter out after only a few moments. This exercise would take time, patience and discipline, but they both agreed that it was worth it and that they would continue to practice it even if they did find Harry a new wand, somehow.
After their experimentation with wandless and wordless magic they had a quick lunch, then completed their meditation and occlumency practice before moving on to their physical exercises. Hermione found it a bit difficult to keep her eyes off Harry as he completed push-up after push-up or as they jogged in several large circles around the tent. Over the past few months of completing their exercise routine Harry had really started to fill out. His frame was no longer lanky or scrawny like it had been for years – his broad shoulders were filled with new muscle, his arms and legs were strong and he had a healthy bulk to him.
He wasn’t rippling in muscles and he hadn’t transformed into some incredible and unbelievable version of himself – but he was fit, strong, and he held himself with more confidence than he had as a kid. That was the main difference, Harry had become comfortable in his own body. The once lanky, long bones and awkward movements now moved with a determination and purpose that he had lacked before. Harry had changed – there wasn’t a hint of the insecurity and he’d morphed into a man who moved confidently in his own body right before her eyes.
And Hermione found it more distracting than she cared to admit.
It wasn’t just the physical changes in Harry that she found her mind drifting to as they laid on the floor of the tent completing sit-ups as a pair – Harry’s feet resting over hers as they alternated their crunches toward each other. It was the maturity that he now carried in the way that he spoke and the way that he thought. She always knew that Harry wasn’t stupid, he was clever and intuitive – but he had always been a bit hot-headed when he was younger.
Now, after everything that had happened, he’d embraced his mature side and started to use his critical thinking skills. He exercised it and built on it like it was a tool, using it to his advantage. She could practically hear the gears turning in his head when she watched him read and speak. And the key difference between now and four months ago, was that now Harry paused and thought before he spoke.
As Hermione showered after dinner, washing off the sweat and grime from their exercises she still could not remove her thoughts from Harry. She knew she cared for him – and she knew that however she chose to define, or not define, whatever was happening between them made no difference.
Losing him would kill her just the same… and she could not escape the conclusion that she had drawn the night before while Harry had laid motionless in his bunk. Being together, accepting her feelings, accepting her fear of losing Harry – while terrifying – was worth fighting for. Harry had been right, it wouldn’t make her weaker. If anything, it would make her stronger. As she ran her hands through her dark wet curls she knew that allowing herself to be with Harry would realistically motivate her to work harder and become stronger – it was exactly as Harry had said to her. He made her want to be better, to be more – just as much as she made him want to grow as well.
She stepped out of the shower and looked into the full-length mirror.
It had been a while since she had forced herself to stare at her scars and recite the list of things that she was grateful for when seeing her reflection. It had been a while since she had to force herself to smile at her marred skin. It had also been a while since she had really looked at her reflection. She, like Harry, was not the same person that she was four months ago. She traced her fingers over the scars that covered her chest gently as she examined her body – the scars were not the only thing that had changed. Like Harry, she had not undergone some miraculous bodily alteration. She hadn’t become some voluptuous woman with shapely curves. Instead, she stood taller, straighter, and with more dignity than she could ever remember having. Her confidence was much more apparent in her stance.
She did have some curve to her waist, nothing extreme, but the presence of female hips was there. Her breasts had gotten somewhat larger, although they still nothing to write home about at a modest B cup. She knew she would always be on the smaller side based on her own mother’s appearance – but frankly, their diet, lifestyle and intense physical exercise routines did not lend to having huge tits anyway.
She snorted at this as she looked over her legs and arms. This was where the largest physical change was. Hermione had always been petite and scrawny – she had never been an active person and she always preferred to stick with her books than run around outside with her peers. She’d never played sports either. Now though, since she was exercising intently with Harry and completing their duelling, she had real visible muscles. She looked fit, strong and capable. She found herself smiling as she pulled her loose-fitting charcoal long-sleeved shirt on and her faded denims. The shirt’s collar hung so that her top scar was plainly visible, but she didn’t even blink at it as her mind wandered back to Harry.
She wanted to tell him.
She wanted him to know how she felt – that she wanted him, that she wasn’t afraid even though she was absolutely terrified. That she wanted to be with him. That he was right, that they were worth fighting for. She gripped the bottom hem of her sweater tightly between her fingers. Running the fabric between her thumb and index finger as she always did when she was nervous. She looked down at her dark purple fuzzy socks before tilting her head back up toward the ceiling. She wanted to give Harry what he wanted, not because she felt pressured and it wouldn’t be any unrealistic promises that could not be kept. But instead, a relationship that was acknowledged and openly admitted – because she wanted it, and she wanted more with him both physically and emotionally.
Taking a breath, she opened the bathroom door and strolled out to the kitchen, her hand still firmly gripping the fabric of her shirt. Harry was standing by the kitchen counter, having just finished cleaning up the kitchen since she had made dinner tonight. He smiled at her as she approached, and she found herself blushing lightly as her heart started to race...
Warnings:
This chapter contains: explicit smut (which can be skipped without missing out on main plot)
******************************************
How should I start this? Hermione pondered as she closed the space between them, noting that Harry stayed in the kitchen and leaned up against the counter.
His eyes had darted from her now blushed face to her hand which was still gripping the hem of her shirt, then back up to her face. She couldn’t help but smile inwardly at the fact that Harry had not even glanced at her visible scars. His one eyebrow was ever so slightly raised, and she began chastising herself for her outward physical tells.
I would be a right shit poker player, she thought as she stopped just shy of the kitchen and leaned against the single center tent post in front of Harry. He clearly knew that something was on her mind, but he remained silent and waited for her to speak first.
“Hey,” she said somewhat shyly, as she looked at him and instinctively crossed her arms over her chest to make herself feel more comfortable. They had taken dinner a bit late that evening and the tent was already dim from the darkness outside.
“Hey,” he said quietly, a small smile on his lips as he looked at her and it made her stomach twist nervously.
Shit, she thought as she looked at him. Her mind was racing, and she wished that she knew what he was thinking. The way that he looked at her – the slight smile he had, the way his eyes heated and danced in the little remaining light as he stared at her, and his relaxed posture as he leaned comfortably against the kitchen counter made her insides squirm in anticipation.
“Harry,” she spoke softly as she felt the blush on her cheeks deepen.
“Hermione,” he said slowly as he studied her face with quiet amusement.
“I was thinking,” she managed to get out, before she found that she lost her confidence to speak further.
“Don’t you always?” he teased lightly as he leaned back further into the counter and grinned widely when she scowled at him.
“Yes, well – I suppose that’s true.” She rolled her eyes, knowing that Harry was just teasing and trying to lighten the mood. He had clearly picked up on the fact that she was nervous to say what she wanted to say. Again, due to her ridiculously poor poker face. “I – um, I think you were right.”
“Really?” Harry said with a small amount of genuine surprise. His eyebrow quirked up before his brow furrowed ever so slightly and he gave her a curious look. “About what exactly?”
Hermione swallowed. Her hands had started to shake so she dropped one of the arms that crossed her chest to lay across her stomach so that she could grip the bottom hem of her soft shirt again. Her heart was pounding in her ears, and Harry continued to look at her in anticipation and confusion. He had no idea of the war that was currently being waged inside her – how her heart was beating erratically, and how her stomach was fluttering wildly as she tried to get the courage to tell him exactly what he had been right about.
“About us,” the words left her lips so quietly that she wasn’t sure if Harry heard them until she saw his shoulders stiffen. She stared at him and waited, waited for him to speak – but he didn’t. He just slowly pushed himself from the kitchen counter and began to close the distance between them.
Hermione pushed her back further into the tent pole as Harry approached and she gripped herself more tightly. She wasn’t sure why she was so nervous to have him move closer to her, he had been close to her before – much closer. But somehow this felt like it was the first time. Probably because it was the first time that it was real between them – or real from her perspective at least. It was the first time that she was openly admitting to herself that she cared for him, wanted him, would be with him and that she planned to outright acknowledge it going forward.
“What do you mean, Hermione?” Harry said softly. He had stopped moving just in front of her and he was now standing only a foot away though he kept his hands at his sides and refrained from touching her. Hermione was still nervously gripping her own body with her hands as Harry stood quietly waiting for a response. His head was tilted to the side, his eyes curious and filled with emotion and her heart was all but hammering in her chest.
“I um,” Hermione stuttered and cleared her throat, then looked down at his chest before forcing herself to meet his gaze once more.
Courage Hermione, she thought as she forced her back to straighten against the pole and her hands to calm. This was it, this was what she wanted – she knew that she did, now she just had to have the courage to follow through and tell him. This was a moment that she would never forget, the moment where she decided to make things real between them and she knew there was no turning back.
“That it makes us stronger,” she said at last. “Being together, it – it would make us stronger. You were right, Harry, I – I was afraid to acknowledge my feelings. I was afraid to make this real – because I am absolutely terrified of losing you. I – I don’t know what I would do without you, Harry – I – I want to be with you. I don’t want to hide from this, I don’t want to pretend that this isn’t a thing.”
She stared at him determinedly, she had dropped her hands from their comforting position across her chest and they now rested at her sides clenching the hem of the sleeves firmly. Harry was staring at her intensely, his eyes bright as they looked at her.
“Hermione,” he said softly. “You don’t have to do this. I said that I was fine with what we have I don’t want you to–”
“I’m not just saying it, Harry,” she cut him off with a hard look of determination in her eyes. She could feel the fear and anticipation that had been coursing through her body fade away. “After Godric’s Hollow… it – it’s like the third fucking time we have almost died since the end of summer and what I’ve realized is that I am going to be devastated – and I am going to hurt whether I outwardly acknowledge my feelings for you or not. Harry, I – I care for you, I – I want to be with you, I want to see where this goes. I’m terrified of losing you, I’m terrified to screw this up, to ruin what we have or to get distracted from our mission – all of the things that I told you before are still valid and I’m still absolutely petrified of them. But you were right. War or not – this, we, are worth fighting for and it is only going to make me stronger. We will be stronger together, you – you were right, Harry. I want this.”
Harry hesitated a moment, his eyes flooding with emotion before he stepped forward and pulled her into a heated kiss. His hands had planted themselves firmly on her hips and he pushed her back into the tent pole, pushing his body into hers. She latched her arms around his back, gripping his thin shirt tightly as she pulled him in closer. His mouth moved quickly against hers, as if searching her for any doubts, as if in disbelief of what she had said before he pulled away quickly gasping for breath. Hermione’s lips trembled at the loss of contact and she looked up at him in confusion.
“Are you sure?” he breathed out against her lips as he looked down at her intensely.
“Yes, you stupid wizard,” she breathed before she latched her lips firmly to his and pulled his body back close to hers.
Her heart was thudding so loudly in her chest she was positive Harry could hear it. His hands were everywhere – on her sides, her chest, around her back, then tangled in her hair as they kissed like their lives depended on it.
She moaned into his mouth as he sucked on her bottom lip and he groaned as she pushed her hips into him. Her back was plastered against the tent pole now and Harry angled her head upward so he could kiss her more deeply. His hand on her neck made her shiver against him. It was like they had fallen apart at the seams and all of their pent-up frustrations and want had been released all at once. Harry’s hesitation was gone and he allowed himself to touch Hermione freely and Hermione found her own hands weaving under the hem of his shirt.
He parted her legs with his thigh, pressing hard against her core and she groaned out at the pressure against her center.
Fuck, she groaned inwardly as she panted for breath and Harry began kissing down her neck. She ran her fingers along his sides and his chest, his skin was hot, and his body was hard. The air in the tent felt thick and the temperature had risen to the point that she worried she might start to sweat. She wanted him, she wanted all of him. It wasn’t just because of the heat of the moment, and it wasn’t just a split-second realization. She had known for a while that she craved his touch, she wanted to feel him against her, she wanted him to be her first.
The thought had crossed her mind over the past few weeks but she had dismissed it as a distracting and stupid idea – thinking that there was no time for such things while in the middle of a war. But now when she thought about it her original opinion seemed stupid and childish. They were in the middle of nowhere and threatened by death at every turn. There was a very real possibility that she would not survive this at all and that she would never have the opportunity to experience sex, or any other aspects of an intimate relationship.
So, it seemed utterly ridiculous to hold out for a future that may never happen – for an opportunity that may never come. It was like suddenly Harry’s words and Bill and Fleur’s wedding took on a whole new meaning for Hermione. There was a difference between being irresponsible in the face of war and living in the face of war and refusing to allow the war to control her life. Allowing herself relationships, friendships, closeness, joy and physical contact did not make her weak. It gave her motivation, it gave her a reason to continue on even when things seemed at their darkest.
Hermione tugged at Harry’s shirt, pushing it up his chest as he continued to nibble at her neck. Seeming to understand her intent Harry grabbed the hem of his shirt and quickly pulled it over his head before placing one hand back on her waist as the other came up to rest on the side of her face where he stroked her cheek with the soft pad of his thumb. They were both flushed from their kiss and the heat between them, and Hermione felt nervous as she looked at Harry’s chest.
She had seen him shirtless before… but not like this, not in this way. He wasn’t sporting a ridiculous six-pack, but he was lean and trim, and she could see the muscle definition across his chest and stomach. She felt the heat between her legs increase as she slowly raised her eyes back up to his face. His leg was still pressed between hers but he seemed to be waiting for her to take the lead – for her to define how they were going to proceed.
Carefully, she leaned forward and kissed him again, slowly, sucking on his tongue as it entered her mouth and pushing her hips into his. She could feel his erection against her hip as he groaned out into her mouth. She placed her hands on his bare chest, trying to ignore the slight tremble they had as she felt the heat of his skin. He circled his arms back around her, pushing her firmly into the tent pole as they kissed more passionately. She felt his hands lift the hem of her thin long-sleeved shirt and brush up against her skin. She trembled at his touch, not from fear of him touching her scars, no – she trembled in anticipation of what his touches would bring.
Slowly he raised the hem of her shirt and she raised her arms so he could gently bring the fabric up and over her head. Despite her best efforts to not worry about her marred chest she froze in the dim light of the tent. The glow flickered gently around them in the quiet night as she stood shirtless before Harry, both of her hands clutching at his chest. She had dropped her head after the shirt passed over her and her eyes were now locked to his abdomen. She was breathing quickly from their heated kiss and her heart hammered as she waited for Harry to respond.
Breathe, breathe, just breathe – it’s fine, don’t worry about what you look like, she repeated the mantra in her head as she tried to empty her thoughts.
“Hermione,” he whispered gently as he dropped his forehead to lean against her own. His hand that was firmly on her hip slowly began to trace up her side as she shivered. “You are beautiful.”
Hermione shuddered against him as his hand caressed her skin gently and he dipped his head back down to capture her lips. He kissed her softly, reassuringly, knowing that this was difficult for her. That it had probably taken every ounce of her courage to let him remove her shirt and then stand bare before him. Slowly she started to respond with more fever, and the pace of their locked lips quickened as he pushed himself into her once more. Her hands travelled down his chest and grabbed onto the belt of his jeans. She tugged it gently before she broke their kiss to speak.
“Harry,” she panted against his ear. “Take me to your bed.”
Harry responded by kissing her fiercely and gripping her hips tightly. They moved together to his bunk just a few steps away, their steps unsteady and slightly clumsy but their kiss unbroken until Hermione’s knees bumped against the frame of his bunk and she dropped back onto it. Without hesitating she moved back against his pillows. Harry followed her quickly, crawling over top of her and locking their lips once more. He was laying between her legs now, hands tangled in her hair again, his hard length pressed to her core as she pushed her hips upwards into him. He groaned outwardly as he pushed back in response, his hands trailing along her body as his lips moved against hers.
It was everything that she needed, everything that she had wanted – and still it wasn’t enough.
Hermione’s body was practically vibrating at his touch, the heat between her legs flared as he grinded against her and all she could think about was how she wanted to be closer to him. How she needed to feel him. Her body felt starved for contact and she found her doubts and endless inner chatter falling away as she pressed into the heat between them and allowed her body to react how it wanted without her mind over-analyzing everything as it usually would. In the strangest way, it was the most freeing feeling that she’d experienced to date – to let her mind empty of its constant worry and to just be with Harry in this moment. To be shirtless with no regard for her scars, to be pasted up against his body and to let go of the control that the war had on her actions and life thus far.
“I want you,” she breathed against his mouth as he thrust his hips more firmly into hers and a groan seeped out between her lips. She couldn’t take the mounting pressure between her thighs any longer and she wanted to take back control of her life, of her experiences and her growth. She wanted to allow her body and mind to have this.
“I want you too, Hermione,” he breathed against her as he kissed her again.
“No, Harry,” she panted against him as she broke their kiss and moved her hand to tug on his belt. “I want you.”
She realized that he had misunderstood her words. He was thinking that she meant that she wanted him in the way that they had spoken of before – which was of course true, but not what she meant at the moment. The tug on his belt had gotten his attention though and he drew back to look at her face. He was propped up on his elbow, hand cradling her neck while his other hand froze along her side. His eyes had widened though they were still hazy with lust from their intense kiss and unbearably pleasant grinding – but her direct statement had sobered him. He was breathing hard and looking at her intently.
“Hermione,” he said quietly, his voice was that familiar deep baritone that made her toes curl in anticipation. “We don’t have to do that yet. You don’t need to rush – I don’t want to push you, we have time.”
“But we don’t know if we truly do have time, do we, Harry?” she said quietly as she looked up at him. Her hand remained firmly on his belt and she snaked the other between them to rest gently on the side of his face. “I’m not rushing. I want this – I want you. I want you to be my first.”
Her words were so quiet that had it been a windy night in the Forest of Dean he wouldn’t have heard her. She felt her heart twist in anticipation as she gauged Harry’s face. His want was evident, and she could see him struggling internally. She knew he was worried that she might be rushing into things between them.
“Harry, we don’t know what’s going to happen. I want to be optimistic that things will turn out fine and that we will have time together in the future,” she said as she bit her lip nervously, pausing before she spoke her next words. “But Harry, I know how I feel about you and I know what I want. You know I never rush into things, so please don’t worry that that’s what this is. I – I want to do this with you. I’m tired of letting this war take from me – take from us, and I won’t let it take this from us too. I want to know what it’s like, I want to experience this while we know that we have the time.”
She took a breath as Harry dropped his forehead to rest on hers and he let out a small groan between his teeth.
“Harry,” she spoke in barely a whisper. “I want to have sex with you.”
Her chest tightened as his eyes snapped open at her words. She had said it. She made herself say it out loud and now she could not help but feel absolutely mortified with herself. Merlin help me, she thought as she closed her eyes tightly, unable to bear the silence between them or the intense and calculating look Harry had been giving her.
Then she felt his lips against hers, gentle and tentative. He was kissing her slowly, and she could feel his hand tighten on her hip.
“Are you sure, Hermione?” he asked against her lips.
“Yes,” she whispered as she latched her lips more tightly to his.
Harry groaned out at her words as she nervously pushed her hips up into his once more. Her stomach fluttered as he gripped her tightly and he pressed his hips back in response. He brought his hand to her neck, tracing the lines of her while he turned his head to kiss her more deeply. She could feel the restraint Harry had beginning to fall away as their kiss quickened. Hermione brought both of her hands down to his belt and undid the buckle before nervously unbuttoning the top button of his jeans. She could feel the heat of him through the fabric and her hand shook with nerves as she undid the zipper of his jeans.
She was a bundle of nerves. Not doubt – just nerves. She had no idea what to expect, no idea what she was doing, no idea how to touch a man in this way. Harry readjusted himself above her, his lips leaving hers as he sat up and shucked off his jeans so that he was only in his boxers. Then slowly, with intense heat in his eyes, he lowered his hands to her jeans and undid the button.
She watched, completely still and transfixed as he slowly pulled her jeans down her legs until she was left only in her panties. She had to clench the sheets on his bed to keep her hands from instinctively covering herself from his view. But she remained strong and forced herself to accept her mostly naked presence in front of Harry.
If I can’t be mature enough for him to see me naked, we shouldn’t be having sex, she thought firmly as she forced herself to sit up and she reach her hands behind herself.
Her hands fumbled as she unclasped her bra and slowly removed the straps from her shoulders. Harry watched her movements, his eyes tracking her hands like a hawk as she pulled the bra away and left her chest exposed for him to see. She could hear his slight intake of breath as he gazed at her and she could feel the heat on her cheeks intensify under this stare. Then she was on her back again, leaned against the pillow as Harry kissed her deeply. He ran his hand over her chest nervously, gently palming her breasts as he muttered that she was ‘perfect’ and ‘beautiful’ against her neck. She could feel his hard length pressed directly against her core, separated only by the thin fabric of her panties and his boxers. It was the most intimate thing she had ever felt and she shuddered deliciously against him at the feel as he pressed himself against her. She moaned out his name as he rolled his hips then teased her nipples with his fingers.
“Harry,” she panted against his neck as she clutched him tightly and bit his shoulder gently. She wasn’t sure where the desire to bite him had come from, but she’d done it before she had even thought it through. Harry’s groan in response made her stomach flutter before she continued. “Harry – pl – please.”
He slid his hand down her side and hooked a thumb under the band of her panties before bringing his lips away from her neck to pull them all the way down to her calves. She kicked them off the remainder of the way and waited while he braced himself on his elbow to pull off his own boxers. Then they laid there, Harry propped up on his elbow – eyes devouring her body as they flicked from her face, to her chest, to the newly revealed space between her legs. She couldn’t help the intake of breath that escaped her as she looked over his body – from his lustful wanting eyes, to his well-muscled chest, to the large erect member between his legs.
She felt the heat in her double, and she found herself wondering how it was going to fit down there.
Sensing her apprehension Harry lowered himself back on top of her and kissed her deeply. She melted against him and moaned when he brought two fingers to slide through her already slick folds. He stroked her clit gently, falling into the rhythm that he had used the last time he brought her over the edge, and the coil in her core wound tightly at his touch. When he slipped a finger slowly inside her she gasped against his lips, her body unfamiliar with the intrusion. She had never had anything inside her before – even in all the times that she had tried touching herself she had only ever danced on the surface and stroked her clit and the sensation was something that she struggled to describe.
Harry was moving his finger inside her as if he was searching for something, stroking gently around. After a moment of his prodding her mind began to wonder what it was he was doing, or if sex was even going to be that enjoyable – aside from the pleasant pressure of having something inside her, she couldn’t help but feel like his finger seemed to be wandering aimlessly without much result. But she pushed her thoughts down and tried to relax, unwilling to give in to her nervousness or worried thoughts that she may not enjoy sex.
He drew back from her to look at her face as he continued to touch her. Her eyes fluttered open to see him staring down at her with a look of concentration in his eyes and heat flushed to her face.
His finger is inside me and he is just looking at me, the thought occurred before she could stamp it out and embarrassment flooded through her veins. Her mind was starting to over analyze, it was fixated on the ridiculous level of intimacy between them and it couldn’t seem to get over the fact that Harry was watching her.
Watching me for what? She wondered as her embarrassment continued to grow. She was beginning to doubt this, beginning to think that maybe this was a terrible idea and the whole experience would be awful. She was about to close her eyes or cover her face with her hands when Harry twisted his finger up toward her stomach and stroked against a rough patch of nerves bundled inside her that she didn’t even know existed and her breath caught. He stroked it again and her eyes rolled back as a small moan left her lips. Her hips reflexively thrust against his finger and her eyes fluttered as Harry grinned widely above her.
“There it is,” he said quietly, his voice deep and husky. She didn’t have a moment to question what he meant. He stroked her there again while his thumb pressed gently against her clit and her eyes rolled back once more and fluttered shut.
She felt her legs fall open wider and she moaned out as Harry continued to move his fingers against her, bringing her closer and closer to the edge as the coil tightened and her breathing quickened. She could feel his hard length pressed firmly against her thigh and she felt him grinding it into her as his fingers shifted between her legs.
“Harry,” she panted, as she pushed her hips up to meet the now two fingers he had slid inside her. “Harry – pl – please.”
Her voice stuttered as she spoke. Her heart was pouding, she was wet, wanting, desperate for his touch and she did not give a flying fuck how she looked right now. She didn’t care how she sounded, or whether or not they were being proper. She just knew that she wanted more. She needed more.
“I won’t last long,” Harry said as he began to gently spread the two fingers that he was still moving inside her. “I can make you come first. It might hurt when we do it, and I won’t – I won’t last long.”
“No,” she gasped out as he circled his thumb over her clit once more. “Harry – please, I want you – I want you inside me, I want to feel you – please, Harry.”
Harry nodded against her neck and she felt his hand fall away from her core as he reached down to his own member. She blushed deeply when she realized that he had stroked himself with her own wetness to add some lubrication. She could feel the heat in her body growing as she watched him pump his length before he moved directly between her legs and paused above her. She looked into his eyes and could see the nervous excitement that they held – she imagined that they looked similar to her own and they smiled nervously at each other before Harry spoke.
“Are you ready?” he asked her in a quiet deep rumble.
“Yes,” she breathed as she spread her legs a bit wider for him.
“If it hurts too much tell me to stop, Hermione – promise?”
“I promise.”
She didn’t look away from his eyes as she felt the tip of his cock press up against her slick folds.
Her stomach turned in nervousness, her heart was once again racing, and she found that she had to remind herself to breathe. He was looking at her like she was the most beautiful thing in the world when he slowly – oh so slowly, pushed into her. Her breath caught in her chest, her eyes widened as she felt herself stretching to accommodate him, and she found herself gripping his shoulder tightly as her nails dug into his skin.
It didn’t hurt per se, not exactly.
No, she thought. That wouldn’t be the right word. It’s ‘tight’ and it ‘pinches’ and it’s borderline uncomfortable – but it doesn’t hurt.
She breathed out sharply when he pushed himself in to his entirety, she felt so full and stretched. His eyes fluttered shut as he bottomed out and his head tilted back to the ceiling as he groaned out in the deepest most animalistic sound of pleasure that she had ever heard. He paused for a moment, his body tense as he remained unmoving inside her before his eyes snapped open and he looked down at her through a haze of lust.
“Fuck, Hermione,” he groaned as he dropped his forehead to rest on hers. “Fuck you feel so good. God I had no idea – are you okay?”
His voice sounded a bit tense and Hermione could tell by his death grip on the sheets by her head and the way that he held her side tightly that he was struggling to control himself.
“Yes,” she nodded in confirmation, laying completely still as she looked up at him. She wanted to feel him move, she wanted to see how this went but she was too nervous to do anything on her own. “Yes – you can move, Harry. It’s okay – keep going.”
His jaw clenched tightly in control as he slowly moved himself back out and then pushed in once more. He groaned as he shifted, and Hermione winced slightly at the tightness.
Still not painful, she thought, though it certainly wasn’t the greatest feeling that she had ever experienced.
After two more slow thrusts, he dropped his weight to his side so he could move his hand between them to stroke her clit. She groaned as he changed his angle and his slow thrusts started to align with that bundle of nerves he had located earlier. It took a moment for him to find a rhythm and although the movements were still uneven, she found herself moaning against him as he muttered praise against her neck.
But the feel of him was still uncomfortable, so she forced her mind to focus on the gentle and delicious movements of his fingers against her clit instead of the pinching, tight feeling of him moving inside her. The longer it went on, the more she found it wasn’t so bad. Actually, it was even a bit enjoyable – if the pinching tightness from her core were to eventually go away, she would be able to come undone like this and she began to understand why people thought sex was so bloody fantastic.
Because the full feeling of having him inside her was unlike anything else.
After several more slow thrusts Harry’s breath hitched and he quickened his pace before he came undone. His hands fisted the sheets tightly by her head, his dishevelled hair fell in his face as he gasped out her name along with a collection of expletives in groans. His head tilted back toward the ceiling of the tent as he came and his expression looked almost pained.
His whole body had tensed in his final quick thrusts and his hand on her clit fell away to brace himself tightly on her hip. Hermione watched him in awe, wondering if this was what she looked like when she came because the only word that crossed her mind as she looked up at him was beautiful. The heat at her center continued to burn as she felt him fill her up as he came inside her. When he finally stilled he dropped his head down to rest his forehead against hers as he panted, eyes still shut tightly. She watched him come down from his high, gripping his shoulders tight as his breathing started to slow and his pinched expression relaxed into what could only be defined as pure bliss.
“Sorry,” Harry murmured, his breath uneven and ragged. “I – I couldn’t stop myself from coming. Did – I – did I hurt you?”
“No,” she breathed against him before he gave her a slow and passionate kiss.
He dropped to his side and brought his hand back to her center. He traced his hand over her clit in slow circles as he kissed her lazily in contentment.
“Harry,” she said between their kisses. “You don’t have to – it’s okay.”
“I know,” he murmured as he grinned against her neck and he nipped her skin gently. “But I want to”.
Hermione shivered under him as he began to rub her clit in the way that he knew would make her come. He was still hard inside her, and she found that the tight feel of him there was only making the way that he was touching her feel even better. She writhed against his fingers and allowed the moans of pleasure to pour past her lips.
She clung to him tightly as he quickened his hand and brought her to orgasm. Without even realizing it she found that she was thrusting herself on Harry’s slowly softening member as she came and her body grew limp with exhaustion as she came down from her high. Harry was laying next to her and at some point, his cock had slipped from her channel. She rolled on to her side to face him as she tried to catch her breath, bringing her hand up to stroke the damp hair away from Harry’s eyes. She knew that her own curls were a wretched disaster at this point and they would be a lost cause until they were washed again.
They laid there quietly for several minutes, but she found that the silence wasn’t uncomfortable. Harry was running his hand up and down her upper arm while they looked at each other. She never would have thought that she could stare into someone else’s eyes for such a long time without it being awkward – but this wasn’t.
It felt surreal, and intimate and… perfect, her brain supplied. She could see everything in his eyes. His hope, his wants, his dreams. The way that he looked at her she could tell that he felt the same way as she did. He would do anything for her because he cared for her, he needed her, he – her brain stopped and her heart fluttered.
He loved her.
She could see it. It almost poured from his eyes. She swallowed hard, too nervous to think too long on that last one, but she could feel her heart bursting at the seams as she looked at him. Maybe it was her post-orgasm high, or the fact it was because she was laying next to Harry naked, but she could not stop the string of words as they floated to her mind.
I love him.
She knew that she did. She had for years, but back then it had been different. She loved him because he was her best friend, he was the person she could count on most and they were a team.
Though, that hasn’t changed, has it? she thought as she traced the contours of his face with her thumb. He’s still my best friend, he’s still the only person I can count on and we are still a team.
She still loved him like that... but now the words tugged deeper at her heart and they seemed to take on a whole new meaning. She could feel it deep down to the core of her being and she instinctively knew that it would never change. It couldn’t. They’d been through too much together, he was the only person who knew her and in some ways – this had been inevitable. She was surprised when her mouth opened and seemed to move on its own accord.
“Harry I –“ she paused as her voice caught in her throat. “You know that I–”
Harry laid there, his eyes unmoving from her face as he waited for her to finish. Hermione clenched her hands determinedly in the sheets, and her heart tightened in her chest as her eyes searched his face. She had decided not to waste the time that they knew they had with waiting for sex – and this should be no different. She wanted to make sure that she was able to tell him, so she forced herself to be brave one final time that night.
“I love you, Harry,” she whispered, and she felt her heart stutter with nervousness in her chest.
Harry’s hand stopped stroking her upper arm and for a second Hermione thought that she might be physically ill by his lack of response – then he pulled her tightly to his chest.
“I love you, Hermione,” he said gently in her ear as he held her close.
She felt her heart thud hard at his words and she buried her head against his chest as a smile broke out across her face. She could feel her eyes prickling with tears as her chest began to tighten.
She knew that this was probably an immature and childish declaration of love compared to what Molly and Arthur, or Tonks and Remus shared – but she didn’t care. They had been through so much, they had fought and stood by each other for years and she knew that she cared for him. Perhaps her love was young and immature, and perhaps it wouldn’t compare to that of others – but it didn’t make it any less real, and she needed Harry to know that he was loved.
That she loved him.
That she would continue to love him. She gripped him tightly as she laid in his arms, face pressed firmly to his chest, listening to his breathing. They laid in each other’s arms for several minutes, content, calm and relaxed with Harry squeezing her close until he abruptly pushed her back from him and met her gaze with anxious concern. She stared at him in confusion, wondering why he looked so tense and why he seemed slightly uncomfortable.
“Hermione – I – I didn’t, did you,” his words were flustered and stuttered, and a deep blush spread across his cheeks. “We didn’t use any contraceptives.”
“Oh,” Hermione let out a small laugh as a blush flooded her face and her confusion floated away. “Harry’s it’s okay – I should have said something earlier, I didn’t even think to mention it – I’m already on one. I took one during the summer.”
“Oh thank god,” Harry sighed in relief as he let out a deep breath. Then his brows furrowed in confusion. “Wait, not that I’m complaining – but why did you take a contraceptive potion?”
Hermione blushed deeply at his words and looked down at his chest before she responded.
“Mrs. Weasley,” she said with an embarrassed sort of shrug. “She made Ginny and I take one this summer before the wedding – she’d brewed a batch for all the girls – she even tried to get Fleur to take it in hopes that it might delay Bill and her from having a kid ‘too soon after just getting married’. But when Fleur found out that it would last for a year she refused.”
“It lasts for a year?” Harry asked somewhat incredulously.
“Yes,” Hermione laughed now as she realized that Harry didn’t know anything about it. “It’s the same one that Madam Pomfrey encourages all the girls to take at school starting in 6th year. Obviously, the teachers don’t condone sex while at school, but they’re not stupid and they know that it happens. So, to try and prevent teenage pregnancy, at the start of the semester each year Madam Pomfrey hands out contraception potions that last for the year. I took one in 6th year because it also helps with… other things – so when Mrs. Weasley pushed for us to take one during the summer I thought that it was a good idea since I wasn’t sure what was going to happen or if we’d be going back to Hogwarts. Otherwise I would have taken one of the ones that Madam Pomfrey handed out again.”
Harry nodded in understanding, not asking what Hermione meant by other things. She was grateful for that, as it saved her the conversation of how contraception potion helped regulate your period and hormones during your cycle. Not that she wasn’t comfortable talking to Harry about those things – just that right now she wanted to enjoy being close to him.
“Well, it’s a good thing that you’re on the ball,” Harry muttered as he pulled her back into him and held her tight. “I didn’t even think about it until after.”
Hermione laughed against his chest as they laid there a little while longer. After a while they both started to get cold, and Harry slowly untangled himself from her arms to pull on his jeans before heading to the bathroom. Hermione threw on her shirt and panties then used the bathroom once Harry was finished. She was surprised to find that her legs moved stiffly, and Harry asked her twice if she was sure she was okay as she passed him on her way to the bathroom.
She’d kissed him gently and reassured him that she was fine – and she was. She was stiff, yes, and she felt stretched and perhaps a bit sore – but she wasn’t hurt, and she definitely did not regret her decision. She imagined that the more you had sex the better it felt, and she couldn’t quite stop the blush and grin that spread across her face at the thought of being with Harry again.
He decided to take the first watch that night, and Hermione decided to sleep in his bunk after she quickly changed his sheets. She grinned as Harry dropped an extra blanket over her and kissed her slowly and deeply, stroking the side of her face gently before he pulled away.
“Wake me up if anything happens, okay?” Hermione called to him as he went to leave the tent.
“You know I will,” he called back with a small smile.
Hermione rolled to her side to watch the entrance of the tent before she fell asleep and she could not seem to stop smiling. She couldn’t stop thinking about what had just happened – that Harry and her were together, that she had fully reclaimed her confidence in her body after the brutal attack, and that she was no longer going to allow the war to dictate her life.
Hermione Granger is no longer a virgin, she thought as she closed her eyes and let out a contented sigh. It had never been an issue for her and it wasn’t something that she had been anxious to lose or anxious to change. It had never really even been a thought in her mind – but she was happy that it happened, because she was happy with how it had happened and who it had been with.
It was with Harry – her best friend and the person that she cared about more than anything in the world. She loved him, she would always love him and being with him was the most intimate and special thing she’d ever felt. She wouldn’t have wanted to experience that with anyone else. No, the sex itself hadn’t been perfect and she could feel a dull pain between her legs. But the moment was perfect, and she felt more alive than she had in months.
And she is no longer going to bow to her fears or let the war control her, she thought as a small smile tugged at her lips. She nuzzled her face into Harry’s pillow as comfort eased through her bones. It smelled of him, and the last thought she had before falling asleep was how perfect this Christmas had been.
Harry sat outside the tent on a large log that he had dragged over from some nearby trees. This log had not suffered the same fate as those at their last camping location – it was free of scratches and had not been exploded by their duelling practice. It was a surprisingly comfortable seat, so he made a mental note to keep this log as a lookout chair and to locate some different ones tomorrow for duelling practice.
The air was cold, quiet and still. Not a single movement except for the small cloud he made each time he exhaled could be seen. Harry hugged the jar of blue flames tightly to his chest, despite the chill he was content, happy and could not shake the smile that lingered on his lips.
Hermione loved him.
Hearing her say those words made his heart feel calm, and made his soul feel like it had a place to belong. After losing Sirius in fifth year Harry’s hope of having a family after Voldemort was defeated had slowly melted away. While he knew that he belonged in the Weasley family – Molly and Arthur had all but legally adopted him as their seventh son – he still felt a deep emptiness where he knew a sense of belonging should be. When he first got together with Ginny, he had once again gained that feeling of true belonging and it was the feeling that he had craved since those long, dark, cramped nights in his cupboard. However, when he and Ginny split up – despite it being completely mutual and what he knew they both wanted – he still could not help but feel like he had once again lost his place in the world and the opportunity to have a true family.
Though he knew that the Weasleys would still accept him even if he never married into the family, he could not help but wonder how close they would truly be once this war was over. A tiny part of him worried that his relationship with the Weasleys could be permanently damaged by his relationship with Hermione.
As he sat on his surprisingly comfortable unscathed log, thoughts of Ron popped into his head and a small part of him felt guilty – he had just had sex with the girl that Ron supposedly liked. He stared down at the jar of blue flames, watching it flicker gently as it cast shadows against his hands while he shook his head to dispel the guilt. The thought was somewhat ridiculous really, he knew that the guilt was unwarranted. While some would see him as a treacherous and perhaps backstabbing friend, Harry knew better. He hadn’t broken Ron’s trust by falling for Hermione and sleeping with her. Ron had never truly liked Hermione in the first place – at least not in that way and he knew it because they had spoken about Hermione a few times in their dormitory last year.
It was blatantly obvious that Ron’s feelings were largely based on the proximity between him and Hermione, and the fact that in the last year Hermione had grown ‘sort of nice tits’ – as Ron had so graciously put it. Combine that with her now noticeable slender and feminine waist and Ron was instantly interested from a physical perspective. Which was no surprise, Ron was much more at the mercy of his hormones than Harry seemed to be. The redhead had commented on several female classmates over the last twelve months and his interest always seemed to vary day by day depending who he spent more time with and who was wearing ‘particularly fit clothes’.
At the time Harry had never really paid it much attention because he’d had more important things going on. Now, looking back on it, the truth was Ron’s behaviour was a bit annoying.
Ron’s interest in Hermione had only started when she gained her more female figure and became appealing to look at from Ron’s perspective. Prior to that, Ron never even acknowledged Hermione as a female let alone as a potential suitor and he had often hurt her feelings by being rude or inconsiderate. The Yule ball was a prime example of that and thinking about it made him cringe. The two of them had absolutely nothing in common and they argued constantly as Ron continued to use Hermione for help with homework. If anything, ever had happened between them, it never would have lasted. Anyone with a brain could have seen that a relationship between his two friends would have been disastrous unless Ron magically matured overnight. Given some space and exposure to other women, Harry knew that Ron would latch on to the next girl just as easily.
Besides, Harry thought bitterly as he gripped the warm jar more tightly. I’m not sure I care if Ron’s upset, I’m not sure I even feel bad about it.
To be frank, at the moment Harry was not even sure that he considered Ron his friend anymore, and he knew that Hermione had forever changed the way that she viewed Ron as well. She wasn’t angry, she was just realistic, and she had detached herself from the situation. She had long ago started to cut the strings that attached her to Ron, and she was debatably more disconnected than Harry was. Ron leaving had seemed to break something within her, it had made her harder, colder, and much more realistic.
At the end of the day, Ron had abandoned them, plain and simple. He left them when they needed to stick together, when they needed to be strong – when they needed him most. He always knew that Ron was immature and a tad bit unreliable, but the boy’s choice to leave had been a hard blow to their friendship. It had made something deep within Harry snap and truth be told he felt like the damage was irreparable because this wasn’t the first time… but it had been the worst. So, if and when he ever saw Ron again, he wasn’t sure what they would be going forward.
They certainly wouldn't jump back into how things were before he left.
No, Harry thought as he gazed back out into the woods. Ron lost that right.
If he was ever to be a part of his or Hermione’s life again, he would need to start over and re-earn their trust. He would need to work his way slowly bit by bit into their lives – and knowing Hermione, it was possible that Ron would never be able to repair the damage he had done. While she didn’t exactly hold grudges, she did remember everything. And while she often offered forgiveness and understanding, Hermione did not confuse that with reconciliation or trust. She was strict, fierce and did not fuck around when it came to loyalty.
A small smile graced his lips when he thought back to Marrietta and the jinx that Hermione had placed on the DA sign up page. His heart fluttered when he thought of her fierce loyalty and determination – it was one of the things that he loved most about her.
Yes, he thought with a sigh. If Ron ever does come back, he is in for a rude awakening when it comes to Hermione. She will not go easy on him.
The truth was, it was difficult to feel guilt about what had happened between him and Hermione when everything had changed. It felt like a lifetime since Ron left and he and Hermione were both different people. Combine that with what had happened – an immature boy who had abandoned his best friends in their time of need – and with the things that Ron had said as he left… it was hard to give a shit about how he might feel. Harry knew that his only true regret would be if he were to lose the closeness with the Weasley family as a result.
He just hoped that Arthur and Molly were objective enough to understand what happened and that the one to cause the damage between them was Ron – but he would have to deal with that and deal with Ron at a later time. There was nothing he could do in the middle of the night sitting in the snow.
Instead, he allowed his mind to wander back to Hermione and the warmth of her touch against his skin and the words that she had allowed herself to speak. He had been a bit surprised by Hermione taking the bold step of acknowledging her feelings for him and he was even more surprised that she had actually decided to voice those feelings.
From the look that shone in her eyes, he knew that she meant it, and that she wanted him to know – needed him to know that he was loved. It made his heart ache with joy that she understood so easily how he felt and what he needed most above everything else – a place to belong, and a place to know he was wanted. It meant more to him than he would ever be able to explain in words that she had been willing to share her feelings with him despite her own fear and anxiety over the war.
He had meant it when he told her that she didn’t need to rush and that he was genuinely happy with whatever she was willing to give him. That said, he certainly wasn’t going to complain about the events of this evening. It was by far the best Christmas that he had ever had in his life, and he couldn't stop thinking about the feel of Hermione’s soft skin against his body or the way that she had trembled under his touch as she pulled him closer.
He had been completely caught off guard by how fucking amazing sex felt too. He knew that it would feel good but holy shit, he really did not expect the heat or how tight the clamp of her walls against him would be.
Or how bloody brilliant it felt to move inside her, his mind offered as he sat there staring into the night. His body still tingled from the intense climax he’d had; it was definitely the hardest he had ever come in his life. Honestly, he was a bit concerned that he might have blown some blood vessels during the experience. And that was just the physical side. Being inside her like that, moving with her, against her, in her and being that close – he felt a shiver run down his spine as he recounted it. He felt closer to her than ever – and he knew that he never wanted to go back to anything else.
His eyes scanned the wooded area around him as he remembered the look on Hermione’s face when he had finally managed to find that little bundle of nerves inside her. After their snogging sessions, he had started to do some reading on female anatomy – for educational reasons of course. He was never planning to push Hermione into anything until she instigated it, but he wanted to be prepared. Maybe it sounded clinical and perhaps some of the guys from school would have laughed at him, but he didn’t care. It had clearly been worth it.
He couldn't stop the self-satisfying smirk that graced his lips when he thought about the other boys his age who had fumbled around during their first time and how he had managed, for the most part, not to be one of them. He’d heard stories in the boys’ dormitories about some pretty rough first experiences – and he was very happy that he had decided to take a leaf from Hermione’s book and do some research on the topic beforehand. He cringed at the idea of having his first time end in tears and embarrassment like it had for Seamus – who had apparently gotten drunk at his family’s Christmas get together in sixth year, accidentally hooked up with a distant cousin, and then ended up coming in her eye after trying to pull out after two thrusts when the girl had smacked him and said it hurt too much.
He sighed and ran his hand through his hair.
He had been a bit worried that he might have hurt Hermione when he lost control at the end and thrust into her quickly – but she had reassured him that she was unharmed. From the expression on her face during, he could tell that she was intrigued by the activity – but he suspected that she did not particularly enjoy it. That said, she didn’t seem to be in pain during it either.
He made a mental note to ask her next time what felt good or if there was any other way that he could do it to make it feel a bit better for her. It felt a bit unfair that he was in such extreme pleasure, and she was left feeling unsure of it while tolerating what was probably uncomfortable. Apparently, it got better the more you did it – so said Lee Jordan. But until that happened, he felt better knowing that he had been able to make her come while he was still inside her and her gentle thrusting against his softening member left him hopeful that this could become an enjoyable experience for both of them someday.
Truth be told, he hadn't expected her to want to go that far so soon, but her reasons were practical and logical – just like her. And it exactly complemented his reasons for wanting to be with her. He didn’t know how much time he would have with her, or if they would make it through the war and he believed that having her at his side made him feel stronger, it made him motivated to keep trying.
The events of Godric’s Hollow had highlighted his single biggest flaw and thinking about it made him groan as he rubbed his hands across his face. His mind was weak to Voldemort and if he could not find a way to close it, it would be their downfall. He should have tried harder to learn occlumency when Snape had tried to teach him in fifth year. While he adamantly maintained that Snape had been a right bastard in his training approach, he could not deny the fact that he hadn’t tried as hard as he could have either. This was his fault and he needed to fix it.
Their modified training routine would help. Not only would he work to strengthen their shield charm against physical attacks, not only would they increase their workouts and make their duels more elaborate – he would add in more meditation and occlumency. Even though neither of them could use legilimens to test it, it didn’t matter. He would do it anyway, and he would learn to control his mind. What happened at Bathilda Bagshot’s would never happen again. Never. He couldn’t let it, because the next time Hermione might get hurt. She had already come close to dying due to his incompetence… it wouldn’t happen again.
He was taken from his thoughts when he felt a small breeze float past his cheek and a whisper of a touch against the outermost protective alarm. It felt like something had brushed up against the perimeter of the alarm but didn’t cross through the shield.
He tensed on his spot, tightening his grip on Hermione’s wand and squinting his eyes to see into the dark of the forest. He stood slowly and sidestepped silently toward the door of the tent. His eyes darted around as he strained his ears to listen for any unusual sounds, but the silence of the forest was deafening, and his ears felt like they were starting to ring. The first alarm had been set 600 meters out, so he had time to react and to warn Hermione if something happened. So far, he couldn’t hear or see anything, and a quick detection spell showed no evidence of anything alive being present. When he felt the gentle brush on the shield for the second time, he slowly backed toward the tent to get Hermione.
-x-x-
Hermione was woken from a deep sleep by the faint brushing of something against the outermost alarm spell. It felt like a light breeze or a feather had touched her mind. The touch had been gentle and cautious, it didn’t feel like someone had blindly stumbled upon the alarm without knowing it was there. Whatever it was – it didn’t breach the shield, so the alarm had not been fully set off.
She had tied her alarms to Harry so that he could feel them too and she was sure that he must have felt the contact. She pushed her messy curls from her face and rubbed her eyes, sitting up quickly on Harry’s bunk and placing her feet on the freezing floor. Whatever had brushed gently against her spell must have sensed it beforehand as the touch was almost tentative and unsure, if not inquisitive – which made her brow furrow as her tired mind raced to try and figure out what might have happened.
She stood up fast, grabbed her purse from the nightstand and wandlessly summoned a pair of pants, socks, the locket and her warm tight-fitting long-sleeved sweater. They had left the locket in her purse for the day so they could have a break from it – which turned out well given the activities that they had partaken in. But she, like Harry, did not trust leaving it in her purse unattended for too long.
She dressed quickly and was pulling on her last sock when she felt a gentle brush against the shield for a second time. Her head darted up toward the door, her eyes wide with caution – she needed to go get Harry, something was going on. Despite how tired her body felt from their earlier activities, she grabbed her jacket and boots and walked toward the exit. She made it almost to the tent door when she saw Harry backing inside the tent, holding the flame jar at his side and her wand tightly in his raised hand.
"Harry," she said in a low whisper as she began to pull her curls into a loose braid at the back of her neck.
Harry turned his head a fraction, indicating that he had heard her, but he did not remove his eyes from the tent doorway.
"You felt it too?" He whispered back.
"Yeah,” she said as she began to pull on her boots, lacing them quickly and standing to put on her jacket. “Did you hear anything out there, or see anything?”
“No,” he said quietly, and she could see his brow furrow slightly. “It’s dead quiet out there to the point that it’s deafening. Something just brushed the alarm twice, but it didn’t go off. I cast a detection spell, but nothing showed – do you think someone might have noticed our shields and they’re lingering on the edge of our secure zone?”
“I'm not sure,” she stated slowly as she approached to stand at Harry’s side and look out the door of the tent. The cold air woke whatever remained of her sleepy state and she felt alert as the cold stung her cheeks. Her breath puffed out when she whispered next to his side. “If someone is lingering on the outskirts, Harry – we need to go. Whatever that was – it was purposeful, the touch wasn’t careless and it wasn’t an accident, the alarm would have been set-off if it was.”
Harry nodded silently beside her, his eyes still scanning the dark forest that surrounded them.
“We should pack up then,” he whispered after a moment and finally turned to face her. Hermione could see the concern in his eyes. “Here, take your wand and get started – I’ll grab what I can by hand.”
Hermione nodded once in affirmation and began to summon the loose items from the tent and pack them into her purse. They moved silent as the night, unspeaking and focused. Harry had collected the books she had left out and several other items from around the tent. In a few short minutes they had everything inside the tent packed away and Hermione was walking to join Harry at the entrance when they both froze – their eyes locked intently, and Hermione shivered.
There was a brush against the second alarm at 400m out. The hair on the back of her neck stood, and she walked rapidly toward Harry, seeing the tight line of his jaw as he clenched his teeth.
“I’ll get the north side, you get the south,” he directed as he moved to begin collecting tent pegs.
Hermione moved quickly, each step purposeful as she went to the south side of the tent to remove the sticking charms and pull out the tent pegs. She shivered again as she felt the gentle feather-like touch brush against her 300m alarm, the contact was so soft and gentle she couldn’t figure out what it was or what was happening. There was definitely contact, something was absolutely making its way through her alarms and its pace was quickening, but whatever it was couldn’t be alive or it would have set off the charms.
Thankfully, they were both capable of completing these basic spells without wands, so when she met Harry back at the entrance, he had completed the north side of the tent with no issue. They both tensed and looked at each other with concern as the 200 meter alarm was brushed with the same light contact. Hermione raised her wand quickly and cast the spell to collapse the tent as Harry opened her purse for her to pack up the disassembled and shrunken tent inside.
Whatever it was that was moving toward them was picking up its pace – almost like its first movements through the alarms had been cautious to ensure nothing was set off. She had just finished storing the tent when she felt the last alarm brushed. Hermione stood quickly at Harry’s side, her left hand grasping his tightly as she raised her wand in front of them. She was just about to apparate them away when Harry spoke in a low and urgent whisper.
“Wait,” he said as he gripped her hand tightly.
“Harry what –“ her words died on her lips when she turned to look at Harry, but her eyes caught the bright silvery-white object that Harry was staring at to his left. They stood perfectly still; hands tightly clasped as the light approached them until its form became clear. “A patronus?”
“A doe,” Harry said quietly as he looked at the beautiful creature that stood about 20 meters in front of them now. The patronus had stopped its approach and appeared to be cautiously lingering by a tree as it stared at them.
That makes sense, Hermione thought as she looked at the doe but kept her wand raised and her ears focused for any sound around them. A patronus wouldn’t set off the alarms that she had set as it was not alive. The alarms she had been using alerted of breeches by any living creature – aside from the natural wildlife that she had made exceptions for, not wanting them to be woken up anytime a mouse ran past the perimeter or a bird swooped in and out – but she had never considered a patronus when she constructed the alarms. The doe took a few tentative steps forward and tilted its head gently as it looked at them, then began walking slowly to the right before it stopped and looked back at them as if waiting.
“Harry,” Hermione spoke in her low whisper. “Do you think it has a message for us? I don’t know anyone who has a doe patronus – do you?”
“No,” Harry said slowly, as a frown crossed his face. “But I think it wants us to follow it.”
Hermione exhaled in frustration, her warm breath clouding in front of her face as she tried to calm the nerves that began to twist within her stomach. She knew that Harry was right. The patronus was clearly motioning for them to follow by cautiously walking toward them, then moving further to the right and stopping each time to look over its shoulder at them as if waiting. The doe never got closer than 20 meters away and it seemed patient in its motions.
“Harry, I don’t know,” she said cautiously as she looked between the doe and his face. “This could be Godric’s Hollow all over again – what if this is just another trap, who would send a patronus here and why?”
“I know,” he said slowly as he watched the deer. She could tell that he was thinking things through as he stood quietly for a moment before he gripped her hand more tightly and spoke. “It doesn’t feel like Bathilda’s though, does it? I mean I don’t know anyone who has a doe patronus but – this feels familiar, calm – I can’t explain it, but I don’t have any sort of sense that it wants to cause harm. Whoever cast it either sent it from afar to send a message of some sort – or they’re waiting on the edge of our alarms because they can’t get to us without setting them off.”
“I agree,” she breathed quietly as she looked into the pale eyes of the doe before them. She sighed again. “Okay – fuck, okay – so what do you think we should do? If it has a message, it would have come to us by now, so it’s clearly trying to lead us somewhere. I agree that it doesn’t feel like Bathilda’s but that doesn’t mean that it’s safe. I don’t want to walk into another trap – but I also don’t want us to apparate away from someone who might be here to help us.”
She gripped Harry’s hand more firmly as she rolled the options over in her mind.
“It’s possible,” she continued. “That the doe belongs to someone we know, but whose patronus we haven’t seen before. We don’t know Molly’s – it’s possible it could even be hers. I just don’t know Harry.”
Harry had squeezed her hand once in return and took a tentative step toward the doe.
“I think we should follow it,” he paused slightly when he heard Hermione exhale in frustration again. He knew she was torn – there was no winning in this situation and with no clear logical choice he knew that she would struggle to make a decision. The fact was – if it was a trap and they walked directly into it they could be completely fucked. But, if it was a friend who had come to them and they walked away from it they could also be completely fucked. It was possible that a friend had finally located them and came with either supplies or information, both of which were critical and there was no guarantee that whoever it was would be able to find them again. And he knew that Hermione knew this. “We can cast our shield charms, we’ll move slow and cautious, cast detection spells every few meters and maintain contact. If anything happens, we leave right away. I just – if it’s friendly and we leave we might never meet up again and what if they’re here with something we need?”
“I know,” Hermione ground out through her teeth. “I thought the same thing – I just can’t believe we’re doing this again – fuck, why is nothing ever simple.”
“Why is it always us,” Harry whispered back with a nervous smile, sounding so much like Professor McGonagall had back in sixth year. Hermione couldn’t help the small smile that tugged across her lips at his comment.
“Well – at least we’ll never be able to say our lives were boring,” she sighed as she stepped forward to stand next to him again and stood as close to him as possible. Harry used his free hand to grip her forearm through her coat, and now, holding her with both hands, he pulled them even closer together. Then, they both took another step toward the doe.
The doe had been watching their exchange patiently and once they took a few steps towards it, it had turned to face forward and began walking toward the outer edge of their alarms. Every so often Harry and Hermione stopped to cast homenum revelio while never letting go of each other’s hand and each time the doe waited for them to complete their spell before moving forward again. When they were within 50 meters of their last alarm they stopped and crouched low to the ground, their homenum revelio revealed nothing and they still could not hear or see anything in front of them. If someone was waiting for them on the other side of the alarm, they were not anywhere close to it.
“We’ll cast the shields now,” Hermione whispered as she pointed her wand at herself and whispered Plenus-Protego-corPus-LoComotor.
The familiar purple spell quickly incased her body before becoming transparent, then she handed her wand to Harry for him to cast his own. She noted that the doe appeared to be watching them with interest as they each cast their shields – its head was once again tilted to the side, long-lashed eyes staring at them almost curiously. Once both shields were fully engaged, they each set an internal timer and stood to begin following the doe at their slow and steady pace. As they crossed over the final alarm threshold Hermione cast another detection spell to ensure that no one was hiding nearby – and much to her surprise, once again nothing was revealed.
The doe continued to lead them for another 100 meters until it moved out on top of a large frozen pond, its gentle hooves leaving no prints in the snow. It stood over the pond on a patch of cleared ice, pawed gently at the surface and then began to fade away – the bright light of its silvery form disappearing into the dark night.
Hermione raised her lit wand to illuminate the surface of the pond before she prodded it gently with her foot. There was no doubt that the surface was frozen solid, with the cold weather they had been having this pond would be sturdy as the stone floors of Hogwarts. They both took a step out onto the ice and paused as if waiting for something to happen – but nothing did. Continuing to grip each other tightly they made their way to the center of the pond to the clear patch on which the doe had previously stood. As they closed the last few steps Hermione saw it – the silver glint of what looked like a cross and she heard Harry gasp as he pulled her forward over the last 3 steps.
“Hermione,” he said in disbelief as they both lowered themselves down to kneel on the ice. “It’s the sword – it – I – I can’t believe this, it’s the fucking sword!”
He was whispering but she could hear the excitement and release of tension in his voice. If this was an ambush it would have happened already. The second that they were free of the alarms and wandering through the open forest they would have been attacked. She knew Harry had determined this as well, but she cast one final detection charm to soothe her inner worry and sure enough, nothing came back. It would be ridiculously unlikely for someone to spend the effort to lure them here, place the sword of Gryffindor under the ice and wait for them to find it only to then attack them.
That wouldn’t make any sense, she thought as she shone her wand light down at the sword. No, whoever brought us here is a friend – or at least not a foe. Whoever cast that doe wanted to help us.
“Whoever left this here – the doe – they meant for us to find it,” she said quietly as she began examining the ice to check the thickness. “We’ll need to melt the ice to get to it.”
“Let’s cut a hole and see if we can summon it,” Harry nodded as they both stood quickly so Hermione could cut a hole directly above the sword.
The ice melted away easily as she traced a circle on it – but the sword did not come as she tried to summon it.
“Accio sword,” she whispered as she pointed her wand determinedly at the glinting handle. “Accio sword of Gryffindor – Accio – Accio Gryffindor sword.”
Harry frowned as he watched the red glinting rubies remain unmoving at the bottom of the dark pond.
“I think we have to go down there and get it,” he said slowly as he pinched the bridge of his nose briefly. “I remember Dumbledore mentioning that the sword presents itself in a time of need when a Gryffindor shows bravery – but why would the sword be summoned under a pond?”
“I’m not sure that it was summoned, Harry,” Hermione said as she turned to look at him. “The sword presents itself if you show bravery, yes – but we haven’t shown any bravery, we were led to it. Someone – or something – has placed this here. But I suppose that in order for us to take it – maybe we have to show bravery? Otherwise, maybe we cannot keep the sword. Maybe it would just disappear?”
“Well, either way we have to go get it,” Harry looked at her with a small frown. “I’ll go get it, you can stay up here with your wand and keep watch.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Harry – I’m the better swimmer, I’ll go get the sword,” Hermione said as she stood quickly and began to unzip her jacket.
She would go get the sword, not only because she was the stronger swimmer but also because Harry had already been through enough in Godric’s Hollow and frankly, he was more important in this war than she was. It was the reason why Dumbledore had included her and Ron on this mission in the first place. They were here to help and protect Harry – to keep him safe. Dumbledore never outright gave the order to Ron or Hermione, but Hermione wasn’t stupid. She had figured that out on her own and she knew the role that he had intended her to play in this war. She was meant to watch over Harry, keep him safe and ensure that he was successful in hunting Horcruxes. Besides, she knew that she would never be able to drag him out of the water without magic and based on the summoning charm not working she was concerned that this could be a real problem once the sword was in hand.
“Hermione, no,” Harry had grabbed her arms to stop her as she dropped her coat to the ice. “I’ll go – you don’t need to do this for me –“
“It’s not about doing it for you, Harry,” Hermione cut him off with a stern look. “You’ll be better above the ice. You’re a better dueller in case someone approaches, your shield will last a bit longer than mine, you’re physically stronger than I am – I wouldn’t be able to drag you out if something went wrong. What if I couldn’t summon you out once you had the sword? What if we have to get this completely without magic? I know I’m stronger now than before, but Harry, I can’t drag you out of freezing water. I need you up here to watch over me and to make sure that we’re both safe.”
Harry looked at her for a long moment before he closed his eyes tightly and exhaled deeply in frustration.
“Fine,” he bit out before he pulled her into a tight hug. “But be careful, please Hermione – I – I can’t do this without you.”
“I will,” Hermione squeezed him back tightly, his familiar scent calming her anxious nerves before she pulled back and looked into his eyes.
She reached her hand up and gently stroked the side of his face before placing a gentle, slow kiss to his lips. Harry gripped her upper arms tightly and pulled her closer, deepening the kiss for a moment before pushing her back and fixing her with an intense look.
“Be quick,” he said as his chest heaved.
“I will.”
Hermione took another step back and cast several warming charms on herself before removing her boots and jeans. She hissed at the cold as her feet touched the snow-covered ice and the freezing air struck her legs as she stood before the opening in the pond in only her panties, and her snug fitting long sleeved shirt. She cast two more warming charms before she passed her wand to Harry. Checking her internal timer, she noted that her shield charm would only last for another two minutes and with any luck she would be out of the pond by then. She briefly contemplated waiting and recasting it – but she decided against it in case Harry had to try to use magic to pull her out. She wasn’t sure how the shield would handle being hit with a summoning charm, and she made a mental note to experiment with that later. They both crouched by the edge of the opening and Hermione took several deep breaths to calm her racing heart.
“I’ll see you in a second,” she said with a small smile before taking a deep breath and slipping into the inky black water. When the water surrounded her two immediate thoughts popped into her head. First was, Holy fucking Merlin’s balls it’s cold! And the second was, Thank goodness that thing glows, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to see shit down here.
The cold-water bit angrily at her skin, making her heart stammer in her chest and her eyes whine in pain as she kept them open to be able to see. She dove forward and forced her aching legs to kick toward the sword and her trembling arms to pull her forwards. If she ever saw her parents again after this, she would need to thank them for insisting that she take swimming lessons and pushing her to continue until she was competent. She could see the faint glint of the light from her wand as Harry tried to shine it for her so she could see better.
A small part of her lamented over not having her wand on her person – but they needed protection above the ice and frankly she did not trust bringing her wand down here. If she lost it, they would be completely and utterly screwed since it was their last remaining wand.
She was two feet from the sword and the water was agony. She kicked three more times and outstretched her hand, her fingers stretching as she reached for the hilt. It glinted in the faint wand light that Harry shone through the water. Her fingers brushed the sword and she managed to close her hand tightly around the hilt. She placed her feet on the rocky bottom and was about to push herself back toward the surface when she felt it – the tight tug around her neck as the chain from the locket constricted against her windpipe.
FUCK – her free hand shot up to her neck, gripping at the chain, desperately trying to loosen its hold. She had completely forgotten that she was wearing it, the locket must have sensed the sword and now the cursed thing was going to strangle and drown her to death. She could feel the shield charm fighting against the pressure on her neck, but there was only a few seconds left on her timer.
She managed a small kick off the bottom of the pond, but the locket twisted tighter, and she struggled to kick her legs as the chain around her neck began to burn into her skin as her shield charm ran out. It twisted until it forced her to choke out the little remaining air that she had. It was wrapped so tightly now that she outright gagged and her vision started to blur. Black dots started to form at the corner of her eyes as her legs kicked lamely behind her.
I’m going to die down here, she thought as her vision faded to black.
-x-x-
Harry knelt at the edge of the hole in the ice after Hermione had slipped into the water. He pointed the light from her wand down into the inky depths in an effort to help her see – with the bright shine from the sword he figured she would have a clear path since he wasn’t able to see any water weeds or other obstructions from the surface. Glancing up around them Harry quickly surveyed the forest around them – it was still deadly quiet, and the air was calm in the blackened woods. Looking back down in the water he saw Hermione’s slender body and perfect form – she was halfway to the sword already and she had closed the distance in a fraction of the time it would have taken him.
She truly was the better swimmer. His hands gripped the edge of the ice as he watched her take the final few strokes toward the sword, hand outstretched to grab it. She was far enough down now that it was getting harder to see her, but he watched her overall movements the best he could and he felt his heart quicken and heard himself sigh audibly in relief when it looked like she had the sword.
He watched in anticipation, waiting for her to start rising to the surface. But the small grin that had been on his face when she had grabbed the sword started to fall when he realized that she wasn’t moving up and his heart caught in his chest. It looked like she was kicking wildly near the bottom.
“FUCK!” he shouted as dread began to fill his heart. “Accio Hermione – Accio sword!”
Nothing happened.
Hermione had been right – whoever set this up intended for them to obtain the sword without magic. Without a moment’s hesitation he ripped off his jacket and glasses and cast a strong warming charm before he dove headfirst into the pond. The water was frigid, and he felt his body seize as the ice-cold cut deeply into his skin. His muggle jeans were heavy as he kicked and swam desperately down toward Hermione. Her motions had slowed, her hand was on the locket chain that had wound tightly around her neck and the sword remained in the death grip of her right hand. He kicked furiously, his heart pounding, and his eyes stinging as his chest constricted so tightly he thought he might die on spot when he saw the final twitching jerk of her leg before her movements stopped completely.
He reached her body in two powerful kicks, tried to cast a bubble charm on her head and grabbed her firmly around the waist. Pushing off the bottom with as much force as he had he began kicking and pointed her wand up to the surface. He cast ascendio and felt a tug on his body as they blasted through the water. He wasn’t sure why this spell had worked while a summoning spell had not, but they rocketed upward, moving faster than a hippogriff in flight before they burst through the hole and landed hard on the ice.
Coughing, Harry quickly got to his knees and cast wordless warming charms as he rolled Hermione on to her back. She wasn’t moving, and her lips had begun to turn blue. The locket chain was still wound tightly around her neck, so he grabbed it to pull it loose and found it unyielding. He reached for the sword that was gripped tightly in her hand, pried it from her fingers and slid it away on the surface of the ice toward the collection of Hermione’s clothes and purse. With her body now free of the sword the locket chain fell limp against her neck. Harry cast two more warming charms on Hermione as he leaned down to check her pulse by hand and cast a quick diagnostic spell – but there wasn’t one. Not a single beat.
“Oh god no,” his voice broke as his stomach lurched with the threat of vomit. The finger that rested against her neck felt nothing but cold and the diagnostic confirmed that she was not breathing, and her heart had stopped.
Without a second’s hesitation he reflectively pointed her wand directly at her chest and cast the spell that Hermione had taught him for shocking and restarting hearts. It hit her hard in the center of her chest. He watched in awe as her back arched, her body tensed, and her bloodshot eyes snapped wide open as her face strangled into a pained expression before she inhaled deeply and began to cough violently. Water poured from her mouth as Harry gripped her tightly and rolled her to her side – pulling the Horcrux over her head and tossing it around his own neck.
“You’re okay – it’s okay, it’s okay. I’ve got you, fuck – Hermione, oh my god, I thought I’d lost you,” he couldn’t stop the ramble that poured from his mouth.
He pulled her up from the cold ice to lean her against his chest as he wrapped his arms around her small frame, running his hands up and down her sides to warm her. He cast another warming charm around them as her coughing slowly began to subside. She was gripping his chest tightly, clinging to him for warmth as her breath came in ragged pulls. They sat there for several minutes before her breathing started to regulate and she pulled back to look at him.
“I’m sorry, Harry,” she struggled to force out the words. “I forgot about the locket – I – I should have taken it off before. Thank you, thank you for coming to get me.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he pulled her tightly to his chest again and kissed the top of her head over and over. “Do not be sorry, Hermione. Absolutely not, don’t be sorry – you’re so strong. I’m so glad you’re alright – I – I thought I might lose you again.”
“Not today,” she choked out a small laugh against his chest before she sat back once more and placed a kiss on his jaw. Her breathing had calmed, her eyes were still bloodshot, her hair was a sopping mess, but she still was the most beautiful human that Harry had ever set eyes on. “Thank you, Harry – thank you for acting so quickly – but just so you know, holy shit that spell hurts. It’s fucking awful, but still – better than dying I guess.”
Harry smiled at her as his racing heart finally began to slow, he choked out a single laugh when she chuckled half-heartedly at her own joke before she smiled up at him.
“Let’s get you in dry clothes,” Harry said as he untangled himself from Hermione and she nodded.
He summoned her clothes from the pile by the sword then cast a few warming charms on them before he began to try and dry her off. Hermione stood shakily with Harry’s help and slipped on her clothes as Harry cast a drying charm on her hair then a few more on himself before slipping his jackets back on.
He ended up helping Hermione with the zipper on her jacket as her hands were shaking too much from the cold and exhaustion that now plagued her body. Once they were bundled up, Harry took her hand and walked towards the sword of Gryffindor that shone brightly on the surface of the ice. As they approached, Hermione quickly dropped Harry’s hand and picked up the sword in both of her own, ensuring that she stopped a few feet back from Harry.
“Let’s not repeat that again,” she said sagely as she eyed the locket that Harry now wore. “They can obviously sense objects that threaten them – and they clearly have the capacity to fight back.”
“No kidding,” Harry said with a grimace, noting how hoarse her voice sounded. “Let’s get this thing over and done with, and then get out of here.”
With that they both walked slowly off the ice and toward a small rock at the side of the pond. Harry stopped before it, removed the Horcrux from his neck and placed it on the rock. Then he turned to Hermione.
“I’m sorry, what?” Hermione asked in disbelief as she stared at Harry with wide eyes. The sword was heavy in her shaking arms and her chest felt as if someone had split it open like a watermelon. Her eyes hurt, her body ached from oxygen deprivation, her head was pounding, and she was still cold from being in an ice pond.
“I want you to destroy it,” Harry repeated as he looked at her intently. His face was earnest if not slightly pleading. “I think you should do it, not only because it just tried to kill you but also because I think it’s important that you do it. You got the sword out of the pond – it needs to be you; I know it does.”
He truly does think I should do it, Hermione thought as she took a breath and winced at the pain coursing through her body.
She’d just been hit with the equivalent to a muggle defibrillator across the chest and the lingering pain was awful, especially when she breathed too deeply. Which was difficult not to do since she was so bloody exhausted. The tingling sensation in her arms and fingers was distracting and somewhat excruciating – a lingering side effect doubled in intensity by her time spent exposed under ice water. She suspected the sensation would linger for a day, possibly two, until her body healed from having her heart restarted magically but she tried to ignore it when she gripped the hilt of the sword more tightly.
“Harry,” she said slowly as she twisted the sword around between her hands. “I don’t know if I can – I – I’m so exhausted, Harry. I’m not sure that I have it in me.”
While her words were true and reason enough not to destroy the locket, she neglected to bring up the fact that she did not want to – that the idea of killing a Horcrux made her stomach roll over with nausea while her heart pounded. After seeing the effects that the locket had on people while they wore it, she did not want to think about what it would do if she tried to kill it. It had nearly strangled her to death only moments ago when she made contact with a weapon capable of banishing it, so she was terrified of what might happen if she actually tried to hit the locket with it.
“You can do it,” Harry smiled gently before he dug into her purse that he’d still been holding and summoned out a small bottle of calming draught and pepperup potion. “Take these first, they’ll help – but you should do this, Hermione. I know you're exhausted, I know you just want to go to bed – and you bloody well deserve to – I just – I can’t explain it, I just know it needs to be you.”
Hermione accepted the two bottles from Harry and drained each of them slowly. The warmth from the pepperup potion hit her quickly and her eyes fluttered closed as she felt the tension in her chest start to dissipate. Harry knew that she was exhausted, so if he was pushing for her to do this then she knew it was both important to him and required. Harry had always seemed to have some sort of connection to Voldemort and the Horcruxes, so she tended to trust his judgement on them when he made a request.
She felt the warmth from the pepperup potion flow down to her toes and she allowed her shoulders to drop as the calming draught started to take effect. Harry wouldn’t ask me to do this unless he felt that I had to, she thought and she relaxed her tense back muscles. She took a deep breath and then forced her eyes open.
“Alright fine,” she said quietly, now beginning to feel the effects of the calming draught on her nerves. “Let’s get this done and get out of here.”
Harry nodded firmly before turning back to face the locket and preparing to open it. Hermione instinctively raised the sword up to waist height, preparing herself to strike the object. She bit down the pain in her shoulders and chest, trying to steady her hands as they trembled under the weight of the blade. If not for the calming draught, her heart would be pounding right now. Hermione was no doctor, but she knew that allowing her heart to race out of control after it had only just been restarted was definitely not medically recommended.
In fact, it would probably be frowned upon, she thought as she held her stance.
“Make sure to stab it quickly,” Harry said as his hands held the locket poised to open and he looked over his shoulder at her. His jaw was tight with concern and she knew that he was nervous for her. “Whatever is in here will attack – the Tom Riddle in the diary tried to kill me in the Chamber of Secrets, and this thing has already gone after you once – so don’t hesitate. Are you ready?”
Hermione nodded once firmly. The quiet of the forest was ringing in her ears and making her hands tremble further. She felt light-headed and sore but she forced her bloodshot eyes to focus on the golden locket in Harry's hands. Her heart, while still controlled, began to beat more quickly in her chest as she heard Harry speaking in parseltongue – then the locket popped open with a click to reveal a handsome eye. It must have been Tom Riddle’s from before it turned red and haunted.
Hermione raised the sword to strike, taking a step forward to close the distance so she could drop it down in one clean strike – but she froze as black grotesque bubbles started to pour from the locket and a terrifying voice echoed around them and shook her to her very soul. A shiver ran down her spine, and terror hit her core as she heard the words the locket spoke echoing through the cold air.
I have seen your dreams, Hermione Granger, it hissed and she felt the urge to vomit. And I have seen your fears. All you desire will not come to pass – what you dread will be your truth. A mudblood, so desperate to belong – discarded by her own disgusting muggle-kind yet unwelcomed by the magical. You don’t belong anywhere.
An abomination!
So desperate to prove herself, to show her worth. Pathetic! So eager to prove that you deserve your magic. But you don’t – and you know that you don’t. You’ve failed, just like how you were always going to fail!
The disgusting black bubbles poured out more quickly and began to take shape, Hermione’s eyes widened with fear as she saw the twisted and disturbing figures of her parents standing before her.
Your parents are lost, the voice was cruel and cutting. She could feel it beneath her skin, rippling in her chest and creeping up the base of her neck. You weren’t able to save them – I’ve taken them.
YOU’VE FAILED!
The voice cackled in madness, echoing around the forest, surrounding her, suffocating her as she heard the desperate voices of her parents’ pleas for help. Her heart filled with dread as she saw her parents’ anguished expressions of pain and hatred.
How could you leave us Hermione! You left us! You betrayed our trust, you failed us!
The voices continued and became intermingled with screams of terror as more voices joined in. She heard Professor McGonagall, Dumbledore, Ginny and countless others as they bore into her mind asking her why she had failed, telling her that she had betrayed their trust as they called her mudblood. They told her that she didn’t belong – that she never had and that she did not deserve her magic. They screamed that she wasn’t worthy and that she never had been.
She could feel her mind being consumed.
Her breath came in quick short rasps as her heart thudded at an alarming rate. She was overwhelmed with doubt and her worst fears – her vision blurred as the disgusting black goo morphed into Harry. He was on his knees, gasping for breath as the voices continued to chant behind her – calling out her every flaw. It screamed her every mistake and played to every insecurity she had buried deep within herself. Then, there was a gaping hole in Harry’s chest and his eyes were glassy as they stared up at her in desperation.
Hermione, the form of Harry choked out as the figure clutched the bloody gaping hole at its chest. You’ve failed, you’ve failed, you’ve failed me.
Her blood ran cold as her chest constricted in agony and her heart raced further. Her mind was lost to the chanting that surrounded the forest, the edges of her vision faded as she watched Harry die before her over and over again. She had failed him, and he had died because of her.
Hermione gasped for breath. It felt like her chest was going to explode in agony. She couldn’t take this anymore, she couldn’t watch, she couldn’t listen, she couldn't move – then a warm, strong and desperate voice filled her ears, cutting through the death and coldness of the locket that had surrounded her.
“HERMIONE! KILL IT!” Harry screamed. The real Harry, not the disgusting and disfigured form before her. “KILL IT NOW! YOU CAN DO THIS!”
His voice seemed to clear her mind and Hermione clenched her jaw as her hands tightened around the hilt of the sword. She forced herself to focus on the real Harry’s voice which continued to call to her and she forced the repulsive chanting of the bodiless voices echoing from the locket out of her head. She ripped her eyes from the locket to look at Harry who was half laying on the ground fighting to hold the locket steady as the black goo poured out of it, he was looking up at her determinedly. He was very much alive. He was fierce, bright, strong and looking at her with so much emotion it made her soul ache and her mouth open as she forced air into her unbreathing lungs in a deep and painful cry.
She rounded on the locket, her hair wild as it blew in the wind that had picked up around them. Her bloodshot eyes burned as she stared down at the disgusting trinket and her heart thudded as her nerves turned to stone.
“You won’t win!” she snarled at the locket with raw, unrestrained rage. She forced her legs to move the last step toward it. It felt like they weighed a hundred pounds each as she slid them forward across the ice and fought against the sheer force of the locket. “It’s over! You can’t defeat us–“
She felt a strong push against her body by some unseen force as the chanting voices grew louder and the words ‘Dirty USELESS Mudblood’ began to scream in her ears. She gritted her teeth and raised the sword.
“FUCK YOU!” she screamed as she swung the sword up violently and then brought it crashing down in one hard motion that used every fiber of her being.
The sword cut through the black goo figures and made contact with the locket. She felt a ripple in the air as the voices were silenced and a bright red flash cut across her vision as a loud crack erupted. Hermione fell back as a wave of energy dispelled from the locket, the sword was still gripped tightly in her hands as she slid several feet back on the ice.
When she finally stopped sliding she raised herself up on her elbows to look at the locket – it was cracked, motionless and split into three pieces. Harry had jumped out of the way of her swing and was laying in the snow to the right of the rock and eyeing the locket as nervously as she was. Then he looked over to her and their eyes locked. Harry pulled himself to his feet so quickly she almost didn’t see the motions. He ran across the ice, his feet slipping and sliding until he reached her and fell to his knees beside her – grabbing her arms to pull her up into a sitting position and clutching her to his chest.
“Hermione,” he breathed, his face buried into her wild and curly hair as he clutched her tightly. “Hermione you were incredible – incredible – are you okay?”
He pulled away from her and began running his hands over her body looking for injury and tracing the lines of her face.
“Yes,” she said somewhat weakly as she dropped the sword and grabbed both sides of face. “Harry, I’m okay.”
Harry was looking at her so intensely it made her poor weak heart flutter. She leaned into him when he bent his head to kiss her fiercely. They sat on the cold ice, Harry’s hand tangled in her hair and his arm wrapped tightly around her as his lips traced over hers desperately – like he was afraid if he stopped, she would disappear. Finally, they parted, and she leaned her forehead against his gently, chest heaving as she breathed in the cold air.
“Let’s get out of here, Harry. Please?” she asked as she shivered against him. She wanted to bury the remains of that cursed locket somewhere deep within her purse until they were able to truly dispose of it. But mostly, she wanted to go somewhere safe, to crawl back into Harry’s bunk and be wrapped in his warm arms and held tightly against his chest. She could feel her body beginning to fail her as the adrenaline started to leave her system. There wasn’t enough calming draught in the world to stop the gentle twitch of her arm or the ragged breathing that escaped her lungs. She needed to rest before she passed out.
“Absolutely,” Harry whispered in her hair.
Harry stood quickly and gathered the remains of the locket and picked up the sword, storing them both efficiently in her purse before he came to kneel beside her once again. Hermione had remained sitting rather limply on the ice while she watched Harry collect everything up. A small part of her thought about helping, she felt guilty that she remained sprawled on the ground while Harry gathered everything up – but her exhausted body was simply not letting her do anything else. She wasn’t sure that she would be able to stand on her own at this point, so, she remained in her dishevelled state until Harry returned.
“I knew you could do it,” Harry said softly as he grabbed her hand tightly and wrapped his arm firmly around her waist.
Hermione smiled against him, closing her eyes as exhaustion overtook her. She sighed in relief when she felt the familiar tug behind her navel from his apparition and she knew that they were safe. They had the sword, they had destroyed a Horcrux, and she had Harry.
We’ll be okay, she thought as the world distorted around them.
-x-x-
They landed near the south of England, along the western shoreline. Harry cast several detection spells to ensure that they were safe before he left Hermione sitting in the snow, gave her their jar of blue flames to hold and proceeded to set up the tent. Once the tent was erected, Harry helped Hermione inside. She winced as all the muscles in her body screamed at her movement and she knew that she would not be attempting any exercise the following day. She was going to sleep in and she was going to take it easy.
Harry left Hermione to shower, knowing that the warm water would help to ease her strained muscles and warm her up. Then he left the tent to go set the alarms, detections and wards.
Hermione groaned in pleasure and pain as the hot water sprayed at her back. It felt like a thousand little needles poking at her freezing skin, but she could feel her muscles loosening up from the heat. She dropped her head against the shower wall and shivered when the last remains of cold, which had been settled deep within her bones, finally left her body. She forced her arms to move, washing over her skin and detangling the mess of hair that hung from her head.
Her movements were slow, and her eyes remained heavily hooded. Once she was thoroughly clean and warm, she wandlessly turned off the shower and put on the thickest fuzziest socks she had, a warm long-sleeved sweater and plaid pajama pants. Harry was still out setting wards as she climbed into his bunk and she knew that he was probably setting extras tonight, as he was likely planning to come to bed too as they both desperately needed the rest.
She had just rolled onto her back and pulled up the covers when Harry walked through the door. She turned her head to look at him, his hair was dishevelled from the wind and his cheeks tinted pink from the cold. He immediately walked over to her, kissing her head quickly before murmuring softly that he was going to go take a shower to warm up.
She tried to stay awake for him – to wait for him to come join her in bed so they could curl into each other’s arms. But the ache across her chest was heavy and her limbs felt like they had been weighted down with lead. Her eyes wouldn’t allow her to stay awake any longer and she dozed off listening to the calming sound of water flowing. She stirred slightly when she felt the bed move beside her and she registered the feeling of Harry's strong arm wrapping across her chest as he rolled on his side to curl against her body. His fresh clean scent enveloped her thoughts and then she drifted off completely.
-x-x-
True to her word, Hermione slept in the next day and so did Harry. Neither one of them were able to pull themselves from bed until well after 10:30 am, which was late considering their usual 7 am wake up time. Thankfully, Hermione didn’t have any dreams or nightmares about being trapped underwater or being strangled to death, though she knew that was likely only due to the calming draught that Harry had given her. The nightmares would come later… and she wasn’t looking forward to it.
When she did wake, she laid quietly in Harry’s arms, enjoying the calm and warmth until her stomach growled. Then she forced herself to slip from bed and make them both breakfast. Harry woke a few minutes later to the smell of toast and eggs, and he groggily came to join her at the table after throwing on the kettle for tea.
They both agreed to take the day off from training and spend the day relaxing. In Harry’s words: ‘sometimes, you need to stop and celebrate the things you’ve accomplished – to allow yourself a moment to enjoy your victory, no matter how small’. And they had just had a victory.
For the first time in months they now had a weapon capable of destroying Horcruxes, which made the task of locating them somehow seem less daunting. Having the sword in their possession was reassuring and it made her feel like the last few months weren’t a total waste of time.
At lunchtime, they broke out the last cakes that Hermione had in her purse and ate them with tea. They packaged the remains of the Horcrux into a small box to store deep within the depths of Hermione’s purse with plans to properly dispose of the pieces later, and then they grinned in triumph at each other when they unceremoniously lowered the box to the bottom of her bag. The remainder of the day was spent examining the sword of Gryffindor, lounging around the tent, napping, and reading while curled up next to each other on the loveseat. Harry let his arm drape lazily over Hermione’s shoulders while she leaned back into his chest, they both covered up with a blanket to keep warm and she continued her reading on potions brewing in unconventional locations.
It was the most comfortable and relaxing day that they had had since… well, since before Dumbledore died.
During dinner, Hermione and Harry discussed going to visit Xenophilius Lovegood to ask him about the necklace he wore to the wedding to see if he knew anything about it being Grindelwald’s symbol. They both agreed that they would need to go as it was the only logical next step to the puzzle that Dumbledore had left for them – the only question on the table was, when to go. They were both extremely hesitant to leave any time soon. If the last few months had taught them anything it was that despite being prepared, they never seemed to be prepared enough. No matter how strong they became or how much they seemed to grow, somehow life just kept demanding more from them, and it always asked them to complete things that were just out of their reach. There had simply been far too many close calls to allow themselves to jump into anything else without first trying to be more prepared.
Especially now¸ Hermione thought, as she watched Harry clean up the table and bring the dishes to the kitchen. She watched his lean shoulders move as he cleaned the plates and stacked them back in the cupboards. She wasn’t able to stop a small blush from forming on her cheeks as she watched his strong body move about with ease.
She had only just managed to come to terms with her feelings for Harry and to allow herself to admit that she cared for him. She was not willing to put him at risk or threaten the new relationship that they had just started but being reckless or stupid. They had to become more. This war was dangerous, violent, and would take everything from them if they didn’t take it seriously. They needed to double down on their efforts and be prepared so anything.
After dinner, Hermione reviewed her potion supplies and found that they were low. They needed more blood replenisher, more salve, more dittany, more calming draught, more pepperup and more of just about every single thing she had prepared and collected for their journey. And they needed to get their hands on some antivenom for Nagini. Given what had happened in Godric’s Hollow, they needed to be ready in case they ran into her again. That snake would kill them both if it had the chance and they wouldn’t last more than a few minutes without the antivenom if they were bitten.
Hermione remembered what had happened to Mr. Weasley when he was bitten in the Department of Mysteries – his wounds wouldn’t close by magic or by stitches until the venom was disabled. The dittany they had poured over the bites might as well have been water as it did absolutely nothing to help, and the stitches they attempted to use to close the wound dissolved almost instantly. As a result, he kept bleeding out and required blood replenishing potion every hour until they had discovered the antivenom.
Mr. Weasley had been at St. Mungo’s at the time though, and so they had resources, materials, potions and ample blood replenishers to treat him and keep him alive. But those were things that they didn’t have while in the middle of nowhere hunting Horcruxes. She would never be able to brew enough blood replenisher or afford to buy enough to keep them alive if they got bit.
They needed the antivenom, there was no other way around it.
During their evening tea Hermione gave Harry a rundown on their potion situation and he agreed with her recommendation that they should not knowingly approach the Lovegood’s or anyone else for that matter until their potion and healing supplies had been properly restocked. With that settled, Hermione revised their daily schedule to include potion brewing and ingredients harvesting – which in and of itself would be a dangerous feat. Some materials they would be able to gather on their own from forests and various locations around England, while others would need to be purchased from an apothecary or stolen – and Hermione frowned at the thought.
It was after their discussion on potions and towards the end of their evening tea that Harry decided to bring up occlumency once more. He felt awkward bringing it up, because of all the self-shame and regret that he had attached to the subject – but he forced himself to do it anyway. He knew Hermione would understand, he knew that she was probably worried about it too and he knew that he would never get better unless he dealt with the issue directly.
She didn’t lecture him when he finally told her what had truly happened in fifth year with Snape, the memories that he had seen and why his lessons had come to a screeching halt. She didn’t get angry with him when he admitted that he had blown off the self-practice and homework that Snape had assigned him or that he hadn’t taken it seriously enough at the time. Instead, she held his hand, squeezed it tight and agreed that they would add even more practice to their already adjusted routine.
Over the next week, Hermione and Harry set their plan into motion. Each day they got up with purpose, completed their exercises, duelled, practiced casting wandless and wordless spells, gathered nearby potion ingredients, studied healing spells, and meditated and practiced occlumency at every spare chance they got. He found himself doing it in the shower or practicing it while he cooked, and he got in the habit of quieting his mind and emotions as he sat outside in the cold during his night watches.
Outside of their joint routine tasks, Harry took the lead on researching and experimenting with ways to make their shield charm more resistant to physical blows while Hermione took the lead on replacing their potion stock, preparing for brewing and managing their supplies. She made a list of all the potion ingredients they would need, brewing durations so they could time their movements with the completion of potions, and she began setting up a brewing station inside the tent.
It took Hermione two days to finish reading her book on brewing potions in unorthodox places, learn the spells required to seal the work area and drawing up plans for how to set-up the station within the tent such that each item wouldn’t need to be packed away individually when they moved. She was able to figure out how to charm the cauldrons and workbench area with a sticking charm and encase the entire space in an explosion proof shield that would prevent any mishaps from spreading through the tent. By cutting a small hole in the fabric within the new potion lab she was also able to vent the workspace to remove any scents or fumes from the potions.
Then, by using a stasis spell listed in the book, she determined that she should be able to freeze any brewing potions in place if they needed to pack up quickly. She had no intention of ever packing up the tent while something was brewing but it was good to know that she could do it if she had to do it – and that she could do it without burning down everything inside the tent. Harry also seemed to be pleased with this knowledge when she presented her plans to him to get his input. It was comforting to know that they wouldn’t be waking up in a burning tent because cauldrons simmering through the night had caught the tent on fire.
Once they had both agreed on the plans she spent the remainder of the week setting up the potion station.
She transfigured Ron’s bunk into a workbench and one of the kitchen chairs into a stool. Neither Hermione nor Harry talked about the fact that she had just, for all intents and purposes, removed Ron’s bed and therefore his place from the tent. And while it remained unspoken, they both knew that neither one of them was expecting him to return. So, they decided to ignore the implications of ‘cutting’ him from the tent and how it physically represented them cutting him from their lives. Instead, they both just continued with their practicing and research, focusing on their task.
By the end of the week, Hermione had the workbench and cauldrons set-up, the vent stack working and all the protective charms in place. Her comprehensive list of the potion ingredients that they had and the ones that they still needed was now cross-referenced with their map of England and she had identified the locations they needed to go to get everything.
With only the small amount of dittany that she had left stored in her supplies, she would only be able to make two small batches of blood replenishing potion and one small batch of essence of dittany for wound use. Normally, this would be a decent amount for her personal usage, but given how the last few months had gone she was nervous that it wouldn’t be enough if things were to escalate into a full-fledged war. She wanted to have at least a dozen blood replenishing potions, three bottles of dittany and several more bottles of calming draught and pepperup potion – so they needed to find a way to get their hands on more dittany, somehow.
The problem was that dittany was both rare and expensive, and she highly doubted that they would stumble upon it randomly in a forest somewhere. So this meant that they needed to go to an apothecary to purchase some. Otherwise, most of the other ingredients she needed could be collected free of charge by apparating around the countryside.
In the meantime, while they gathered ingredients, Hermione planned to brew what she could. Thankfully, Hermione had packed the crocodile hearts that she had purchased on sale in Diagon Alley in her potion kit. At the time, Harry and Ron had stared at her like she was crazy for getting excited and bounding into the apothecary which was selling the hearts. Her exact words at the time had been, ‘can you believe this guys! Look at these ridiculously cheap prices!’
She had never intended to brew during their hunt, but now thanks to her constant need to be prepared she would be able to make several new batches of calming draught to keep on hand. She was also able to start a single new batch of pepperup potion. The item that was left completely blank on her list was Nagini’s antivenom – for which she had no idea where to start.
Despite her vast knowledge on potions for someone her age and her extensive efforts researching, Hermione felt incredibly under-informed and completely out of her comfort zone when it came to antivenoms. They were usually rare and complex, so most potions masters stayed away from them. Some antivenoms didn’t even require a potion – some were just a single herb or a combination of plants that occurred naturally that you could pick from the ground and use immediately. Others were bizarrely complicated potions that required a sample of the venom and a sample of the victim’s blood to create the neutralizer. Then there were others that had to be prepared in advance while a few had to be prepared after the victim was bleeding. There were documented cases of antivenoms being as simple as a dandelion leaf, while others ranged to potions that took 3 months to prepare and had a shelf life of only 24 hours.
What made matters worse, was that Nagini was not a normal snake that was being controlled by Voldemort. So, it wasn’t like Hermione could just bust into a muggle hospital and get the antivenom for Vipera Berus or a Copperhead for Merlin’s sake. Nagini was clearly a magical creature of some sort. And while Hermione could not confirm it, she had her suspicions that Nagini was either a cursed Russell’s Viper based on her appearance or, the more likely option, she was a Maledictus – someone permanently turned into a beast due to a blood curse. She doubted anyone would know for certain, save for Voldemort himself, and she wasn’t about to try and ask or figure that one out.
The only thing that kept her panic and anxiety at bay was knowing that Mr. Weasley had beaten the venom before. He had found the antivenom, used it and was alive and well – proving that the cure worked. The only thing she needed to do was either break into St. Mungo’s and see if they had any antivenom on hand that they could borrow, or she needed to find Arthur Weasley and speak with him to get the antivenom recipe. Either way, the process would be risky. It was possible that St. Mungo’s was being watched by Voldemort or that it was already being run by him. While locating Mr. Weasley would be relatively easier than breaking into St. Mungo’s, it would put the man and his family and possibly even the remaining members of the Order at risk.
Based on the updates that they were getting from Phineas, which were few and far between, it was clear that whatever was left of the Order of the Phoenix was being kept top secret and that the members were operating in the shadows. They were trying to fight the war quietly without drawing attention to themselves because they simply didn’t have the numbers to compete with Voldemort directly. At this point, the Ministry was all but taken over and their secrecy would be critical to their overall success. If they pushed too much too soon or did anything too dramatic, Voldemort and his followers would bring the war to their doorstep before the Order was ready for it – and since no one else knew about the Horcruxes, the results would be devastating.
Voldemort couldn’t be killed, not until the Horcruxes were gone. So, she and Harry needed to keep the war at bay for as long as possible to avoid unnecessary loss of life while they tried to locate and destroy the final remaining Horcruxes.
Hermione worked hard over the next few weeks, training with Harry and brewing the potions that she could with the ingredients that she had on hand and with what they could collect from their apparating trips around the countryside. Each time a potion was completed she felt a tiny thread of her anxiety fall away and a small comfort surge in her chest. Having these potions was like having a lifeline and she would create as many lifelines as she could because she would not let them fail.
If she had to brew all night, creep into the deepest and darkest crevices of the forest to get an ingredient they needed or wrestle a salamander out of a skunk’s mouth, as she had in Surrey – she would. She would push herself to the edge if that’s what it took to ensure that Harry was safe and that their mission was a success. Skunk smell or no, Hermione was on a mission and she would not let anything stop her.
So, as she brewed and collected ingredients she thought, and as she thought, she planned. There was no doubt in her mind that going to St. Mungo’s was out of the question. It was simply too dangerous, and they had no connections there to help them get into the secure facility. One high profile break-in was enough for her lifetime – they didn’t need to add a second. While their adventure at the Ministry had been successful, it had also gone somewhat poorly and cost them time, energy, resources and Ron. She also had no doubt in her mind that Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were being watched closely so they couldn’t just apparate to the Burrow. She refused to put them in danger no matter how irritated she may have been with their idiot son.
She still loved Molly and Arthur dearly – and she did not want to hurt them.
Thus, there was only one solution. They needed to come up with a plan to get in contact with Mr. Weasley privately, without it being noticed by anyone – not even Molly. They also needed a way for him to be able to communicate back to them so he could give them the antivenom recipe, but it needed to be discrete. Going to the Ministry to see him would be suicide, going to the Burrow would be dangerous for the family, owls were too obvious and were being monitored, the Floo network was out of the question and a Patronus could be intercepted or dispelled. They either needed to intercept him somewhere or find another way to contact him, and it had been the topic of discussion over the last few evenings without much progression.
That night, the air was quiet. She stirred the cauldron of the last batch of blood replenishing potion she was able to make until she got more dittany. Harry was outside completing some additional wandless magic practice, trying to use up the last few moments of sunlight that they had left before the early darkness of winter set in. She knew that he would make dinner while she finished up the potion, he always made dinner when she was brewing.
Hermione looked down at the workbench as her hand turned the stir stick by muscle memory, allowing her mind to run blank as she practiced her occlumency and her eyes skimmed over the different tools and remaining chopped bits that were covering the surface. Her eyes slowed when they skimmed over her research notebook which was filled with jotted notes, diagrams and plans, and they halted completely when they noticed the small round silver ink cap that rested on the open page.
Her eyes widened and her heart leapt as the idea hit her.
Of course! Hermione thought as she quickly finished stirring the potion while her mind raced a mile a minute to formulate her new plan. The answer is obvious! I can't believe that I didn’t think of it right away.
She grinned to herself, wandlessly and wordlessly summoning two clean bottles and stoppers from her purse. She began to pour the potion into the bottles, using her magic to steady the flow and conserve each drop of the replenishing potion for future use. She glanced at the tent door as the wind outside picked up and the tent around her fluttered. She couldn’t stop the smile on her lips from growing wider as Harry walked into the tent covered in snow but grinning widely at her. It looked like he’d had a good night as well. She beamed at him, calling him over to their new potion lab, excited to tell Harry exactly how they were going to communicate with Mr. Weasley.
Warnings:
This chapter contains: explicit smut (which can be skipped without missing out on main plot)
*******************************************
Harry stood firm in front of his newest unsuspecting victim, a strong weathered oak branch that he had found on the forest floor about twenty-five feet away from the tent. It stretched an impressive four feet long and was a hefty ten inches in diameter – a prime target for his practice. The tall looming trees around him rustled as he stared the branch down through squinted eyes, feet planted wide in a defensive position, knees slightly bent in anticipation of a counter-attack.
Then, taking a deep breath, he cleared his mind. He used the occlumency skills he had developed from hours and hours of meditation practice. He had learned how to empty his head and so he focused his attention on the spell that he was about to cast at his new opponent.
He had mastered casting diffindo wordlessly and wandlessly a week ago and had started working on his sectumsempra – hoping to be able to add it to his ever-growing arsenal. Hermione was already able to make large gashes wordlessly and wandlessly, but she had always been better at wandless and wordless magic. Her concentration, focus, attention to detail, and ability to control her mind made her a formidable witch who learned quicker than anyone. Harry, who had more raw power, had only been able to manage small scratches so far – but he was determined to change that today.
Letting out his breath, Harry let the last thoughts that had been lingering in his mind float away, and he dropped his shoulders in relaxation as he closed his eyes lightly. This was the missing piece of the puzzle, the one that he had been without during all his previous endeavours to learn wandless and wordless magic. And it was something that would have helped him infinitely during his occlumency training with Snape in the past – the feeling of peace and ease within one’s own mind. He had never had it, and learning how to be comfortable within the emptiness, let alone creating the emptiness, was difficult.
When they first started seriously training occlumency, Hermione had located and pulled out an old and battered book from her purse of wonders. It discussed learning occlumency from a different perspective – a perspective that turned out to be very similar to the meditation that Hermione had been practicing for years. Hermione had explained that she found the book on the dusty back shelves of the second-hand bookstore in Diagon Alley and picked it up for ‘light bedtime reading’ after she learned about occlumency in fifth year. Apparently, the book had not been overly popular when it was originally printed – not only because occlumency was difficult to start with and many witches and wizards struggled to become skilled in its practice – but also because its take on occlumency was unorthodox. So, there were hardly any volumes available and Hermione had been rather pleased when she located the book on that hot summer day.
While the book agreed that the main point of occlumency was indeed to be on the defensive and protect your mind from intruders, it advocated that this could be accomplished through obtaining peace and ease within your own mind and thus ‘gaining true control of one’s self and emotions’ instead of only taking a fighting and aggressive approach that most other books seemed to promote. Typically, occlumency was joined at the hip with teaching people to compartmentalize their emotions, put up walls, and protect and block intruders from gaining access to their minds. While this book did cover the importance of creating shields and barriers within your mind – as these are indeed important aspects of occlumency which are required – it also maintained the opinion that mediation practice could afford you inherent protection. That if you could reach a point of peace where you ‘let go of yourself, your worldly views and attachments’, you would be able to truly empty your head, void yourself of accessing any memories or information, and thus, make it more difficult for other people to access your mind. By combining this approach with standard compartmentalizing techniques and barriers, one would be more effective at occlumency because they were truly detached from themselves and not just hiding the information in their brain.
Or so the book said.
While neither Harry nor Hermione had any true experience with occlumency to test the theory of the book, and they didn’t have a teacher that they could discuss the books’ approach with to see if it was legitimate – they could not deny that the meditation and detachment exercises were helping them profoundly in every other area of their training. So, they both agreed to continue with the approach regardless of whether or not it actually helped them with occlumency.
Since neither one of them was a practiced legilimens, they did not dare try to breach each other’s minds to test their progress. Legilimency was dangerous if done poorly or incorrectly – minds are a careful and fragile thing, and they were both smart enough to know that you don’t go rooting around in someone’s brain unless you know what you’re doing. There were countless documented cases of Legilimency gone wrong – incident of it used by untrained or uncaring people that resulted in their victims losing memories, going insane or suffering from ongoing headaches and spotted vision for the rest of their lives.
So, they practiced the techniques together every day but never tested it.
For a brief moment, Harry felt light and detached from his body, almost as if in a trance. His mind felt crystal clear, like he was standing on the top of a glass lake – so clear that the sky was reflected in the water, and you couldn’t tell where the lake ended and the sky began. There was nothing but thick fluffy clouds floating above and below him with no end in sight. And once her felt his shoulders relax, he opened his eyes quickly and cast the spell. He didn’t yell the word in his head, instead just thinking it with a clear, calm, direct and firm intent. With a loud crack, the thick oak branch broke into three uneven pieces before him.
"YES!" Harry yelled as his head fell back, and he dropped to his knees in the snow. “Fuck yes! Finally!”
A huge grin split across his face. After a month of relentless, challenging, and draining practice where they had made decent progress – this was always out of his grasp, until now. Harry could feel the triumph and warmth flow through his body as he dropped his eyes back onto the now broken branch.
I did that, he thought as he continued to grin at the broken pieces before he tugged himself back up to his feet. God this feels good; this has made all that practice worth it.
The wind picked up around him as he brushed the snow from his knees. It ruffled his long black hair and cooled the back of his exposed neck. He had thought to ask Hermione to cut it again as it had grown almost past his shoulders. His hair had always grown quickly, and sometimes it felt like it had a mind of its own – as it had recently noticed that no one was paying attention to it, so it decided to grow even quicker and more dishevelled than usual – taking its new-found freedom to heart somewhat like a teenager being set on the loose for the first time and becoming uncontrolled. Harry snorted at the thought, it wouldn’t surprise him if he woke up tomorrow and it had grown another inch or two. But if he was being honest, he just didn’t care. It was warmer with longer hair and it was at the bottom of his priority list at the moment, so he had forgotten to bother with it.
Though, if he let it get much longer, he would need to put it in a ponytail to keep it out of his face. Harry laughed outwardly at that. Between him and Hermione, there was a ridiculous amount of hair in the tent and some nights sleeping next to Hermione felt like having two rather large messy birds’ nests on his pillow.
Harry turned toward the tent with his mind now on Hermione, which only caused him to smile again. Things between them over the last month had been great. They were a wonderful team, and they had been working and training well together. Hermione had made progress with her examination of the golden bracelets and had successfully brewed several potions. Harry had helped with some ingredient prep and brewing, but he mostly spent his solo time working on the shield charm.
It had been going really well, and yesterday he thought he finally found a way to make the shield resistant to physical blows, but it seemed like it would reduce their shield time dramatically. He only practiced it once, and he still needed Hermione to test his theory – since it was impossible to actually test the shield against physical blows himself while he was in the shield. He hoped that they could do that tomorrow, except he needed a better testing mechanism than having Hermione throw a rock at him. They needed to try and recreate a bite force comparable to Nagini or a werewolf as they were the most likely physical blows that they would sustain in battle.
He had a few ideas he planned to run by her.
Running a hand through his messy locks, Harry walked toward the tent. Dinner tonight would probably be some veggies and a pot pie because, for some reason, he seemed far better at making pot pies than any other food. Harry brushed the last bit of snow off his pants before he ducked into the tent and looked over to Hermione’s workstation – or the lab as they now called it – where she was currently looking over her shoulder at him with a huge grin.
Her hair was a mess.
It had obviously been in a ponytail at some point, but now long curly tendrils leaked down her back and stuck out at odd angles. There was a sheen of sweat across her forehead from working in the small, shielded potion lab – it always got way too warm in there with the cauldrons going – and she had evidently decided it was too hot for formalities as well, because she had stripped down to a loose-fitting dark blue tank top that flowed gently along her curves. The oversized armholes showed the sides of her black bra, and her top-most scar peeked out of the neckline. He suspected that this must be one of her exercise shirts – perhaps even a transfigured tank as it was not something she would typically wear out in public, but Harry had no complaints. Between the tank top, the warm flush on her face and her rather tight-fitting black shorts, he couldn’t stop his brain from wandering.
"Merlin, you’re beautiful," the words fell from his lips before he could stop them.
She had been opening her mouth to say something – judging by the grin on her face when he entered the tent, she’d had a productive day and was planning to share some good news. But at his words, she faltered and left her mouth hanging open as the blush on her cheeks deepened. She glanced down at her outfit, and the pink blush crept down her neck as she seemed to realize what she was wearing. While Hermione had stood somewhat flustered, Harry had quickly shucked off his jacket and boots before their eyes locked again.
She truly was the most beautiful person he’d ever laid eyes on – she always had been, but ever since the Forest of Dean, Harry couldn't stop looking at her with a small amount of awe and appreciation. She had become so strong, somehow even more capable than she was before, and her growing confidence in her own abilities suited her well. It shone out of her, and she felt like his own personal little beacon of hope that fired his motivation.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Harry – I’m a mess. I’ve been brewing in here for hours,” she laughed gently as she set down the freshly bottled potion she had been holding and grinned up at him shyly.
Closing the distance between them in a few quick steps, Harry passed through the barrier into the potions lab and grabbed Hermione by the waist, pulling her tight against him.
“And I love it when you’re a dishevelled mess,” he grinned at her as she scrunched her face at him.
Despite the awful heat of the small, enclosed space, he pulled her tighter to him before capturing her lips and kissing her deeply.
They hadn't been together since Christmas.
There had been some snogging, some snuggling, and one night with a rather intense session of grinding, but nothing else comparable to their night in the Forest of Dean had happened between them since. After the incident with the ice pond, they had both naturally become more sober, somber, and refocused on their Horcrux hunt and training efforts. Everything they had been doing was scheduled, purposeful and focused.
While a part of Harry desperately wanted more every day, every time he kissed her and every time he saw her smile – he didn’t regret that nothing else had happened between them yet. They needed to be focused on their mission. They had to be – and he had made a mental promise to prove to Hermione that they could be together and remain focused on their task at hand. After all, that had been one of her greatest concerns about acknowledging a relationship between them and going down this path during a war. So, Harry resolved to stay focused no matter what his hormones might think.
Besides, their last night in the Forest of Dean had been a blunt and brutal wake-up call from their single night of bliss. It was a rude welcome back to the reality of what they were tasked with. There would be time to be intimate again later, they would make time, but right now, they needed to focus their attention and time on the mission so that they could feel back on track and like they were making progress.
Hermione groaned under Harry's lips, pushing herself up against him as her hand gripped the belt on his waist.
Or, Harry thought mischievously as he gently pressed Hermione back into the potion workbench. Maybe we can make some time now.
“Harry – I wanted to tell you – my – idea,” Hermione breathed between each kiss as Harry’s hand slid up her back to tangle in her mess of curls.
“Mhmm,” Harry murmured as he turned his head to kiss her more deeply and nibble her bottom lip.
“Mm – aaahh – it’s – it’s to get the antivenom recipe,” she gripped his belt tighter and grabbed at the front of his shirt. Her hips were pinned between his and the bench, and he had started to gently move against her.
“Mmm – that is important,” Harry breathed as he pulled his lips away to look down at her. Despite the desperate need of his body, he did not want to stop her from relaying something important. Her eyes were half-lidded and glazed over, and she was still gripping him tightly as if to pull him back to their kiss before he spoke again. “What was your idea?”
Hermione searched his face, her eyes flicking over his and lingering on his lips before they flicked back up to meet his. Her frustration with the halting of his movements was apparent as her eyebrows creased in annoyance, and she pushed gently against him.
“Harry, you can’t be serious,” she breathed heavily against him, a slight laugh gracing her lips as she dropped her head with a thud against his chest. He could feel every part of her against him, and there was no doubt in his mind that she could feel his hardness against her hip. “Ugghhhh – you come in here like that – kiss me like that – then you want to hear my idea?”
“Well – I mean, I had other ideas, but the antivenom is important,” Harry grinned at her and squeezed her side gently when she raised her head to look up at him in disbelief. He couldn’t stop the small chuckle that escaped him at her frustrated expression. Apparently, she was also craving some physical intimacy but had been keeping her desires at bay to stay focused on their mission.
“It is, but I can tell you the details later – the long and short of it is that I came up with a plan to contact Mr. Weasley using a triple protean charm combined with disguising, protective and cryptography spells that I read about last summer.”
The words poured from Hermione’s mouth quickly, and Harry could not prevent his eyebrows from raising.
“Of course you did,” he said with an amused smile as she pulled him closer to her. “And I suppose it’s an easy solution that was rather obvious too?”
“Oh shut up – of course it was,” Hermione rolled her eyes at his teasing before she kissed him again. “I’ll tell you all about it later.”
“Good,” Harry murmured back against her lips as he pushed his hips into hers once more to bring forth a small groan. “Because there was something else that I wanted to try first.”
-x-x-
Hermione’s heart fluttered as Harry’s hand tangled deeper into her hair, and his mouth moved slowly against hers. It felt like ages since the last time they had kissed like this, and she had missed it. They had become so focused on their mission – which wasn’t a bad thing – that they hadn’t made any time to be together since the Forest of Dean. But with the last of the potions that she could develop before collecting more ingredients made, they could spare some time tonight to be together before they ventured back into more dangerous situations to collect the remainder of what they needed. Right now, she would let herself forget where they were and just dissolve into Harry’s arms. She wasn’t planning to start the work on contacting Mr. Weasley until tomorrow anyway, so their night was wide open.
Harry pushed against her more firmly; his hard length pressing into her hip making her stomach roll in anticipation. She moaned when he nibbled at her lip and dropped his mouth to her neck, tracing long and painfully tantalizing kisses along the exposed skin. She breathed against his ear and wrapped her arms around him to grab the back of his shirt, desperate to close the little distance between them.
“Harry, let’s get out of this lab.”
With a grunt of agreement, Harry grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the lab toward what they had recently begun calling their bunk. Within seconds his hands were back on her body as he lowered her down to the bed. She pulled him forward with her, spreading her legs so that he could lay between them on top of her.
It was incredible how natural it felt to have him there, laying between her legs with his weight pressing down on top of her. It felt safe, warm, and secure. And his gentle movements against her core made that familiar little coil begin to tighten. She wound her hand into his hair as his tongue entered her mouth.
His hair is getting ridiculously long, she thought before another moan poured out of her lips. She brought her other hand down to grab his belt and pulled down as she thrust her hips up into him and smiled when a low growl escaped him.
“Fuck, Hermione,” he breathed against her before he brought his lips to her neck again. “You feel so incredible.”
She watched as Harry moved his way down her body, kissing along her neck, pushing her loose tank top up to expose her chest and continuing his way down her stomach until he reached her hips. The thought of her scars didn’t even cross her mind as he went. Her focus was entirely captured by the feel of his lips tracing their way over her skin.
When he reached her hips, he stopped and looked up at her; and she nodded – knowing that he was waiting for her approval to continue. She gripped the sheets on either side of her tightly in anticipation. Even though they had already had sex, she still felt nervous. They had only done it once, and the last time Harry had removed her pants, his face wasn’t right there. So she couldn’t help but feel a jolt of electricity chase through her nerves at the thought of what this thing was he wanted to try.
I wonder if he’s planning to use his mouth, she thought as Harry carefully removed her shorts and panties. She could feel a blush cover her cheeks as she lay before Harry bottomless. The chill of the main tent area made her feel exposed, and she found herself craving the warmth of having his body pressed up against her.
The tent was dim in the late evening, but it was lighter than the last time they had been this intimate and Harry was now hovering a few inches from her most private bits – she knew that he had a clear view of everything – and that made her heart race. She could feel the coil in her center tightening as she bit her lips nervously and forced her body to remain still.
She couldn’t look away from him, watching as his eyes remained fixed between her legs for several moments before he looked up at her. She knew she was as flustered and flushed as ever, and the deep lust in his eyes only made her squirm even more underneath him.
“Hermione,” he said, holding her eyes with an intense and smouldering gaze.
Oh fuck, she thought as her stomach flipped over. There’s that deep baritone voice again.
She knew that she was already wet. Whenever he had that look and used that voice it affected her. But with the way he was gripping her hips right now – she was doomed. She wanted him; she needed him to touch her.
“Yes,” the words rasped from her lips. It didn’t sound like her at all. Her voice was deeper and lusty, and she felt Harry’s hand tighten on her hip in response.
“I’m going to try something – if you don’t like it, that’s okay, just let me know.” He moved so he was laying at an odd angle at the foot of the bed, his head lined up between her thighs, hand still on her hip as he waited to see if she would object.
“Okay,” she breathed. A small amount of mortification crept up inside her as she watched Harry lower his head between her legs. She could feel her eyes widen as she watched, unable to tear her eyes away from the scene of anxious anticipation, want, and horror before her.
She wanted this, but her mind was racing.
Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god – his face is right there, what if it tastes bad!? What if it’s awful? What if – her thoughts were cut off as she felt the first soft touch of Harry’s tongue against her slit, and her eyes fluttered shut.
She let out a breath she didn’t even know she had been holding as he ran his tongue along her slick folds once more, and her head fell back.
Fuck, she thought as her brain ceased to function. His movements were slow and tentative, as if he was waiting for her to buck him away with her hips in rejection – but with each movement, he let his tongue slide over her clit, and it felt surreal. It was soft, gentle, delicate – she didn’t have the words to describe it, but the feeling was completely different than when he had used his fingers like before.
It was much more intimate, and every single touch was completely for her.
Her fingers tightened in the sheets beside her as her mind went into overload at the sensation, and thoughts began to once again race through her head at an alarming rate. Her breathing sped up. She furrowed her brow in frustration as she felt herself losing control over her thoughts.
No! she thought quickly as she tried to regain control. She wouldn’t allow her anxiety and mortification to run amuck in her brain and ruin this when it so obviously felt good. She wouldn’t allow her mind to overthink the fact that it was Harry’s face between her legs and his tongue touching her… there… that was causing these incredible sensations.
Don’t overthink it, she breathed calmly to herself. Trust him. If he didn’t want to be down there – he wouldn’t be. Just focus on the feeling.
She breathed deeply and forced her face and shoulders to relax until she slowly untangled her fingers from the sheets and let the calm take over her body. Harry had clearly anticipated her hesitation and he continued to move slowly until most of the tension from her body had dissipated. Then, she felt him move his tongue more quickly, it pressed harder against her clit, and her breath caught as she gasped at the feeling.
Fuck, that feels good, she thought as a small moan escaped her lips. Apparently, that was all the reassurance that Harry needed because his motions became more deliberate, his grip on her hip tightened, and she felt him slide a single finger inside her. When he curled it up toward her stomach, she outright groaned in pleasure, and her hips reflexively ground up against him.
“Holy shit!” Hermione groaned out as one hand shot down to tangle in his hair.
Her body trembled. It felt like her nerves were on fire as the coil at her core was burning and tightening with each swipe of Harry’s tongue. Her mind was blank to any thought or reason, and she felt her eyes roll back as Harry inserted a second digit and began sucking on her clit as his fingers pressed gently against that wonderful little bundle of nerves he had discovered a month ago. Her hips flexed against him, her breath was short and shallow, and the muscles in her abdomen tightened as she felt that familiar building sensation in her core as he continued his ministrations.
“Harry – I – fuck, Harry, I’m,” the words tumbled from her lips between the moans that she couldn’t prevent. “Oh god, Harry I – I’m going to come.”
Harry’s grip on her hips tightened, holding her firmly in place against the mattress and controlling the rocking of her hips. His fingers stroked her more quickly and he swirled his tongue over her clit in a motion that made her see white. She fell apart under him, swearing as her body tensed and twitched, her hand tightly gripping his hair with no mercy as her hips rocked against his mouth. He continued to stroke her as she rode out her orgasm until the hand that gripped his hair fell away to the bed, and she lay there panting, eyes glassy and unfocused. She watched through the haze as Harry pulled himself away from between her thighs and kissed her hip before he came to lay by her side.
He had a rather large grin on his face.
“So,” he said as he kissed the corner of her mouth. “Was that okay?”
“Pfft – Harry,” she swatted him gently at the teasing question and grinned when he laughed. “Was that okay? Seriously? – fuck – yes, that was more than okay.”
“Good, I’m glad,” Harry whispered in her ear before he ducked his head to kiss her once more.
She could taste herself on his lips – it was a little bit sweet but hard to describe, though it wasn’t bad – and with that, she felt a tiny part of her buried anxiety fall away as she moved her lips against his. She could feel the bulge in his pants still present as it pressed against her hip once more. She grabbed his belt and tugged him closer as she traced her hand over him.
She wanted to taste him.
She wanted to know what it was like to have him in her mouth – to see what he tasted like, even if the idea of it made her heart race. She was nervous that she would be terrible at it, but she had, of course, done a least some research and was determined to not let her anxiety get the best of her. She would do it, because she was Hermione fucking Granger, and she could manage anything.
“Harry,” she murmured against his lips.
“Mmm?” He questioned as he kissed her back.
“I want to taste you,” she pushed at his shoulder gently, rolling him onto his back and crawling above him so that she was straddling his hips. She could feel his hard erection through his jeans pressing up against her wet center. She rolled her hips and grinned down at him when he groaned – she could see the desire in his eyes and the control he was fighting to maintain.
“Are you sure?” Harry asked, his eyes hazy as they searched over her face. He was gripping her hips tightly and she knew that he wanted her to be sure. “You don’t have to – I didn’t do that because I was expecting anything.”
“I know,” Hermione said with a small smile as she pushed her hips down into his once more. “But I want to.”
With that, she scooted down Harry’s legs and began to undo his belt. His eyes tracked her every movement as they darkened with want – like a predator watching its prey. She carefully undid the fly of his pants before she grabbed the sides of his jeans and boxers and pulled them down over his hips. Her heart raced as she took in the sight of his fully erect cock, and she could not help but marvel at its stature as it stood proudly – while simultaneously wondering how the hell she was supposed to fit the whole thing in her mouth.
While she was never much for reading smutty novels like many of the other girls her age had been, she never turned away from knowledge either – even if it was smutty knowledge. So, when Katie Bell had been talking to some other girls in the dormitory bathroom about how to give blow jobs, she had paid attention quietly while preparing for bed – crinkling her nose at some of Katie’s choice words and inwardly gawking at the fact that Katie had just admitted to giving head to a fellow Gryffindor student in an empty classroom.
Katie had said that you should use your hand to start with. It apparently helped with the sensation and also helped if you were unable to fit the whole of the guy’s length in your mouth. She recalled that Katie suggested going slow and stroking up and down as you essentially bobbed your head with the motion – and now would be the time to test that knowledge.
Her cheeks flushed as she tentatively reached her hand out to take him in her grasp.
This will be the first time that Hermione Granger, the brightest witch of her age, has ever touched a male penis.
She almost laughed as the thought ran through her mind, but it was quickly squashed down as she closed her fingers around him and hoped to god she truly was as bright as everyone seemed to think she was – and that she wasn’t about to mess this up too badly. She was surprised by the feel of it. She didn’t know what she was expecting, but it was harder than she thought it would be as she experimentally gripped her hand more tightly and moved it up and down. She heard Harry’s breath intake sharply, and when she glanced up, she saw that his eyes had hooded slightly. His gaze was locked on her with a deep want that sent a chill down her spine.
Well, that’s a good sign, she thought as she shivered under his gaze and moved her hand again. His skin was softer than she could have imagined, and his slit was slick with pre-come.
Slowly, she lowered her head; unsure of whether or not she should just pop the tip in her mouth she opted instead to slowly trace her tongue around the head. She kept her eyes focused on her hand and the stiff length that twitched in her grasp as she continued to trace her tongue. A low breath escape his lungs and she inwardly smiled. Feeling a bit more sure, Hermione opened her mouth wider and slid him into her mouth.
“Oh fuck,” Harry groaned out as Hermione slowly bobbed her head and twirled her tongue along his length.
Her heart fluttered at the noises he was making as she continued to move her head, circle her tongue and slide her hand up and down with each movement. Katie had been right – using her hand as a guide helped her control how much of him she took into her mouth at one time, and it helped her keep her pace. She tried taking more with each bob, and she could feel Harry’s body tense as he restrained himself from thrusting into her mouth as she moved.
When she lowered her head far enough that he hit the back of her throat, she realized that she wouldn’t be able to take the whole length of him in. At least not yet; not without gagging anyways. She put a mental pin in that thought to research it later and see what she could do to try and improve.
“Shit – Hermione – fuck. That feels so good,” Harry gasped as she continued moving her mouth over him. She felt his hand come to rest on the top of her head, gently tangling within her hair but being careful not to push down. “Just like that – you can squeeze harder – oh fuck.”
At Harry’s words, Hermione had tightened her grip on his length. She hadn’t been gripping him very tightly before because she was afraid that she might squeeze too hard and hurt him, but evidently, that was not the case. His response to her extra pressure was instant, his hand curled more tightly in her hair and a string of expletives left his lips as he struggled not to buck his hips into her. She sucked him harder, moving her head up and down with her hand, tracing her tongue along the underside of his length before circling it around to the head.
“Oh my god, Hermione – fuck I’m going to come, Hermione, you–“
His words stopped as she tightened her grip further and circled her tongue one last time. Harry’s whole body tensed as he let out a moan and Hermione felt his cock become impossibly hard before hot liquid spurted into her mouth. She knew it was coming – yet hadn’t been expecting it and she was caught off guard as some of it hit the back of her throat. She stopped moving her head and instead remained motionless on her knees, her mouth still surrounding him as she stroked her hand up and down his length and his release filled her mouth.
Oh – my, okay – what do I do now?! Her mind had started racing again as she realized he was finished. Do I spit it out or keep it in? Do I take my mouth off now? Should I swallow this? It’s warmer than I expected, kind of salty? What did Katie say?
She forced herself to breathe as she removed her lips from him but kept his release inside her mouth, covering her lips gently with one hand as she looked up at Harry.
Fuck he looks gorgeous, she thought as she stared up at him. His hair was a mess, his eyes were glassy and dark, and he looked more relaxed than she had ever seen him before. Images from their first time fluttered into her mind – him coming undone over top of her, filling her channel and groaning in bliss. He had been incredibly attractive in that moment too and it made her stomach fluttered to think that he would have looked like that only seconds ago – and that she had accomplished it with just her mouth and hand.
“Hermione, I’m sorry – you don’t have to swallow that – I was going to tell you to stop before I came,” Harry had started to sit up, and she could see the embarrassment creep across his face as she realized what she must look like from his perspective. She was sitting back on her heels by his knees, her mouth filled with come, blushing with her hand clapped over her mouth.
She shook her head before she made her decision and decided quickly to swallow. She saw Harry’s eyes widen as she did it and she smiled at him when she was finished.
“It’s okay,” Hermione said a little bit shyly as she looked at Harry and gently wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. It was more viscous than water, tasted slightly salty, and was warm – though it wasn’t bad. She could see how some girls complained about ‘swallowing’ especially if they had a bad gag reflex but she decided that she would probably do it again. Especially when Harry seemed to enjoy it so much. “You told me you were going to – I just, I guess I wasn’t thinking about that part – but – I – I don’t mind.”
“Merlin, you’re perfect,” Harry breathed as he reached out to her, and pulled her toward him.
They laid together on the bunk, Hermione’s head resting on Harry’s chest as his hands wrapped around her and she snuggled into his warmth.
This is perfect, she thought as she felt Harry trace gentle circles on her lower back, her tank top pushed up around her ribs so that he could stroke her skin. Everything about this is perfect, because it’s with Harry.
“You’re perfect,” she mumbled against him as she breathed in his scent, nuzzling her nose deeper into his chest. She smiled as he pulled her tighter to him in response and relaxed into his hold.
“So, what was your idea?” Harry asked after they had laid there for several minutes, enjoying the post-activity cuddles.
“Mm,” Hermione recalled their conversation when Harry had first entered the tent. She turned her head and rested her chin on his chest so she could look up at his eyes. “So, it’s a triple protean charm combined with disguising, protective and cryptography spells.”
“Mhmm,” Harry nodded, recalling what Hermione had said to him earlier in between their heated kiss. “And how do you plan to set that up?”
“When I was brewing the potion, I saw my ink bottle cap on top of my notebook and remembered the coins that I had made for the DA meetings. Do you remember them?” Hermione asked, smiling when Harry nodded. “Well, those coins were charmed with a protean charm – so when I changed mine, all the others would change to show the date and time of the next meeting. What I want to create is something similar, but that allows us to send coded messages back and forth.”
“Makes sense,” Harry said as he shifted so Hermione could cross her arms over his chest to rest her chin on them more comfortably. “So, how are we going to do that?”
“Do you remember the summer we spent at the Burrow in fourth year before the Quidditch World Cup? Well, during our time there, I helped Mr. Weasley get a subscription to a muggle magazine called Science Focus – it covers a lot of neat things, and Mr. Weasley was ridiculously interested in the topics. It really skyrocketed him past questions on rubber duck functionality and into the territory of real technological discussion. I’d brought him an old copy just for fun and he found the articles titled things like ‘the science behind why chocolate will kill you’ devastatingly amusing. So, I got him a monthly subscription that is delivered to a post office box in Ottery St. Catchpole – the small town near the Burrow, and he stops by once a month to pick it up. And I know that he still receives and reads them because we talked about them just this past summer before the wedding. My idea was that we could leave him a modified magazine in the post office box along with a muggle ‘commemorative coin’ that has been issued to ‘long time subscribers’.”
“Wait,” Harry interrupted as he quirked an eyebrow at her. “Are you saying that you’re responsible for the two-hour-long conversation that I had with Mr. Weasley this past summer about why coca-cola tastes better out of glass bottles rather than cans – when, mind you – I’m pretty sure that he has literally never had coca-cola before in his life?”
“Uhh,” Hermione grinned at him sheepishly as she shrugged her shoulders. “Sorry? I guess – I mean, it turned out to be helpful in the end, right?”
“Unbelievable,” Harry laughed as he shook his head. “Ugh – that magazine led to so many bizarre conversations. I’m pretty sure you’re responsible for nearly giving Mrs. Weasley an aneurism – but okay fine – yes, it turned out to be a good thing – I guess.”
“Hey – the keyword there is nearly. He only gets them once a month, so the topics wear off after a week or two.” She grinned at him as he rolled his eyes.
“Okay, so we sneak into the post office and modify his magazine – how is that going to work with the coin?” Harry asked, raising his eyebrow once more.
“Well, the magazine will be spelled with a dual protean charm to match a blank notebook that I have here. The first half will allow us to write to him – the words will show up on his magazine pages in coded text, and the second half will be charmed so that he can write on the magazine pages, and his text will show up in my journal. The coin will be protean charmed too, so that I can give him the cypher for the text we send. I’ll instruct him to burn the pages after they are sent as well, so each page is a one time use and no one else will be able to stumble upon our messages.” She smiled at Harry proudly. “It’s safe for two reasons. First, the messages will be encoded and only Mr. Weasley will know what the cypher is. And second, no one in the wizarding world suspects anything from muggles – most of them don’t even know what a cypher is either. Remember Snape’s puzzle guarding against the Philosopher’s Stone? It was so simple, it was brilliant – most witches and wizards lack in the logic department and rely heavily on magic. Besides, literally no one else would ever even open his magazine, let alone read it.”
“I agree,” Harry said, grinning down at her. “That’s clever – very clever, and keeps us a safe distance away from Mr. Weasley so we don’t risk being spotted or have anyone catching on to him meeting in unusual places. It also opens up two-way communication available more than once – but we should still be wary of the topics we write back and forth. How are you going to get the message to him the first time, though, so he knows what’s going on?”
“I’ll leave him a note on the magazine explaining everything – but charmed to activate only when he touches it. I’ll layer it with a modified disillusionment and disguising spell along with a protective charm, so basically, he will be the only one able to see it and the words will vanish after a set amount of time. I’ll tell him to burn it after he reads it as well.”
“You make it sound like it’s so simple,” Harry sighed as he kissed her head.
“Well – I mean, it is a little simple,” Hermione laughed as she sat up from Harry’s chest. She was positively starving and had just realized that they were lying in the tent together naked from the waist down for the last half hour. “I really should have thought of it earlier and set something up to communicate with the Order before we left – I guess I just thought that we would have more time to prepare.”
“Yeah, I know,” Harry sighed as he sat up and grabbed his pants. His stomach rumbled as he began to pull his boxers back on. “We all thought that we would have more time – more time to prepare, more time to say goodbye – but we’ll make it work. How long do you need to prepare the coin and magazine?”
“Well, the coin and letter I’ll do tomorrow. I’ll also get my notebook set-up, but I’ll need the magazine to be able to complete everything.” Hermione had already replaced her shorts and was fishing out a sweater from her purse that sat next to the bed. Now that she was out of the potion lab and their activities were over, the chill from the tent was starting to set in. “The magazine is delivered on the 4th of every month and Mr. Weasley usually goes the following weekend to collect it. That means we need to be in Ottery St. Catchpole in 2 days to break into the post office and complete the charms of the February month issue.”
“Okay, we can do that – while we’re there, we can grab some additional supplies and see if there is a local apothecary. It would be safer than Diagon Alley. The wizarding presence in Ottery St. Catchpole is rather large – so they may have something.” Harry stood and went to the kitchen to throw on the pot pie as he began mulling over the few details that he knew about Ottery St. Catchpole.
“That’s a good idea,” Hermione nodded at him as she shrugged on her sweater and stood to go use the bathroom. “I’m going to get the lab cleaned up before dinner, and then we can make a list of what we want to grab while we’re there.”
“Okay,” Harry kissed her gently as she walked by, smiling as she blushed and walked toward the bathroom. He watched as her slender form disappeared down the short hall, the soft padding of her thick fuzzy socks making his heart flutter as he thought about how she had looked hovered over him only moments ago. How they had been so intimate but also remained capable of switching back to business.
Fuck, I’m so lucky, he thought as he turned back to finish preparing what would now be a very late dinner.
Harry gritted his teeth and tried not to flinch as a boulder the size of Hagrid hovered directly above him, and he held his breath as it started to lower. It was made worse only by the fact that the rock had been strategically selected to have a small surface area on one side to, as Hermione so eloquently put it, ‘better mimic the bite force of a werewolf’. In Harry’s opinion, it just made the rock look that much more unnerving and stabby, given its pointy nature.
While they had started with smaller rocks and worked their way up in size, Harry could not help the butterflies that swirled in his stomach as the rock lowered further down only inches now from the shield charm that he had just cast on himself. If it wasn’t for his immense trust in Hermione, he would have stepped aside ages ago. As it turned out, mimicking the bite force of a werewolf was incredibly difficult to do when neither one of them was an animagi of a comparable animal, and they didn’t know any comparable spells. And they figured it would be a bad idea to go looking for trouble with local animals or testing out new magic.
Hermione, however, had concluded that if the modified shield could withstand an equivalent weight pressing down on it over a comparable surface area – then by default, it should hypothetically be able to withstand a bite from Nagini or a werewolf. ‘Since that’s all bite force really is, just force over an area’ she had stated matter-of-factly.
Hermione estimated that the bite force of a werewolf exceeded that of Nagini, and it was likely just over 2000 psi. Since they were not able to find any rocks that had a 1-inch square surface area on any side that just happened to weigh 2000lbs, they had to select a larger rock in order to get comparable force over area – or at least that was how Hermione had explained it. As a result, she selected the pointiest rock she could find with a weight larger than what they would’ve needed had the rock had a 1-inch square side.
Ether way, a giant rock was now about to be lowered on top of his head – and Harry was very glad that it was Hermione who was controlling it. She had implemented several backup safety measures, including a tether on the rock so that it would only fall so far and therefore not completely crush or kill Harry if the shield failed. She was also standing right there controlling the rock, only ever allowing partial weight to rest on his shield so they could see if it held.
“Ready?” Hermione called, with far more confidence than Harry seemed to be feeling at the moment. He trusted Hermione completely, but standing under a boulder still made him nervous.
“Yes, I guess,” Harry said as he glanced upwards once more before locking his eyes on Hermione. “Let’s do this before my shield runs out – I’m exhausted from the last two times, and I’m not sure how much longer I can hold this.”
Hermione nodded before she lowered her wand a fraction and allowed the giant rock to rest gently on Harry’s head before she slowly lessened the levitation, and allowed more and more of the weight to rest on the shield. It was a funny feeling having a giant rock trying to bore into and crush you but having the pressure and force stopped by an invisible wall. Harry could feel the pressure on his head, kind of, it was massively reduced. It felt like someone was gently resting their hand on his head prior to tussling his hair – and there was absolutely nothing painful or heavy about it. He waited anxiously and glanced up to see that the boulder was pressing into the nothingness just a few centimeters above his head, and the shield held – it didn’t buckle, and Harry didn’t move from any physical force.
“Okay, I’m going to give you 95% weight,” Hermione said as she concentrated on removing more levitation from the rock, allowing it to settle on Harry’s head with even more weight. She trusted her backup tethers, but she would never 100% let go of her control on the rock – that would just be irresponsible and foolish. “How is it?”
“It’s fine,” Harry said as he stood very still and still only felt the light touch on the top of his head. “I can tell it’s there, but it’s just like a light touch.”
“Harry, that’s fantastic!” Hermione grinned triumphantly before she resumed full levitation on the rock and removed it from above Harry’s head, placing it gently to the side. “Well, I’m glad we tested it but let’s not do that again, okay? I don’t fancy the idea of squishing you with a rock accidentally – backup tethers or not, this was dangerous, and I’d much rather keep you around.”
Harry grinned as he felt the shield give out exactly in line with the mental timer he had set. They now officially had two protective shields – one partial shield for magical attacks and one fully protective against magical and physical attacks. It felt a little bit like having gold in your back pocket. With practice, Harry suspected that they would be able to increase their durations on the full shield, but until then, they could cast either charm dependent on the situation they were in.
“Well, it’s confirmed,” Harry said as he shuffled through the snow to Hermione and wrapped his arm around her waist. “With resistance to physical blows, I can only hold the modified shield for four minutes – and you admitted that you would miss me if I was gone.”
“Psschh – Harry! What a horrible thing to say – miss you? Of course I would miss you,” Hermione swatted him on the chest before she allowed herself to be pulled into a tight hug. “You know how important you are.”
“Mhmm,” Harry mumbled as he kissed the top of her head. “I am the chosen one.”
“Oh, for the love of – Harry, you know what I meant – that you’re important to me,” Hermione had pulled herself away from Harry’s chest to glare at him. “You know how much you mean to me, Harry.”
“I know what you meant,” Harry said quietly before he kissed her gently, taking his time to absorb the softness of her lips. “You’re important to me too.”
Harry grinned as a smile split across Hermione’s face, and he pulled her back tightly to his chest.
“You know you’re brilliant, Harry,” Hermione murmured against his chest. “This spell is incredible.”
They remained outside for several minutes, holding each other in the snow as they both became lost in thought. Hermione had finished charming the coins, her notebook and created the note to Mr. Weasley that morning – she had even selected the first cypher for their communication and preset the coins.
After lunch, they had apparated to Dartmoor National Park to be closer to Ottery St. Catchpole and so that Harry could implement his testing plan using the natural rocks in the area. He had taught Hermione the newly modified shield charm, which she was able to hold for three minutes, then they had spent the rest of the afternoon trying it out to see if it truly would resist physical attacks – though it had taken a bit of effort for Harry to convince Hermione that it would be okay to drop rocks on him.
She had flat out refused at first until she came up with a back-up safety mechanism which turned out to be a modification on a tether spell that some wizards use on their animals to keep them in their yard. The magic was tricky and would never work on intelligent magical beasts, but on smaller animals or nonmagical animals, the tether acts as a temporary leash and prevents the object from moving past a certain point. In this case, Hermione had set the limit to about mid-chest level on Harry – so that if his shield spell did fail, he wouldn’t be completely crushed. She had also insisted that he stand in between two large flat rocks that were about waist height so if the tether failed, they had a physical barrier that would stop the rock from crushing him.
Harry had truly appreciated her efforts to ensure that he did not get injured or crushed, and he was glad that she took over designing the testing methodology. So far, everything they set out to accomplish that day had been successful and frankly, that made Harry nervous. Every time things started to go well for them, or they started to get on track, or they made some kind of headway – it always seemed like things went to shit. He pulled Hermione tighter as he rested his chin on the top of her head.
You are immensely important to me, he thought as he breathed in her scent along with the bitter cold air. And I will do everything to protect you.
-x-x-
“Alright, are you ready?” Hermione asked as she finished packing up the last of the items on her potions workbench.
She wanted to have the coins, notebook, and explanatory note readily accessible in her purse for when they broke into the Ottery St. Catchpole post office in a few short minutes. They had spent the remainder of the previous day reading and studying late into the evening. They went to bed much later than their usual schedule, forgoing a night watch and instead relying on their many alarms and wards – hoping to be well-rested for their midnight sneaking and break-ins. It was just after midnight now, and they were planning to follow their usual routine of apparating a short distance out of the city and sneaking in under the invisibility cloak. However, since the city was so close to the Weasleys – who were known opposition to Voldemort – they figured that the city might be monitored by some of Voldemort’s followers, so they decided to use Polyjuice potion for this journey for extra safety.
Once they got into town, they would break into the post office first and make the changes to the magazine, as this was the top priority of the mission. Secondary to that, assuming that they didn’t run into trouble during their post office break-in, they planned to grab some supplies from local grocers and then break into the Ottery St. Catchpole apothecary to get some additional potion ingredients needed to finish the last few batches of blood replenishing potion, essence of dittany, and calming draught.
Hermione was also hoping to break into the muggle pharmacy, which was located just across the street from the apothecary, to get some muggle supplies for minor injuries. She figured that if they could treat minor scrapes and bruises and other nonmagical injuries with muggle remedies then, they would be able to save their potions and salves supplies for the more serious injuries. She had proposed the idea to Harry while they had a late breakfast, and he’d had no objections since he was used to muggle products from his childhood anyways.
“Ready,” Harry said as he shouldered his pack and met Hermione by the entrance to the tent. “I was looking at the map, and I think that our best point of entry is going to be from the south side as it’s closest to the post office. After that, we can apparate to the east side and approach the apothecary; it’s near the muggle hospital and the pharmacy that you wanted to go to.”
“Okay – I know a good street to the south that we can apparate to that should be dead this time of night. After this, we only have four more hair samples – but we have enough Polyjuice potion left for six more transformations,” Hermione said as she held up two small glasses of Polyjuice potion and then turned to exit the tent. “So, if the opportunity comes up, we should grab some more samples.”
“Sounds good. So, who will we be today?” Harry asked as he started to disassemble the tent to pack in Hermione’s purse while Hermione carefully added different human hairs to each glass and struck the samples from her notebook, so they knew they were used.
“Today you’re a tall sandy-haired young male, and I – am your hot blonde girlfriend,” Hermione grinned at him as he stuffed the now shrunken tent into her bag. She handed him the glass when he was finished. “Bottom’s up!”
“God, I hate this stuff,” Harry said with annoyance as he eyed the glass with contempt before downing the whole thing in one gulp.
They both immediately covered their mouths and grimaced as the taste hit their tongues, and they forced themselves to swallow the brew. It was horrible, and if they hadn’t taken it previously and been expecting the taste it would have been difficult to keep down. Regardless of how much Hermione hated Barty Crouch Jr or how much she detested him as a human being – she had to admit it was impressive that he drank as much Polyjuice potion as he did throughout their fourth year of school to keep up his Mad Eye Moody charade. She wondered if he had intentionally spelled away his taste buds or that perhaps he had found a way to adjust the potion to make it not so utterly disgusting.
Or maybe he just got used to it, she thought as she scrunched her nose at the lingering taste.
Hermione watched as Harry grew another two inches, and his hair changed from black to a light sandy colour. His eye shape changed along with their colour until they settled in at a dark brown. She could feel herself growing several inches and tried to ignore the tightness across her chest as her boobs grew several cups larger – apparently, this girl’s boobs were real.
That was one of the fascinating things about Polyjuice potion and using it with hair you borrowed from muggles, it changed you to match the person’s genetic appearance, not their altered one. So, depending on who you stole hair from, you could be in for some surprises – like a different nose, extra skin, or even smaller boobs.
“I like your normal hair better,” the sandy-haired man in front of her said as he reached out and ran Hermione’s newly blond and newly straight hair through his fingers. “This is so – so ordinary, it doesn’t suit you.”
“Thanks, Harry,” Hermione blushed as she reached up to grab his hand and squeezed it. “This should last us about three hours give or take some, so we should get apparating.”
They apparated just outside of Ottery St. Catchpole on the south side as Harry had recommended. Harry held Hermione’s wand while she kept a firm grip on his other ungloved hand. When they landed, they crouched into their defensive position and waited while Harry cast several silent spells, including homenum revelio to ensure that they were alone – but Sidmouth Road at 1 am was empty, cold, and dark. They had purposely apparated south of Gerway Lane to avoid being seen. There was nothing lurking near them but trees and snow-covered farmland – no one knew that they were there.
They changed grips, and Harry gently held the back of Hermione’s neck while she bent over to fish out the invisibility cloak from her bag. Once they were covered, she grabbed Harry’s hand again, and they made their way slowly into town toward the post office while vanishing their footprints from the snow.
Despite having only been to Ottery St. Catchpole once, Hermione couldn’t help but feel like everything was so familiar. How many times was it now that they had snuck into a town and broken in somewhere to either get supplies or information? Her senses were on high alert, and they flinched at every noise, every rattle and any movement of the trees that they saw.
When this is all over, Hermione thought to herself. I think I will miss this the least.
Fighting for food and supplies, sneaking around and being on high alert somehow always left her feeling like she had run a marathon. Probably from the sheer amount of stress and adrenaline pumping through her veins as her body was constantly vigilant and waiting for attack. She would be happy when her sneaking days were over.
When they reached the post office Harry quietly unlocked the door, and they slipped inside. Hermione led the way to the post boxes at the back of the building, where Mr. Weasley received his subscription to box number 153. It took Hermione only a breath to unlock the box wordlessly and pull out the magazine. When she did, she almost snorted at the cover, which read ‘Plants – are they listening to your conversations?’ . She turned to Harry who promptly rolled his eyes when he read the cover and shook his head.
It took Hermione about twenty-five minutes to complete the charms on the magazine and link it to her notebook using the double protean charm. The coin, which was already prepared, was then carefully inserted into an envelope and placed within the magazine. Hermione used a sticking charm to ensure that the envelope would not fall out of the magazine and made it look like it was intentionally part of that month’s issue. Harry watched her work while maintaining a gentle grip on her hip; he’d pushed his hand under the fabric of her jacket and sweater, and would apparate them away if anything unplanned happened.
Once the charms were completed, Hermione then placed the letter to Mr. Weasley inside the front cover of the magazine. She used a sticking charm to fasten it as well and placed a fourth disguising charm on the letter. Even Molly Weasley wouldn’t be able to see the note she had left explaining how their communication would work – it was for Mr. Weasley’s eyes only and would vanish if forced to reveal itself by any other wizard.
Once she was done, she carefully placed the magazine back in the post box and relocked the door before turning around to Harry and grinning widely – step one of their mission had been a success.
They then crept their way back to the post office door and quietly left the building. Before apparating to the east side of town, they popped into the small grocery store just down the street that they had passed on their way in and restocked their supplies. Hemione grimaced as she looked at her change purse while counting out money to pay for the groceries – this whole ‘saving the wizarding world’ escapade was taking a huge hit on her financials, and she was starting to regret not taking out more money from Gringotts and her muggle bank. They would likely need to start trying to catch or harvest more of their own food. She had already been trying to collect mushrooms and other small things like nuts and berries while they travelled, but it looked like it would need to become a more regular routine.
She and Harry had planned to stop at Gringotts before skipping out on seventh year to go Horcrux hunting so they could both collect money from their accounts. She knew that Harry was well off and that he had probably intended to take out a small fortune to fund whatever they needed. They never told Ron about their plan since they both knew that he and the Weasleys didn’t have much money to contribute, and they didn’t want him to get upset. They had been planning to make it a separate trip with just the two of them early in the morning before Ron woke up the week after Bill and Fleur’s wedding, but they never got the chance – they didn’t expect the wedding to be the last night they would have to prepare. Hermione had had her bag, clothes and essentials for all three of them packed for days, but their post-wedding Gringotts trip never happened, and to show up at Gringotts in Diagon Alley now would be a death sentence.
Once clear of the main street, they apparated over to the east side of town and landed on Cadhay Lane so that they could sneak into the apothecary and the nearby muggle pharmacy. Their walk to the apothecary was equally as stressful and tense as their walk to the muggle post office had been. The wind was picking up and the associated noises made both Hermione and Harry stop several times on the walk to crouch down while they waited to ensure that they were truly alone – but a combination of the cold and perhaps even some luck seemed to be on their side tonight. They made it to the apothecary undisturbed.
“Harry,” Hermione whispered, her words barely audible beneath the invisibility cloak. “There may be wards and charms.”
Harry nodded in agreement as they crouched next to the side of the apothecary building. It was an old stone house, where the owner clearly slept upstairs, and the shop was on the main floor facing the street. Harry wondered how long it had been there for, and he smiled in amusement when he thought of how many Ottery St. Catchpole muggles must walk by this building each and every day without evening knowing that it was there.
Holding Hermione’s wand steady in his hand, he cast several charms to check for any wards – finding none, they crept slowly toward the main door to check it.
“No wards, but the door is charmed and locked,” Harry whispered to Hermione after testing the door. He handed her back her wand. “I don’t suppose you know any fancy spells to get us in without setting off some sort of alarm, do you?”
Hermione cast a detection spell at the door, and sure enough, Harry was right. While the whole building had no overall wards – likely to prevent them from going off at all hours of the night either due to neighbourhood cats, drunk muggles, or local kids, the door was indeed locked tight with some impressive charm work. A simple unlocking spell wouldn’t open the door – and even if it would, Hermione wasn’t stupid enough to use it. The charms placed on this door would alert the owner, who was likely sleeping upstairs, that it had been opened outside of business hours or tampered with.
“No,” Hermione mouthed back before gesturing for Harry to start moving back around the building. They shuffled their way around the house and vanished their snowy footsteps until they were in the side yard of the house.
“So, what are we going to do?” Harry questioned as he watched Hermione flick her wand at the building and squint her eyes as she examined it in the darkness.
“Well,” she sighed after a moment and when several more wordless detection spells had been cast. “For starters, I’m going to add burglary skills to our list of things to work on. The whole building isn’t warded, just the door on the front, and there is some spell work on the main floor – probably a movement detection spell that activates on the main floor during the evening. As annoying as it is – on the bright side, it’s probably safe to assume that this apothecary has a good selection of ingredients.”
Harry snorted slightly at her optimism and waited for her to continue.
“The way I see it, we have two, or possibly three options. First, we wait until morning and then enter as disguised customers – but that would mean using more Polyjuice potion, and the store owner may be a bit suspicious since we aren’t regular customers. Plus, you never know who we might run into during the day or who might be watching the store. Second, you levitate me up to that second-floor window, and I’ll break in and then levitate you up. We can then try to dispel the motion detection ward on the main floor before making our way down there.”
“What’s the possible third option?” Harry asked when Hermione had stopped speaking and was looking at him guiltily.
“Well,” she hesitated. “The third option is quite illegal.”
“You mean more illegal than breaking into someone’s home?”
“Yes,” the guilty look on her face doubled. “If I’m unable to dispel the motion detection spell on the first floor – well, we can always find the bedroom of whoever owns this place and immobilize them so that they can’t do anything when the detection spells go off. We then have to grab what we need quickly and get out before releasing them.”
“How exactly would we be immobilizing the owner?” Harry asked as he now understood where Hermione was going with her train of thought.
“Well, we could use immobulus or petrificus totalus, and worst case if we had to – which I don’t want to consider it – we could use imperius – but either way we look at this, we can add attacking an unarmed and innocent wizard on top of our breaking and entering crime.”
“How certain are you that you could remove the motion detection spell on the main floor?”
“I’m not sure,” Hermione frowned as she rubbed her brow with her wand hand since Harry still kept a firm grip on the other. “Maybe sixty or seventy percent? I sort of need to attempt it to see – or at least examine the spell work from the inside. But if I fail, well – then we’d be in trouble. It would be better to just immobilize the person first, but then they will know we are there for sure.”
“Alright – okay,” Harry’s brow creased as he pondered how to move forward. “How about this. Let’s go to the pharmacy first and get the supplies you want from there – that way, if the apothecary goes poorly, we just leave right away and we’re not out anything else. We’ll try a freezing charm first, and worst case, we just leave and apparate back to the northern coast.”
“Okay, yes, let’s try that – I’d rather not have this turn into a duel,” Hermione agreed as she nodded, and they made to move across the street to the small muggle pharmacy.
Breaking into the pharmacy was easier than catching flobberworms.
A quick unlocking and freezing spell later and they had entered the pharmacy and shut off any muggle security alarms that might have been present. Harry trailed quietly behind Hermione under the cloak as she went from aisle to aisle, collecting various items ranging from feminine products to band-aids, splint material, medical wrap, acetaminophen, and disinfectant. He raised an eyebrow when she grabbed several syringes from behind the counter along with some needles and a long plastic tube that were sealed in sterile packages.
“You never know,” she muttered as she then counted out some bills to place in the register to cover the cost of the materials she had taken.
Leaving the pharmacy and heading back to the apothecary proved to be more difficult. They were almost across the street – their pace slowed by Hermione needing to vanish their footprints in the freshly fallen snow when Harry froze on spot and grabbed her hand more tightly before pulling her into their defensive crouch position. She then heard the gentle shuffle of feet in the snow before she heard a low mumble of a voice.
Oh bugger, Hermione thought as she squinted her eyes to see down the narrow street and made out the shape of a dark hooded figure. It was walking up the sidewalk from their right toward them. Of course our luck would run out.
She felt Harry squeeze her hand firmly and she glanced at him to see him make their wait signal, indicating that they should hold on spot, before her eyes traced back to the cloaked figure approaching. They both crouched perfectly still and waited to see what the figure did, but based on the cloak, he was clearly a wizard. As the unknown wizard closed the distance toward them on the sidewalk, they heard a noise to their left before a second figure emerged from around the corner.
“Anything on yer round?” The first cloaked figure asked as it slowed to speak with the second, just to the left of where Harry and Hermione stood hidden under the invisibility cloak on the street.
“Nah,” the second replied in a gruff voice.
Though Harry’s grip remained tight, neither one of them made to apparate away – the sound would be a dead give away, and they needed to get ingredients from the apothecary if they wanted to have enough potion supplies. Getting caught near an apothecary would be suspicious and the last thing they wanted was for some ridiculous article to be published in the Daily Prophet that led to more security or guards around the very type of store they needed to break into.
“I ain’t seen nothin’ from the blood traitors all week – I don’ know why they think sumthin might be going on ‘ere – only thing I saw was one of ‘em mangey wolves tryin’a come in the north-east side.”
“Those fucking dogs are causing more trouble than they’re worth,” the second hooded figure replied back angrily.
“Hey mate – keep yer voice down, you never know if they be listenin’,” the first man responded as he glanced nervously over his shoulder.
“Ah fuck it, those dogs cause more noise and trouble than I ever would,” the second man said as he waved his hand in dismissal. “I told the last one I caught trying to sneak into town to fuck off before I neutered him like the dog that he was. They’re supposed to be covert, but those bloody fuckers don’t know what the fuck that means, and they just keep trying to move south. They’re already regularly pulling from Bristol, and the muggles have noticed, the disappearances are on their news. Stupid as muggles are, they’re not completely moronic – they’ll notice a bunch of people being taken.”
“I know, worst part is the girls,” the first man sighed and brought a hand to his head. “It was one thing when they was just takin’ the homeless – but now tha’ they takin’ the girls from the pubs? Yeah it’s as you said, the muggles notice.”
“I just don’t understand why he even wants them. They just cause problems and cock everything up.”
“Ah who knows,” the first man said. “I recon it’s jus’ the brute force he’s after – he’ll prolly kill ‘em all once he’s done with ‘em.”
“Yeah, well, I hope that’s sooner than later,” the second man spat at the ground. “Otherwise, we’re bound to see more action than what’s necessary from the blood traitors – or we’ll end up in full-on war with the muggles before we’re ready. They should have leashed the main pack too, not just their damn muggle grunts.”
The first man nodded before he took out his wand and cast a warming spell on himself.
“Alrigh’ then, I’m freezing my arse off. Yer goin’ to take the east side for the rest of the night then?” The first man asked as he quickly cast a second warming charm on himself. He’d clearly been taking some kind of first watch and was trading off with the very unimpressed second man.
“Yeah, yeah, even though it’s a fucking waste of time. You tell Scabior – that if I see another one of those fucking dogs – I’m going to blast its head clean off. I don’t care what the orders are, they’re flee bags, and they’re just causing problems.”
“Aye, I know, you say tha’ every night,” the first man said as he started to walk past the second man toward the corner.
“Yeah, but this time I mean it!” The second man called to the first.
The first man raised his hand in the air to acknowledge the second’s words, but he kept walking until he had rounded the corner and they heard a faint pop.
“Fucking mangy dogs,” the second man muttered to himself as he began strolling down the street the direction the first man had come from.
Hermione and Harry remained frozen under the cloak for the entirety of the exchange, waiting until the second man was far from view and until not a sound could be heard. Then they waited a few minutes longer. Hermione knew that not all of Voldemort’s followers liked or supported the idea of involving the werewolves, but she had not anticipated that the werewolves would be causing such problems for their own side – though it did make sense when she thought about it. Werewolves who embraced their curse tended to become more primal in their behaviours. They were often violent, hot-headed, hard to reason with, and they weren’t something that could be controlled. She felt Harry let out a breath behind her.
“Well, that was fucking lucky,” he muttered in her ear.
“I’ve actually been meaning to ask you, Harry,” Hermione muttered back as they slowly began moving toward the apothecary again. “Did you happen to have more liquid luck hidden away that you decided to drink today?”
“No,” Harry snorted. “It sure seems that way doesn’t it. Though – I’m sure our luck will change again, just give it time.”
Hermione’s jaw clenched and her mouth fell into a tight line. Harry was right. They never had good luck, and surely this only meant that they were about to get royally screwed over in some way – it was only a matter of time. As they approached the side yard of the apothecary again Hermione pondered the conversation that they had just overheard, she knew that Harry would be thinking about it too and they needed to discuss it. She wanted to start spending more time on the golden bands and try to compile all the bits and pieces of information that they had. It was also something that they should consider telling Mr. Weasley about – she assumed that he was still in touch with Mr. Shacklebolt, who was the advisor and protector of the Prime Minister. If the werewolves were taking muggles in such a way that it was upsetting even some of Voldemort’s followers, maybe they could somehow warn the muggle public without it being obvious that they knew a larger plan was in the works. She made a mental reminder to discuss that later with Harry. They were now crouched down under the second-floor window of the apothecary, and they needed to refocus on the task at hand.
“Okay, so you’re going to levitate me up to the second-floor window, and I’ll climb in. Afterwards I’ll levitate you up, and then we’ll find the bedroom,” Hermione said quietly to Harry as she handed him her wand before slowly uncovering herself from the cloak.
They both agreed she would be levitated up first since she would be able to levitate Harry up wandlessly – and thus, they could avoid trying to throw their only wand to each other in the dark. Their hands were still gripped tightly together as they did one final scope out of the surrounding area before deciding it was time to complete their plan. Harry removed the cloak from himself and tucked it safely into her purse.
“Ready?” Harry asked, squeezing her hand firmly before letting go.
“Ready,” Hermione breathed.
Harry pointed her wand at her and then wordless cast his spell. Hermione felt her feet leave the ground as Harry carefully directed her up to the second-floor window and held her steady as she unlocked it and crawled inside. He waited until she was securely through the window before he lowered her wand – the last thing he wanted to do was drop her two stories down; despite the snow, the landing would still hurt. Hermione poked her head back out the window and gave a small thumbs-up before Harry felt himself being lifted from the ground. When he finally reached the same level as the window, he could see that the window entered into a small study room filled with books. Grabbing the ledge firmly, he pulled himself through the window before Hermione lowered him back to the ground.
Hermione wasn’t sure who the man was that owned this apothecary – but she felt even worse breaking into his house after she saw all the fantastic books that he had laid around his small study. The majority of the books seemed to be focused on potion making, but there were others there regarding history, and some focused on charm work. It took a decent amount of her self-control to keep her hands off the tempting tomes. Linking hands with Harry once more, they crept toward the door to what she assumed was the hallway.
The second-floor landing of the house was dark, except for a small lantern that sat on a narrow table near the stairs. As Hermione approached the staircase cautiously, she could feel the slight hum of magical wards that were clearly not cast to be discrete on the main floor.
Yes, she thought as she peered down the stairs. There is definitely a motion detection spell down there - and it was cast with the intention of being noticeable. Whoever owned this shop was clever and knew that leaving a strong magical presence on the main floor would help to deter people from trying to break in. It was pretty much the equivalent to a dog marking his territory and leaving an absurdly strong scent.
Now that she was inside, she cast a few detection and analysis spells before frowning at the results. Hermione looked back and shook her head gently to Harry – whoever had cast this had not tried to hide it. The spell work was blunt, thick, layered and to the point. She doubted that she would be able to remove it without triggering something else. She simply had not spent enough time on her break and entering skills to be able to disarm the main floor without the risk of sounding the alarm. They would need to immobilize the owner.
Harry nodded in understanding and made for the only other door that exited onto the small landing. Before opening it. He cast two disillusionment spells. He didn’t want to take the cloak out in case they had to make a run for it, it was too valuable to lose, but disillusionment would suffice for approaching someone who was hopefully asleep. The door to what they assumed was the bedroom was unlocked and opened soundlessly when Harry turned the nob.
It was indeed a bedroom, and there was indeed someone sleeping in the bed. What they had not anticipated, though, was the very large owl that stood proudly on a tall perch near the window that had – at the soundless sound of the door – turned its head to inspect what was going on. It took only a tenth of a second for the owl’s eyes to narrow suspiciously and for its beak to open wide.
“Shi–“ Harry started to say before he was cut off by the immense screech of the owl.
With two quick flicks of his wand the owl fell silent, and the man that had sat bolt upright in bed froze in place before he had managed to turn and face them.
“Well, that was unexpected. You go downstairs and get what you need. I’ll stay here to keep them immobilized and make sure nothing else comes in – be quick,” Harry whispered hastily as he looked at the blank space where he knew Hermione was standing beside him.
“On it,” Hermione said as she let go of his hand. “You remember our meeting place?”
“Yeah, in case something happens, let’s meet there.”
“Okay, I need my wand for a moment,” Hermione said as she reached out toward the nothingness that was Harry and grabbed her wand.
She then quickly removed the audible alarm from the main floor – the rest she didn’t care about. The man currently frozen in his bed probably had alarm bells ringing in his head from her tampering, and he was about to get more when she set the motion detection off, but he obviously knew that they were there anyway. So long as nothing was blaring out into the neighbourhood alerting any other people of their presence, Hermione couldn’t care less how many alarms she set off. With the audible alarm removed, she returned her wand to Harry and quickly descended the stairs into darkness. Wandlessly, she cast a small light and found the handle of the door which opened to the main floor shop at the bottom of the stair.
The apothecary was neat and tidy, everything was labelled, and she smiled despite the situation.
At least this will be easy, she thought, and she began collecting ingredients.
She grabbed larger quantities than she knew she needed – there was no time to measure and no room for error or being cheap. Everything she grabbed was quickly stowed in her purse as she kept a rough mental tally of the cost in her head. This was going to cost her a small fortune, and she would be basically out of coin. She grabbed valerian roots, unicorn hair, bicorn horn, mandrake roots and several other ingredients. She quickly ran up and down the shelves searching for dittany and clenched her fists in frustration when she couldn’t find any. She was just about to give up and place the money on the counter when she noticed a row of jars on a shelf behind the counter.
“Perfect,” she said as she spotted the second last jar on the left, which was labelled in beautiful cursive as ‘dittany’, and she quickly hopped up and over the counter.
The ingredient was scarce and expensive, so it wasn’t really surprising that it would be kept behind the counter along with several other more expensive ingredients – but the second her fingers touched the glass jar, a loud screeching began.
“Ah, fuck!” Hermione cursed as she unscrewed the lid of the jar and rapidly dumped the dittany into her purse. Her ears were pounding at the sound, and she could feel a dizziness settling over her. She slammed the money she had previously taken out down on the counter. She wasn’t sure if it would be enough to cover the dittany she had just taken, but she did not have time to recount. If this ever ended, she would return and ensure that she paid the man back in full, but without her wand she couldn’t silence the alarm, and they needed to get out before the neighbourhood heard it.
Of course the items on the back shelf had separate alarms you idiot! she screamed at herself inwardly as she threw herself back over the counter and landed with a wobble. The screeching sound from the jar, was making her nauseous and severely unsteady. She suspected that the man had placed the charm on the jars so that only he could touch them and take out product for customers.
The charm is probably permanent and on there all the time, she surmised as she jammed her fingers in her ears and forced her legs to move their way toward the staircase. With each loud shriek from the jar, she felt like her head was suffering from whiplash – like she had been hit with a violent bout of vertigo that made her nearly fall down and vomit all over herself. She’d almost made it to the top of the stairs when she heard a loud popping sound.
“Peter! What’s–“ the voice of another male was cut short as she saw Harry flick her wand several times while simultaneously trying to cover his ears.
“What the fuck happened?” Harry yelled to her as the alarm seemed to grow louder.
“A jar was charmed – I couldn’t dispel it without my wand,” she yelled back as she climbed the last step and staggered into the wall.
Their disillusionments had worn off and she could see Harry standing at a bizarre angle as he tried to block out the sound and maintain his balance. When she got closer to Harry, she glanced in the bedroom and saw that both the owl and the man were now frozen in a different position. The man had actually managed to get out of bed before Harry had immobilized him again, and the owl was now laying on the ground with its wings spread – it had clearly been hit mid-flight and then dropped to the ground. Harry’s aim with his wand is distorted, she realized.
“We need to go,” Harry forced out before he grabbed at his stomach with his hand. “Bloody hell, I’m gonna puke.”
Hermione reached to grab for Harry but lost her balance as she uncovered her ear and instead stumbled disoriented to her left through the door of the study and fell to the floor. Her insides felt like they had just rotated ninety degrees, throwing her center of gravity off and hitting her with a fresh bout of nausea. She clenched her jaw and shut her eyes tight to prevent herself from puking, knowing full well she would not be able to apparate while inside the house without splinching them into several pieces.
“Clever bastard,” she groaned through her tightly clenched jaw as she buried her face into the carpet of the study, trying to stop the swimming of her head and stomach. This apothecary man was a genius, mess with someone’s senses like this – wizard or no, and there was no way they were leaving his house with anything.
In fact, she doubted that anyone tried to burgle this man.
She felt Harry grab her hand and pull her to her feet as her stomach rolled once more, and she retched and vomited on the floor of the man’s study and across one of his books. Harry dragged her to the window before he lost his balance completely and fell next to the ledge.
“I think that’s quite enough,” a man’s voice boomed from the other room.
Hermione’s vision was still rolling, but she could see the man who had been immobilized in bed approaching the study doorway from the hall with his wand extended and flashing with light. Whoever it was that had apparated into his home had called him Peter – but Peter’s friend was still frozen in place, so Peter was on his own. She could begin to feel the effects of the Polyjuice potion wearing off as she leaned against Harry who was slumped against the wall with his hand over his mouth.
Oh yes, this is just a great feeling, she thought sarcastically as the awful feeling of transforming back into her normal self started to hit her body while the ringing alarms in the house continued to feed her violently spinning vertigo symptoms.
She felt Harry grab her waist tightly, his hand slipping under her coat and beneath the fabric of her sweater so it came to rest on her bare, scarred skin. She knew what was coming even before he gave the small tug to shift them fully in front of the still-open window.
“You think you can come into my house and steal from my store!? Who do you think you are!” The man yelled angrily as he stormed into the room and began closing the space between them quickly before he raised his lit wand to point directly in their faces.
Hermione flinched, squinting her unfocused eyes in response and forcing them to stay still while they tried to roll out of her head and upturn the contents of her now empty stomach once more. She strained them to look the man in the face. He was middle-aged – perhaps around Mr. Weasley’s age and had dark brown messy hair. Then she watched as his angry and rageful expression morphed into a look of utter disbelief and confusion.
“You can’t be Harry Potter?” Peter asked incredulously as a glint of fear crossed his eyes. At the same moment, Hermione heard Harry retch behind her from the nausea and felt him make a final tug around her waist.
“I’m sorry for the mess,” Hermione managed to say before Harry tugged them both backward and out the window.
Arthur Weasley whistled happily as he strolled down the snowy main street of Ottery St. Catchpole on his way to the local post office. He’d had the muggle tune of We Wish You a Merry Christmas stuck in his head since he first heard it walking through the town in December, and it had become one of his favourites to whistle this year – much to the annoyance of Mrs. Weasley when he was at home and stealing snacks from the kitchen.
The morning was crisp and beautiful, and Arthur could not help but smile. He felt peace settle over his soul as he walked, admiring the beautiful white snow and icy crystals of the quiet morning. It was days like this that gave him hope and inspired him to remain positive about the ongoing war efforts.
Things had been particularly bleak over the last few months. For starters, he had found out that his youngest son had abandoned Harry and Hermione and was now hiding out at Shell Cottage with his elder son. He knew that Ron’s absence from the Burrow was partly to avoid the wrath and badgering of his wife and partly because Ron was trying to figure out what to do next while hiding his embarrassment and shame. Secondly, Bathilda Bagshot had been found dead by two Aurors in her home in Godric’s Hollow, or well… what was left of her home. The top floor of her house had been exploded during some kind of altercation, and the remains of Bathilda that they found were disturbing to say the least.
They were also dealing with trying to keep the muggle public out of the know, which was becoming increasingly difficult as more and more muggles turned up dead or went missing. The Death Eaters were growing bolder with each passing day. They were acting out in public, including in muggle areas which was difficult to conceal and resolve. Not to mention the much more frequent and highly suspicious sightings of werewolves in denser populated areas – which was a nightmare for logistics and made the Order feel as though Remus Lupin’s efforts throughout the past year trying to recruit the known packs had been a massively wasteful effort that endangered a key member of the Order for no gain whatsoever.
Then there was the extra fun drama of his own family that seemed to never end. Aside from Ron abandoning his friends, returning home, and the tension that it caused with his wife and Fred and George – there was Percy, who had been a sore spot for the family for a number of years. And now Ginny, who had come home at Christmas with a girlfriend, announcing that she was gay while explaining the rebellion and war efforts that she had been leading with Neville Longbottom of all people while at Hogwarts last semester. That had sure spun things into a tizzy with the household and resulted in a large outburst on Christmas day that would surely go down in Weasley family history.
So far, the majority of the Order’s war efforts had been covert and under the table. The Ministry was infiltrated – that was well known and a surprise to no one. The Daily Prophet was bought and paid for and currently run by Death Eaters. The curriculum at Hogwarts had changed, and most magical families were too afraid to do anything about it – being more interested in keeping themselves and their family members safe rather than getting involved and helping the cause.
Arthur couldn’t even blame them. Times like this were difficult and demanded a kind of courage and bravery that most people were not accustomed to. It also demanded sacrifices, ones that most witches and wizards were not willing to make. People die in war. It had been years since the last great wizarding war and people were not eager to lay their heads down on the chopping block – especially when Harry Potter had run off on some alleged secret mission.
Even though Arthur didn’t know what they were up to – and Ron, to his credit, had still refused to say what they were doing when he returned home rather sheepishly – Arthur trusted that they were fighting the war in their own way. Likely on Dumbledore’s confidential orders. He knew that Hermione was not one to abandon a cause midway, and he knew that Harry was loyal to Dumbledore to a fault. So, he trusted that they were working hard at whatever it was that they were doing.
The problem was that many others within the wizarding community viewed Harry’s absence as a sign of the times – that Harry had gone into hiding because Voldemort had become so powerful that the war was a lost cause. People were choosing to keep their heads down and follow along instead of fighting back. People were afraid. Voldemort and his followers had taken Harry’s disappearance as an opportunity to gain more power, and they’d had the Daily Prophet issue article after article about how Harry had abandoned the wizarding world to return to the muggle world. They also ran several stories stating that Harry was a killer and a thief, and generally just a bad person. The amount of garbage that the Death Eaters pumped out of that newspaper was astounding, and the Ministry had officially made Harry their Number One Undesirable.
The Order had started Potter Watch through radio communication as a means to try and maintain support from the wizarding public, to reach those that still believed in the cause or were hesitant to fully support it. Their goal was to keep people informed on what was really going on while trying to show that Harry was still on their side and helping in some way despite them having no actual idea what he was doing.
Suffice to say, it was difficult to keep morale up, and it was hard to keep people in touch with the truth when they really had no idea how Harry was helping – except that they just had faith in him.
But with the cold crisp air Arthur felt refreshed. He had pushed the worries and doubtful thoughts from his mind, and he was intent on going to pick up his favourite magazine and stop by the apothecary to get some ingredients for Mrs. Weasley. She was planning to make her famous headache remedy and pepperup potions. Their supplies had been ransacked heavily over the Christmas break, and the twins had recently come down with a nasty head cold, so Mrs. Weasley was planning on delivering some freshly brewed pepperup to them this afternoon. It was the perfect weekend to be out and about, and for the first time in ages there was no secret meeting or work that needed to be done over the weekend. So he actually had time to read some of his magazine before helping Mrs. Weasley around the house.
Arthur reached the post office and smiled as an electronic bell rang when he opened the door.
Muggles, he thought fondly as he stomped his boots to clear the snow and walked into the shop. They make such neat inventions.
“Good Morning Howard!” Arthur called cheerfully to the man tending the front counter as he walked to the post boxes at the rear of the store.
“Good Morning Mr. Bell,” the cashier said with an amused smile on his face as Arthur strode by in his typical monthly routine.
It took Arthur several months to become comfortable with going into the post office and unlocking his post box on his own. He was always worried that someone might think he was stealing, and so he used to stop at the counter to inform Howard, the clerk, of his business at the back of the store each month he went to get his magazine. Both Howard and Hermione, once she found out that this was what Arthur was doing, then explained to Arthur that it was his post box and he was allowed to go and check it any time that he wanted to while the post office was open and that no one would think he was stealing.
Arthur had decided to get the magazine subscription delivered under the name Alex Bell in tribute to Alexander Graham Bell, the muggle inventor who created the telephone. He also got his post office box created under the same fake name. Hermione would deny it to anyone who asked her because it had been illegal, but she had created a fake muggle license for Arthur to use as ID, and had come with him to setup the post box. And while Howard would deny it to anyone who asked him, since most of the other muggle store owners found Mr. Bell odd, Mr. Bell was truly his favourite customer, and he quite enjoyed his visits.
Even though Howard agreed that Mr. Bell was a strange man, it was impossible not to enjoy his cheerful nature – or find his eagerness to hear about how ‘business at the post office’ was going amusing. Howard also took great pleasure in answering Mr. Bell’s odd questions or telling him about his own hobbies since Mr. Bell always found Howard's hobbies fascinating, and this made Howard smile. Over the years, he had learned that Mr. Bell particularly liked tools and seemed to be a collector of them – though Howard was unsure what Mr. Bell used them for.
Arthur reached his post box and continued to whistle his song while he opened the small metal door and grabbed the magazine. He glanced at the cover and smiled. The title on the front would surely amuse his wife and would make for good snowy day reading material. He slipped the magazine into the inside pocket of his muggle jacket – which had been extended with an undetectable extension charm so that he could carry his magazine and any other goodies he picked up while in the small town. Then, he made his way back to the front counter to speak to Howard.
“So, Howard,” Arthur said brightly as he placed both hands gently on the top of the counter. “How’s the post business this month?”
“Oh, it’s back to normal I would say,” Howard smiled as he looked over Arthur’s cheerful features. “Now that the Christmas and New Year rush is over, it’s just the steady old mail and packages that we usually see. Have you gotten any new tools?”
“Ah yes! I have!” Arthur said proudly, his chest puffing out. Arthur wasn’t one to brag, but he was very fond of the gift that Fred and George had given him for Christmas this year, and he did not have the chance to tell Howard about it last month. Apparently, the twins had found it while looking for new ideas for their joke shop and thought it would make a good gift. “This year for Christmas, my two sons got me a jackknife!”
Arthur grinned at Howard excitedly, oblivious to the small smile that crossed Howard’s face.
“It’s the neatest little contraption,” Arthur continued as the amusement on Howard’s face increased. “It has a knife of course, which is in the name, so that’s obvious – but it also has all of these little miniature tools that you can pull out of the sides of it. Like clippers, a file and a wee little screwdriver!”
“That sounds wonderful, Mr. Bell,” Howard said as he grinned widely. It was always refreshing to see someone enjoy the small things in life and not need huge or lavish gifts to be happy.
“Yes, it is,” Arthur beamed back. “I’ve quite enjoyed it so far, carrying it around in my pocket at home just waiting to find things to try it out on. It’s very handy.”
Arthur then said goodbye to Howard and left the post office, continuing to whistle his tune when he stepped outside and turned to head towards the apothecary. Most other wizards that he knew would have walked back to Bits and Such, the small wizarding shop down the street that allowed you to apparate in and out of town using their side yard so that muggles wouldn’t notice, then apparated directly to the side yard of the apothecary. But Arthur didn’t mind the cold or the walk. He had charmed his jacket before leaving so that it would be extra warm.
The walk to the apothecary was uneventful, and he arrived approximately 20 minutes later, cheeks flushed from the cold and ready to get warmed up inside the store.
“Good Morning, Peter,” Arthur called as he opened the door to the apothecary and stepped inside from the cold, taking a moment to vanish the snow from his boots before stepping off the doormat.
“Ah – oh, Arthur – good morning,” a tall dark-haired wizard said from behind the counter of the apothecary.
Peter had jumped slightly when Arthur entered the shop; he had been standing behind the counter, organizing the jars on the shelf behind. Usually, Peter was a well-put-together wizard, sharp as a tack, clever and never startled by customers entering the premises. Today though – well, Peter looked a little worse for wear. There was a hint of shadow under his eyes, his hair was ever so slightly dishevelled, and frankly, it looked like the man had not been sleeping the last few nights. Arthur cautiously looked around the apothecary, ensuring that no one else was inside before he spoke again.
“Everything okay there, Peter?” Arthur did not drop the friendly tone of his voice, but his eyes were serious and hinted of something more. “I hope no one has come around bothering you again?”
Peter was one of the wizards fighting on the side of the light – or well, as much as he could do without losing business or getting snuffed out by Voldemort and his followers. He had not publicly taken a stance or a position in the war, but he sold Arthur and the other Order members ingredients at a discounted rate – sometimes sneaking in more rare and important ingredients free of charge. He also acted as a front for information transference between Order members when possible, giving them a means to hand over data disguised and hidden inside ingredient bottles or boxes.
Due to Peter’s family relations with several large greenhouses in England, he tended to have the best ingredients, and if he didn’t have it, he could get it. But Peter had been under immense pressure from the Death Eaters lately to either join their side or be bought out. So far, Peter had managed to evade their requests and outmaneuver their plays by providing less potent ingredients, pretending to be out of certain items and faking greenhouse plagues and dead crops – all the while stockpiling and storing ingredients underground for use by innocent everyday wizards or by the Order.
The Death Eater visits to Peter’s apothecary had been increasing in frequency the last few months, and Arthur knew that it was only a matter of time until Peter either caved or disappeared. He had spoken to Peter about it only once previously with Shacklebolt’s support – they needed Peter to fold and start to supply the Death Eaters when the time was right. While they did not fancy giving the Death Eaters more resources or power, they needed people like Peter to stay alive and stay in the positions that they had. Alive Peter could still help the Order, albeit less so, but that would be better than not at all. Not to mention the fact that Arthur liked Peter. He was a good man, and he deserved to live.
“Oh, it’s fine,” Peter said as he tried to smooth his hair and came to rest his hands gently on the counter for support. “You know how it is – it’s cold season, so it’s been crazy busy, and I’ve been having trouble with the mandrakes again.”
Mandrakes – yes, that was the code word that Peter and Arthur had decided to use when discussing the Death Eaters.
“Ah yes,” Arthur said sadly as he stood in front of the counter facing Peter. “Mandrakes have always been a handful. Have they been acting out again?”
“I’d love to say that they are only being as bad as they usually are, but this year they seem to be getting more aggressive. I have a feeling I might have to just cut my losses with them soon – especially given last night’s incident.”
“That’s unfortunate,” Arthur said sincerely, understanding that this was Peter giving him warning that he would soon be caving to the Death Eaters, and they would need to stop using his shop for information trade. As per their plan, they would still be able to buy ingredients like any other wizard, but no more critical information would be housed or transferred through the apothecary and ingredient shortages would disappear. “What happened last night?”
He was nervous of what the answer might be. The Death Eaters had underhanded moves, and Arthur only hoped that no one in Peter’s family had been placed in danger.
“Oh, just a little surprise. An attempted break-in,” Peter said in a voice that was calmer than what his eyes showed.
“A break-in?!” Arthur could not help the incredulous tone of his voice or how his eyebrows shot up. Anyone who knew anything about Peter knew that you did not try to rob him – even the Death Eaters weren’t stupid enough to try it. This meant that either the lower-level snatchers had gotten desperate and too bold for their britches, or the Order now had a brand-new problem to deal with. Either way, it wasn’t good news, and it made Arthur’s good mood diminish further.
“Yes, it seems that two young kids thought they were smart enough to get into my shop and steal some ingredients.” Peter fixed Arthur with an intent stare as if trying to convey some kind of message, and then he continued to speak. “Luckily though, I caught them and sent them on their way before they were able to take anything.”
“So, no one was hurt, and you didn’t lose any supplies? That’s good – but kids, Peter? That’s odd. What were they after?” Arthur asked as he tried to work out what it was that Peter was trying to say.
“Well,” Peter hesitated and glanced at the shop door before he started to idly shuffle things around on the counter, tidying and rearranging the containers that sat there. “I wouldn’t say no one got hurt – there were minor injuries before I sent them away – but yes, nothing was taken. I was able to balance my inventory books over the last few days and confirm it. I’m afraid that’s why I look a little tired – I went through my supplies to make sure that there were no shortages of anything.”
Arthur nodded in understanding.
The Death Eaters had been coming around and checking on the inventory of Peter’s shop for the last year – ever since Peter had started helping the Order by pretending to be out of stock or having supply issues. Based on Peter’s appearance, he had been up all night for the last few days adjusting his inventory books, not checking them. That meant that whoever was here left with supplies, and, Peter must have let them. Peter had shared some of the security measures that he had on the apothecary with Arthur when they first started working together, and Arthur knew that it would be highly unlikely that anyone got away unless Peter let them.
“Well, that’s good news,” Arthur said, placing a fake smile on his lips as he watched Peter pull a bag out from behind the counter. “Did you alert the authorities?”
“No, I didn’t,” Peter said as he placed the bag carefully on the counter and pulled out a rather large ledger that Arthur knew he kept his sales records in. “They were just kids, underage in fact. I didn’t want to bother the Ministry with what was surely just a dare gone wrong – you know how kids are. But of course, the racket my alarms made did draw some attention, so I did already have some conversations with the Ministry and assured them there was no cause for concern.”
“Well, that’s good,” Arthur said knowingly. The Death Eaters had already come by to see Peter, likely the Death Eaters that functioned within the Ministry. Peter had clearly managed to just scrape himself out of a disastrous mess and was under watch due to the suspicious events. Their time working together was over effective immediately.
But who was it that Peter let take supplies last night? Arthur wondered.
“I have your winter order ready,” Peter said as he pushed the large brown bag toward Arthur and grabbed his quill. “All the ingredients that Molly will need to make her headache potion and pepperup brew. Make sure to thank Molly for owling me with her list ahead of time. With the shortages I’ve been experiencing, it really helps me organize and make sure each customer gets what they need.”
“It’s no problem,” Arthur said as he pulled some coins from his pocket to pay for the supplies. “Let’s just hope that things improve soon, so the shortages don’t go on for another year.”
“Yes,” Peter said with a small smile. “Let’s hope.”
Just then, the door to the apothecary opened and in walked Selwyn, one of Yaxley’s lackeys in the Magical Law Enforcement Department.
“Morning, Peter,” Selwyn grinned widely as he strolled through the apothecary toward the counter, not bothering to vanish the snow from his boots before he stepped off the mat.
“Good morning Selwyn,” Peter said with a false smile and tightened jaw.
“And what do we have here – Mr. Weasley!” Selwyn’s voice was rough and had a reserved sort of crazy to it that only a true Death Eater could manage. “What brings you into town on such a snowy, snowy morning?”
“Good morning Selwyn,” Arthur said tightly while holding the bag that Peter had given him. “Just getting some supplies for pepperup potion I’m afraid – round of winter illness seems to have hit the family.”
“Ah,” Selwyn said as he closed the distance and stood too close for comfort at the counter. “What a shame, it’s always unfortunate when those you love – are not well.”
“Too true,” Arthur said as he accepted the small amount of change that Peter held out to him, noticing the crooked smile and intense stare Selwyn fixed Peter with as he spoke his last words. “Thankfully though, Peter here was able to supply what we needed – and we should be set for the winter.”
“How fortunate,” Selwyn said as his eyes shifted to the bag in Arthur’s hands, and he glared suspiciously at it. “As it so happens, I’m also here to collect on some much-needed ingredients – that I’m sure Peter will be able to supply. Though it is unfortunate that you purchased so much dittany last month, as I was only able to buy such a small amount of it this morning.”
“Well,” Arthur said without missing a beat, knowing full well that he had not purchased any dittany from Peter last month. “I’m afraid I had some trouble with a misused muggle artifact last month that ended rather poorly. And with Fred and George’s line of business – well, let’s just say there were a few cuts larger than scratches that needed to be healed.”
“I’m sure,” Selwyn growled as his eyes narrowed.
“But Peter is the best,” Arthur continued as nonchalantly as he could muster, glancing at Peter to see if he wanted support – but he was met only with a small smile and the slightest shake of a head. So, Arthur gave the most reassuring smile he could muster before taking his leave. “I’m sure he will have more in stock soon, though – I best be off to give this to Molly. She has lots to brew this afternoon. Have a good day.”
Arthur turned and headed toward the shop door, resisting the urge to turn around and look back at Peter, knowing full well that it would be suspicious. His insides twisted at the lie that he had just told. He knew that he would need to tell Molly and the boys so that everyone was on the same page, and he might even need to fudge some of his own records from work to account for an imaginary injury.
As much as he hated leaving Peter at the hands of someone like Selwyn, he knew that the longer he stayed the worse it would be – and that frankly, if Peter was to be killed for whatever happened last night, it would have already happened. Peter was not in immediate danger. Selwyn was just there to close out whatever agreement or threat that he had issued earlier that morning.
But the question that was truly plaguing Arthur’s mind was why did Peter cover up the loss of dittany – how much could it have been? And for the people who broke in, why did they need it? Dittany was almost exclusively used in healing potions, so who was that injured?
-x-x-
Arthur entered the safety of his home and let out a sigh. The light and carefree morning he had was over, and he could feel the weight of reality settle back on his shoulders. The only ease that he felt while in his own house was that the Burrow was a safe zone, thanks to the protections added by Dumbledore, Alastor and the other Order members. He could actually speak freely while inside the boundaries without fear of being overheard. With that said, he was fully aware that the house was still being watched, so they never had conversations outside of the home.
He could hear Mrs. Weasley upstairs, probably putting away the clothes that she had been washing before he left that morning. He didn’t bother calling out to her to tell her that he was home – she would already know, and he felt like his energy had been drained from the exchange at Peter’s store. Instead, he placed the bag from the apothecary on the kitchen counter and began taking out the potion ingredients, placing them on the worn surface for Mrs. Weasley to use and consolidate with the pre-existing ingredients they had.
As his hand touched a small jar of bicorn horn, he felt the slightest tingle in his fingers, and he froze. That was the method that he and Peter had established for passing information inside potion ingredient containers. They were spelled to vibrate faintly when the person the information was for touched the container, so they knew where to look.
It was Peter’s own design.
Arthur quickly took out the remainder of the ingredients and then returned to the bicorn horn container, unscrewing it carefully and dumping the contents out into a small bowl. Buried within the powder was a piece of paper so tiny you might have dismissed it for lint if you weren’t looking for it – but Arthur knew what he was looking for. He enlarged the paper and quickly began reading as the colour drained from his face.
Peter had left him a note describing the evening events that occurred on the 4th of February – and now Arthur understood why Peter had hidden the robbery and ultimately, why he had decided to cave to the Death Eater’s demands and stop putting up a fight.
Harry and a female companion, who Arthur assumed must have been Hermione, had broken into his apothecary during the middle of the night and ‘stolen’ a vast number of potion ingredients. Though, Peter specifically noted that they actually left money for the items they took. The majority of the ingredients were commonly used in healing potions, blood replenishers and other medical remedies. What was concerning was the quantity that they had taken and that they had broken in while under the disguise of polyjuice potion – Peter had realized this when he noticed that the man he’d seen in the hallway did not match the boy he saw in his study.
Harry and Hermione had immobilized Peter and his owl while they gathered ingredients, and they actually managed to escape his house by falling out the second-floor window before Peter could stop them. Peter noted that while he did not manage to get a look at them before they disappeared, by the time he had gotten to the window, they were gone. He did hear a rather loud thump after their exit, and he was concerned that they might have been injured. Thankfully Marvin, Peter’s brother, had been immobilized during the exchange in the study and did not know that it was Harry Potter who had broken into the house.
Due to the audible alarms that Peter used, it only took a short time for Yaxley to hear about the ordeal and send over some Death Eaters to investigate and find out what happened. Peter had barely managed to change his ledger to account for the missing ingredients before they arrived, and he apologized for bringing Arthur into the mess by falsifying his records to show that Arthur had purchased a rather large amount of dittany the previous month.
Since the event, Peter had been dealing with much more aggressive pressure from the Death Eaters, who had become increasingly suspicious that someone with such notorious alarms would have been willing to let some ‘kids’ go after an attempted robbery without reporting it. As a result, Peter had been spending his evenings the last few days putting together some final ingredient packages for the Order, sending them out with his owl disguised under a disillusionment spell, removing any Order stored information and returning it, and preparing to become even more of a pawn in the war.
Arthur heard his wife enter the room and he briefly contemplated burning the note in his hand and not telling Mrs. Weasley about Harry coming to Ottery St. Catchpole with Hermione. She would be upset to know that Harry and Hermione may have been injured, and she would be even more concerned regarding the ingredients that they had taken. After the fit she had at Christmas with Ginny, Arthur had spent the previous month desperately trying to keep any upsetting news from Mrs. Weasley’s ears for fear of setting her off.
Perhaps it was traditional or old-fashioned of him, but he could not help but want to protect his wife – though, in truth, she didn’t need his protection at all. She was a fiery, brave, bold and strong woman who ironically, despite his efforts to keep her safe, often was the member of the household that spent the most time protecting the rest of the family and their friends. He sighed inwardly. He would have to tell his wife about the note since there was no way he would be able to tell her that they needed to lie about purchasing so much dittany from Peter without her asking other questions. And while Arthur would withhold information from Mrs. Weasley from time to time – he never lied to her, at least not outright, so he wouldn’t give her false excuses about the coverup.
“Arthur,” Mrs. Weasley said in a friendly voice as she rounded the table to join him by the counter. “Did you get all of the supplies from Peter’s? I owled him in advance telling him you’d be there Saturday, so he should have had it ready for you–”
Mrs. Weasley’s face fell when she came to stand next to her husband, and she saw that he was holding a piece of paper in his hands and looking rather lost for words.
“What’s going on, Arthur?” She asked immediately. Mrs. Weasley could always smell trouble, shenanigans, secret Order dealings, and just about anything else that someone might want to keep quiet.
“Molly,” Arthur started slowly as he forced himself to smile. “Everything’s fine – just that there was a bit of an incident in the town this week that has forced Peter’s hand. I’m afraid that he is going to be settling on some terms with the Death Eaters this weekend and won’t be able to help us as much as before.”
“Oh,” Mrs. Weasley frowned and she looked genuinely concerned. “That’s unfortunate – Peter is a good man. What happened – is he alright?”
“He’s alright, don’t worry,” Arthur nodded as he folded the note in half. “He actually gave me this note explaining what happened.”
“Arthur,” Mrs. Weasley warned when her husband paused. She knew that he was stalling. “What happened?”
“Well, it seems that there was a break-in attempt at Peter’s store – and well, it was successful. So Peter needs us to coverup the loss of some inventory, specifically dittany – so if anyone asks, we bought a rather large amount last month due to a misused muggle artifact incident, and for Fred and George’s injuries during their experiments.”
“Of course,” Mrs. Weasley said without hesitation, and she nodded firmly. “I’ll tell the twins when I drop off their pepperup this afternoon. It’s probable that they had an injury last month anyway, and that they just didn’t tell us about it and patched it up themselves – but Arthur – a break-in? At Peter’s?! No one breaks into Peter’s – why weren’t they caught?”
“Well – Peter did sort of catch them,” Arthur hesitated once more. “But he let them leave.”
“Well, that doesn’t make any sense,” Mrs. Weasley said as she shook her head. “Peter has always been very strict about how he handles robberies. Why did he let them go?”
“Because it was Harry and Hermione.”
Arthur watched as the colour drained from his wife’s face, and then he passed her the letter to read.
-x-x-
Almost two hours later, Arthur fell into the large old chair in his workshop and let out a sigh of exhaustion.
This war is aging me too quickly, he thought as he rubbed the bridge of his nose gently and tried to ignore the ache in his back.
He reached his other hand down to fish out the magazine he had almost forgotten about from his pocket. As he expected, Mrs. Weasley had reacted with minor hysterics to the news of Harry and Hermione breaking into the apothecary, and she was deeply concerned over why the two of them needed so many ingredients for healing potions. He had sat with her at the dinner table having an early lunch while he walked her through the happenings of his visit to the town, his coded conversation with Peter, and they both reviewed the note to try and speculate why Harry and Hermione chose to break into Peter’s store.
Of all the apothecaries in England that they could have chosen, why did they risk coming so close to the Burrow?
It didn’t make any sense, and after a while they gave up trying to figure it out. Instead, Mrs. Weasley started on the pepperup potion, feeling the need to complete it quickly so she could deliver it to the twins along with their coverup story regarding the dittany.
Arthur shook his head as he placed the magazine on his workbench and listened to the sounds of his wife bustling away upstairs. They had both agreed that when she delivered it to the twins this afternoon, she would tell them that they injured themselves last month, and she provided them with essence of dittany. However, they both concluded that no one else was to know about Harry and Hermione’s visit to Ottery St. Catchpole. Whatever the reason was – it was obviously intended to be a secret, and the duo had not meant to get caught based on how Peter had described their desperate escape efforts. So, the fewer people who knew about it, the better.
He stared blankly at the magazine cover and couldn’t help the small smile that tugged at the corner of his mouth when he read the title again. Though, if he was being honest, he really didn’t feel like reading the magazine right now. With all of the information that he had just received, sitting down and reading seemed like a waste of time – but Mrs. Weasley had insisted, saying that he still needed to take a moment for himself now and again.
Begrudgingly he let out a sigh and made to flip open the cover, making a mental compromise that he would skim the main article to satisfy his wife before returning upstairs to help with the potions. He was horrible at potions, but he was decent at ingredient prep.
As the cover page flipped open, he saw a blank white page, almost like a piece of paper had been pasted on top of the first entry. He ran his finger over it to see if it was an insert – perhaps an ad for another muggle magazine. He had received some of those in previous issues, but the blank white page was stuck firmly to the first page, and there was no seam that he could pry at. His brow had just furrowed into a confused frown when suddenly text began to appear on the blank page.
Arthur dropped the magazine down on the desk and had his wand out in the blink of an eye – but as he skimmed the text that had appeared on the page, a huge smile split across his face.
“Of course,” Arthur murmured as he placed his wand down on the desk and picked up the magazine again. “This is why you two came to Ottery St. Catchpole – you truly are the brightest witch of your age.”
He quickly flipped the magazine open to the center and took out the coin that Hermione had left him before grabbing a quill from the holder to his right. He flipped back to the front of the magazine to re-read her instructions, making sure that he understood them fully and had them memorized.
He had read them over four times before the ink started to vanish, and the edges of the white paper insert started to curl as it caught fire and burnt away – without damaging the rest of the magazine. He grinned again.
What a clever, clever witch, he thought as he flipped to the pages of the magazine that Hermione had indicated were reserved for him to write on.
Then he dipped his quill in ink.
"I'm sorry for the mess," Hermione managed to say before Harry tugged them both backward and out the window……
Bitter cold was the first thing that hit Hermione as they rolled backward out the window of the apothecary and into the night. It was followed closely by a fresh round of nausea from the momentum of their fall, and for a brief moment, she thought that she might throw up mid-air. Her brain was rolling and spinning from vertigo caused by the security alarms within the apothecary. Yet despite her addled state of mind, she could feel Harry's grip tighten around her waist, and she knew that their impact with the ground was imminent. They wouldn't be able to apparate away. They didn't have skin-to-skin contact, but more importantly, their senses were still too distorted from the alarms.
She was going to land right on top of Harry; he had made sure of that with the way that he pulled her out the window, lining them up so that he would take the majority of the impact. Despite the plentiful snow on the ground below, she knew that they could both be critically injured if they landed wrong and that even if they landed 'right', they would still be injured – just to a lesser degree.
Hermione closed her eyes and gritted her teeth, forcing her brain to focus on the stinging cold against her face. Then she concentrated her senses, and cast an extremely poor nonverbal, wandless spell to slow their fall. It worked – sort of. Harry hit the snow-covered ground with a loud thud that echoed through the night air. Then the wind was knocked from Hermione's chest as she collided with his body.
Fuck that hurts, she screamed inwardly as her lungs desperately tried to fill with air, and she stifled a loud groan.
At least the impact helped to jar her senses back to some sort of usable state, and the freezing wind that whipped harshly over her face also provided a firm slap back to reality. Harry moved quickly beneath her, pushing her up into a sitting position and moving in close behind her. He pulled the invisibility cloak out from her purse and began hurriedly throwing it over them. Hermione could hear his laboured breath on her ear and the small groan that escaped his lips as he moved.
He's broken a rib, Hermione thought as she grabbed the end of the cloak that he tossed over her and spread it out to cover their legs. Possibly more.
Once covered, they sat there unmoving on the ground. Harry kept Hermione's wand aimed up at the window above them, and they both watched it carefully with bated breath – waiting for the apothecary man to peer outside. Hermione ignored the snow that was now melting down her back and burning at her skin. She fought to keep her eyes from rolling as she focused on the open window above while she clenched Harry's free hand tightly. The apothecary man appeared at the window only an instant later. He had obviously been startled by their grand exit, and this had afforded them the time to take cover under the cloak, but only just.
The man was staring down to where they had fallen, a look of disbelief barely visible on his face in the low light as he realized that the space was empty – or at least it looked that way.
With one look, Hermione knew that the man was shocked. No one would have been able to apparate so quickly after having their senses ruthlessly assaulted by his alarms. And yet, as he looked out the window, there was no one on the ground. The man craned his neck, leaning over the sill to peer out into the surrounding neighbourhood and backyards. She didn't know what the man would do if he caught the 'thieves' that had stolen from him based on the extraordinary extent of his alarm, but as she watched the man look out over the snow, she could have sworn that she saw a small smile touch his lips. Then, he shook his head in astonishment, confirming that he had not spotted them, and ducked back into the house.
The second the man closed the window and retreated from view, Harry and Hermione both let out the breath they had been holding and slumped against one another in relief.
"Are you okay?" Harry murmured against her ear as he lowered her wand and wrapped his arm around her body.
"Mostly," Hermione answered in a low whisper. "We need to move away from here, get our senses in order and then get the hell out of this town. Are you okay?"
"Probably," Harry groaned as he tried and failed to pull himself off the ground. "I think my ribs are broken. It feels like a hippogriff is sitting on them – which is making important things like breathing difficult."
"Oh, they're broken for sure," Hermione said, snorting at Harry's attempt to be light-hearted regardless of their terrible situation. She frowned as she stood, her legs shaking beneath her as she glanced over her shoulder to make sure they were still alone before extending a hand to Harry to help him off the ground. "It's just a matter of how many."
It took a moment and an extremely pained expression from Harry for him to upright himself with Hermione's help. Then she carefully stepped up beside him and slung his arm over her shoulder before starting the slow process of moving toward a large bush at the edge of the apothecary property. They needed to leave now, like right now – but to do that, she needed to mend Harry's ribs. Otherwise, they would puncture his lung while they apparated, and to heal his ribs, she needed to make sure her brain wasn't riding the puke train express that they had just been on inside the apothecary. Harry vanished their steps as they moved, and a full half a minute later, she tucked them into the side of the bush against the fence and out of the wind. Harry leaned gratefully against the wooden surface and waited while Hermione rooted around in her bag and pulled out two small bottles of pepperup potion – handing one to Harry to drink.
"Drink this." She nodded to the potion that she held out. "It should help get your head back on your shoulders straight, and we should be focused enough to be able to apparate out of here after I fix your ribs."
"Gladly," Harry groaned as he clutched his stomach and grimaced at the nausea which had overcome him from their movements.
They both downed the liquid and stood silently in the cold, waiting for the effects to take hold. It didn't take long before Hermione could feel the warmth radiating from her stomach into her bones to push the cold out. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, feeling the dizziness within her head subside. When she opened them, Harry was starting to look better too. He was still hunched over from the broken ribs, but his ghastly expression had lessened.
"Okay, let's get you patched up and then get the hell out of here," Hermione whispered as she took her wand from Harry and cast a quick diagnostic spell. "I don't fancy being hunted down, which will probably start any second now and – oh, Harry. Dammit, you broke four – some of them twice."
Hermione grimaced as she placed a gentle hand on Harry's side to hold him steady while she aimed her wand.
"The good news is that your internal organs are okay. This might sting a bit." Hermione cast the spell and saw Harry grimace as his ribs realigned and mended. "You're going to be sore for the next few days."
"That's fine, but what about you?" Harry reached for the wand and cast his own diagnostic spell on Hermione, pausing only for a brief second when he heard the sound of multiple voices at the front of the house.
"Harry, we're running out of time. We need to go," Hermione whispered urgently as she heard footsteps approaching from over her shoulder. She could just make out the voice of the apothecary man speaking.
"Not until I know that you're not going to kill yourself apparating us away," Harry said firmly as he quickly skimmed his eyes over the results looking for anything life-threatening.
"What the fuck is going on, Peter!" A deep gruff voice called from the front of the house.
Hermione recognized it as one of the men they had seen talking on the street earlier.
"Okay, you're good, let's go." Harry nodded as he finished his examination.
Hermione ripped the invisibility cloak off of them and stuffed it into her purse as she heard the voices and the sound of snow crunching growing louder in the side yard. She heard a growl directly behind her the moment she felt Harry's hand on the back of her neck. Turning her head, she only managed a brief glimpse at the outline of four people and a creature rounding the corner of the house before Harry apparated them away into the night.
-x-x-
“Harry!”
Harry looked up from the book he was reading over to the potions lab, where Hermione was waving him over excitedly. The tent was warm despite the absolute sub-zero temperatures of the Northern coast of Scotland, where they were currently hiding out. Hermione had adjusted the potion lab barrier to allow more heat into the main tent area, without the fumes, to help battle the frigid cold.
Why waste the free heat? She had exclaimed excitedly when she made the modifications to the barriers the day before.
It had been three days since their trip to Ottery St. Catchpole and their break-in disaster at the apothecary. Hermione was now brewing up a storm, making as many potions as she could with the ingredients they had collected. She was standing in the potions lab wearing small black stretchy shorts and a loose, skimpy black tank top similar to her last potion-making outfit. The oversized armholes of her shirt showed the blue bra she had on at the sides, and it also acted as ventilation for the ridiculous heat in the room she was working. Her hair was piled on top of her head with four clips, and a deep purple bruise covered the back of her right shoulder and upper back.
It looked similar to the bruises that Harry was sporting on his lower back and upper left shoulder. The fall out the apothecary window may not have been deadly, but it had left them extremely sore, swollen, and bruised. They'd been coating themselves with thin layers of bruise salve, but neither one of them wanted to waste too much of their hard-earned supplies. So, they opted to let the injuries heal naturally. It was a bit risky given how unlucky they usually were, but by hiding out in the most unbearable weather conditions on the island, they were able to avoid running into any uninvited guests. It gave them time to brew more potions in peace while they healed, and it gave them a chance to relax for a day – or an hour, or literally whatever life would spare them.
Harry hauled himself off his bunk with a groan and made his way over to the potions lab, removing his sweater before he entered the magically encased area. He had gone in there yesterday wearing his sweater, and that had been a definite mistake. It was like a humid tropical forest, and the intense heat and fumes had made him feel sick.
Not today potions lab, he thought with a smirk as he walked through the barrier sans shirt. I've planned ahead, and I will defeat you.
"What is it?" He asked as he crossed the invisible barrier and stepped into their private little amazon rainforest. The hanging dried ingredients and leaves really set the vibe.
"We have contact," Hermione was positively beaming as she held up her journal for Harry to see.
Harry's eyes widened as he saw the jumbled characters inscribed on her journal page, and he laughed in disbelief as more started to appear.
"You charmed it, so it works in real-time," Harry said, running a hand through his hair as he shook his head in amusement. "Of course you did."
Hermione grinned proudly at him and placed the book back on the counter, shuffling over so Harry could come and stand next to her.
"I sure did! He is literally writing to us right now! Harry, I can't believe this worked – I – with everything that's happened – I thought surely something would – I just can't, I–" Hermione stopped talking and gripped the edge of the lab table tightly.
"Hey," Harry said softly as he wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her into his side. He could see that she was fighting back tears. Her brow was furrowed, her eyes were glassy, and she was clearly feeling overwhelmed.
Frankly, Harry would be lying if he said that he didn't feel it too. The tightness in his chest wasn't just from the bruising, and the slight prickle at the corner of his eyes made his throat tighten as he thought about everything that had happened thus far. After everything, it felt unreal to be seeing letters from a friend appear on a page or to accept that this endeavour had truly worked. He leaned down and kissed Hermione's temple before nuzzling his face into the nest of hair she had piled on her head. He could feel her shoulders quiver as the sound of a small sniffle left her body.
"I'm sorry – I'm being stupid," Hermione mumbled as she wiped her eyes across the back of her hands. "It's just that we've been out here alone for months, and with everything that had happened – Harry, we've not been so lucky."
"That's putting it lightly," Harry snorted as a chuckle escaped him. He pulled away so he could see her face and wiped a stray tear from her cheek with his thumb. "You're not being stupid, Hermione. I know exactly how you feel. It's overwhelming to finally be in touch with someone; it feels like a big step in the right direction to getting through all this."
"Yeah." Hermione nodded with a small smile before picking up her journal once more and looking at the inscription. "It looks like he's done – I told him to sign each transmission at the bottom with a symbol so I would know when he's finished writing; that way, we don't cut each other off. He's used it here, see? I'll decode this, and we can see what he wrote."
Harry nodded, waiting patiently while Hermione grabbed her coin and quickly skimmed through the note from Mr. Weasley. He watched as she topped the journal with her wand and temporarily enchanted the message to be visible in its decoded form. He knew the spell would only last for a few minutes before returning to its original state, so they both leaned over the page in her journal and read:
~
Hermione, you are brilliant!
I'm sorry for such an informal start to our first communication in months, but my gosh, I had to write it! Sometimes I forget just how clever you are, and then something like this happens, and I'm left speechless and in awe by your consistent ability to blow my mind. Well done, my dear girl, well done!
Now on to a proper format…
Dear Hermione and Harry,
I am so glad to know that you two are safe and alive! Please know that you have been in my and Molly's thoughts every day since the day that you left the Burrow, and that we worry about you constantly (so do the other Order members and the rest of the family!). I know that you cannot tell me what you are up to, and I respect that, but if there is ever anything that I can do to help you in your mission, then please do not hesitate to let me know, and I will do everything that I can!
Perhaps it is too presumptuous of me to think it but judging by the level of effort you extended to establish this line of communication, there must be something that you need or require; or you have critical information that must be shared. Just let me know what it is, and Molly and I will support you!
I must also be honest that I am a bit concerned for your wellbeing – there was a break-in this past week at the apothecary in Ottery St. Catchpole. The man that owns and operates the business is named Peter; he is a friend to me and the Order. He informed me of the goods that you took and that he thought it might be you. There is no need to worry – Peter is a good man, and he and I are working to cover up any fallout from the break-in. But I have to ask, are you two okay? Many of the ingredients that you took are for medicinal potions, specifically for blood loss and healing wounds. Both Molly and I are concerned with the sheer quantities that you took. Have you been injured? Is there anything we can do to help?
While Molly knows about the potion ingredients that were stolen (it's a long story, but there was no way around that), I have yet to tell her about this journal. As it was addressed and entrusted directly to me, I have kept this new means of communication secret. I understand the importance of limiting knowledge for the sake of safety, and therefore, I will continue to do so unless you tell me otherwise.
Now, I know that this must be a sore topic for you both, and frankly, I considered not bringing it up – but I figure that there is no reason to dance around the topic as a centaur would. While sometimes finesse and delicate words are useful on touchy topics, in this case, I think a direct approach is best. I hope you both know that I consider you members of the Weasley family, that you both always have my continued support, and therefore I feel we can speak candidly. There is no easy way to say this, so I would just rather get it out of the way – to rip the band-aid off as the muggles would say!
I am so sorry on behalf of my son.
When Molly and I found out that Ron had left you two, we honestly did not know what to think, and Ron faced some harsh criticism from the two of us. He never told us why he left, but he is ashamed and regretful of his actions. To this day, I do not know what happened between you three, and I want to assure you that Ron has refused to speak about what you are doing, so your secret mission is still safe. To say that both Molly and I were disappointed in him and his actions would be an understatement – and it fueled the fire of what I think might be the most eventful Weasley family Christmas that has ever occurred.
Please do not mistake my breaching the subject as a plea for you to forgive my son or excuse his behaviour. I wasn't there to witness what happened, and even if I was – it is not my place to request that you forgive him or accept his apology. Instead, the reason I wanted to bring this up is that I want you both to know that you are so loved. That regardless of whatever happened between you and Ron, and regardless of whatever will happen between you – Harry, Hermione – you both will always have a place within our family and a seat at our table.
With love,
Arthur Weasley
~
This time, Hermione could not keep her emotions reigned in, and Harry heard a muffled choke burst from her lips before she clapped a hand over her mouth. Harry instinctively pulled her into his arms and let her bury her face into his bare chest as she sobbed. Mr. Weasley had done what they both had been dreading – he had brought up the topic of Ron.
Harry had discussed it with Hermione the other day while they waited for the weekend to approach. They both adored Mr. and Mrs. Weasley. Harry loved them, they had all but adopted him into the family, and they acted like the parents he had never had. He knew that Hermione had a close bond with them as well – and that after she obliviated her own parents, she had come to rely on them as parental figures even more. They truly wanted to believe that Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were logical people who would, at the very least, try to understand what happened between Ron and them instead of blindly supporting their son and blaming his actions on them.
The trouble was, especially in the wizarding world, blood tended to be thicker than water. Harry had no idea what Ron might have said when he inevitably returned home. He didn't know if Ron threw him and Hermione under the bus or lied about what had happened. As a result, he didn't know how Mr. and Mrs. Weasley would take the news of Ron's return.
It had been plaguing the back of Harry's mind for the last three days, and he knew that it was eating away at Hermione. They were worried. Worried about being rejected from the only remnants of a family they had left and worried that they'd lost their home within this mess of a war. Of course they knew that the Weasley family would still help them if it was needed. The Weasleys stood firmly on the side of the light and against blood prejudice, so their support in the war efforts was never questioned. But what they didn't know was how their relationship with Ron would affect their personal relationships with the rest of the family.
Holy shit did Mr. Weasley ever dispel that concern, Harry thought as he buried his face in Hermione's hair and felt his chest tighten.
The unconditional love that Mr. Weasley had poured into that letter made his soul ache. It hurt. It hurt somewhere so deep down and so fundamental that it made his heart feel like it was exploding into a million pieces from being overwhelmed. After losing Sirius, after losing Dumbledore, and the devastating crack in his relationship with Ron – Harry really didn't have many people left. The Weasleys were the only family he had outside of Hermione, and he was so relieved that he wasn't going to lose them over a stupid feud with an idiot who chose his own comfort and safety over doing the right thing.
Mr. Weasley is a great man, Harry thought as she closed his eyes and let out a sigh of relief.
He stood holding Hermione for several minutes until they both calmed down and composed themselves enough to reread the letter and discuss a response. He kissed Hermione gently before she started her reply, stroking her cheek with the pad of his thumb and resting his forehead against hers. He felt like he could breathe freely again – despite the heaviness in his bruised lungs.
"Hermione," Harry said softly as he pulled away from her and brushed a loose strand of hair out of her face. His heart felt like it was exploding with happiness and love. "Thank you for being here with me. Thank you for being so bloody brilliant all the time."
Hermione grinned at him and kissed him once before she picked up her quill to reply to Mr. Weasley.
"There's nowhere else I'd rather be Harry," she said as she dipped her quill in ink.
~
Dear Mr. Weasley,
I am very glad to see that you not only got your magazine but that you also found my note and were able to follow the instructions. I knew that you would understand the use of a cypher!
You're too kind with your praise, the charm work to set-up the magazine was rather simple actually, and I think that's part of why it will work so well!
You are correct in assuming that we do require your help, and that is indeed why we travelled to Ottery St. Catchpole to modify your magazine and set up this line of communication. I want to first assure you that both Harry and I are fine. I won't lie to you; we have had some unfortunate mishaps along the way that resulted in some rough times. However, at the current moment, we are both healthy and uninjured (besides some minor bruises from the apothecary break-in and escape). Please be reassured that we are safe and that there is no need to worry!
We stopped at the apothecary to restock several ingredients that we need to finish making several medicinal potions. As I mentioned, we've had a few run-ins with trouble, and we've found that having extra stock of some basic healing potions is helpful to ensure our success. Unfortunately, due to the… unusual nature of Peter's alarms, I must admit that I was a bit disoriented while gathering the ingredients and that I definitely grabbed more than what I had planned. That said, with how our luck has been, I'm glad to have it and be prepared for the worst.
If you get the opportunity, please apologize to Peter on my and Harry's behalf. We did not know who owned the apothecary or that they were working with you and the Order.
We believe it is best to try and limit the involvement of anyone else in our mission. Not only for their safety but for ours, so we have been trying to keep a low profile during our supply gathering. It was never our intent to cause such a ruckus at his store, and it was certainly not our intent to leave you and Peter (an ally) to clean up the fallout. For that, we would like to sincerely apologize – I hope that the situation is not too bad? Also, if I was short on the money that I left for the ingredients, please tell Peter to keep track of what I owe him. I will pay him back when this is all over and apologize to him in person.
But back to the reason why we set up this line of communication. I was hoping that you still have a copy of or still have access to the antivenom recipe for Nagini's poison. Please don't worry when you read this! Neither Harry nor I were bitten or infected, we are both completely safe, and there is no need to worry. I would, however, like to brew a batch of the antivenom to have on hand - just in case - and getting into St. Mungo's to get the recipe was simply out of the question. While I have no real evidence to support my suspicion, I'm concerned that St. Mungo's may be compromised, and I suspect that it is being watched by You Know Who's followers, so we couldn't risk breaking in. Would you be able to give us a copy of the antivenom recipe?
I appreciate your understanding of the importance of keeping information secure and with limited distribution. At this time, Harry and I would ask that you continue to keep this line of communication secret and that you do not disclose it to anyone else. It is not because Harry or myself do not trust the members of the Order. It's just that Harry and I have been having a difficult time keeping a low profile and accomplishing what we must. The fewer people who know anything about our actions or whereabouts, the better. When this is all over, we promise to explain everything – and it will make sense at the end. Until then, we appreciate that you've kept this secret to help keep us safe.
I don't have the words to describe how we felt after reading your letter. Mr. Weasley, for the past seven years, you have been like a second father to me, and you have been the father figure to Harry that he never got the opportunity to have. It means more than words could ever describe that you would continue to support and welcome us into your family. Please know that Harry and I love you and Molly and all of the Weasley family dearly – and that we view you as our family. It means the world to me that you would still welcome us into your home despite what has transpired, and I'm thankful that Ron has kept his word and kept our mission a secret.
While our resources and abilities are limited with the position that we are in while completing this mission, please know that your extension of help is not only appreciated, it is reciprocated. If there is anything that you need from us, please let us know, and we will try to do everything that we can to help.
With lots of love,
Hermione and Harry
~
Hermione signed the note with the symbol indicating that her message was complete before smiling at Harry and returning to prep more ingredients. As she worked, Harry made them a late lunch, and they both took a short break to eat in comfortable silence. They were simply too emotionally and physically exhausted to talk, and so they quietly enjoyed the odd sort of peace that settled over the tent instead.
They had camped on top of a cliff where a blizzard raged violently outside, the wind screamed as it rattled the magically secure tent frame – but inside, the fire crackled warmly, the mood was light and free, and the two of them felt safe.
Harry went back to sitting on his bunk after cleaning up the lunch dishes, reading his defensive magic book while waiting for Mr. Weasley to respond. Hermione had just finished prepping the last of the ingredients she needed before starting her next potion when the coded ink in her journal from Mr. Weasley appeared. It took several more minutes for Mr. Weasley to finish writing his response, and Hermione couldn't help but anxiously fiddle with the coin in her hand as she waited. When Mr. Weasley finally coded the note as complete, Hermione hastily grabbed her wand and began to decode the text, smiling as she read until her eyebrow arched up.
"Harry," she said as she approached his bunk, holding the journal in her hands. "Do you have any thoughts on where we might find a large bulldog between two and a half and three years old whose last meal was chicken?"
"Uhh." Harry raised a confused eyebrow. It was certainly not the question he had been expecting to hear when Hermione approached him. "My Aunt Marge breeds bulldogs… it's possible she could have one?"
"Good," Hermione said with a surprised smile. She had not been expecting him to actually have a response and was thinking they may need to scour the pet stores of the muggle world. "Because we need eight ounces of its drool for the antivenom."
Warnings:
This chapter contains: explicit smut (which can be skipped without missing out on main plot)
******************************************
“Ginny?”
A gentle hand touched her leg and jolted her from her thoughts. She had been sitting quietly, consumed by the endless ramblings of her mind as she stared out the window and rocked gently with the movements of the train as it sped farther away from Hogwarts and into the surrounding snow-covered hills. At the contact, her eyes snapped away from the endless white and locked to the bright honey-coloured ones that were looking at her with concern.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?” Ginny asked, giving her head a small shake and trying to clear out the worries that had flooded it.
“I asked if you were okay – if you still want to do this?” She wasn’t backing out, just giving Ginny a final opportunity to change her mind. “I can still arrange to go to my parents.”
“No.” Ginny shook her head quickly and then grabbed hold of the hand that was still on her leg. It wasn’t safe for her to go home to her parents; they both knew that. Her family was targeted, and frankly, it was a miracle that her parents hadn’t been killed yet – almost all the rest of her family was slaughtered by Voldemort, her aunt being the most recent member added to the list. The Burrow was safer. “I’ve already told mum that you’d be joining us. They’re expecting you, and I want you to be there.”
“Alright,” a small smile formed on her lips as she squeezed Ginny’s hand in return. “But don’t feel pressured to say anything you don’t want to. I understand, Ginny. Your parents, your family – they don’t know yet. And you don’t have to tell them. I can just be a guest, just – a friend.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Susan,” Ginny said as she twisted her body and leaned into the girl’s side. Closing her eyes briefly, she let out a deep sigh. “You are my guest and my friend. But – you’re also my girlfriend, and I want my family to know that. If they don’t like it… well – then that’s their problem to deal with, not mine and certainly not yours.”
“Okay,” Susan agreed, nodding her head. She slid her arm around Ginny and leaned her head against her fiery red hair. “But we do it on your terms when you want to and the way you want to. So just take your time with it and do what you think is best. I’ll be there with you – right beside you the whole time.”
“I know.” Ginny tilted her face to kiss Susan’s jaw then nuzzled her head back into the side of her soft sweater.
The train was warm despite the frigid cold that had started to frost up the windows, so they had ditched their cloaks the second they boarded, piling them up on the opposite seat and storing their small travel bags on the racks above. Even though most students were returning home for the winter break, the train felt empty – likely because a lot of students didn’t return to school that September. With Snape as the Headmaster, Dumbledore dead, and Voldemort and his followers rising in power, many wizarding families didn’t feel safe sending their kids back to school and had kept them home.
Smart move , Ginny snorted inwardly as she thought back to the Carrows who were in charge of student discipline, teaching muggle studies, and acted as the Deputy Headmasters. Which was just a fancy way of saying that they harassed, tortured, and terrorized the students of families who did not outright support Voldemort and taught that muggles were scum that deserved punishment, as a minimum, and death when and where possible.
They were the reason that the train was late leaving Hogwarts and why Ginny and Susan would not be arriving at King’s Cross station until well after 11 pm that night. The Carrows had insisted on searching several school bags, holding up the boarding students and trying to drag a few of them off to be questioned in the dungeons prior to departure. Professor McGonagall, who had been on the platform attempting to keep things calm, had lost her temper and pitched a fit. She had yelled at the Carrows, demanding that they stop their dimwitted nonsense and allow the students to leave. Wands had been drawn, the air had grown tense, and it had almost turned into a full-on battle until Snape suddenly appeared on the platform between them with a gust of wind.
In an instant, the platform fell silent, each student frozen in terror as the man who killed Dumbledore stood like death before them. A dark shadow against the white snow, they were unable to look away as their breaths hitched in their chests, and they waited to see what would happen. Even the Carrows had frozen on spot. The suitcase in Alecto’s hands fell open, and the contents spilled to the ground while her brother, Amycus, gripped Dennis Creevy tightly by the upper arm – his wand still pointed at Professor McGonagall.
Both of them had watched Snape carefully. As stupid as they were, they weren’t complete imbeciles. The man who towered before them had single-handedly killed one of the greatest wizards of all time, he was the right hand of the Dark Lord, and they knew that they didn’t stand a chance.
Snape’s eyes had danced around the platform, taking in the scene and assessing the situation quickly while showing absolutely no sign of emotion. Ginny couldn’t stop the involuntary flinch she felt when his dead eyes swept over her before circling back to the Carrows.
“I would think that you would realize how idiotic it is to search the students upon their departure,” Snape had said, his voice low and slow, emphasizing every syllable as he spoke. “Especially given the number of students who you’ve now left unattended within the school.”
The Carrows had flinched at his words. Ginny had been able to see the fear and embarrassment that flashed across their eyes when they realized that Snape was right – they had just voluntarily left students free to do as they pleased back up at the castle while they harassed those leaving for the holidays.
“I don’t care what they take from the school.” Snape’s words were deadly as he started to close the gap between him and the Carrows. “I care what they bring back. Perhaps your time would be better spent planning a search for their return.”
With his final step toward Amycus, Snape reached out his hand and grabbed Dennis by the back of his neck, turning swiftly on his heel and throwing the boy onto the train much less than gently. Professor McGonagall’s mouth had opened wide at the action, her eye twitching as if to challenge Snape right then and there on the platform for manhandling a student. But a single deadly look from the bat of the dungeon had her freeze on spot and lock her jaw shut. He glared back at the Carrows, his imposing frame causing Alecto to drop the already opened suitcase on the platform and grip the side of her robes tightly while Amycus pocketed his wand.
“Yes, sir – you’re right, sir.” Amycus nodded with a slight incline of his head before grabbing his sister’s arm and turning toward the castle. “We will prepare a plan right away to present to you – and check the castle for wandering students, sir.”
As they walked quickly toward the castle, no doubt already planning how to scrutinize the students upon their return and ensure that their favourites were found guilty of something – Snape turned once more to face Professor McGonagall, his face blank but chilling.
“Professor – please see to it that the students get on the train in a timely manner. I have more important things to do than babysit dunderheads who can’t complete a simple task.”
With that, Snape turned on his heel and vanished from the platform, his robes billowing out behind him as the students remained silent. Ginny didn’t miss the brief but sharp glare he threw her way before he vanished, and she smirked, knowing full well that the more important things he had to deal with were the multiple stink bombs that she and Neville had left timed to blow up in his office corridor.
Professor McGonagall regained her senses promptly and shooed them all onto the train – evidently wanting to get back to the castle and check on the remaining students before the Carrows caused more trouble. Normally, Ginny would be as fearful as McGonagall for her fellow students, but she knew that the majority of those staying over the break were allied with the Carrows and the few remaining who weren’t would be hiding out safe in the Gryffindor common room. The Carrows wouldn’t find a single soul out of bed when they returned.
Typically, she would expect Professor McGonagall to be sharp enough to figure that out, but Ginny knew that McGonagall was at the end of her wits. The multiple stress lines on the woman’s face were a testament to that. Between the Carrows, Snape, caring for the students, trying to protect the students, the Ministry breathing down her back, and the overarching war that was ongoing outside of school, McGonagall was ready to have a meltdown. Ginny hoped that she found some sort of peace over the holidays. The students needed her at her best day in and day out to help keep their sanity, but she wasn’t sure how much more their professor could take.
Ginny and Colin had boarded the train quickly to see if Dennis was alright while Susan retrieved his suitcase from the ground. Thankfully, he was largely unhurt aside from minor bruises, which was nothing compared to what he would have gotten had he been dragged to the dungeon by the Carrows. Ginny had had several run-ins with the Carrows herself over the last few months, and she had the scars to prove it. She wasn’t an idiot; she knew that the only reason why she didn’t get it worse than she did was because she was a pureblood, and the Carrows had been ordered not to harm purebloods ‘permanently’. Though they certainly had no issues coming after her frequently, which was easy for them to do given the commotion that Ginny had been creating since her return in September. Unfortunately, this meant that the people who had been following her lead now bore the same scars. At least this time, Dennis escaped without further torture.
It was never Ginny’s intent when she returned to school to reinstate Dumbledore’s Army or to have others help her in her efforts to disrupt the school, fight in the war, and help Harry, Hermione, and Ron in whatever way she could. She had been positively shocked when Neville, of all people, within the first week of school no less, had sought her out and asked her what the plan was. Within three weeks, he had become her right-hand man and was instrumental in the rebellion efforts. And while the consequences of their actions weighed heavily on her mind, as she often felt responsible for the injuries sustained by her friends, she couldn’t lie – she needed their help. They were all instrumental in being successful.
Under the layer of guilt that circled her mind, she knew that each member of Dumbledore’s Army had returned and stepped up to the plate at their own volition. For some in the wizarding community, Dumbledore’s death had been an excuse to become meek, to hide and to give up – to justify their inaction and cowardice because ‘if a great and powerful man like Dumbledore could fail how could they succeed?’ But for others, most notably Neville, Susan, and Luna, it had been a reason to stand up and fight even harder.
Ginny had been surprised further when within a few weeks, Colin, Dennis, Hannah, and Seamus had offered their support. And after only a month and a half at school, she had been positively shocked when Lavender Brown and the Patil twins freely offered their assistance. They wanted to fight, they wanted to help, they were willing to accept the consequences, and they did so, each and every time without complaint.
Ginny was once again pulled from her thoughts by a soft knock on the compartment door. She knew that it was Neville even with the window blind pulled down because they had made several coded knocks and words to use for communication at school. During the remainder of the summer at the Burrow after the wedding, Ginny had read a book that Hermione left her about muggle codes, which proved to be inspiring and useful. Now many of the DA members used codes and secret words to convey information when talking since you could never guarantee you were alone at Hogwarts.
“Yes, come in,” Susan called as Ginny sat up, and they both looked toward the door expectantly.
“Hey Susan, Ginny – sorry to bother you, I just wanted to let you know that Lavender can get us some more of that salve over the break. She said her grandmother was working on making several batches.” Neville closed the door behind him before he spoke and sat down opposite to them in the compartment. “We just have to find a creative way to sneak it in.”
“Great!” Ginny smiled as she gipped Susan’s hand in happiness. “I’m sure we can come up with something. We should probably ask Luna – she’s usually pretty creative with these things.”
They had been using medical salves that Lavender’s grandmother had been providing to treat some of the wounds they accumulated from the Carrows and from their own DA missions. While Madame Pomfrey was doing her best to treat the students at the school, she was technically not allowed to treat any injuries that resulted from their punishments, because otherwise ‘how would the students learn?’
Obviously, Madam Pomfrey didn’t give a murtlap’s ass what the Carrows said, and she promptly refused to listen to that rule and treated the students. But it made it easier and prosed less risk to Madam Pomfrey’s wellbeing if they kept a minimal supply of healing salve and potions hidden in the main Gryffindor common room.
Neville had been the first person at school to learn that Ginny and Susan were a couple. He had accidentally stumbled in on them while they were snogging in the Gryffindor common room in the middle of the night after everyone else had gone to bed. Something that they never did again after that because it was simply too risky. At the time, Ginny had been horrified, unable to speak and unsure of what to say. The confusion on Neville’s face was obvious as his eyes flicked between the two of them, unsure why Susan was even in their common room while he tried to decide if he had seen what he thought he had. It could have been a trick of the low firelight. As far as everyone at school was concerned, Ginny was still dating Harry Potter, so Neville had struggled to wrap his head around what was happening. After several moments of awkward silence, Susan sighed and stepped up to clear the air and squash out the building tension.
“Neville, Ginny and I are dating. She and Harry mutually broke up months ago – he knows – but we haven’t told anyone else yet. With everything going on, it seemed like a bad time. So we’re going to tell everyone later. We would appreciate your discretion until that time comes.” Susan paused, allowing the information to sink in before arching an eyebrow at him in challenge. “Do you have a problem with that?”
“No,” Neville had sputtered, briefly reverting back to his old self – a far stretch from the confident, well-spoken, and capable wizard he had become since Dumbledore’s death. “No, no – not at all! I just – I wasn’t expecting to see you here. I - I didn’t know about you and Harry, Ginny. I didn’t want to assume anything, I just – no, I have no problem with it.”
Then a huge grin had split across his face, and he almost wiggled on the spot with excitement.
“I am so happy for you two – I promise I won’t say a word,” he said seriously, evidently understanding their situation and why they chose to hide it.
The words had practically made Ginny’s heart burst. After coming to terms with her own sexuality after breaking up with Harry and rebuilding her self-confidence throughout the summer, Ginny was confident in herself. She wasn’t hiding her relationship because she was ashamed or embarrassed. She kept it a secret simply because there was enough shit going on in the world, and they didn’t need to cause any more drama. Susan not only supported her opinion, but she also seconded it. While Susan’s parents knew that she was gay and openly supported her – Ginny had yet to tell her own family, and the last thing she wanted was for her mum to find out through a third party.
Couple that with the fact that the Carrows were sadistic and cruel, often using their emotions and friendships against them, it was an obvious approach to take. After what happened to Maisey, her dorm mate, Ginny and Susan had absolutely no desire to announce their relationship to the school, and they were glad that Neville unquestioningly agreed to keep this quiet. Maisey had been the first one to be forced to attack her boyfriend as punishment – but she wasn’t the last. The Carrows would force students to cast the Cruciatus curse on each other, specifically at first years and people that they cared about – and if they refused, the Carrows would simply use the Imperius curse to make it happen.
Since then, everyone at Hogwarts, even those not part of the rebellion, kept their relationships and friendships as secret as possible. It was harder for the siblings, Colin and Dennis being prime examples since that wasn’t something you could hide - but they did what they could.
They both knew that Luna undoubtably knew about their relationship, and they suspected that Colin, Hannah, and the Patil twins had figured it out too. But none of them were stupid enough to ask for confirmation, and Ginny and Susan weren’t dumb enough to tell them. Plausible deniability was everything during war, especially when veritaserum might be involved. But based on their unwavering loyalty to Ginny and DA - they were confident that their unconfirmed relationship had been accepted by their peers and that no one had questioned Ginny’s loyalty to Harry.
A second knock on the compartment door indicated that Luna and Hannah were there. Ginny and Susan shuffled again, unlatching their hands and leaving a few inches of space between them before they opened the door and allowed their friends inside. As much as Ginny wanted to sit quietly and undisturbed with Susan and enjoy the train ride, she did appreciate the interruption and the conversation that ensued. She was a nervous wreck. While she meant what she said to Susan – that she didn’t care what her family thought about their relationship - it didn’t make the idea of announcing it any easier, and the group conversation helped ease her mind.
Ginny settled comfortably into the discussion, talking about DA’s next moves and smiling at the group as they tried to stay positive and enjoy their small freedom away from school. She grinned at Hannah, who grinned widely at her in return as she handed out chocolate frogs to the group for a snack.
-x-x-
By the time the train pulled into King’s Cross station, it was 11:30 at night, and the compartment was exploding with bodies. Hannah had fallen asleep on top of the coat pile in the corner of their compartment. Neville was talking animatedly with Lavender, who had joined them at some point, and Susan was discussing ideas with Luna about smuggling in the salve. Colin and Dennis had also squished their way in with Seamus, sitting next to Ginny and talking about seeing their families again. Parvati, who had popped in to wish everyone a Merry Christmas about an hour before the train arrived, was now seated on top of Hannah’s feet on the floor with her back resting against the outer wall – eating her chocolate frogs as she talked quietly with her sister, who had stood like a sardine against the closed compartment door. Ginny was wedged tightly between Colin and Susan and partaking in several different conversations.
Eleven people were far too many to have squished in one compartment, and it obliterated any chance of being comfortable for the ride. Ginny had to cast cooling charms every so often so they wouldn’t need to remove their clothes or end up passed out from heat exhaustion – but she wouldn’t have had it any other way. These people had become her family. They were a team. They depended on each other. They supported each other and had set aside any inner animosity to do their part in the war. Being with them, with Susan at her side, made her feel safe and confident.
“Merry Christmas!” Ginny waved as she lugged her small suitcase off the top rack with her opposite hand. She and Susan had waited for the rest of the crew to exit the compartment before attempting to gather their belongings and depart.
“Bye!” Hannah smiled as she turned to leave last, and the other goodbyes could be heard throughout the corridor.
“Be safe!” Colin waved as he held his brother’s shoulder gently and steered him off the train.
“See you guys soon!” The Patil twins called behind them.
“Floo me if you can!” Lavender called out after them.
“Seamus don’t blow anything up!” Dennis yelled back the corridor as Colin steered him along.
“Oi, fuck you!” Seamus yelled, unable to do anything else since he was stuck behind the crowd.
“Take care, Neville,” Susan said with a gentle squeeze of his arm.
“You too. Remember, if you need anything, let me know.” Neville smiled at the two girls before heading to the platform.
“Make sure you de-nargle your mistletoe,” Luna said airily as she departed the train next.
Ginny sighed, smiling at Susan before closing her eyes and heaving in a massive breath of the cold winter air that filled the platform. It was good to be able to breathe freely again. When her shoulders had finally relaxed, she opened her eyes and started making her way down the platform, scanning the faces for someone in her family – unsure who would be picking them up.
“Ginny!” She heard her father call from the crowd before she spotted him. Catching a glimpse of his raised hand, she smiled back at Susan, and they quickly made their way over.
“Hi dad!” Ginny grinned as he hugged her tightly and then turned to give Susan a traditional Weasley bear hug.
“You must be Susan!” Arthur said with a grin as he released her and then took both of the girl’s bags. “It’s so nice to meet you – Molly and I are happy to have you join us this Christmas.”
If nothing else , Ginny thought as she smiled at the blush on Susan’s cheeks from the warm welcome she had received. Dad will support me.
Her father, ever the happy and welcoming man, had never let her down. He had always supported her, always believed in her, and always welcomed everyone into their home without hesitation. While her mother was also incredibly welcoming, warm-hearted, and a typical mother hen, she could sometimes get worked up and temperamental. Due to their similar hot-headed personalities, Ginny often butted heads with her mother. Her dad, on the other hand, she always got along with. He was the calm and gentle force that held the family together.
They made their way off the crowded platform, through the familiar barricade, and out past the parking lot toward a safe apparition zone with several other people. While some wizards dared to apparate directly onto the platform – usually this was the stuck-up, pompous, pureblood families like the Malfoys who were completely uncaring if their actions hurt others – most didn’t. It was just too dangerous and a nightmare to do successfully. Countless times over the years, wizards had been injured attempting it. They would accidentally apparate on top of others or leave partial suitcases behind. They would splinch themselves while attempting to apparate out of the crowded and busy platform and then require emergency healers to repair the damage. Hence, the creation of a safe apparition space located just outside the station and why wizards got there numerous other ways.
“Alright gang,” Arthur said enthusiastically as they reached the safe wards and stepped inside. “I figure apparating is best today given the late time – you’ll each need to hold your own suitcases tightly, though.”
Ginny took her suitcase back in hand and tried to calm the worry she felt in her heart as she looked at her dad. Despite his enthusiastic personality, she could tell that he looked tired, and she knew that he was doing his best to remain his cheerful old self. Susan shot her a comforting smile before they each took one of his outstretched hands and got ready to travel.
“Alright,” Arthur said, standing straight and smiling down at them both. “On the count of three. One, two, three-”
With a pop they disapparated into the cold winter night. Ginny grimaced at the awful feeling of being pushed through a very small tube and then stumbled when they appeared outside the wards of the Burrow. Susan grabbed her arm quickly to prevent her from falling over and bent at the waist, gripping her own stomach with a laugh.
“I always forget just how awful that feels,” she said, looking up at Arthur. “Thank you for doing the apparition. I’m always hesitant to do it myself after what happened the first time.”
“Of course my dear!” Arthur said brightly as he took both suitcases from the girls once more, and they started their way up to the house, passing through the wards and enchantments with each step. “What happened the first time you apparated?”
“Oh, you know – just left a leg behind.”
“You don’t say!” Arthur said excitedly as he looked toward Susan. “Well, that’s quite the story isn’t it – was it the whole leg?”
Ginny grinned widely at how comfortably Susan was talking to her dad. It felt like they were old pals catching up, and she bit back a laugh when Susan told the story of her first apparition lesson. He was a great audience, asking all the questions that his curious brain wanted to know – the ones that her mother would surely have swatted him for while saying something like ‘it’s impolite to ask how much leg someone left behind!’
When they got to the house, most of the lights were off. Ginny wasn’t sure just how many of her siblings would be joining them for the holidays, but if they were already there, they were sleeping. She knew that Ron was off with Harry and Hermione, and Percy definitely wouldn’t be coming – but Fred, George, Bill, and Charlie were bound to stop by at some point. Ginny grinned when her mother greeted Susan much like her father did, and she tried to hide the blush that dusted her face.
“You must be Susan!” Mrs. Weasley smiled, pulling Susan into a tight hug before ushering the girls inside. “We’re so happy to have you for the holiday! I wasn’t sure if you girls would be hungry, with the train being as late as it was – I’ve made you some hot chocolate and heated you some left-overs from dinner. Here – you two sit, and Arthur will bring your bags to your room. I thought that you could stay in the spare bunk that Hermione has used over the summer, Susan. I’ve changed the sheets and tidied everything up, so it’s all ready.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Weasley. That’s very kind of you,” Susan replied as she took a seat at the table next to Ginny.
“Oh, it’s no trouble at all dear,” Mrs. Weasley smiled as her husband carried the bags to Ginny’s room and the girls started eating.
“Are Fred and George coming for Christmas?” Ginny asked as she tucked into her dinner. The chocolate frogs Hannah provided had worn off ages ago.
“Yes, they’ll be here Christmas Eve. I think they plan to stay through until boxing day.” Mrs. Weasley took a seat at the end of the table as Arthur reappeared. “Charlie said he’ll try to pop by on Christmas day, and Bill and Fleur will come and stay Christmas Eve as well.”
Ginny noticed a tightness in her mother’s jaw when she mentioned Bill and Fleur, but she chose not to comment on it. It was after midnight, she was exhausted, and she didn’t want to open that can of worms. She already knew that either her mum had become upset with Fleur, again, or perhaps she was still struggling with accepting that her older brother Percy was a douche and wouldn’t be coming home. Either way, all she wanted was to get to her room with Susan and go to sleep.
Once they had finished eating, Mrs. Weasley shooed them to bed, Ginny and Susan both gladly agreed and made their way down the short hall to Ginny’s room. Ginny could hear her mum and dad whispering quietly in the kitchen while they tidied up.
“So,” Susan said once the door was shut and Ginny had placed a silencing charm out of habit. “This is your room?”
A furious blush crossed Ginny’s face when she realized that she was standing in her childhood bedroom with her girlfriend – she’d been so bloody tired that the thought hadn’t even crossed her mind.
“Uh,” Ginny hesitated, quickly scanning her eyes around the room to make sure that there was nothing embarrassing lying about. If there was, she would blame it on Hermione, but thankfully her mum had tidied up and aside from some Holyhead Harpies posters, there wasn’t much laying about. “Yes – it’s not much but-”
“I love it,” Susan grinned, stepping toward Ginny and wrapping her arms around her waist.
Ginny flushed deeper, feeling the heat in her cheeks as her face turned a similar crimson as her hair. It had been ages since she and Susan were alone, and Ginny’s pulse was racing at the closeness between them. No matter how much time passed, her stomach still fluttered every time they touched. Grinning, Ginny leaned in and kissed Susan gently.
“Thank you for coming with me,” she breathed against her lips.
“Thank you for inviting me,” Susan whispered, nuzzling her nose against Ginny’s before the sound of Mrs. Weasley’s voice startled them apart.
“I know you’re tired girls, but don’t forget to brush your teeth.”
Ginny groaned and slapped her face with her hand as Susan laughed outright. Grabbing her wand off her bed, she removed the silencing charm to respond at the same time Susan did.
“Yes, mum!”
“Yes, Mrs. Weasley!”
Taking a breath to calm her nerves, Ginny opened her suitcase to pull out her pajamas and bathroom kit.
“Come on – I’ll show you where the bathroom is.”
It crossed Ginny’s mind while she brushed her teeth that her mum would have an absolute hay day if she knew that Susan was staying in her room as her girlfriend. Similar to how Fleur had stayed in a separate room when she was visiting the Burrow last Christmas, partners were allowed to stay in the house, but her mum wouldn’t allow unmarried couples to canoodle under her roof. Susan was only staying in her room because she was a friend and because on Christmas day the house would be quite full. The only free room would be Percy’s since Charlie would likely use Ron’s.
If only they knew , she snorted at the thought. But having Susan stay in a different room would only arouse suspicion, and Ginny wasn’t ready to tell her parents yet.
She wanted to tell her family once and only once. So, she was waiting until they all showed up so she could get it done and over with in one fell swoop.
Besides , she thought as she quickly changed into her pajamas while Susan went to use the washroom. I wouldn’t mind having some actual time to be with my girlfriend before shit hits the fan.
Term hadn’t ended this year until December 18th, with exams extending over the weekend and the train home scheduled for Monday the 22nd. They’d be heading back to Hogwarts on Friday, January 2nd, only for term to start the following Monday. Based on what her mum had said, Christmas day would be the only day that everyone was there – which left her only tomorrow and Christmas Eve with Susan before she revealed their relationship to her family.
So Ginny was going to enjoy those two days to their fullest extent, knowing full well that for the remaining eight days of their vacation after Christmas, Susan would be staying in a different room, and her mum would be watching them closely. And that was assuming that everything went well and that her family accepted them. Worst case, they would be leaving the house and apparating to Susan’s parents, which was a risky move given the Death Eaters’ watch on her family. Susan and her parents had made arrangements with Neville and his grandmother so that if things got bad, they could evacuate their home and apparate to a safe place on the Longbottom estate – but everyone was hoping that it wouldn’t get to that point.
“Hey,” Susan said as she stepped back into the bedroom in her pajamas. Her strawberry blonde hair hung loose in a high ponytail, and she closed the distance between them as Ginny cast a silencing charm and locked the door.
“Hey,” Ginny smiled, pulling Susan toward her and relaxing in her hold.
“You still okay?”
“Yeah,” Ginny sighed, breathing in the wonderful scent of Susan’s face wash. “Tired, stressed, anxious, nervous – you know, the norm.”
Susan laughed and kissed her on the forehead.
“How tired are you?” Ginny asked, looking up into her girlfriend’s honey-coloured eyes and dimming the light with her wand.
“Tired,” Susan responded before giving her a mischievous grin. “But not that tired.”
Ginny bit her lip as her heart fluttered once more. She had heard her parents go to bed while she was in the bathroom, and with the lock on her bedroom door, no one would be walking in unannounced. The house was quiet, the world was sleeping, and they finally had a moment alone.
Ginny pulled Susan down onto her bed, capturing her lips as she moved and revelling at the sweet and minty taste of her mouth. It had been ages since they had done anything physical, aside from a brief kiss here and there. The last time they had been intimate was Halloween, and it had been quick because there wasn’t much time. Ginny moaned softly as Susan nibbled at her bottom lip and slid her hand under the edge of her oversized pajama shirt. Pulling Susan on top of her, Ginny opened her mouth and slid her tongue through her lips.
She tasted like bliss, like pure heavenly bliss, and Ginny felt the coil at her core start to tighten.
When they had first started dating at the start of the school term, Ginny was surprised to learn that despite Susan’s reserved and polite outward appearance, she was actually very carnal and strongly in favour of physical contact as a way of expressing her feelings. It worked well for Ginny, who had always been very outspoken, impatient, and perhaps a little brash with her regular vulgar words. Especially since Ginny was also someone who craved physical intimacy due to her own heightened sexual nature. It didn’t take long before they realized that they were two peas in a pod, and they began pushing past casual snogging if the opportunity struck. It was a huge leap from the letters they had penned back and forth throughout the summer or the causal touches they had the previous school year before it ended, but it was never even a thought between them that they might be moving too fast.
It’s been so fucking long , Ginny thought as Susan groaned and slid a leg between hers, pushing into her center and moving her hand to gently massage her breast.
Their lips moved with practiced ease. Their movements quickened, and soon they were panting. Ginny’s hand was gripping Susan’s hip tightly, pushing down into the grinding motions she was making and pushing her own thigh up into Susan’s core.
“Shit – Susan,” Ginny groaned as Susan pushed her shirt up, exposing her chest and moved to suck her nipple – twirling her tongue around it and making Ginny’s back arch. “Merlin, you feel so good.”
“Mmmm,” Susan murmured against her chest before making her way up to suck on Ginny’s neck. “I love when you’re wound up.”
“You fucking wind me up, witch,” Ginny moaned as Susan brought her hand between her legs and rubbed the junction.
Unable to take the building pressure anymore, Ginny pushed back on Susan, forcing her to sit up and then lay down with her head at the foot of the bed.
“We need to – take – fucking pants – off,” Ginny struggled to make a coherent phrase as she grabbed the waist of Susan’s pajama pants and started to pull them down.
Susan grinned widely and lifted her hips, eager to assist and remove the barrier between them. She loved when Ginny was pent up and needed release – and she loved being the one to give it to her. Ginny quickly shucked off her own bottoms before moving to lower her head between Susan’s legs, one hand pressing down on Susan’s stomach.
“Oh – fuck, that feels good,” Susan moaned, her head lolling to her right as Ginny pushed her panties aside and slid her tongue over her already wet folds. Susan moved her hand between them and tangled her fingers in Ginny’s hair, pushing her hips up as Ginny continued to circle the little bud that was throbbing between her legs, each lick sending shivers down her spine.
“Ginny,” Susan’s voice was low and sultry. “I want you.”
Feeling the push against her head, Ginny let Susan lead her backward until her head was once again resting on her pillow. She removed her panties while Susan stripped off her own, then parted her legs as Susan crawled forward. They had only ever done this once before, and it had felt so good, Ginny came almost instantly. Which she had found somewhat surprising because apparently, not everyone did. She suspected tonight would be similar – they were both tired, pent up, and desperate for release. Susan climbed on top of her, aligning their centers before she lowered herself, rocking their cores against one another as she held Ginny’s leg in front of her.
“Oh – fuck Susan,” Ginny groaned, hands fisting her own hair as a tremble shook through her body. It was only the beginning of what was to come and somehow felt even better than the first time they had tried this, hidden behind the charmed curtains of Susan’s four-poster bed.
“You like that?” Susan asked teasingly as she rocked her hips.
Through hazed eyes, Ginny could see the faint flush across her girlfriend’s beautiful complexion as she moved above her. Sliding her hands from her hair, she gripped Susan’s hips tightly, pulling them down even closer.
“Yes, I fucking like that,” Ginny groaned as Susan began to pant with the motion.
She had also been surprised to find out that Susan seemed to like talking dirty when they first became physical, but she had absolutely no complaints about it. Her body trembled again; she was so close. Seeing Susan in nothing but a baggy old T-shirt, the faint light glowing off her hair while she ground into her in her childhood bedroom was almost enough to send her over the edge alone.
“Merlin,” Ginny panted. “You’re going to make me come.”
“Fuck, Ginny,” Susan moaned as Ginny pushed up into her once more. “I want you to come – I want you to come for me.”
She dropped her hand between them, using her fingers as Ginny started to squirm.
“Susan – fuuuuck, Susan, just like that – just like–“Ginny’s eyes clamped shut as the coil that had been building within her snapped, and a wave crashed over her, every muscle in her body tensing with her climax.
She felt Susan's hand slow as her orgasm receded, then Ginny shifted to bring her hand to Susan's center. Susan groaned. She moved her fingers quicker, gripping Susan's hip tight until she fell apart. Watching as she rode out the wave, a look of euphoria washing over her beautiful features before she crumpled into Ginny’s arms.
“Holy shit, Ginny,” Susan panted into her neck, her limbs shaking from the effort as the last remains of her climax coursed through her body.
“No kidding,” Ginny breathed, her heart still racing as a heavy tiredness began to sink in.
She hadn’t realized just how pent up she was, and she held Susan close and kissed the side of her face before they untangled themselves to lay panting at the ceiling. It was several minutes before they begrudgingly made their way to the bathroom to wash up. Both of them wanted nothing more than to curl up right then and there and go to sleep – but after such activities, they both knew a trip to the bathroom was necessary.
As Ginny returned to her room, she saw that Susan had transfigured her bed wider and was lying half asleep within it, her ponytail re-fixed atop her head. She couldn’t help the sleepy smile that crossed her face as she crawled into bed behind Susan and wrapped her arm around her. Susan snuggled back into her, enjoying the warmth in the cool bedroom.
“G’night Ginny,” Susan whispered softly against the pillow she had taken from her spare bed. Her breathing was already deep, and Ginny knew she was mostly asleep.
“Good night Susan,” Ginny yawned before kissing the back of her neck and allowing the heaviness that floated over her to take hold.
The next morning Ginny awoke to the smell of breakfast floating down the hall from the kitchen and was surprised to see that she and Susan had not moved an inch from the night before. Despite their numerous sexual activities over the last few months, they had never actually slept together, so she hadn’t been sure what to expect. She had been told in the past, mostly by Hermione, that she was a bit of an aggressive sleeper. She was a notorious blanket stealer, rolled about, and often kicked anyone within a three-foot radius. Apparently, as it would seem, having an orgasm and then curling up next to Susan calmed her down sufficiently to prevent the chaos.
Shit we were more tired than I thought, Ginny mused as she felt Susan wake in her arms.
They laid there happily for several minutes, neither one of them speaking while they just enjoyed the calm comfort of laying in each other’s arms while being thankful for having each other. If asked to describe how Ginny felt about Susan, Ginny would say that ‘she was everything to her’ and that’ she couldn’t imagine life without her’. She had told these things to Susan as the first semester progressed, and Susan had told Ginny that she cared about her more than anyone. Both of them knew how they felt, but they had yet to say the big word.
It felt weird to be afraid of a word, to let it hold so much power over you when really it should be welcomed gladly. After all, it was the single nicest thing that you could say to someone. But regardless, Ginny was too nervous to tell Susan that she loved her. She wasn’t worried that Susan would reject her. She knew from the way that Susan looked at her and how she would open her mouth then hesitate and close it again that she was thinking the same thing. It wasn’t because Ginny was unsure if she loved her either. Susan was home to her; she was where Ginny belonged. She wanted to spend all her time with the girl, and Susan was the first person she ran to when she needed to talk. She knew that she wanted to stay with her, that she wanted a life with this incredible woman that gave her the confidence to be herself and who so perfectly complemented her life. She was just afraid – for no logical reason, probably like most people are.
After saying good morning, the two girls finally hauled themselves from the warmth of the sheets and transfigured the bed back to its normal size. Susan tossed her pillow onto the spare bed and pulled back the comforter – clearly aware of the appearance they were keeping up without commenting on it. Then, they changed out of their pajamas and made their way out to breakfast to join Ginny’s parents.
“Good morning, girls,” Arthur said with far more energy than anyone should have in the morning.
“Good morning,” the girls echoed in perfect unison as they walked to the table, pulled out their chairs, and sat with identical movements.
“Hey! Don’t steal our bit,” two unified voices said from the kitchen doorway. Fred and George had just entered the Burrow and were starting to remove their coats.
“It took us years to perfect our synced methods. Surely you two could just wear matching outfits instead,” Fred said with a wink as he grinned at his sister.
“But then how would we tell them apart, Fred?” George asked with mock concern
“Fred! George!” Ginny leapt up from her seat and ran over to her twin brothers, who were dusting the snow off each other, and gave them both a hug. Even though she had been communicating with them throughout the school year to get supplies from their joke shop to use in the DA rebellion, she rarely ever saw them in person.
“Yeah, that’s us,” Fred said brightly as he squeezed her back and began slipping off his boots.
Ginny smiled widely as she returned to her seat and began hungrily digging into the spread that Mrs. Weasley had prepared.
“I thought that you weren’t coming until tomorrow,” Mrs. Weasley called, a large smile gracing her face as she came over to kiss them both on the cheek.
“And miss out on the amazing breakfasts you make over the Christmas holidays?” George said as he moved into the kitchen. “Not a chance!”
“Good morning, boys!” Arthur was positively beaming as he folded the magazine he had been reading and laughed when Fred and George both hugged him where he sat. “What a wonderful surprise! Are you off now until Christmas?”
“Sort of,” Fred replied as he grabbed a slice of bacon from the plate in the middle of the table and took a bite. “Just reduced hours. We’ll go in 11 am till 4 pm today, but we’re closed Christmas Eve and Christmas day.”
“So, we’ll come back after work today and stay an extra night,” George continued his brother’s sentence as he grabbed a slice of bacon for himself before turning his attention to Susan. “Susan – it’s been a long time!”
Susan had been seated quietly at the table throughout the exchange; a large grin stretched across her face as she watched with amusement. She had always loved the Weasley twins at school, but she had never seen so many Weasleys interact all at once. It was loud, comical, loving, and the most fantastical family situation she had ever been a part of.
“Yes, it has,” she said as she smiled up at the twins almost nervously, and Ginny nudged her foot reassuringly under the table. She knew that her family could be a lot to handle if you weren’t used to them.
Both Fred and George circled around the table to give Susan a single-arm hug across the shoulder while they continued to hold bacon in the opposite hand.
“No one escapes the Weasley greeting hug,” Fred joked as he squeezed Susan’s shoulder then made his way over to his usual seat. Both he and George filled up their plates, accepting the tea that Mrs. Weasley started handing out.
“I trust both of you slept well,” Mrs. Weasley smiled as she handed the girls their tea and then took her own seat. “You two slept like the dead! Didn’t hear a peep – poor things, you must have been so exhausted.”
“Oh yes, I slept wonderfully,” Susan replied as she buttered her toast and gently nudged Ginny’s foot under the table. Both of them tried not to laugh at her mother’s words; they had been anything but quiet last night.
“Yeah,” Ginny agreed as she reached for her tea. “Between exams and everything else, I was exhausted.”
“Everything else?” Mrs. Weasley asked, her brow arched as she held her tea mug. Arthur was busy fixing his tea and didn’t seem to notice that the tides were about to turn at the table.
“Well yeah,” Ginny said, somewhat surprised. With the number of problems that they had caused over the last four months at Hogwarts, she had just assumed that her parents had heard about it. She didn’t miss the mischievous grin the twins shared at the turn in conversation. “With Dumbledore’s Army – we’ve just been organizing and doing things around the castle.”
“What sort of things?” Mrs. Weasley’s voice had dropped in tone, and Ginny realized that either her parents had absolutely no idea what they had been up to all term, or her dad had done an excellent job hiding the letters from the school. Based on her dad’s pleasant and calm expression while he whistled a muggle Christmas song and buttered his toast, she guessed it was the former of the two.
“All kinds of things,” Ginny replied vaguely, picking up the jam that Susan had finished with to put some on her toast.
“Ginevra Weasley – you answer the question.” Mrs. Weasley was now looking at her sternly over the top of her mug, her back was straight, and her tone was serious.
“Yeah, Ginevra Weasley, answer the question,” Fred teased as he flashed her a set of pearly whites. Ginny shot him a glare. She was starting to think that her brothers were probably the only other people at the table aside from her and Susan who knew what the DA was up to.
“Oh, relax mum,” Ginny shrugged, turning her attention back to her plate and ignoring her brother. She was unfazed by her mum’s stern tone. She had heard it an uncountable amount of times over the years because of the two shit disturbers sitting across from her. “Just small things, nothing major. We’ve been training, and we practice defence, and you know, try to stop the Carrows from harassing the younger kids–”
“And set off stink bombs,” George mimicked her voice before eating more bacon.
“And tried to steal the sword,” Fred added, then sipped his tea.
“Tried to steal the sword?!” Mrs. Weasley sputtered, and Ginny glared daggers at her brothers. She knew they were only doing it to get a rise out of their mother and that they meant no real harm, but it was still incredibly annoying.
“Oh, come on, it’s no secret. Everyone knows,” Fred rolled his eyes at Ginny’s death glare.
“The sword? You mean the sword of Gryffindor?! You do understand that you’re attending a school that is being watched by Death Eaters?” Mrs. Weasley asked incredulously, sitting her teacup down so abruptly that the contents sloshed over the sides.
“The Carrows didn’t catch us, “Ginny retorted as she put down her toast in frustration, still side-eyeing her brothers as they sat back and enjoyed the show they had just started. “None of the Death Eaters knew about it! It was in Snape’s office – we almost got it to until the last second. And Snape didn’t want to look like an idiot, so he obviously never told anyone he was almost robbed by students. Probably would have looked bad to You Know Who, so he kept it quiet, and we only got detention with Hagrid.”
“We!?” Mrs. Weasley’s voice had escalated, and Arthur had finally stopped humming and took notice. She turned to face her husband somewhat desperately. “Arthur! Do you hear what your daughter just said?! It’s one thing to do something stupid on your own, Ginevra Weasley; it’s a completely different thing to involve your friends! You do understand that Headmaster Snape is a Death Eater – that he killed Dumbledore?”
“Yes!” Ginny leaned back in her chair in exasperation. “Of course, I know that! Everyone was there by choice!”
Ginny felt Susan place her hand on her thigh under the table, trying to keep her calm.
“Arthur, will you say something!!” Mrs. Weasley practically shouted, her eyes darting between her daughter and her husband.
“Why were you stealing the sword?” Arthur asked as he leaned forward to rest his elbows on the table. His voice was sincere, and he sounded genuinely curious.
“Oh, for the love of – Arthur, that’s not what I meant!” Mrs. Weasley yelled, her frustration getting the best of her as her voice went past the point of being controlled.
“Because Harry needs it!” Ginny yelled back, glaring at her mother and clenching her hands into fists at her sides. She was starting to feel ready to abort this conversation and walk out of the kitchen. “I know that you only think of me as your incapable little girl – but I’m not!”
The twins gave each other a nervous look. This argument had far surpassed what they had intended to start. They had only wanted to stir the pot a little bit, to get their mother worked up and maybe have a laugh about some of the more ridiculous pranks that Ginny and the DA had pulled at school. In hindsight, it was stupid of them to think that bringing this up was going to end well. The conversation had quickly morphed into an argument about the war, specifically, about Ginny’s involvement in the war. Fred and George both knew that their mother struggled to accept her children’s involvement, so they should have known this would go poorly, and now they were both kicking themselves for it.
“You know perfectly well that I don’t think you’re incapable!” Mrs. Weasley’s voice was pointed.
“Then stop treating me like I am!” Ginny yelled, pushing her chair back and standing at the table.
“You’re still underage, Ginny! I’m not treating you like you’re incapable; I’m treating you like you’re my child – and I only want what’s best for you!”
“But none of us can afford to be fucking kids anymore!” Ginny practically screamed as she leaned forward, hands resting on the table. “I’m underage by eight months! Do you really think that matters at a time like this? We know how dangerous Snape is. We’ve been at school the last four months dealing with him and the bloody Carrow’s torment – we’re not complete fucking idiots! Everyone involved is there because they want to be, because they want to help – because they understand the consequences of losing this war!”
Ginny was breathing heavily. She knew that if she continued to scream, it would only hurt her cause. It made her look like the child that her mother clearly still saw her as. She needed to calm down. Taking a deep breath, she managed to get control of her raging emotions and removed her hands from the table, standing up straight before she continued in a low and serious tone.
“Stop treating me like a child and start treating me like someone who will be a part of this war – because I will be, whether I want to be or not,” Ginny paused, and she gripped the sides of her pants as she fought to retain her calm. “I know it’s hard for you to accept, but I’m going to help. I’m going to fight. I’m going to do everything I’m capable of to help win this war. I’m not going to abandon my friends or my family – I’m not going to sit on the sidelines hoping that someone else does the dirty work. You didn’t raise me to be like that; you raised me to stand up for what’s right, regardless of what’s easy and to protect and take care of my friends. To take care of my family. And that is exactly what I’m going to do.”
Mrs. Weasley was silent. Her eyes were wide with shock from the vulgar that had poured from her daughter’s mouth, but she was stunned into silence by the image before her. Her baby girl, her only daughter, stood fiercely at the table – speaking calmly, responsibly, and with a fiery determination that would not be swayed. Mrs. Weasley couldn’t process it. Her mind wouldn’t accept it.
When did my baby girl grow up? She thought as she gripped the table cloth tightly in her hands, unable to form a response and unwilling to accept that her daughter was no longer a child.
Ginny stared at her mother hard as she side-stepped from her seat, then calmly turned and walked up the stairs. The entire kitchen table sat there in silence. All of them watching Ginny go until they heard the familiar sound of her bedroom door open, and they waited for the explosion, but it didn’t happen. A year ago, Ginny would have slammed her door shut and made a racket for the next hour to ensure that everybody in the house knew she was upset. Today, there was only silence.
Ginny had just won the argument, and everyone knew it. She had calmed her temper, spoken clearly and logically, and stood up for the morals that her family had preached and taught her since the day she was born. Despite the choice use of language and the obvious tension that this would cause with his wife, Arthur couldn’t help the proud feeling that welled in his chest as he saw the young woman his little girl had become.
As the silence continued and an awkwardness settled over the table, Susan wriggled her toes uncomfortably and glanced around. Arthur was sitting back in his chair with an odd look of pride on his face. The twins sported matching looks of guilt from starting the argument, and Mrs. Weasley was still clutching the tablecloth tightly in her hands with her jaw clenched shut. After a full minute of silence passed, Susan decided to excuse herself.
“Sooo….” she said awkwardly as she placed the napkin that had been across her lap back on the table. “I think I’ll – I’m just going to go check on her.”
Pulling herself up from the table slowly, Susan paused when Arthur finally spoke.
“She’s not a child anymore, Molly,” he sounded proud, but there was a heaviness to his voice that made Susan’s heart ache. “And we need to accept that and support her, because she’s going to help anyway.”
Not wanting to intrude on any further family affairs, Susan retreated from her seat and climbed the stairs to Ginny’s room. Ginny heard the door and looked up from her pillow to see Susan enter the room, then let out a deep breath.
“Susan, I’m sorry,” Ginny sat up on her bed as Susan closed the distance. “You didn’t need to see that. Sometimes my mum and I don’t exactly see eye to eye, and I can’t help myself.”
“You don’t say,” Susan snorted lightly as she climbed onto the bed in front of Ginny, mimicking her position and sitting cross-legged. They were close enough that their knees were touching. Susan leaned forward and placed a hand on either side of Ginny’s head, resting her thumbs on her temples and bringing their foreheads together. “I thought you handled yourself really well actually – you know your dad supports you. I think he’s proud of you for standing up for what’s right.”
“I know,” Ginny breathed, closing her eyes and relaxing under Susan’s touch.
“And you know that your mother is just worried about you,” Susan continued as she rubbed gentle circles on Ginny’s temple.
“Yes,” Ginny sighed again, taking deep breaths like Susan had taught her to over the last few months to calm her heart. “I know she means well.”
“Mhmm,” Susan murmured softly before she slid her hands down Ginny’s neck to rest on her shoulders, still maintaining the contact of their foreheads. “She’ll come around in time – it’s just hard for her. You’re her only daughter and her youngest child. That’s a double whammy if there ever was one.”
“Mhm,” Ginny laughed as a smile tugged at her lips.
Susan’s fingers were massaging the stress out of her body through her shoulders, and she felt like she could breathe again. Normally it would take Ginny hours to calm down on her own. While she had managed to control her temper and stop outwardly throwing tantrums, she still struggled to truly calm down on the inside – but with Susan’s touch, she’ ha already melted into a puddle. She knew exactly how to handle Ginny’s fiery temper and bring her back down to Earth.
“Thank you,” Ginny whispered.
“Any time,” Susan smiled when Ginny finally opened her eyes and looked about ten thousand levels calmer.
“I don’t know what I would do without you,” Ginny said, reaching for Susan’s cheek and leaning forward to kiss her gently.
“Yes, you do,” Susan whispered in between their kiss. “You’d be up here, stuck in your own head, throwing a damn fit for hours.”
Ginny snorted and pulled Susan in further, tilting her head to kiss her deeper when she heard the door to her bedroom creak open, followed immediately by a voice.
“Ginny, I–” George stopped midsentence, standing in the half-opened doorway staring at the two girls seated cross-legged on the bed before him that he had undoubtably just caught kissing.
And one of them was his sister.
Ginny and Susan pushed away from each other the second they heard the noise, but they weren’t stupid – they knew that George had seen them. The wide-eyed expression on his face and the fact that his mouth was still hanging open from cutting his sentence short was a confirmation of that. Ginny felt her face flush crimson and her pulse double as she tried to rack her brain for a response, but the only thing her mind seemed capable of coming up with was: Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FFUUUCCCKK!
She sat frozen on her bed, her hands grasping the sheets on either side of her tightly while starring at her brother’s face in horror. Susan was flushed pink and sitting quietly in front of her, no doubt regretting the fact that she didn’t lock the door. She was looking at Ginny with two surprised eyebrows while she waited for Ginny to react.
Susan wouldn’t be coming to her rescue this time – not as she had with Neville. This was family, and Susan had stated countless times that while she would support Ginny and stand beside her no matter what, it was up to Ginny to tell her family. She wouldn’t be taking the lead here; she would be the supporting role.
Ginny watched as the stunned expression began to fade from George’s face, his mouth slowly closed, and his eyebrow arched as the gears in his head began to turn. She could see him putting the pieces together in his mind until a look of realization struck him. Then he quickly stepped fully into her bedroom, closed the door behind him, and cast a silencing spell and a locking charm. He moved so fast that Ginny never even saw him draw the wand that was now in his hand. Before she could blink or speak a word, he had closed the distance between them and crouched down, throwing his arms around her.
“Ginny – I didn’t know. You could have told me.” George hugged her tightly as he spoke softly. “Ginny, Fred and I are here for you always. If you need anything, just let us know – we both love you and support you, and we’re here for you. You don’t need to hide from us, Gin – we love you and accept you for exactly who you are.”
Ginny’s brain couldn’t process the reaction, and she felt her chest tighten as a wave of emotion crashed over her. The sick nauseating feeling that had been building in her stomach stopped, and she felt her eyes prickle with tears as she tried to accept what was happening.
She had always known that George and Fred would accept her. Out of all her family members, those were the two that she was least concerned about telling. But seeing it now, hearing his words, and knowing it was true was overwhelming. Her shoulders shook as her body went limp, and she wrapped her arms around George and gripped him tightly. She knew that she was spilling tears all over his shirt, but she didn’t care. She was too overwhelmed to speak. Unable to articulate how much his words meant to her, that his acceptance was like a heavy burden being lifted from her shoulders.
“It’s okay, Gin,” George said when she finally let him pull away. He gave her a kind and understanding smile before he brushed a final tear from her cheek. He wasn’t expecting her to say anything. He knew that this was hard. He turned to Susan, who was sitting with her knees to her chest and a hand to her mouth while her eyes shone brightly. “You are most welcome in our family.”
“Thank you,” Susan whispered when he hugged her, stifling a single sob in his shoulder. “Thank you, George.”
George crouched by the side of the bed, a look crossing his face that Ginny had never seen before. George was serious, compassionate, but serious.
“I assume that Harry and Hermione already know, but that Ron and the rest of the family don’t?”
“Harry knows,” Ginny nodded as she let out a shaky breath. “I never had the chance to tell Hermione myself before they left – but I’ve no doubt that she’s figured it out after spending so much time with Harry. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ron doesn’t know, though.”
“Neville and Luna know too,” Susan said quietly, and Ginny nodded in confirmation.
“Probably some of the other DA members have figured it out, but with the way the Carrows have been implementing punishment, we’re not telling people,” Ginny added. It felt wonderfully weird to finally say these things out loud and speak openly.
“That’s a good choice,” George nodded. He was aware of some of the happenings at Hogwarts, having supplied many of the DA stink bombs and other materials. “I’m guessing you were planning to tell mum and dad this Christmas?”
“Yes,” Ginny nodded again.
“Okay.” George looked thoughtful for a brief moment before he nodded to himself. “The passcode to our flat above the joke shop is ‘lemon sherbert willy whompers’. Our floo is connected to the Burrow, but it’s warded to only allow select people through, and you need the current password to get out of the fireplace. I’ll add Susan to the ward list so you can both get through. You know that mum and dad love you – and that they will love you no matter what – but if things get too tense or you just need a break and want to get out of here, you can come and stay with us. Our flat is heavily warded, just like the Burrow. You’ll be safe there.”
“George,” Ginny said softly as she stared at her brother in disbelief. She felt like she was meeting a completely different side of her brother, a side that hardly anyone ever saw except his own twin. “I – I don’t know what to say. Thank you – you – you didn’t have to do that.”
“No, but I wanted to.” George smiled at her again before standing up. “Having a place where you know you belong and are welcomed is the very least that you deserve, Ginny. Is it okay if I tell Fred so he knows that you might be popping by?”
“Yeah, of course. I was going to tell him myself – well everyone, at the same time on Christmas – I uh, I wasn’t expecting this to happen.” Ginny rubbed the back of her head a bit sheepishly.
“Oh, that reminds me!” George said before he turned to the door. “I came up here to apologize – Fred and I didn’t mean to start such a row between you and mum – we were just trying to get her riled up. In hindsight, it was a stupid topic to pick, and we should have known better. But if it’s any consolation, you totally won that argument, and I think dad’s really proud of you. He and Fred are still down there talking to mum. They’re trying to get her to come around on the idea that you’re not – you know – four anymore.”
“It’s okay, George,” Ginny waved her hand to dismiss the whole affair. “I know that you didn’t mean it to get that bad. I also lost my temper and fed the argument.”
“Maybe – but that doesn’t make what we did okay,” George said seriously, then he turned to wink at Susan. “You’re a really good influence on her, you know? Normally she would still be pitching a fit up here – stomping around and yelling at things. I’ve never seen her handle herself so well before.”
“I know she would,” Susan grinned with a laugh as Ginny rolled her eyes.
“Okay – I’ll leave you two be,” George said, placing his hand on the doorknob and removing the charms. “Oh! But maybe next time just remember to use a locking charm, yeah? I don’t fancy seeing any more of your activities than I did today.”
-x-x-
The remainder of the day proved to be uneventful.
The twins had left to get ready for work before Ginny and Susan came down to the kitchen for lunch, so Arthur did his best to act as a buffer between his daughter and his wife. Ginny did her best to maintain her calm composure and avoided being alone in the same room with her mum for too long. They spent part of the afternoon playing games and then practiced some spells in the yard before returning inside to get ready for dinner. When Fred and George arrived for dinner with their overnight bags packed, Fred had quietly walked over to Ginny in the kitchen and given her a very firm and extended hug. Ginny managed to keep her outward emotions in check, but she squeezed him tightly in return, smiling when he then walked directly up to Susan, ruffled her hair and pulled her into a warm embrace.
Dinner was quiet. The twins talked mostly about work, their plans for expansion, and Arthur asked Susan about her favourite hobbies. Everyone did their best to avoid the topic of school altogether.
It became apparent as the evening progressed that Mrs. Weasley had agreed to disagree with her husband. She most definitely did not support Ginny’s involvement in the war. She had clearly not come to terms with the fact that Ginny was no longer a child and did not want to accept her daughter as the young woman she had become. Every so often, Mrs. Weasley would mutter to herself, shake her head, or send Ginny desperate pleading looks – but at least she realized discussing it or arguing with her daughter was a lost cause. Apparently, Arthur and Fred had convinced her of that much, and she had calmed down some. Then, by the end of the evening, Ginny managed to exchange words with her mum without it exploding into an argument.
The girls played several rounds of exploding snap with Fred and George in the living room before turning in for the night. The four of them laughed loudly, screaming each time the cards exploded and passed around snacks that they had taken from the kitchen. By the fourth round, the drama from the morning was completely forgotten.
Finally, around 1:30 in the morning, they decided to turn in, and Ginny and Susan made their way sleepily upstairs, brushed their teeth unenthusiastically and then returned to the main floor to collapse in bed. Susan didn’t even have the energy to widen the mattress. Instead, she pulled Ginny close to her chest and snuggled into her warmth. Both of them were too spent to partake in any activities, and they fell asleep to the sound of the wind blowing outside Ginny’s window.
-x-x-
The following day, they awoke in each other’s arms again to the smell of breakfast. They pulled themselves from bed and padded their way down the hall to join the family. Though, this time, breakfast was far less eventful. Bill had owled Mrs. Weasley to say that they would be arriving just before dinner, and Mrs. Weasley was busy fussing over what to make. Arthur sat reading his favourite muggle magazine before gleefully explaining to the remainder of the table the ‘science’ behind why the turkey Mrs. Weasley was preparing for dinner would make them sleepy.
“Remind me to throttle Hermione when I see her again,” Ginny muttered loud enough for Susan and her brothers to hear after her dad had been rambling on for over 30 minutes.
After breakfast, the girls took turns showering and then returned to the kitchen to help Mrs. Weasley prepare dinner. Ginny ignored the occasional look she still got from her mum and instead focused her attention on the potatoes she was charming. Susan, as it turned out, was exceptional at cooking spells and helped Ginny once she had finished her own tasks. The twins were quickly kicked out of the kitchen by Mrs. Weasley after they turned the broccoli purple and ‘lost’ the stuffing – which Ginny suspected would show up later.
Just as the dinner table was being set and the twins had returned to the kitchen, taking their seats, they heard the front door open, and Ginny couldn’t help the smile that split across her face. Bill, being the eldest Weasley son, was a full eleven years older than Ginny. When she was growing up, she didn’t know him very well as a sibling since he was at school most of the year for the first seven years of her life, but when he was home in the summer, she often thought of him as a secondary father figure. He always took care of her, helped her ride her broom and stopped her other brothers from picking on her. She was excited to see him – and based on the face that her mum had made yesterday when she mentioned them, she was excited for her mother’s attention to be turned back on Fleur instead of herself.
“Happy Christmas, Mum!” Bill called as he walked through the door behind Fleur and began helping the blonde with her coat.
“Merry Christmas, Weasleys!” Fleur’s heavily accented voice swept across the room as she walked in like a radiant glowing orb. Stepping into the kitchen to kiss Mrs. Weasley on the cheek, she then made her way around the room to greet everyone. “It is so very good to see everyone! I ‘ope you’ve been well.”
“That’s strange,” Ginny murmured to Susan as Fleur approached. “From the look on mum’s face yesterday, I thought for sure she’d been in a row with Fleur again – Hi Fleur, so nice to see you again!”
“Ah, you ‘ave a guest, who is zis?”
“This is Susan,” Ginny smiled as Fleur pulled Susan into a light hug.
“Hi, nice to meet you,” Susan said as she accepted the hug, blushing when Fleur gently stroked her hair.
“So very nice to meet you, Susan, look at your ‘air! So gorgeous!”
Ginny looked back over to Bill, expecting him to come around and greet the family too – but he was still at the open door, back turned to the room and facing outside. Ginny heard him muttering in a low voice, and her ears picked up the sound of another voice. Furrowing her brow in confusion, she looked between her mum’s grim expression and Bill’s back until the voices grew louder and she could make out the words.
“Just come inside – it’s too late to back out now.” Bill sounded exhausted and annoyed.
“I told you I didn’t want to come.” The voice was low, but it sounded familiar.
“Well, too bad – deal with it.” Bill reached forward and grabbed something before he turned back into the house. The something that he had grabbed was apparently a person, who he proceeded to drag into the house by the back of their jacket, pushing them gently into the room.
“Ron?” Ginny, Fred, George, and Susan exclaimed in unison. Fred and George had stood from their seats; their faces scrunched in confusion as they looked between Ron and Bill.
An awkward silence fell over the kitchen as Ginny’s brother Ron stood before Bill, shoulders slumped, hair longer than it should be, and sporting a look of nervous dread. The pink tinge of his ears was visible when Bill pulled the knitted hat off his head before taking off his own jacket. Fleur had come to stand beside Mrs. Weasley, placing a gentle hand on the woman’s forearm supportively. Ginny glanced back to her mum, seeing the tight line of her jaw again – then to her dad, who now looked exhausted and sad.
Something’s happened, Ginny thought as her stomach began to knot and worry washed over her.
“Ron, what are you doing here?” Ginny asked nervously, taking a step forward toward her ashamed-looking brother. “I thought you were with Harry and Hermione – are they here too? Are they okay?”
“No,” Bill answered after Ron continued to stand in the kitchen mutely, his eyes fixed angrily at the ground. Bill had heard the building panic in his sister’s voice and he knew that she was concerned for her friends. “Nothing’s happened, they’re not here – just Ron – okay, everyone sit down. Let’s not hold up dinner. Mum worked hard to prepare all this.”
Slowly the twins sat down in their chairs, but their eyes didn’t leave Ron. Mrs. Weasley’s jaw clenched further, but she allowed Fleur to steer her to the table and took her seat. Ginny continued to linger near her chair, watching as Bill pushed Ron forward to the table and into an empty seat. She could feel Susan hovering at her elbow, unsure if she should sit or remain standing with Ginny.
“Ginny,” Arthur’s voice caught her attention, and she looked down the table to her father. His eyes were pleading. “Please take a seat; I think everyone has had a long day. We can all talk afterwards.”
Something’s happened, Ginny thought as she clenched her jaw and slowly took her seat next to Susan. She could see the visible relief on her father’s and Bill’s faces when she kept her mouth shut and didn’t demand answers, instead joining the thick tension at the table. The twins looked uneasy. Fred opened his mouth twice to say something before he begrudgingly stayed silent. George looked at Ginny with a raised eyebrow, silently asking if Ginny knew what might be going on. Ginny shook her head and made a frustrated face to convey her agitation.
“Good,” Arthur said once the gang was seated. The stress across his features relaxing a fraction as his kids actually listened to him for once. “Well, I just wanted to say Merry Christmas to everyone! And thank you to Molly and the girls for putting together such a lovely meal. Everyone, dig in!”
Ginny picked up her fork and narrowed her eyes at Ron, her grip tighter than necessary as she bit back her questions until ‘later’. Despite her efforts, she knew that the odds of them making it through this dinner without another explosion were minimal to none.
Ginny started scooping food onto her plate, everyone grabbing from the bowls and dishes closest to them before passing items around. With each quiet murmur of thanks, the tightness in the air grew. It felt warmer than the Hogwarts train compartment, and Ginny could smell the tension in the air. Fred and George looked angry. Bill looked tense. Her dad looked like he was about to collapse from exhaustion and her mum looked like a tea kettle ready to whistle. With every stiff movement and every scratch of cutlery, Ginny could feel a ringing begin in her ears. She tried to keep control of her temper, even though she was desperate to ask the obvious questions that everyone at the table clearly wanted to ask.
Why the fuck was Ron here?! Where was Harry?! Where was Hermione?!
It took every ounce of her self-control not to dive across the table and throttle her idiot brother – to make him tell her everything. As Ginny chewed, the grip on her fork began to tighten, while the expression on Fleur’s face became more confused as the blonde looked down at her plate. Ginny knew that she couldn’t hold it in any longer. She couldn’t pretend to have a ‘nice family dinner’ when something had obviously happened.
“Why is zer stuffing in ze carrots?” Fleur finally asked as she held up her fork to examine the bread that was peeking out of a rather plump piece of hollowed-out carrot.
“Why is Ron here and not with Harry and Hermione,” Ginny answered, dropping her fork to her plate with a clatter. “That’s the question we should really be asking.”
“Ginny,” Bill pleaded, his eyes looking desperate now.
“No – we want to know too,” the twins cut in, putting their cutlery down much more delicately than their sister.
“What the bloody hell is going on Ron, are Harry and Hermione okay?” Ginny asked.
“I don’t know,” Ron muttered as he stared at his plate.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Ginny’s eyes narrowed as she leaned across the table. “You left with them – you’re the last one who would have seen them – where are they?”
“I DON’T KNOW,” Ron yelled as he dropped his fork to the table and dropped his head into his hands. “SEE! This is exactly why I didn’t want to come here, Bill! No one will leave me alone about it!”
“Ron,” Arthur warned, trying to regain control of the situation before him.
“Well, why don’t you explain why you’re here to start with.” Ginny’s voice was tight. She refused to back-pedal on her behaviour and start yelling. “Why aren’t you with them?”
“Because I left okay! You want to tell me I’m a shitty person too and crap all over me like mum and dad!? FINE! Go ahead!”
“You left!?” This time it was Ginny, Fred, and George who responded in sync, all three of them dumbfounded by Ron’s response.
“You left them?” Ginny repeated, her face turning into one of disgust. “You left Harry and Hermione? What did you do – just abandon them?! Did you tell them you were leaving? Why would you leave?”
“You don’t know what it was like out there!” Ron yelled again, pushing his chair out and standing up at the table. Bill grabbed his sleeve tightly to keep him from darting off or jumping at Ginny. “It’s getting fucking dangerous out there!”
“Right,” Ginny spat with venom in her voice. “So, when it gets dangerous, you leave. I would have thought that would be the time to stay.”
“Oh, fuck off, Ginny – you don’t have a clue what you would do. You have no idea what it’s like out there!”
“I know that I wouldn’t leave my friends!” Ginny snapped, her voice rising as she pushed her own chair back to stand. She refused to sit while her idiotic, pathetic coward of a brother stood there and pointed down at her.
“Yeah, of course you wouldn’t,” Ron sneered at her. “Because everyone else in this family is just so fucking perfect. I’m the only one who fucks up! I'm the only one who makes mistakes! You don’t know what it was like – you don’t know what we went through! I made a mistake! A fucking mistake! One that I regretted instantly!”
“Then why didn’t you go back?” Ginny crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him.
“Because I couldn’t!” Ron yelled, turning to face his older brother as his voice broke. “I tried to go back – the second I left, I tried, but I got caught by snatchers! Then I couldn’t find them!”
“So, you’ve just been hiding out at Bill’s like a coward?” Fred asked, the tone of his voice making it obvious how little he thought of Ron at that moment.
“Oh – fuck you, Fred!” Ron yelled, turning to face his brother. “Like you’ve never made a mistake before.”
“Alright, that’s enough!” Arthur said, coming to stand at his seat.
“Ron, sit down,” Bill tugged at his arm.
“This is exactly why I didn’t want to come here! I don’t need this shit, Bill. I already know I’m the bad guy. I already know that I’m the asshole – I don’t need all of you to remind me.” Ron’s voice was positively hoarse now, and Ginny could see the shimmer of tears threatening to fall from his eyes.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake Ron,” Bill snapped, getting to his feet and using both hands to shove Ron back in his chair. “Ginny, sit down! Ron, I didn’t bring you here so that everyone could take their shot at you – I’m not a sadistic asshat. This is exactly why dad wanted everyone to just take a seat! Why is it that this family is incapable of having normal conversations without everyone losing their shit and just screaming at each other!? I wanted you to come, Ron, because things are getting worse. As you said – things are dangerous out there, and we don’t know when the next time will be that we all get to gather around this table – or if there will even be a next time! For all we know, one of us or all of us will be dead before this war is over! I brought you because I wanted everyone to see each other one last time and enjoy a nice fucking Christmas dinner!”
The entire room was silent, and Bill was panting. Ginny had taken her seat instantly when Bill had yelled at her and was staring up at him with awe and surprise. She had never seen Bill lose his temper. He was always the collected one in the family, and his outburst had sobered all of them. She was still absolutely livid at Ron, and she wanted to pummel the ever-loving shit out of him for deserting their friends – but her heart ached at the words that Bill had spoken. He was right. She didn’t know what was going to happen in the war. She didn’t know who would be lost to it. Her very own girlfriend was a prime example of someone who had had their family ravaged by war.
She flicked her eyes to her parents, who were both staring at Bill wordlessly. It was abnormal for them to allow such language in the house or to allow such a commotion to start without joining in or trying to defuse the situation. But Bill had stolen the spotlight and beat them to the punch. Then, at that moment, Ginny realized that her parents had known that Ron had come home. That was why her mum was so tense about Bill and Fleur coming for Christmas. They weren’t saying anything now because – well, because they probably had nothing else to add, and evidently, they had already spoken to Ron in person and said their piece. From what Ron had screamed and from the way he stood there on the verge of tears, apparently, her parents hadn’t coddled him.
“Thank you, Bill,” Arthur breathed as he nodded his head. Bill slowly sank to his seat, looking somewhat dazed in the aftermath of his own explosion, and Fleur placed a hand on his shoulder. “I couldn’t have said it better myself. What’s done is done. Right now, we don’t know where Harry and Hemione are. The last information we have from the Order suggests that they are safe, but their whereabouts or what they are doing remains unknown. Times of war are hard – they challenge even the strongest bonds, tearing people apart and pushing us to our limits. Right now, the most help we can offer – the best way we can aide the war – is to stick together and stay strong.”
Ginny’s shoulders softened as her dad spoke, and she saw Ron wipe his cheek with his sleeve from the corner of her eye. Fred and George were completely still, something that was rare to see, while her mum still sat motionless at the table – but instead of her tightly clenched jaw, she now just looked sad.
“I won’t lie to you children,” Arthur said quietly, eying his wife briefly before he continued to speak, revealing information that Mrs. Weasley had preferred to keep from her children. “Things are indeed very dangerous. The war has proved to be much more difficult and much more political than the Order anticipated, and right now, we are struggling to keep up with You Know Who’s forces. His support is growing by the day, and ours is dwindling. This upcoming year will not be easy, and the truth is – with Dumbledore gone, we’re not sure how we’ll pull through. So please – don’t fight amongst yourselves. Let’s just enjoy this time that we have together.”
With that, Arthur took his seat, and everyone slowly began to eat. His speech seemed to calm the room, and everyone solemnly digested the information that he shared while keeping their eyes on their own plates. The room was still tense, but the tone was different; everyone was choosing to let their anger go so they could just be a family.
When dessert was finally brought out Fleur complimented Mrs. Weasley on the pie, and Fred asked Fleur if she had enjoyed the stuffing filled carrots – indicating that he could teach her the spell if she was interested.
After dinner, Ron retreated to his old bedroom, and everyone left him undisturbed. Ginny played a game of exploding snap with her brothers and Susan, and Fleur helped Mrs. Weasley clean up. Arthur helped in the kitchen before joining in on a final game of cards. It felt odd to be at home, to feel comfortable yet also uneasy. They were tip-toeing around one another and talking softly over evening tea. Fleur spoke with Susan about hair care spells, and Ginny discussed some new joke shop products with Fred and George while Bill talked quietly to their parents. Finally, when the clock struck midnight, they retired to their rooms.
Ginny lay in her bed holding an already sleeping Susan tightly to her side, feeling the odd sensations from the last few hours drift through her body. The house was quiet; she could hear the familiar creaks from the walls and the groan from the window as the wind rattled against it. Yet despite the overwhelming exhaustion that she felt in her bones, her mind was wide awake, mulling over the anxiety that had begun to fill her head as her eyes staring aimlessly at the ceiling in the faint moonlight.
How in Merlin’s name am I going to announce our relationship to everyone tomorrow after everything that’s happened?
Warnings:
This chapter contains: explicit smut (which can be skipped without missing out on main plot).
AND
Explicit language and derogatory terms/slurs that may be triggering, family drama centered around coming out, and a generally tense/challenging atmosphere.
Nothing was written in excess or for shock value, but some may find this chapter difficult and/or upsetting to read. As such, I have placed a two-sentence summary at the bottom of the chapter so that you can skip it if you wish.
******************************************
Ginny awoke Christmas morning feeling much like she had been hit with a bludger. Her head ached from the emotional rollercoaster the day before, and her heart felt heavy. She was so unbelievably mad at her brother – he was an asshole. Leaving your friends during a time of war was the most selfish and cowardly thing one could possibly do, and Ron had done it.
Honestly, she wasn’t even surprised that it happened. Ron had never been overly loyal, and he didn’t exactly have nerves of steel. He was often a pathetic excuse for a friend. More than anything, Ginny was just disappointed in him. Disappointed and severely concerned about Harry and Hermione. What made her most frustrated, though, was that even though she hated Ron right now for leaving Harry and Hermione, Merlin knows where to fend for themselves; she couldn’t help the microscopic part of her that actually felt bad for him. Ron was clearly upset by his actions and regretted leaving his friends.
Good , Ginny thought bitterly as she yawned and curled into Susan further. That dumb, selfish mother fucker should feel guilty. Asshole.
“Good morning,” Susan yawned as she turned in Ginny’s arms.
“Good morning.” Ginny couldn’t help the smile that tugged at her lips as her eyes met with Susan’s bright honey-coloured ones. “I’m sorry about yesterday. My family has always been loud, but usually, we’re not so angry.”
“It’s okay,” Susan said, giving Ginny a soft kiss on the lips. “A lot of stuff is happening right now, Gin – I get it. Things are tough right now, everything is unsure, and people just don’t know how to handle it.”
“Yeah,” Ginny sighed as she brought her hand up to brush the loose hairs from Susan’s face. “Thank you for staying despite all this – for being here with me.”
“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.” Susan flashed another one of her beautiful smiles.
“Merlin, you’re perfect,” Ginny mumbled as the pad of her thumb brushed over Susan’s cheek. “Despite everything – this is the best Christmas morning I’ve ever had.”
“Hmmm,” Susan murmured, kissing Ginny’s hand and moving in closer. “I don’t smell breakfast yet – maybe I can make it even better.”
“I like your thinking,” Ginny whispered before capturing her lips.
Susan moved her hand down Ginny’s side, stroking the curve of her waist before she slipped her hand under her pajama pants. She knew exactly how to touch Ginny to elicit a response, quickly finding the sensitive bud between Ginny’s folds. She stroked her fingers softly across Ginny’s skin then circled her clit, causing Ginny to moan into her mouth. It didn’t take long for Susan to get Ginny completely wound up, writhing under her touch and pushing her hips into Susan’s fingers.
“Shit, Susan,” Ginny panted as Susan kissed her neck and continued the circular motion of her fingers. “Oh fuck, right there – ugh, Merlin, it feels so good.”
“Do you want me to make you come?” Susan purred into her ear, nipping at the lobe and slipping her fingers inside Ginny’s slick channel.
“Yeess,” Ginny shuddered, gripping Susan’s frame tightly as the coil in her center became impossibly tight. “Please make me come – just like that–”
Susan added a second finger, pumping them in and out in time with Ginny’s hips before curling them just so as her thumb circled her clit. With each motion, Ginny wriggled more, shivers cascading over her body as the tension built. Pushing more firmly against her bud, Susan stroked the bundle of nerves deep within her until she came undone. A wave of pleasure rippled through Ginny’s body, and her eyes shut tight as she rode out the high.
“I love it when you come,” Susan whispered as she dusted Ginny’s face with light kisses, sliding her hand out from her pants and gently rubbing her side.
“I love it when you make me come,” Ginny grinned, pulling Susan into a tight hold and kissing her deeply.
A loud knock sounded on the door and startled them apart from their own little world.
“It’s Christmas!” Fred yelled, and he continued to tap the door excitedly, creating random noises. “You gotta get up!”
“But actually, though,” George’s voice echoed from the hallway. “Mum says to come help with breakfast, and I doubt she’ll be as nice waking you up as we are.”
Ginny groaned and hauled herself from the bed, taking a second to make sure that her clothes were on straight and that Susan was decent before she dispelled the lock and silencing charms, then wrenched open the door.
“Right, because this–” Ginny began randomly tapping her own door with both hands in the same annoying manner that Fred had done. “Is a super nice way to wake up.”
Both twins grinned at her before standing straight and turning on spot to salute Susan, who was still lying in Ginny’s bed.
“Good luck with her, Admiral,” Fred said as he finished his salute. “We do not envy you.”
“She is not a morning person, ma’am,” George added when he finished his own salute with a foot stomp.
Ginny rolled her eyes as they both turned swiftly and marched down the small hall in perfect formation.
“To breakfast, Lieutenant,” Susan said with a formal tone as she hopped out of bed and headed out the door behind the twins.
“Wait, why am I the Lieutenant?” Ginny asked. She didn’t have much muggle military knowledge, but she was pretty sure that Lieutenant ranked lower than Admiral.
“Because I am the Admiral,” Susan said, looking at her as if that was the most obvious thing in the world. “I would have thought that was obvious – even your bothers know I’m in charge.”
“Oh, hell no! You three are not taking sides!” Ginny yelled as she chased Susan down the hall to the kitchen.
-x-x-
Breakfast proved to be quite pleasant. It didn’t take long to prepare, and everyone ate quickly so they could bring their tea into the living room to drink while opening presents. Ginny grinned when her father opened the muggle jackknife that her twin brothers had gotten him – Arthur was very impressed with the device and spent much of the morning playing with it and constantly taking it out of his pocket. Fleur gifted Mrs. Weasley a rather expensive-looking teapot that Mrs. Weasley fawned over and promised to treasure forever. Ron sat somewhat solemnly in the corner, opening his gifts and thanking everyone quietly. Ginny was pleased to see that it looked like he might have cried the night before.
Fred and George loved the book that Ginny had gotten them, it was titled: ’101 easy, but uncommon spells that you never knew could be so useful’. Ginny had found it when shopping with Hermione at the old used bookstore in Diagon Alley during the summer. She had stumbled upon the book while waiting for Hermione to finish her browsing, and the title had been what caught her attention. When she skimmed through the contents, she immediately realized that Fred and George would likely be able to use some of the spells for their joke shop products.
Susan was practically brought to tears when she opened a rather large lumpy present to find a Weasley jumper inside. She pulled it on very enthusiastically and refused to take it off for the remainder of the morning.
Once presents were finished, and everyone settled into friendly but cautious chit-chat, Ginny and Susan slipped upstairs to shower and change out of their pajamas – though Susan put her Weasley jumper back on once she had finished drying her hair. They had just come back downstairs and were standing in the kitchen with a fresh cup of tea when Ginny decided to bring up the topic that had been plaguing her mind since the night before.
“Susan,” she said quietly, knowing that her family members in the living room around the corner wouldn’t be able to see or hear them. “I’m not sure if I should tell them.”
“Because you don’t know how, or just given what’s happened?” Susan asked as she took a sip of her tea calmly. “Either way, I completely understand and will support you.”
“Just given everything that’s happened,” Ginny sighed and then rubbed her temple. “I also don’t know how to – I want to – but I just don’t even know where to start. Do I wait till lunch and be like: oh hey mum, can you pass the sandwiches; also, I’m gay. How’s the salad?”
Susan snorted into her tea and smiled at her sympathetically.
“There is no right way or wrong way, Ginny – you just tell them and then work it out after. I mean, obviously, you try not to break the news at funerals or birthdays – that would be less than ideal and wouldn’t be the best way to do it.”
“How did you tell your parents?” Ginny asked as she leaned against the counter and enjoyed the heat from her teacup against her cold hands.
“I think they always just sort of knew to be honest,” Susan said as she furrowed her brow in thought. “I told them while we were all sitting having tea. It was weird, actually. It was a hot summer night, the window was open, a breeze was blowing in, and my mum was doing a crossword puzzle while my dad was reading. I can still see the whole scene in my head. I was just sitting there staring out the window into the back garden, and all of a sudden, something just clicked in my brain, and the words came out. It was like ‘now’s the time’, so I just said it. It wasn’t to anyone in particular – I just said, ‘I’m gay’, then I took a sip of my tea like it was the most normal and causal thing I could have said. My parents both looked at me – and I’ll never forget this, my mum smiled and patted my hand.”
“Were they upset?”
“No. I think my dad’s exact response was, ‘oh that’s nice, dear, have you met any nice girls at school?’ He’s never really been one to give big reactions though… and my mum just thanked me for telling her. I don’t think my experience is a good example of what’s typical for most people.”
“Probably not,” Ginny muttered, looking over her cup toward the non-visible noise of the living room. “My family is like a pack of wild crups that scream louder than mandrakes.”
“They’re not that bad,” Susan said, turning toward Ginny and resting her hand on the counter between them. “They’re just passionate. They care a lot, and I think that’s just how they show it.”
“You’re just biased because you got a Weasley jumper for Christmas,” Ginny said, lowering one of her hands and placing it on top of Susan’s. She gripped it tightly, then intertwined their fingers. “You know they’ll still give you one next year even if you’re honest and say what you really think.”
“Why are you holding hands?”
Ginny’s eyes tore from Susan’s, and her head whipped around to face Ron, who was standing in the doorway to the kitchen. Her mum, dad, and brothers were just steps behind him – all of them making their way to the kitchen for a snack. They all slowed when they reached Ron, who was standing in the middle of the wide doorway where he stood staring at Ginny and Susan.
Instinctively, Ginny’s hand tightened further around Susan’s fingers, and if it wasn’t for the fear that was flooding her mind, she would have been worried that she might break them. Her heart raced as she stared at the confused and somewhat angry look on her brother’s face. Apparently, the decision had just been made for her, and whether she was ready or not, this was happening now.
“Ron – what the, did you forget how to walk?” Fred laughed as he walked around his brother and came to a stop just inside the kitchen, picking at the remains of breakfast that still sat on the table.
Ginny remained frozen on spot as her mum and dad easily maneuvered around Ron, each of them giving their son a confused look as they passed. Arthur looked across the kitchen to see what was going on. His eyes locked onto their motionless forms standing against the kitchen counter, where their tightly joined hands and Ginny’s wide but determined eyes were clearly visible – and Ginny saw a flash of comprehension cross her father’s face.
Her mum had approached the table to set down her tea and was completely unaware that anything was happening. At the same time, George made his way into the kitchen and came to stand beside Fred. He instantly noticed the girls and quickly poked Fred in the arm to get his attention, motioning with his head toward them and whispering something in Fred’s ear. Fred looked up toward them, and he gave them a thumbs up while George nodded firmly to the girls in support.
Bill and Fleur were next to enter the kitchen, making their way in behind George. Fleur seemed to spot their interwoven hands immediately, her eyes lit up, and she gave them a soft smile before tugging on Bill’s sleeve.
“Why are you still holding hands?” Ron repeated, his eyes flicking between the two of them in utter confusion.
“What are you talking about, Ron?” Mrs. Weasley asked before Ginny had managed to open her mouth and form a response.
Mrs. Weasley glanced up from the table to her son, then noticed how everyone was standing in an odd semi-circle by the doorway staring behind her. She promptly turned around to face the girls, her eyes flicking between them and then down to their tightly gripped hands. Yet despite seeing them, Ginny could tell that her mother had still not grasped the situation.
Feeling her face heat up, Ginny stared at the crowd of Weasleys that stood before her. She felt like she was a professor standing in front of a classroom about to give a lecture. It was like being on display, like being watched like an animal at a zoo. This was not how she had wanted this to happen, but to be honest, she had no idea how she wanted this to happen. She had run a million scenarios in her head, a thousand different dialogues, and countless different approaches. She had considered telling her parents first, then her siblings. She considered telling her siblings first, then her parents. She had even considered telling everyone and just never telling her mum, but no matter how many times she played it out in her head it had just left her and anxious mess.
She had always suspected that Fred and George would accept her, no questions asked. She had her doubts about Ron, her mum, and Bill. She figured that Charlie would understand since he was such a free spirit and had no interest in following the ‘traditional’ ways. She was surprised so far at Fleur’s visible positive reaction – which gave her hope that maybe Bill would come around. Her dad would love her no matter what. She doubted he would understand it, but she knew that he would support her regardless.
Ginny felt Susan squeeze her hand gently, breaking her out of her frozen state.
Well, Ginny thought as she took a deep breath and set her shoulders back. Time to earn my reputation as a brash and fearless Gryffindor.
“We’re holding hands, Ron, because we’re together,” Ginny said calmly and firmly. She stepped closer to Susan and moved their hands from the counter to hang in between them. Her eyes were fierce as she looked over each member of her family in turn, daring them to challenge her.
“What do you mean together?” Ron asked, spitting the words with unwarranted venom and making it sound like he didn’t understand her statement at all.
Ginny sighed; it was like his brain just didn’t work sometimes.
“Together as in together, Ron. We are together; we’re a couple.” She continued to hold Susan’s hand and maintain control of her voice, but she could feel her annoyance starting to flare. She glanced around the room, trying to gauge the reactions of the rest of her family.
“You’re a couple?!” Ron’s eyebrows shot up into his hair, and then she saw his features change to a look of disgust. “You’re cheating on Harry?! I knew you could be a bitch sometimes, but I never took you as a slag.”
“Ron!” Arthur shouted, turning angrily toward his son. “You will not use that language in this house or insult your sister!”
“But she’s bloody cheating on Harry, dad!” Ron yelled, pointing a finger at Ginny and glaring back at his father. “She’s a bloody slag!”
“I’m not a slag, you dimwitted wanker!” Ginny’s voice had risen as she struggled to control her anger and keep her wand in her pocket. How she would love to curse her idiot brother into oblivion right now for even suggesting that she would do such a thing to Harry. “Harry knows, Ron – we broke up before school ended last term.”
“Harry knows?” Ron shook his head in disbelief. “Funny, he never mentioned it to me.”
“Well, maybe, that’s because you didn’t stick around long enough to find out!” Ginny said through clenched teeth. It was a low blow, and she knew it, but Ron had become a giant asshat, and she was starting to care less and less about preserving his feelings when he was so ready to throw insults at her and question her integrity.
Ron went silent, his face furious as his ears tinted pink.
“We agreed to keep our breakup secret until I had sorted things out and until we could tell everyone together. But given how this summer went, we didn’t exactly have the chance,” Ginny continued, choosing to ignore her brother altogether and speak instead to the remainder of the Weasleys in the room. She was desperate to get control of the situation and announce this the way that she wanted to. “We never meant for it to go on this long. I wanted to tell everyone sooner, just with the war and Harry going off, there never seemed to be a good time to bring it up.”
“Or maybe,” Ron spat, clenching his fists and preparing to attack again after recovering from Ginny’s blow. “He was just embarrassed to find out that his girlfriend was a bent twat. How long was it after you ‘broke up’ that you got together with her? Or did you only find out you were bent after you’d already hooked up? Was that how it happened? You cheated on my best mate and felt so bad that you broke up with him?! No wonder he never said anything!”
“Alright, that’s enough,” Mrs. Weasley yelled as she smacked Ron over the head. “One more word Ronald Weasley and you’ll regret it – we do not speak like that to our family in this household.”
“We get that you’re having trouble processing this, Ron, but this isn’t about you,” George said dangerously.
Looking over to her brothers as he spoke, Ginny realized that at some point, while Ron had been insulting her, George must have drawn his wand because he was now gripping it tightly in his hand and pointing it at Ron’s face. Fred looked even angrier at his side. He was glaring at Ron intensely, and his right hand had a careful hold on George’s sleeve as if preventing him from actually casting a spell.
“Ginny,” Mrs. Weasley turned to her daughter, her expression stunned and confused. Ginny could feel her heart drop as her mother searched her eyes. It was so glaringly apparent that her mum was refusing to process the information, and that she wasn’t accepting what was happening. “Ginny – dear, are you sure? Are you really?”
“Yes, mum. I’m really gay,” Ginny said, rolling her eyes at the denial that caked her mother’s face. “And before any of the rest of you run your mouths – NO, I wasn’t dating Harry when Susan and I got together. Harry and I mutually broke up at the end of last year. He was the first person that I told, and he supported me. He still supports me. Susan and I didn’t start dating until the start of this school year.”
Ginny shot a death glare at Ron, who was scowling at her in disgust. His nose wrinkled in disbelief, and his eyes darted every so often to George’s wand, but he remained silent.
“So, it’s still new,” Mrs. Weasley’s voice had a desperate optimism to it, and Ginny immediately knew what she was thinking.
“We are, yes – but my being gay isn’t! Merlin, mum, I know what you’re thinking and just stop. This isn’t a phase – I can’t just not be a lesbian because it’s not what you want.” Ginny could feel her heart sinking in her chest. She had suspected that this would be her mother’s reaction but witnessing it was so much worse than thinking it.
“There is nothing wrong with being gay,” Mrs. Weasley said unconvincingly as she tried to backtrack on her words. She ran her hand through her hair in frustration. “It’s just – I, well, it’s just–”
“It’s just that you didn’t want your daughter to be gay – right?” Ginny said quietly. The pain in her chest was growing as she stared at the look on her mother’s face which said it all. Mrs. Weasley didn’t deny it and instead the woman looked around the room as if wanting back-up from the family that surrounded her. “You’re fine with other people being gay, right? If another family has a gay kid, that’s okay. If someone else’s daughter was a lesbian, you would support that, wouldn’t you? You just don’t actually want any of them in your family – because that wasn’t your plan.”
“Ginny,” Arthur said softly, seeing the hurt in his daughter’s eyes and stepping forward. He was obviously uncomfortable. Ginny could see the worry in his eyes as he looked at her, but she knew that he didn’t know how to help. He so obviously wanted to support her, but he was unsure what to say or do. “You know that your mother loves you. We both do–”
“Yeah, of course.” Ginny’s voice broke as she spoke. Then she heard an unfamiliar, almost hysterical laugh come from her mouth. It felt surreal – like she was no longer in charge of her own body. She laughed again and ran her free hand through her hair. She could literally feel her heart breaking. She was losing her composure, and she was powerless to do anything about it. This hurt so much worse than she had ever anticipated. “You love me – just not all of me – just not the gay parts. Because that doesn’t fit in with the life you pictured for me, does it, mum? It’s not what you wanted. It’s embarrassing – having a gay witch in your family.”
“Ginny, of course I love you,” Mrs. Weasley cooed as she moved toward her daughter, a look of desperation in her eyes. “It’s just – you’re so young, and this is so new – how can you be sure? You don’t really know if you’re a lesbian, Ginny. I just don’t want you to throw away what you had with Harry because of some confused fad that you’re going to outgrow. If you throw this away, you’ll miss out on so much – children, a real family – I don’t want you to regret your decisions later on. There’s a lot going on right now – you’re just confused.”
“You’re unbelievable,” Ginny whispered, though she knew the whole room could hear her.
She stepped away from her mother’s advance and pulled Susan with her, moving them closer to the only true support she felt she had in the room – toward Fred and George. She wanted to leave. She wanted to get away. She could feel the prickle of hot tears at the corners of her eyes and a tightness across her chest that threatened to break.
“Don’t you dare try to make this about ‘my best interests’.” Ginny tried to ignore the single tear that leaked from her eye. She didn’t want to be weak. She didn’t want to lose her strength. She had said she didn’t care what her family thought, that it was their problem to deal with and not hers, but of course she cared. This was her mother. The one woman in the whole world who was supposed to love her unconditionally and support her no matter what – and she was rejecting her. “This is just you not wanting to accept the fact that you have a gay daughter. I’ve been gay my whole life, mum. I didn’t just wake up in September and say, ‘gee I think I might become a lesbian today’.”
“Ginny, I just think you should give this more time and not be so rash–“
“I can’t do this, “Ginny breathed out, clutching her chest as the tightness that had been building there finally broke. The tears began streaming down her face. She could hardly see the room in front of her as she felt her breath come in short quick rasps as she panted out her words. “You just don’t want to lose Harry. You don’t want to lose the future you envisaged – your imaginary grandchildren – your imaginary perfect daughter – I – I can’t be what you want me to be.”
Blindly she pulled on Susan’s hand, moving rapidly toward the fireplace in a bid to escape the Burrow.
“Ginny wait!”
She heard her father call as he moved toward her, but she didn’t stop. Her heart felt like it was going to explode as she reached for the flower pot that held the floo powder. She wouldn’t let herself fall apart in front of her family. She needed to get away; she needed to breathe.
“Afternoon Weasleys!” a voice from the door called as a cold draft spilled into the house.
The room froze, and Ginny stopped herself two steps from the fireplace. Floo powder in hand, she spun around to see her brother Charlie step in from the snow with a huge smile on his face. His smile immediately fell when he looked around at the seriousness of the scene before him.
Ron was standing angrily in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. He looked ready to explode save for the fact that he was currently being held at wand point by his brother George. George looked livid. His eyes were dancing angrily while Fred stood by his side, looking devastated, but continued to restrain his brother from using his wand. Fleur was gripping Bill’s arm tensely, her eyes darting around the room as she appeared unsure of what to do. Bill looked conflicted, he was steady next to his wife, but the turmoil was evident in his eyes. Mrs. Weasley was clutching the kitchen counter for support. She looked desperate; her eyes panicked like she was about ready to have a heart attack. While their father, Arthur, was mid-dash toward the living room with his arm outstretched toward the fireplace. The desperation on his father’s face made Charlie’s jaw clench – it took a lot of distress to visibly upset his father this much.
Then lastly, there was Ginny.
His eyes circled round to his baby sister, who was standing a foot from the fireplace, hand loaded with floo powder, tears pouring from her eyes while she tightly clutched the hand of a gorgeous strawberry-blonde girl that he had never seen before. Charlie might have been initially confused by the scene before him, but the fierce way that the strawberry-blonde stood by his sister’s side and the obvious devastation on Ginny’s face made the situation quite clear.
Just by looking at her, he could see the hurt, feel the ache, and sense the rejection and her need to flee.
“Oh.”
The word tumbled from Charlie’s mouth as his brain quickly put the pieces together. The tension in the room was so great he could have cut it with a knife, and he instantly understood the desperation on his father’s face. Forgetting his boots and jacket, Charlie rapidly made for the living room like his dad, wanting to reach Ginny and diffuse the situation before they never saw her again. He knew what his family could be like, and sometimes their love or best intentions did more damage than good.
“Okay,” Charlie said calmly. “Maybe we should all have some tea, and then Ginny can tell us all about her wonderful girlfriend.”
“Charlie–”
His name came out like a broken sob from his sister’s lips as more tears began to pour from her eyes. He reached the two girls before Arthur and pulled them both into a tight hug, clutching Ginny to his chest as she continued to grip the floo powder tightly. He was afraid to let go. He knew how determined and how strong his sister was. If she was this upset, the situation was bad. If they let her leave now, the damage might not be repairable.
He looked back over his shoulder towards the other Weasleys in the kitchen, giving them all a look as if to say what the fuck did you do? He wasn’t sure who had done this, but he had his suspicions.
“Zat would be wonderful!” Fleur agreed quickly and loudly.
After all the chaos surrounding her relationship with Bill, she often chose not to get involved in Weasley family arguments. Evidently, though, she’d had enough and she refused to sit on the sidelines of this ridiculous explosion. Like Charlie and the twins, she intended to make her support clear, and she knew that they needed to calm everyone down and get the room under control before Ginny bolted again.
Fleur fiercely looked up at Bill, gripping his arm tight and making it clear exactly where she stood on the subject. She arched a brow, challenging him to disagree, but Bill nodded firmly and flicked his wand at the teapot to get tea started.
“Wait – just wait,” Mrs. Weasley said quickly as she saw the tension in the room start to lessen, and she sensed another chance to try and better get her point across.
She knew that her daughter was stubborn, and she needed this opening to try and talk some sense into her. She was unwilling to let this go, unwilling to let her daughter continue to throw away the happy life she had ahead of her with Harry. She pushed herself away from the counter and began approaching the living room behind Arthur as she spoke, still desperate to try and change the situation.
“Charlie hold on,” Mrs. Weasley said quickly. “Let’s not just rush into anything – we need to discuss this–”
“What’s to discuss?” Arthur asked, cutting off his wife’s voice in a tone much louder than his usual level.
He ignored the still open doorway as he quickly closed the distance between him and his daughter, who was currently being held tightly in place by Charlie. He gripped his son firmly on the shoulder and gave him a nod. Charlie loosened his grip to step away from the girls, and Arthur took a breath, leaning down to look his daughter in the eyes. Her face was pink, her eyes were bloodshot, and tears continued to pour down her cheeks – but her fiery determination was still there. She stared back at him intently, her gaze fierce and defiant.
Arthur was excellent at solving logical problems, organizing, planning, and even rallying people in times of need. He was not, however, as good at comforting upset people or dealing with emotional topics. Usually, that was Mrs. Weasley’s area of expertise – but this news was clearly proving to be too much for his wife to handle. Between Molly’s disappointment in Ron, her feelings of failure over Percy, and the stress of the war, this was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. He knew that she would come around in her own time, Molly loved Ginny, and her reaction right now was simply a knee-jerk one. Her hot-headed attitude was clouding her judgement and making her act irrationally.
This was the howler from second year all over again. A quick, temperamental and angry reaction that she had regretted after she had calmed down. It was embarrassing to think about – a grown adult sending a screaming letter to a child at school. But, similar to how it was then, he knew that when his wife calmed down and she’d had a moment to come to terms with Ginny’s announcement and accept the information, she would undoubtably be mortified by her own reaction.
Right now, Mrs. Weasley was mourning the loss of the life that she had planned for her daughter. Her only daughter. She had desperately wanted a girl for so many years. She wanted to be there when her daughter got married, when her daughter had children, when her daughter became a mother, and right now, Mrs. Weasley felt like that life was vanishing before her eyes. He knew that his wife was desperately clinging to the image she had of Ginny in her head, what she wanted Ginny to be and that she couldn’t let it go. But Arthur knew that Molly’s image of their daughter could be repainted. He knew that Molly would become excited for the new future Ginny had – and that Molly would realize just how incredibly special it was that Ginny had shared her truth with them.
She just needed time to process things.
Right now, though, this needed to stop. He may well understand why his wife was reacting the way she was – but that didn’t make it okay. She was mistakenly putting her own feelings before their daughter’s, looking at this as a loss instead of a wonderful gain, and it was causing irreparable damage. He wouldn’t allow her to ruin their relationship any further, especially when he knew that his wife would regret it later once she sorted herself out.
“Ginny,” Arthur said slowly, holding her gaze firm as he spoke only to her. “You know that I love you no matter what – and that I will always support you. Always.”
Ginny clenched her jaw, holding in the sob that threatened to burst from her lips as her father pulled her into a tight hug. The pain in her heart was immense as she breathed in the familiar warm scent of her dad’s Christmas sweater. It flooded her mind with memories of her childhood and made her chest tighten even worse. She had always known that he would support her, and she let out a deep breath as he pulled away.
“Susan,” Arthur said with a small smile, his eyes flicking back over to his daughter. He wanted to show her that he meant what he said – that he supported her and always would. So he formally held out his hand to Susan and stood up straight, just as he would have done with any of his children’s partners. “I believe that we were not properly introduced at the station. I’m Ginny’s dad. It’s a pleasure to meet you; I’m glad that Ginny has found someone who makes her happy.”
“The pleasure is mine, Mr. Weasley,” Susan said softly, taking Arthur’s outstretched hand and shaking it firmly. The gesture made her eyes prickle as a smile tugged across her face.
“Please, call me Arthur – Mr. Weasley is much too formal. It’s an honour to welcome you to the family,” Arthur said sincerely before pulling Susan into a tight hug.
Ginny dropped the floo powder as she brought her hand up to cover her mouth as she watched her father formally welcome her girlfriend into the family. She could see the shimmer in Susan’s eyes as she hugged Arthur back tightly and grinned into his shoulder. They were the same words that he had said to Harry when he welcomed him to the family, and it made Ginny’s heart burst.
He was treating them as equals.
“Arthur!” Mrs. Weasley almost cried as she looked between her husband and Susan, her hand clutching at her chest. “Arthur, you can’t possibly be supporting this. Ginny is still a child! She doesn’t know what she wants!”
“Molly,” Arthur said sternly, turning to his wife. He looked at her harshly before his eyes softened a fraction. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet, sad, and pleading. “Please… I think we’ve had more than enough excitement for the day – not to mention the last forty-eight hours. I’ve had enough of everyone yelling and screaming and accusing each other of nonsense. It’s Christmas day for Merlin’s sake, and I’d like to enjoy some time with my family and those who are important to them.”
Mrs. Weasley went silent, her eyes filling with tears as she watched Charlie turn his back to her and usher the girls toward the couch in the living room. George finally lowered his wand and then pushed past Ron to join them. Fred grabbed the biscuits from the kitchen table, a dark expression on his face as he followed closely behind, not looking at Ron or his mother as he passed by.
“Well, ze tea should be ready, yes?” Fleur said to Bill, as if the explosion that had taken place only moments ago never occurred.
The blonde made her way over to the kettle while Ron dropped himself into a chair at the table and slumped his head against the surface. Bill followed behind Fleur, grabbing clean mugs and fetching the sugar. As Ginny sat feeling light-headed on the couch, she could see her dad make his way back over to the kitchen, no doubt going to speak with her mother.
She knew that her mum needed space. She needed time to process everything that had just happened, and it wouldn’t be easy to do if she and Susan were staying in the house. They needed to leave so her mum could deal with this on her own terms. Besides, if Ginny was being honest, she didn't even want to look at her mother right now, let alone be in the same house. While she knew that she loved her and she knew that this would pass, a piece of Ginny’s heart felt so broken by the denial that had so readily poured from her mum’s mouth that the thought of staying at the Burrow made her sick. The woman's blatant unwillingness to accept that Ginny was not who she thought she was, was devastating.
She sat close to Susan on the couch, speaking quietly to Charlie and the twins before the headache hit her. She felt like she had been in a physical battle. Her head pounded, her eyes hurt, her chest was sore, and she was emotionally dead. The tears had stopped coming because she was so dehydrated there was nothing left to cry, but the pain hadn't stopped. She felt like an empty shell – exhausted, hollow, and incapable of anything else.
The tea that Fleur brought out helped, and the kind smile that Fleur gave them when she patted Ginny’s knee was reassuring. Yet despite this, Ginny knew she was down for the count. She couldn’t be here in this house. She didn’t have the energy to exist around her family, let alone talk to them like an actual human being after what had just happened. While she appreciated the support that she was getting from some of her family members and she respected her dad’s request for time with his family – she needed to leave. She felt bad for wanting to go, but she needed to lay down and just breathe. Right now, the only thing that was keeping her from shutting down completely was the fact that Susan was sitting strong like an anchor by her side.
Several minutes later, Arthur rejoined them and gave Ginny a reassuring smile when he sat in his armchair across from them. Ginny knew that her eyes looked dead when she looked at him, she could tell from the pained expression on his face.
“Ginny,” Arthur said quietly, leaning toward her with his elbows on his knees. “I – I know that I said I wanted to spend some time with everyone today and have a normal Christmas. But that request is unfair. Ginny, love, you look exhausted. If you girls want to go take a nap or just call it a day that’s okay. We can visit tomorrow or the next day – we have lots of time between now and you return to school.”
“Thanks, dad,” Ginny said flatly, as she was incapable of mustering anything more. She pulled herself off the couch and crossed the room to give her dad a hug. “I’m sorry – I – I didn’t want it to happen like this. I didn’t mean to ruin Christmas.”
“You have nothing to be sorry about because nothing is ruined,” Arthur said firmly as he hugged her tightly in return. “It means the world to me that you chose to let us into your life, to see the real you.”
“Thanks, dad,” Ginny murmured when she pulled away. She glanced over her shoulder to Susan, who was talking with Charlie and Fleur. “I think we might go to Fred and George’s – to give mum some space.”
“I understand," Arthur said gently. "Don’t worry about things here. Your mum and Ron will come ’round – you’ll see.”
“Yeah,” Ginny snorted as her eyes started to feel heavy. “Maybe.”
After saying a quick goodbye to those in the living room, Ginny and Susan flooed to Fred and George’s flat. They used the password to exit the fireplace and enter the living room; then, they collapsed on the first couch that they saw. Ginny was too exhausted to speak as Susan pulled her to her chest, curling behind her like a warm and comforting vice. Then she let her eyes fall closed, knowing that Fred and George would bring their bags over later.
-x-x-
Two sentence summary:
After a private and intimate moment on Christmas morning, Ginny and Susan go join the Weasley family for breakfast and gifts are exchanged. After which, Ron sees the girls holding hands in the kitchen, and he wrongly assumes that Ginny is cheating on Harry – an explosion ensues: Ron lashes out, Mrs. Weasley struggles to accept her daughter and thinks this is a ‘phase’, Arthur loves Ginny and is desperate to help, Charlie shows up and stops the girls from leaving, Fleur and the twins declare their support, Bill helps make tea to calm everyone down, and the girls spend the remainder of their holidays at the twin’s flat.
This chapter is dedicated to Liz86000, who used a highly effective attack (Bambi eyes) to ensure that this chapter contained HHr relationship building and stuff
-x-x-
Warnings:
This chapter contains: explicit smut (which can be skipped without missing out on main plot)
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“I look utterly ridiculous,” Harry groaned as he glanced at his Polyjuiced reflection in the small mirror Hermione had handed him moments ago.
Hermione snorted, bringing a hand up to quickly cover her mouth and feigning innocence when Harry, or rather, a large older woman with tight, curly, short hair, turned to glare at her. She couldn’t help it, things had been getting more stressful lately, and she really needed a laugh. The purple and green horned rimmed glasses with a gold chain to keep them securely around Harry’s neck was her favourite addition to the ensemble.
“You think this is funny, don’t you?”
“No.” Hermione almost choked on the word as she tried to keep a burst of laughter at bay.
Harry was standing there trying to look stern, but his large sweater, which featured a glorious winter scene, burgundy coat, and bulldog brooch, didn’t do much in the way of making him look imposing. Instead, he looked exactly like someone’s 50-year-old aunt might look. Which was good, because that was exactly the disguise they were going for. She couldn’t deny the fact that she was very pleased with her transfigurations. Harry looked positively perfect, and she grinned proudly at her handiwork.
“Why couldn’t I go as the young girl again?” Harry rolled his eyes at her obvious enjoyment, returning his gaze back to the mirror and tucking a curl behind his ear. “I feel like you could have pulled this off much better than me.”
“We’ve already discussed this,” Hermione said as she smacked his arm and ignored his comment about her being able to pull off the look of a 50-year-old woman better than him.
She knew that he was just dreading going to see his Aunt Marge and was venting his frustrations. It was the straw breaking his back amongst their other more pressing concerns. It was easier to be frustrated with this task than to allow himself to think about everything else. It was the same reason why she was laughing at his appearance – she had to. Otherwise, she might well cry. She was practically at her wit’s end and barely keeping it together.
“I’m playing your niece, you’re the one inquiring about purchasing a dog, and you will be the one talking to your aunt. You know her, so you’re far better equipped to talk with her than I would be. You can respond with what she’ll want to hear. I look like I’m 12 – there’s no way your aunt is going to even acknowledge a word I say. I’m just there as a prop.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Harry sighed, throwing his head back to look at the quiet sky of the forest surrounding them. “Let’s just hope that I don’t lose my temper – my aunt’s kind of a bitch, you know. And by kind of – I mean that she is a bitch.”
“Well… then don’t lose your temper,” Hermione teased as she took back the mirror from his hand and secured it in her purse. “She doesn’t know that it’s you. Right now, you’re a potential customer – I’m sure that she’ll be nice enough.”
Harry gave her a deadpanned look as she finished transfiguring her jacket into a blue child’s coat, much more suiting to a young 12-year-old girl than the dark grey one she had before. She added a pink pompom hat to her head as a touch of innocence to her look before she examined the remainder of her outfit.
“You severely underestimate my family’s capacity to be douches,” Harry’s tone was flat. Still, he straightened his brooch and rolled his shoulders, resigning himself to the outfit with no further complaint.
Hermione snorted as she finished changing her boots and pants, recalling the phone conversation from the day before. She had called Harry’s aunt under the guise of being interested in purchasing a new puppy from a recent litter (a litter they knew she had after snooping around). At some point during the conversation, Harry’s aunt had felt the need to explicitly tell her that she did not sell her beautiful babies to young children, hippies, vegetarians, or insurance salesmen because they could not be trusted. It was an unexpected rant, to say the least. The woman’s stipulations were ideocratic, making no sense and obviously being deeply rooted in bias.
After the call, Hermione adjusted her expectations. She held no false hope that Harry’s aunt might be a saint or even a remotely decent person for that matter – she just hoped that Marge was decent enough to treat a potential customer politely. Taking Harry to see his aunt was a bit of a risk given the history between them and their current mentality. She was silently crossing her fingers that he would behave, keep his cool and not blow up – or blow his aunt up again. Once she had assured Marge on the phone that they were none of those undesirable things, they had arranged to meet today at 1:00 pm to see the puppies on her small farm.
“Alright, let’s get this done and over with. Are you ready?” Harry had approached her, hand outstretched in anticipation of their apparition.
“Almost, just let me pocket my wand,” Hermione replied, her morphed face scrunching as she stored her wand in a charmed elongated pocket and ran her hands over her new jacket. She grabbed Harry’s hand and pulled him closer. “Okay, let’s go!”
The pop of their disappearance echoed through the dead forest that they’d been standing in. With their tent having been packed up minutes before, nothing remained of their presence in the Northern forest. They appeared immediately in a small alley behind a store on a bustling street. They had picked the location out the day before, so they were able to quickly make their way down the familiar short alley and toward the busy road. Hermione’s hand gripped Harry’s tightly, her opposite hand wrapping her hidden wand in a death grip as they cut through the crowd. Keeping their eyes straight ahead and not stopping for anyone, they hailed the first taxi that they saw.
Over the last two weeks, Hermione and Harry had been relentlessly brewing potions, training themselves to exhaustion, examining the golden werewolf bracelet, and gathering ingredients for the antivenom recipe which Mr. Weasley had sent them. Things had started to get a bit tense in the tent as the days went by. The regular updates from Mr. Weasley about the war efforts by the Order had added to the list of things that Hermione constantly worried about throughout the day, and she found that they were keeping her awake at night – but she never stopped reading them. They needed as much information as they could get their hands on. It was just unfortunate that the majority of the information was not favourable.
Several more members of wizarding families known to support Harry and the Order had been killed since the new year, including Lee Jordan’s father. Phineas’ update from Hogwarts had indicated that things were about as bad as they could possibly be, and both Hermione and Harry were worried that Ginny and Neville could be in real danger. They had sat together silently at the dinner table several nights in a row watching the Marauders Map, finding that both Ginny and Neville spent an awful lot of time with the Carrows – which was deeply concerning. Combine that with the small details that Mr. Weasley revealed about the inner workings of the Ministry, and Hermione was starting to wonder how the hell they were going to pull through.
So, she threw herself into potion making, aggressive training, and started writing specific notes and instructions in her journal for Harry in case something happened to her. She was exhausting herself, burning the candle on both ends and lighting the center on fire – but she couldn’t stop it. She could feel herself spiralling while the world seemed to burn around her. She couldn’t explain why, but a heaviness had settled over her heart after the apothecary robbery, and it was eating away at her slowly.
The only positive that came from their midnight robbery in Ottery St. Catchpole was the actual ingredients they obtained. As it turned out, they already had most of the necessary ingredients for the antivenom: four cups of distilled water, a handful of witch hazel, three drops of salamander blood, one pinch of unicorn horn, a lemon, mint, unicorn hair, a bezoar, and yarrow. All that remained was getting their hands on the drool from a black bulldog and fresh snakeweed harvested exactly fifteen minutes after midnight.
Once they had everything, Hermione would be able to start brewing the potion on Monday, allow it to stew for three days, and then have three small bottles of antivenom. Each bottle would be able to break down all the poison within the bloodstream at the time it was consumed into harmless byproducts. If they were bitten again after drinking the potion, they would need to ingest a second bottle, but assuming that they got away after being bitten, they would have enough potion to cure three separate incidents. It was a far easier potion to brew than what she had expected. The difficultly, it seemed, laid entirely on obtaining the highly specific ingredients and determining the combination of the ingredients in the first place. She had yet to ask Mr. Weasley exactly how he came across the recipe or if he had invented it himself, but she’d made a note of that question in her journal and planned to ask him when she saw him again. She figured that it would be a better story to hear in person.
They climbed eagerly into the warmth of the first taxi that stopped, buckling their seat belts and giving directions to Marge’s farm only 20 minutes out of the city. They knew exactly where they were going, exactly how long it would take to get there, and exactly how long they had before their Polyjuice potion wore off. They were not taking any chances this time. Hermione had set an internal timer to keep them on track, knowing that they would have just under two hours to drive to the farm, meet with Marge, find out how old her dogs were, and get out.
They had spent the last three days staking out his aunt’s farm, examining the surroundings, returning to their tent to discuss their plan of action in the North, and then sneaking into the farm at night to see what dogs she had. Based on their investigation, they found that Marge had three black bulldogs, and while she may not have given a crap about Harry (or most other people for that matter), she seemed to truly love her dogs, and she took good care of them. The dogs lived in what looked to be a newly renovated barn, which could hardly be called a barn, as it was heated, insulated, had running water, bathroom facilities, and was very much a second house for the dogs on her property.
The only problem was that they had no idea how old the dogs were, and there was no age-revealing spell that they could simply cast to figure it out. So, after deliberating over how to proceed the previous morning, they finally decided that the best course of action was to call and pose as potential buyers, then ask Marge for more information on her dogs. They had never intended to actually tour the farm. Hermione had tried to ask about the different dogs that Marge owned while on the phone, but Marge had outright refused to give out any details on her animals. She firmly stated that all interested and prospective buyers had to come to the farm for a visit – and muttered that giving out information on how they were fed, their ages, and their training would be revealing ‘tricks of the trade’ and that she was ‘not going to give away any secrets’.
Harry had thumped his head against the phone booth wall in frustration while Hermione acquiesced and quickly covered for why her voice would be different the next day – claiming to be the cousin of a lady interested in a new puppy and setting up the appointment on her behalf. So here they sat, Harry bundled in a thick burgundy jacket, bulldog brooch sparkling on his chest in the midday sun while Hermione, his niece, sat wearing a green jumper with a bear on it, a blue child’s coat, and a pink pompom hat that complimented her blonde braided pigtails.
The drive to the farm was quick, but they knew it would be. They would have apparated directly onto the farm for their appointment, but of course, things were never that simple. Aunt Marge’s farm was extremely open in the front, with a clear view of the road and oncoming traffic due to the barren winter landscape. There was absolutely no way they could apparate to the end of her drive without being seen in the middle of the day. The road she lived on was also rather quiet, so it would be incredibly suspicious if they arrived sans car, given that Marge would be able to hear the oncoming traffic from within her house and would be expecting to hear them arrive.
Though, Hermione thought as she gazed at her unfamiliar hands. Those are the trivial details in the grand scheme of things.
The most concerning aspect about their mission to Marge’s, and the detail that had disturbed their minds and set them on edge for the last two weeks, was that Marge lived on the outskirts of Birmingham – the epicenter of the werewolf activity.
Of course she lives in fucking Birmingham, Hermione grumbled internally as she peered out the window at the approaching farm and revisited the foolishness of going to the middle of their ‘no apparate zone’ to get 8 ounces of dog drool. Birmingham was undeniably the center of the werewolf activity, and they had been actively avoiding going anywhere near it for weeks. Finding bulldogs in England wasn’t difficult – but finding a purebred black English bulldog that was exactly between two years old and two and a half years old wasn’t easy.
They had considered breaking into a vet’s office to review through client files or checking the papers to see if there were any dogs listed for sale – but that would be incredibly time-consuming, and they wouldn’t be able to guarantee the dog was purebred. Hermione was unsure whether or not that actually mattered for the antivenom, but she wasn’t willing to take any chances.
They had also considered calling around to a few animal shelters or popping in to see if they had any up for adoption, but this had the same issue and would take them months to complete. Not to mention the colossal amount of Polyjuice potion that would require. Hermione had already tried calling a few places over the last two weeks, and out of the twelve shelters that she called, only one had a black bulldog, but they had no idea how old he was. This left them with the exclusive option of finding a breeder who could guarantee the breed and the age, and Harry’s aunt was as much of a surefire solution as they could get.
Unwilling to put themselves in more danger than they needed to and wanting to avoid any surprise encounters in town, they had apparated directly onto the farm the first night while disillusioned. They hadn’t cared about the sound of their arrival. They had been fully prepared to bail if they were noticed, but they covered themselves with the invisibility cloak and cast their shield charms just in case. Then, they snooped around to locate the dogs and survey the area. Each movement they made was careful; each footstep vanished from the snow, and every ten feet, they cast detection charms to check for any unwanted visitors. They disapparated back to the far North end of England once they had gathered their information and camped in the deep blizzard while they made their game plan.
During their second trip to the farm to look at the dogs, Hermione borrowed some of the local newspapers from Marge’s recycle bins next to the house, bringing them back to the tent to read in hopes of finding additional information on the attacks. The findings had been sobering and were yet another unpleasant cherry on top of the harrowing cake of panic that Hermione did not need.
The volume of missing persons accounts was disturbing. Police were urging people to stay in at night and travel in groups. Most of the attacks seemed to happen between midnight and 3 am. People were often last seen around bars or popular nightclub areas, and so far, anyone who had gone missing had yet to be located. Right now, the Police were attributing the attacks to drug violence. They reported that they were increasing their K-9 searches and had begun to post officers around the popular bars. Though they strongly urged people not to go out if they could help it. After reading through the news, they decided that travelling during the day would be safer than at night despite how uncomfortable it made them. Going out during the day was their best bet at avoiding another werewolf encounter.
After they had begrudgingly admitted that they would need to call Marge to get the dog’s age, they apparated directly into Birmingham in the morning while under the disguise of Polyjuice so that they could place the phone call. Following the conversation with Marge and knowing they would have to go see her the next day, they cautiously explored the outskirts of Birmingham to find the most efficient location to apparate to the following day. They needed to reserve as much time as possible to be disguised while on Marge’s farm and factor in the length of time a taxi ride would take. After walking nervously down the street hand in hand as an elderly couple, they managed to find the perfect spot. It was away from the nightclub area of the city, located near a 24-hour grocery store that looked to be constantly busy and it was only several minutes away from the farm. Standing unassumingly by the bus stop as they surveyed the area, they even managed to grab several more hair samples from unsuspecting patrons for future Polyjuice disguises. With the new samples, they had gained two more disguises each before Hermione would need to brew another batch.
As it happened, their trip to Birmingham would have been required nonetheless, and it would now become even more dangerous. The snakeweed that they needed only grew near water, and according to Hermione’s potion book, it only grew natively in England around the Birmingham canal region on the South-West.
Hermione had groaned loudly and slumped in her chair when she read the page in her book dedicated to snakeweed. Her reaction drew Harry’s attention away from his book, and she had turned to him in defeat asking: Why Harry? Why is this our life?
It was as if the world believed her cake of panic didn’t have enough cherries on it already. She had been feeling the tension build in her body for months, but it was as if the full weight of the war had landed on her shoulders in the last two weeks.
Of course Snakeweed could be obtained from apothecaries or potentially even greenhouses if you knew of a herbologist who grew it. But based on how their last endeavour went, they weren’t exactly itching to break into another apothecary any time soon. Besides, Hermione’s continued communications with Mr. Weasley made it abundantly clear that robbing another apothecary was out of the question. Many apothecaries were now being watched, their stocks monitored, and some had even closed their doors altogether as the Death Eaters began locking down potion supplies in an effort to gain the upper hand in the war. In a lot of ways, breaking into another apothecary would be more dangerous than entering Birmingham during the day to locate natural growing snakeweed.
Coming back at fifteen minutes after midnight to harvest it… well, that would be a different story. The only thing Hermione could do to try and limit the danger they were about to put themselves in was to locate snakeweed farthest away from the areas that the Police had flagged as hot zones for disappearances.
Though really, danger is pretty much a given at this point, Hermione rolled her eyes to herself before the cab came to a stop.
She paid the driver quickly and hopped out behind Harry. Everything about what they were doing felt wrong, and she could feel the fear settling deep in her bones. The farm looked different during the daytime, almost pleasant in comparison as the sun reflected across the white snow. It was nothing like the creepy shadows that lingered across the open front yard in the darkness.
She side glanced at Harry, who was doing his absolute best not to scowl under his ever-growing tension and took his arm before making their way up the long driveway. If it wasn’t for the fact that such a terrible lady owned the land, that they were in the epicenter of werewolf attacks and kidnappings, and that the war seemed to be consuming them whole – the farm would be rather nice.
-x-x-
“Hello, I’m glad that you made it – oh, my, what a beautiful brooch! I have two myself – a fawn and a red brindle. I just adore them.” Marge’s deep voice greeted them as she opened her front door. They hadn’t even knocked, and she had already appeared, confirming their suspicion that she would be watching for their arrival.
“Ah yes, my lovely niece Stephanie got me this one for Christmas,” Harry said as he shook his aunt’s firm hand and turned to smile at Hermione, who was standing shyly beside him. He hoped she knew that she did not need to impress Marge for any reason other than to obtain information.
“Oh lovely, lovely.” Marge completely ignored Hermione and motioned for Harry to come inside her house. “So, you’re interested in purchasing the best breed of dog on the planet, huh? Just leave your shoes on – we’ll be back outside in a moment!”
“Oh yes!” Harry said, feigning excitement as he followed Marge down the hall and out through the patio door that faced the renovated barn. Why they didn’t just walk around the outside of the house was beyond him, but he kept his mouth shut and crossed his fingers that they did not run into Ripper. He didn’t feel much like getting his leg mauled today. “I just adore bulldogs – and my cousin Bethany, the one you spoke to on the phone – she said that you would be a good person to contact. I was so glad that she could set up this appointment.”
“Too right she was! I don’t usually toot my own horn, but I happen to have the best bitches in the region – probably the country! They make the best pups you’ve ever seen, excellent health, and perfect temperament.”
Harry bit his tongue, unable to stop his eyes from rolling at his aunt’s absurd comment.
Yeah right, you don’t like to toot your own horn – what a lying old coot, he thought bitterly as he followed Marge toward the barn that he and Hermione had already visited twice.
“Oh, I’m so excited to see them!” Hermione wiggled in excitement as they reached the doors of the barn, and Marge pulled out a key. She was doing a much better job at acting than he was. He was only barely keeping his comments to himself.
“Oh yes – that reminds me. You’re not looking to get a dog for your niece Sofie are you? Because like I already told Bethany on the phone, I don’t sell to children. Not these bulldogs, no ma’am – these are top tier, high-quality dogs, and they need a firm hand.”
“Goodness no,” Harry waved his hand as if that was the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard. Knowing that it was not worth correcting Marge on Hermione’s fake name. “She wouldn’t even know what to do with them. She’s just visiting me over the weekend and wanted to come to see them with me – you know how young kids are.”
Hermione smiled up at Marge politely, but didn’t make a peep.
“Good, good. Just make sure you keep your hands to yourself, Sofie,” Marge nodded, holding the door open for them to enter and looking sternly at Hermione’s small figure as she passed. “I never asked this on the phone; I much prefer to speak in person – you can tell a lot about a person from their stature and how they present themselves. Like you, I can tell you don’t put up with crap – it’s good to see that your niece Stacy here actually listens to you. I have a nephew myself who’s as rotten as they come. Ungrateful, lazy – a real piece of work. I keep waiting for the day I find out he’s gotten himself arrested – deadbeat like his parents. Now tell me, have you owned any bulldogs before?”
Harry gritted his teeth, his fists clenching firmly at his side as he tried to control the raging anger inside him. How many other complete strangers had this woman said these things to? How often did she tell people that he and his parents were deadbeats? The arrogance and blatant malice of this woman was unbelievable.
“Yes, I’ve had four over the course of my life. After Brutus passed away, I’m afraid it hit me rather hard. It’s been two years – but I think I’m finally ready for another.” Harry toughened his jaw as he spoke, his long fingernails biting into his skin.
It looked as though he was swallowing down the show of emotion over the loss of his imaginary dog. Though really, he was choking down his temper and resisting his urge to blow Marge up for a second time – perhaps permanently so. It took every ounce of his self-control not to test out some of his new wandless magic.
He felt Hermione brush his arm gently in support as they followed Marge inside the familiar barn and toward the dog kennels at the back. He needed to stay calm, needed to keep his temper in check.
Breathe, just breathe, he chanted as he closed his eyes and pulled in a deep breath.
They only needed to find out if any of her three black bulldogs were between two years and two and a half years old. Then they could get the hell out of there. Maybe he could obliviate his aunt so that they could just apparate away instantly instead of taking another taxi.
In fact, I think I’ll obliviate her anyways, he thought as they closed the distance to the pen of bulldog puppies that were running around happily. The last thing they needed was any sort of connection between them and this city. Not to mention that it would be incredibly satisfying to wipe his aunt’s mind.
“I can understand that. Dear lord, I don’t know what I’ll do when Ripper passes away. Sometimes I’m not even sure if I’ll be able to continue the work that I do here. But I think I must – it’s important to ensure the standards are maintained. I fear if I quit, people would be limited to a rather poor selection of mutts,” Marge said as she came to a stop at the pen and gestured down to the dogs with a look of pure self-satisfaction. “Well, here we are. So far only red, green, and blue are spoken for – the rest are available. Assuming that you are indeed qualified to purchase one.”
“Yes, of course,” Harry answered, unclenching his hands to lean on the fenced-in area and peer down at the puppies. He noticed that they each had different coloured collars. He assumed this was how she told them apart without assigning names. “You can’t just let anyone purchase a pup – some people have no idea what they’re doing.”
“Too right you are, I’m afraid.” Marge nodded seriously as she gazed at her prized animals.
“So, who are the parents?” Harry asked, turning to face Marge with a serious look and wanting to get this over and done with. He assumed that the only adult dog in the pen with the puppies right now was the mother. She was probably there to help teach them manners, but unfortunately, she was a fawn colour.
“Well, that would be Max and Tully – two of my finest if I do say so myself. Yes, they’re great dogs. Bred them myself four years back.”
Shit, Harry thought as he absently nodded. Max was one of the black bulldogs they had seen when they snooped around the barn, but Marge had just indicated he was four years old. Tully must be the fawn-coloured mother; she looked like a good dog, but she wasn’t what they needed. That meant that their options were down to the two remaining black dogs: Radar and Scout.
“Aw, they’re perfect! Do you have many other bulldogs, ma’am?” Hermione asked politely, eyes wide and hands clasped tightly in front of her. She had placed her hands there the second Marge told her to keep them to herself, and she was eagerly looking up at Marge and making a play at her ego.
“Yes, I do, Sofie! I have ten adults right now, excluding Ripper, who is too old to breed at this point,” Marge said proudly, waving her hand to the side where the other dogs were snoozing contentedly in their own kennels. Calling them kennels was a massive misrepresentation of what they were though, they were like cozy little rooms. Evidently, Marge believed in giving her dogs the best treatment possible. “Usually, they’re out in the yard, but with the cold we’ve had over the last few days, I’ve been keeping them inside. They still get out for a couple of hours a day – but if truth be told, I think they’d rather be inside for the winter.”
“Oh, wow.” Hermione beamed as she approached Radar’s kennel and crouched down to look at him. “What a gorgeous dog.”
“Ah yes! She has a good eye, doesn’t she?” Marge grinned at Harry before she walked proudly over to Hermione, who was maintaining a respectable distance from Radar’s door. “So well behaved – gosh my nephew could learn a thing or two from you, Stacy! Radar here is one of the best, great lineage and top-notch health. You could not ask for a better dog. I haven’t bred him yet – he just had his second birthday two months ago, but I’ll be getting a litter out of him in the summer.”
“Perfect,” Harry said tightly, and he stepped away from the dog pen. His patience was failing him, they had the information they needed, and he was done listening to his aunt blow smoke out her ass. “Well, these dogs look wonderful – but Sofie, I think we should go. We’ll think things over at home and then be in touch.”
“Well, just hold on now.” A look of irritation split across Marge’s face, and Harry knew things were about to get ugly. “You better not have come all the way out here to waste my time. I happen to be a very busy woman, you know, and I don’t like being jerked around! You’re already here, you might as well fill out a form even though at this point it’s not like you’re going to get app–”
Marge’s face went blank, and she slumped to the floor.
“Really, Harry?” Hermione turned to look at him as she stood from her crouched position. She looked tired as she moved, and Harry knew the stress from everything was starting to wear on her.
“What? We got the information we needed,” Harry shrugged as he walked over to his aunt’s round form and propped her up against the wall next to the puppy pen. It was more than she deserved. “It’s just a stupefy. She’ll be fine. We can wipe her memory and then leave – don’t you think it’s better not to have any ties to this place?”
“Yes.” She fished a vial from her purse, handing it to Harry. He could tell that she was trying to remain in control, trying to be a bigger person than Marge and behave properly. “Just maybe we could have been a little more tactful, no?”
“Maybe,” Harry accepted the vial and waited for Hermione to pull the cooked chicken from her bag. “But it doesn’t really matter if we’re wiping her memory anyway – there was no point in dragging it out and listening to her rant. Things would have gotten nasty – besides, now we can apparate away directly and avoid another taxi ride.”
“You’re right,” Hermione sighed as she pulled the chicken from her bag and gave him a sad smile. She looked defeated and shook her head with a scoff. “Merlin, she’s a pompous ass, isn’t she?”
“Yeah, I believe I tried to warn you about that.” Harry smiled as he knelt down next to the kennel where Hermione had taken a seat.
“Sometimes it blows my mind that you turned out the way you did, you know?” Hermione pushed the bowl of cooked chicken through the bars and patted Radar on the head.
She had written back to Mr. Weasley after he sent the antivenom recipe to clarify if the chicken needed to be raw or cooked, and how long after the dog ate it that they needed to wait until they could collect the drool. He had clarified that it needed to be a chicken breast cooked plain and that the saliva could be taken immediately after the dog had eaten. Apparently, this worked best since the dog would already be drooling.
“I think a lot of people would have turned out bitter, jaded, or angry–”
“Like snakeface?” Harry prompted, raising a brow as he too patted Radar gently on the head.
He’d taken to calling You Know Who by various different names after Mr. Weasley informed them via the magazine about the trace placed on Voldemort’s that would summon snatchers immediately to the location that the name was uttered. Harry had vehemently refused to call him You Know Who and play into the fear-mongering and instead often referred to him as snakeface, red-eyes, Tom, or dipshit on occasion.
“Harry, you’re nothing like him.”
“I’m not like how he is now, no, but Dumbledore showed me some of his memories, Hermione. Tom had a shit childhood. He felt neglected, struggled to find his place – I guess I’m sort of agreeing with you. I could have become bitter, and I could have potentially even become just like him. I think the only reason why I didn’t was because of you, Ron, Dumbledore, and Sirius. You guys kept me on track. And you never let me get away with being a mopey ass.”
Hermione laughed as she smiled at him.
“Maybe,” she said quietly. “I’m sure that more things factor into it than that. I think you have a good soul, Harry. You’re truly a good person and – Ugh c’mon, this is gross.”
Hermione’s eyes darted back to the vial she was holding and the giant flow of drool dripping down her arm. She’d taken the large vial back from Harry once Radar was done eating and stuck it under his jowls while she scratched his head with her free hand. But Radar was completely unaware that his drool needed to be collected so it could be part of an extremely important potion that may save lives, so he was panting and whining and wiggling around while he soaked up the attention. His whole butt was moving violently side to side as he wagged his stub, and the drool was missing the vial.
“Here,” Harry said, chuckling as he vanished the drool from her arm.
“What I’m trying to get at, Harry,” Hermione said, bringing the vial away from the dog and turning back to Harry. “Is that sometimes I forget just how terrible things were for you before you came to Hogwarts – and well, I’m just glad you’re who you are. I’m glad that I met you, and I’m glad that you’re you.”
“I’m glad I met you too,” Harry smiled, squeezing her forearm gently before taking the vial from her. Her words tugged across his heart, and it brought up the uneasiness within him that he’d been experiencing all week.
The dogs around them started to bark, clearly jealous of the chicken that Radar had received. Their whines echoed around the barn as their butts wiggled in excitement, each of them wanting some attention, sniffing the air in the hope of treats. Apparently, Ripper was the only violent dog that Marge had.
Makes sense why he’s her favourite, Harry thought as he surveyed the barn one last time. They needed to get out of there before anyone else came by to check on the dogs. Harry handed Hermione back her wand.
“You’re better at memory charms, I’ll store this, and you can wipe the last two days from Marge.”
“Deal,” Hermione said, quickly standing to go and tend to Marge.
It only took Hermione a few minutes to wipe Marge’s memories of their interactions over the last two days and confund her so that she would think she fell asleep while sitting and visiting with the puppies. Long before she would wake up, Hermione and Harry exited the barn and apparated away to the safety of the North.
-x-x-
While Harry was thrilled with the success of their first task and pleased that they were now one step closer to brewing the antivenom potion, he was dreading their return to Birmingham to get the snakeweed at midnight. The last few days had been incredibly dangerous, but returning at midnight to a known werewolf-infested area felt like a suicide mission. He didn’t like it. He felt heavy, like a bad omen was weighing down on him and bringing a sharpness to the tight pain in his chest that had been building the last few weeks.
He watched as Hermione puttered around the potions lab, writing notes in her journal and prepping all the ingredients that she could while muttering to herself. She had been writing a lot of notes lately, more than usual. He couldn’t focus on his book and instead sat there watching her in silence. He felt like he was wasting his time, watching minutes of their lives just tick away while he had no assurance that they would still be alive tomorrow.
“Hermione?” He asked after another whole minute had ticked by, and he was unable to read a single letter on the open page before him.
“Yeah?” Hermione looked up from her notes, the ingredients she was categorizing laid out in front of her.
“You’re sure that snakeweed doesn’t grow anywhere else?” The words pained him as he said them. He already knew the answer, yet he could not stop himself from asking. He was being cowardly, anxious, selfish – wishing to bide their way out of what they both knew they had to do.
“Harry,” Hermione said sadly, her voice low. She didn’t look irritated by his question. She knew why he was asking, and she understood why he was concerned. She shared the same fears, but they’d both been dealing with them separately and allowing their own tensions to build. “You know it doesn’t, we both looked through the same book – it was also mentioned in Professor Snape’s class in fifth year. Even if it did grow somewhere else – I wouldn’t know where to start looking. We could waste months of time trying to find it, and apothecaries are out of the question.”
“I know, I know,” Harry shook his head and ran a hand over his face into his hair while trying to shake the dark uneasiness that encircled him.
His hair had become so unmanageable, constantly falling in his face while he read that he’d tossed it up into a bizarre and messy ponytail to keep it out of his eyes. It stuck out of the hair tie at odd angles, making him look like an anime character as the unfamiliar weight of it gave him a headache. He really needed to just cut it. He didn’t care what it looked like, but he needed to lob it off. Neither one of them knew any hair spells, though, and none of the books that Hermione had brought contained any such magic. Tomorrow he would bust out the kitchen scissors while they brewed and take care of this problem in one clean cut.
He let out a sigh.
He felt tired, more tired than he had in weeks, and he was frustrated and annoyed. They had been making good progress with the potions, preparation, and training – but Mr. Weasley’s replies about the Order’s war efforts had rattled him. The situation at Hogwarts felt like a burn on his soul, and his mind was constantly being ravaged by a sense of doom.
“I just – we got lucky the last few days popping in and out of Birmingham,” Harry said slowly, his expression tight with worry as he looked at Hermione. “Well, maybe some of it had to do with us being better prepared and smarter with our movements – but still, luck, was definitely a factor and I don’t want to rely on luck. I just can’t stand it that we’re once again going somewhere that we know is dangerous.”
“I know, Harry,” Hermione said, her voice soft as she spoke. She set down the quill in her hands and walked out of the lab towards him, kneeling before him on the soft rug of the tent floor and gripping his hands with her own. “I know this sucks. But what else can we do? We need to make that antivenom. Nagini is going to be where he is, and we have to confront him eventually. I don’t see any other way around this.”
“Neither do I,” he sighed in frustration, dropping his forehead down to lean against hers.
He felt so trapped. He was terrified to go back to Birmingham after what happened with the last two werewolf encounters, and based on the conversation they overheard outside of the apothecary – things were getting worse. He knew he was being moody and unreasonable. He was overtired, stressed, and irritated with their situation simply for it being what it was.
He knew that his feelings didn’t change what they had to do – they would go to Birmingham to get the snakeweed tonight, and he would need to find a way to deal with the anxiety pumping through his veins. He knew that Hermione was nervous too. She’d been jittery for the last two weeks and training extra hard to try and distract herself. It was taking a visible toll on her, and he knew that they both needed to calm down.
He let out a deep breath.
Everything about this was infuriating, and all he could think about now was, what if they weren’t prepared? What if they weren’t strong enough? What if everything they had done up until now wasn’t enough, and they failed? What if something happened to Hermione? How would he cope with that after knowing what their relationship together could be – how would he live with that? He could feel his heart begin to race as the questions assaulted his already weakened mind, and he gripped Hermione’s hands tighter.
“Will you promise me something?” He asked slowly, already knowing that what he was asking was impossible. It went against every fiber of her being, and he didn’t even know why he was trying to go down this road.
“Mmm?” Her eyes were closed as she continued to lean her forehead against his and rubbed small circles across the back of his hand with her thumb.
He wasn’t surprised that she didn’t automatically agree. Harry had known that she wouldn’t. She was waiting to see what it was he wanted. She was too clever, too kind, and too giving to agree blindly. From the way she was holding his hands, Harry could tell that she knew he was anxious. She knew that he was feeling desperate and defeated. She likely even knew exactly where this conversation was headed and was fully prepared to reject his request – yet he continued walking down the path anyway, because he needed to get the words out so he could relieve some of the pressure off his chest.
“Promise me that you’ll keep yourself safe, Hermione. If things go badly, whether it be tonight or the next night – keep yourself safe.” He pulled his head back to look her in the eyes, searching their warm depths and feeling a pain across his chest. “Apparate away if you need to – I’m not asking you to abandon the war, I just–”
“You’re just asking me to abandon you. If something happens – you’re asking me to leave you, Harry.” She was looking at him fiercely, her eyes glinting from the light of the tent as the dimness of evening settled in. “No, Harry. My answer is no, and it will always be no.”
“Hermione.” Harry frowned. He knew that she wouldn’t agree; he had expected it. She would do what she always did – stick by him through thick and thin and fight until the end. It was like he couldn’t get across the emotion he was feeling with his words. He couldn’t wrap his own head around what he wanted. “I’m not asking you to just leave me – I’m saying if something happens, and if I can’t be saved – you need to save yourself. You’ll be the only one left who knows what to do to win the war.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“You don’t know that, Hermione. We have no idea how this will end – and I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if something happened to you.”
“Well, now that just doesn’t make any sense at all – you were talking about if something happened to you and you couldn’t be saved. If something did happen to you, you’d be dead, Harry – so you wouldn’t be living with knowing something happened to me,” Hermione said defiantly. She was almost glaring at him now, and Harry could see her own inner turmoil bubbling over. “Don’t you think I’d feel the same way? If something happened to you, Harry, and I didn’t try to help you – I would never be able to live with that. I can live with knowing that I might die in this war, but I can’t live with knowing that I gave up on you. I’m not an idiot, Harry, I’m not going to do anything stupid or reckless for no reason, but I’m never going to abandon you to save myself!”
“Hermione, don’t get mad. I–”
“I’m not getting mad!” Hermione retorted. Her face was flushed, and she was gripping his hands like a vice.
“Well, you’re getting upset.”
“Yes, I’m getting upset – I’m getting upset because you’re talking as if you think you’re going to die tonight, Harry. And that’s not going to happen – I’m not going to let that happen.”
“And that’s exactly what I’m afraid of!” Harry snapped, grabbing her wrists and pulling her up from her heels so she was stretching from her knees on the ground, and their eyes met on the same level. “Don’t think I haven’t figured out what’s been going through your head, Hermione. You’ve already decided that your role in this is to aid me no matter what the cost to yourself is!”
He had noticed the change after the Sword of Gryffindor. The increased number of notes Hermione had been taking in her journal, how she had been writing out potions with step-by-step instructions, showing him how to use everything in her purse, and teaching him how to use the magazine for communication with Mr. Weasley. He knew that she was helping him prepare for war like he had asked her to long ago after the werewolf had attacked her, and Harry had sworn to become stronger and more competent. But he wasn’t stupid. He knew that she was also preparing him so that he would be able to continue alone if anything ever happened to her.
“Yes,” Hermione admitted, her eyes flashing with anger as she refused to look away from him. “Because this is bigger than me, Harry. You know that! This has always been bigger than us! This is about so much more than trying to get out of this alive. See – this right here, what you’re doing – this is exactly why I was afraid of being in a relationship while in the middle of a war! Wars have sacrifices, Harry, and you can’t fight this properly if you’re constantly worried about losing me. Dumbledore knew that too! Do you really think he could have been defeated that night on the tower? I don’t know what was going on or what his plans were, but I know he died on purpose. And I know it was because he understood that sometimes sacrifices have to be made!”
“Alright, fine! Let’s call it like it is then – I’m being selfish! You’re right! I don’t want anything to happen to you in the war. I can’t lose you, and I’m sure as hell not going to let you sacrifice yourself for me!” Harry was practically yelling as he clutched Hermione’s wrists to his chest, and she glared up at him.
The tension that had been building in the tent for the last two weeks was reaching critical levels. Harry could not remember the last time he and Hermione had fought, though he wasn’t sure he would call this fighting. They were both just angrily yelling what they already knew to each other. They were so frustrated, so exhausted, so stressed, so plagued by their situation, so desperate to keep each other alive, and so unwilling to even consider losing each other as a possibility – all while knowing it could very well happen.
“I am not going to abandon you, Harry,” Hermione said tightly. “Not ever. I’m never going to step aside in this war!”
“Ugh – that’s not what I’m asking you to do! I’m not asking you to step aside!” Harry’s head was pounding; he couldn’t rationalize his thoughts and get his emotions into words. “You know I would never ask that!”
That was the truth.
He would never ask her to stand aside in the war or go into hiding so she wouldn’t get hurt. He trusted her skill, and he knew that their only chance of winning the war was to work together until the end. He just could not shake the awful feeling that had been building in his chest at the thought of returning to Birmingham. He knew it was a buildup of anxiety from the trauma of their past encounters and the fear that haunted him every day – the fear that constantly told him he still might not be enough to protect her. He couldn’t deal with the idea of losing her because she wouldn’t abandon him, but he didn’t want her to leave either.
“Then what do you want me to do, Harry?!” She yelled, eyes wide and angry as she strained herself taller and leaned into his space.
“I don’t know!!”
Harry felt a wave of emotion snap within him. He all but lunged towards Hermione and crashed his lips against hers, kissing her desperately as his hands dropped their hold on her wrists so they could wrap around her small frame. She grabbed the front of his shirt and tugged him from the couch, pulling him down to the rug on the floor as she opened her mouth to kiss him more deeply.
He settled between her legs. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t stop. He felt like his heart was going to explode in his chest as he kissed her like it was the last thing he would do on Earth. He was desperate, terrified, weak and starved for her touch. It had been so long since they had done anything physical. They were too focused on preparing for war and too physically injured from their fall at the apothecary to do anything these past weeks. His bruises had only just healed in the last few days.
Hermione gripped his shoulder tightly, her opposite hand going to his waist and pulling him against her as she pushed her hips up. He didn’t know what was going through her head, but neither one of them stopped. This was like nothing he had ever experienced before, like nothing they had ever done. Every movement was urgent and hungry. Hermione pulled at his shirt trying to get him closer. He trailed hot, open-mouthed kisses down her neck as he ground his hips into hers and she groaned into his ear.
They were both overstrained, both terrified of what was to come and determined not to lose one another – even though they both knew they were playing the same game. Harry ripped his shirt off the remainder of the way as Hermione tugged hers up and over her head. He wanted to feel her. He needed to be as close to her as humanly possible. He needed to feel her warm skin against his and know that she was there.
“Harry,” she panted in his ear as her hands worked on his belt. Her voice was throaty with need. “Harry, please – I need you.”
Their motions became frenzied as Harry shucked off his pants, and Hermione undid her own. Harry sat back and grabbed at the ankles of her jeans to pull them down her legs with her panties before Hermione grabbed his neck again and pulled him back down, capturing his lips in a heated kiss. He groaned into her mouth, twisting his hand into her hair and grinding his hard length against her core as she keened.
She was already wet.
His body shivered as his cock slid easily against her slick folds. He wanted to push right into her, to feel the heat from her center surround him, but he gripped his hand on her waist tightly and stopped himself. He needed to slow down. They’d only done this once before, and they were both acting crazed. He wasn’t even sure how to categorize the emotions that were rushing through him as he hovered above her.
“Harry,” Hermione caught his gaze, grabbing both sides of his face to look at him intently. Her eyes were blazing. He could see the anguish that mirrored his own, and he knew that she was dealing with the same desperate wave of emotions he was. “Harry, please.”
Both of them had been completing their own secret missions to ensure that the other would be fine. Harry – teaching Hermione violent offensive spells while working tirelessly to improve their shield spell. Taking any opportunity he could to throw himself between Hermione and danger like the fall out of the apothecary window. Hermione – improving Harry’s medical skills, teaching him to brew potions, and improving his duelling and wandless magic. Neither one of them was willing to let the other go. They refused to walk away and leave the other behind – but the crushing weight of the war was suffocating them, and it felt like they couldn’t escape.
He hesitated, and it was unbearable. He wanted her so badly. He felt like he needed her physically, to reassure himself that she was there with him and that he wouldn’t lose her. But he was nervous he might hurt her with the craze they were in.
“Harry.” Her voice was firm, and it pulled him from the rolling turmoil within his own head. She was still holding one side of his face, but her other hand now gripped his hip tightly. She was staring up at him passionately. “I’m not going to lose you – do you hear me? Not ever. We’re in this together – whatever it takes. We’ll train harder. We’ll practice more. We’ll become whatever we have to be – do whatever we need to. I can’t lose you either.”
“I know.” His voice broke as he spoke, and he let Hermione guide him inside her.
A low hiss escaped his lips as she thrust her hips up to meet his. He lowered his head, capturing her lips once more as he moved within her, meeting the tempo that she set with the pressure she kept on his hips. It was faster than the first time, not reckless, but not gentle. She didn’t want him to be gentle. She was pushing upwards to meet each motion and kissing him back with matched desperation because that’s what they were right now – two desperate people caving under the enormity of the weight on their shoulders while refusing to give up.
Hermione moaned into his mouth, her back arching as Harry slid a hand between them to rub her clit. He wasn’t going to last long, but it seemed that she wasn’t either. The boiling tension was too much as both of them flexed their hips and gave into the feel. Hermione clung to his shoulders with each thrust. Her head dropped down to his neck, and her nails dug into his back.
“Hermione – I–” His words stuttered from his mouth as his breath came in pants. He couldn’t finish his sentence, Hermione had wrapped her legs around him and was quivering beneath him, and it sent his mind into overdrive.
He couldn’t hold on any longer.
“Harry, I’m going to – I’m going to come, fuck, Harry – don’t stop – don’t stop, I–” Hermione shuddered, and her head dropped back against the carpet.
Harry felt her clench around him as her orgasm rippled through her, and his body tensed at the feeling. Her eyes were screwed shut, and her expression looked pained for a second before every muscle in her body relaxed. Harry felt his balls tighten, and he clamped his eyes shut as he came hard inside her. It was far more than he’d ever expected of himself in this scenario. He couldn’t believe that he had held out as long as he did, and he was shocked that she’d come while he was inside her.
He collapsed on top of her, moving his lips along her jaw toward her temple as he continued to rock his hip while she came down from her high. He watched her breathe, the low rasps ghosting against his face as she held him tightly.
“This won’t be a weakness, Hermione,” Harry breathed across her cheek as he nuzzled his nose against hers, then repeated her words. “We’ll do whatever it takes.”
“Whatever it takes, Harry,” she whispered, placing a kiss along his jaw. “We just make sure that it never happens.”
“It won’t,” Harry whispered back, brushing the loose hair from the side of her face.
He held her gaze as he gripped her tight, revelling in the blissful feel of his orgasm as he remained embedded deep inside her. He meant it. He meant those words with every fiber of his being. He would become whatever he needed to be. Do whatever he needed to do.
He would not lose her.
Warnings:
This chapter contains: Muggle mistreatment, violence against woman, blood, gore, implied rape, death, murder, and mercy killings that may be triggering.
Nothing was written in excess or for shock value, but some may find this chapter difficult and/or upsetting to read. As such, I have placed a two-sentence summary at the bottom of the chapter so that you can skip it if you wish.
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Hermione twisted her hands, working her thick curly hair into a braid down the back of her head as she tried to ignore the sick feeling that was once again festering in the pit of her stomach. It felt like years ago that she and Harry were lying naked in each other’s arms on the rug in the living room after having the most passionate, rough, and intense sex she had ever had.
Well, the most intense sex I’ve had compared to the only other time I’ve had sex, Hermione thought as she finished off the braid and tied the end with a hair tie, knowing full well that her tenacious curls would escape their braided confines and her mane would return in full force.
She wasn’t sure how to articulate the tsunami of emotions that had come over them in the tent hours before, and specifically, she wasn’t sure how to describe what had crashed through her as they fucked on the living room floor. She had never put much thought into chronicling her sexual exploits or classifying the encounters differently before today, but now she realized that sex could happen in many different ways. Their first time had been more tender. She equated it to gentle lovemaking – innocent, cautious, and tame.
It had been great. She loved the experience, and she was grateful that Harry had been so gentle with her through her first time. Today though… well, today was something entirely different. Today they ‘fucked'. It had been intense, aggressive, passionate, heated, and urgent. Completely different than the first time, yet everything that she needed it to be in that moment. She hadn’t been so bold with their sexual encounters previously, but today she could not stop herself.
She had needed him.
She needed him closer. She needed him on her. She needed him inside her. She had wanted to feel his skin against hers, to feel him push inside her and consume her lips while she gasped for air. She had tugged on his shirt in desperation, thrust herself against him, and clawed at his back angrily – the frustration at their situation feeding the anguish that raged through her. She had felt desperate, immensely turned on, and overwhelmed with an urgency to have him.
She was afraid, but not of the heat between them or the roughness of their interaction, quite the opposite in fact. She was afraid of losing him, afraid that tonight may very well be their downfall. It was the same fear that she knew was consuming Harry. He was upset, stressed, and tormented with worry about what they were about to go do. Their argument, which could hardly even be called an argument, was the lit fuse to the fear and pressure that had been building around them for weeks. Then today, it exploded between them into a mess of hands and lips and skin moving against each other in a furious show of emotion that neither one of them could articulate with words.
They were terrified that they were going to their deaths tonight, terrified that they would lose despite all their efforts, and terrified that they would lose each other. It was exactly what Hermione had been worried about when they first started their relationship and when they first acknowledged their feelings. She had always been worried that they would reach a point where they both fell so deep into their feelings that they wouldn’t be able to accept the thought of losing the other.
It worried her. It worried her that Harry might do something stupid to keep her alive or that she herself would not be able to let him go if it ever came down to it. But as their bodies collided, as she breathed him in, and desperately wrapped herself around him, tasting him, feeling his skin against hers – she knew it wasn’t a worry anymore.
It was a fact.
She would never let anything happen to him. She would never allow that to happen, because she couldn’t let me go.
She meant what she said to him before he pushed inside her. She meant it with every fiber of her being as she thrust up into him and called out his name. She had meant it when they laid there in each other’s arms on the floor after Harry came, and she knew that Harry meant it too – but she didn’t feel it resonate through her very core until afterwards, when they stood together in the shower surrounded by steam.
They had laid quietly on the floor for almost an hour. Harry brushed his hand over her hair and down her back while she rested her cheek on his chest and traced circles across his skin. Neither one of them had spoken. They had let the silence surround them. Only the sound of the cold wind beating across the tent echoed in the quiet as she held him tightly and refused to let go, trying to extend their closeness and drag it out into infinity. It wasn’t until the heat between them had completely dissipated and Hermione had started to shiver that they finally pulled themselves apart and up off the floor.
Then, hand in hand, Hermione had allowed Harry to lead her to the bathroom. Their feet padded softly against the cold wooden floors as she felt a heaviness fill the air between them and settle across her heart. It was the first time that they had ever taken a shower together, and while nothing else happened between them, the intimacy of it had rocked Hermione to her core.
She’d never really looked at him naked before or stood before him completely bare for any significant length of time. She found her eyes tracing over his skin, memorizing every mark, every scar, and the way that his muscles flexed as he moved before her. She knew that he was doing the same thing, memorizing her so he would never forget and so that they knew each other by heart. There wasn’t an ounce of embarrassment. She felt no anxiety. The thick air between them was serious, sobering, and powerful. Somewhere deep within, she felt a part of her soul break as she looked up at Harry through the steam and her eyes scanned over his solemn expression and resolute eyes.
She loved this man.
She loved Harry more than she ever thought it was possible to care for another human being.
She could no longer picture her life without him. He deserved to live, and the burden of her earlier words suddenly sunk deep within her chest. She felt the weight of it ache in her heart worse than when she had been split open by the werewolf as a wave of fierce conviction washed through her body. She felt the tightness pull across her chest as Harry lowered his head and kissed her slowly, the water running down his back and splashing across her face as she gripped him tightly.
She would do anything to keep him alive.
They would do anything to keep each other safe – whatever it took, whatever the cost, she would pay it. They would win this war. Together they would fight until their last dying breaths, and they would become whatever they needed to be in order to do it. She would do it not only because it was her only shot at ensuring Harry lived but also because it was their only prospect of winning the war.
Months ago, Harry had taught her sectumsempra just in case because he understood that You Know Who and his followers would never play by the rules. They would never show any mercy. There would be no humanity, no integrity… and You Know Who would win because of that. Because his people were willing to sacrifice anything for their cause. It was something that they had both always known.
After the Battle on the Hillside, the final remains of her naivety had been shattered. With each day that followed, she started to contemplate what she would be willing to sacrifice for the war. The coldness of their reality crept through her heart day by day, hardening her from the inside out. Hermione knew that she was willing to sacrifice her own life if necessary, but she still struggled to accept that she may need to take a life.
Even after killing the snatcher on the Hillside, she had a difficult time with it. She was constantly conflicted by her own morals and integrity. Until that moment, she had been unsure of her ever-changing personal boundaries and where they would fall as they navigated the hostility of the war.
But as she stood naked before Harry in the shower, the doubt that lingered within her washed away. She felt herself tremble under his lips as the hardness that had been slowly encircling her heart finally encased the organ completely and started to wrap her body in a cold, detached shell.
She would sell her very soul to the dark arts if she had to.
She would crush anything that stood in their way.
When it came to You Know Who and his devotees, she would abandon her morality, bury her decency, and use whatever means necessary to succeed because it was the only way they stood a chance. This foolish childhood dream of defeating evil with righteous good and integrity would cost them the war and the lives of many innocent wizards and muggles. They would be destroyed if she continued to hold any doubts or hesitations.
She was becoming a tool in this war, and if she was willing to die, then she should be willing to give anything else required. If she lived through this, she would accept and deal with the consequences of her actions when it was over. Until then, she what do whatever she had to.
She pushed the thoughts aside as she glanced over at Harry.
He was pacing back and forth in the snow, his long hair still held in a dishevelled ponytail that jutted out the back of his head while some of the shorter bits at the front framed his face. It was definitely a non-traditional look, it was maybe even a bit peculiar, but in a strange way, it suited him. It matched the grit of their living conditions and the battle-worn appearance he now carried with him. He looked nothing like the boy he used to be during their 6th year at Hogwarts or their easy summer at the Burrow. In fact, calling him the boy who lived felt a bit ridiculous now; he was definitely not a boy. Harry had long since become a man.
There was a hardness to his jaw in the way that he clenched it. There was a ferocity to the determination in his eyes that made his well-built frame look larger than it was while giving off an intimidating vibe. It was such a stark contrast to how he used to look that she silently wondered if people would recognize him without a double-take because he looked like Harry in a different body. His broad shoulders, strong stance, and intense expression made the air around him feel powerful. He looked exactly how Hermione felt on the inside, like someone who was ready to give anything, take anything, and do anything to finish this war.
She checked her internal timer, there was only another 5 minutes left before they would be apparating out of the cold, desolate forest and back into Birmingham. During their previous nerve-racking trips, Hermione had located two naturally growing snakeweed sites along the Birmingham canal that were far enough away from the werewolf activity and disappearances that she felt somewhat safe using to collect their ingredients. They didn’t want to spend more time there than necessary, just a simple in and out operation to collect what they needed and then return to the North. Though she wanted to leave enough time to apparate to the second site in case the snakeweed was already harvested, dead, or god only knows what else could go wrong. So, had they agreed to show up at 12:10 am under a disillusionment spell so they could assess the snakeweed and get into position. This left enough time for them to apparate to the second site if necessary.
It was now 12:06 am, and they were both anxiously waiting until exactly 12:10 am to make their apparition.
They had packed the tent up twenty minutes ago, cast several warming charms between themselves and now lingered near the rock that was providing them with shelter from the brunt force of the wind and snow that was blowing off the ocean only a few meters away. Harry had her wand; he was going to take guard position while she harvested the snakeweed with a freshly sharpened silver potions blade. She would cut the stock at exactly 12:15 am and store the snakeweed in the glass bottle that was hanging from a tie off her belt.
“Are you ready?” Hermione asked, her breath puffing out against the freezing air as she walked toward Harry. Only three minutes left.
“As ready as I’ll ever be – you have the knife?” Harry had finally stopped pacing and moved his way towards her.
“Yes, and the bottle – keep your hand on my neck while I harvest and if anything happens, we bail to the second site–”
“And if the second site isn’t safe, we leave, return here and come up with a new plan,” Harry finished reciting their plan with a nod. “My complete shield charm only lasts for seven minutes, yours for six – so we’ll cast them when we get there.”
“Right.” Hermione nodded as she reached out to take Harry’s hand, ignoring the bite of the cold against the fingers of her ungloved hand. “It is a Sunday night. Most disappearances seemed to have happened on Fridays or Saturdays while people were out at the bar. Or, to homeless people – but there aren’t any around this area, so we might get lucky and be able to get in and out quickly.”
“I hope so,” Harry breathed as he gripped Hermione’s hand tightly and stepped toward her. “How much longer?”
“One minute.”
“I’ll cast the disillusionments.”
“Okay.” She felt the familiar feeling of an egg being cracked over her head as Harry cast the charm on her first them himself. The seconds of her timer began counting down, and she felt her shoulders stiffen involuntarily. “Thirty seconds.”
This was it.
They were about to return to Birmingham and get their final ingredient for the antivenom potion.
“Twenty.”
She just hoped that tonight would be uneventful.
“Ten.”
That tonight they would be lucky.
“Zero.”
-x-x-
A faint pop echoed out into the quiet night surrounding the Birmingham canal as Harry and Hermione appeared exactly where they intended to, right next to a thick growth of snakeweed on the water’s edge. They ducked immediately, Hermione casting a wordless silencing spell and a detection spell while Harry cast his own protective shield charm. They both still needed to cast the shield charm verbally, and the last thing she wanted was to attract unwanted attention from making any noise.
Nothing showed up from her charm, so she remained crouched and still in the snakeweed while Harry finished his shield. Her eyes darted along the water, tracing up the path across the river before them that led up to an old part of town. Then they circled back around to look at the peaks of the houses behind them.
She quietly took her wand when Harry handed it to her and cast her own shield. They had yet to try casting them on each other – it was too risky, the last thing wanted was for Harry or herself to be caught inside a death bubble for six or seven minutes while the other stood there helpless and unable to dispel the charm. Once her shield was fully formed, she returned her wand to Harry and set a mental timer. She knew Harry would set his own, and she felt his cold hand slip under her braid to grip the back of her neck firmly while she began sliding the silver potions blade from her pocket.
“Nothing on the detection?” Harry whispered in her ear as he crouched down behind her.
“No, nothing – there are some small animals around, but nothing abnormal,” Hermione murmured in return. Regardless of the silencing charm, it felt risky to speak aloud, so they always kept their voices down.
“How long?”
“Just over three minutes,” Hermione checked her mental timer and pulled the cap from the bottle on her hip.
She needed to slice the stalks at exactly 12:15 am and then jam them in the bottle before 12:16 am. There would be no repeat. If they missed this opportunity, not only would they need to return and endanger themselves once more, but it would delay the potion brewing by a week as the potion needed to start on a Monday.
Hermione strained her ears in the night, listening for any sound outside of the wind, the distance hum of the odd car driving through the nearby streets and the gentle sounds of the icy water. Her teeth clenched tightly as every muscle in her body tensed, waiting for the inevitable crux that was coming to complicate their night and ruin their plans. But as each second ticked away in her head and her heart thrummed against her ribs, nothing happened. At one minute remaining, she reached forward and grabbed a firm hold on a large bundle of snakeweed, knowing it was more than four times what they needed but intending to do this only once. The stalks were perfect, the cold air would help keep them fresh, and she never wanted to come back here again.
“Fifty seconds,” Hermione breathed, her fingers pulling the snakeweed taught as she placed the knife against the base of the stalks.
She licked her lips in concentration, her heart racing as she waited. Her eyes focused on the stalks as an anxious tremble rolled through her body. They were going to make it. They were going to get the snakeweed; they would get away, and she only needed forty-five more seconds to–
Her heart plummeted into her stomach as a blood-curdling scream split across the night, and a wave of nausea rolled through her gut at the sound. Harry’s grip tightened on her neck as his wand shot up. The noise had come from across the river towards the old, mostly empty area of the city. They couldn’t see anything on the other bank of the canal, but they could hear the desperate sound of a woman’s voice cut through the cold air like a knife.
“PPPPPLLLEEAASSSSEEEEEE, NOOO–”
Hermione’s stomach rolled. Her eyes darted to Harry, unable to see him under the disillusionment but knowing that he was looking to the other bank and searching for threats. She tried to focus on the snakeweed in her hand, but her fingers had started to tremble as the screams from the woman rattled her to her core. There was only one reason anyone would ever make that sound – the woman was being attacked.
“Time?” Harry’s voice sounded next to her ear against the screams.
“STOPP – HEEEELLLPP–”
“Twenty Seconds – Harry, we have to- “
“Cut the weed then we leave.”
“Harry, we can’t leave her–”
“It could be a trap.”
“Or it could be a muggle woman being attacked! Harry, we can’t just – shit!”
The timer went off in her head, and she slashed the snakeweed, dropping the blade to the ground so she could use both hands to stuff the herb into the uncapped bottle. She could still feel Harry’s hand on her neck, but she noticed the slight tremor to it as the volume of the scream became muffled. She stuffed the snakeweed into the bottle as quickly as she could and recapped it, hoping to Merlin that Harry wouldn’t just apparate them away, and trusting that she knew him well enough to know he wouldn’t abandon someone being attacked.
“Harry, just wait,” Hermione said rapidly. “Wait until I get this packed we can’t leave–”
“Hermione, we can’t stay. If we go chasing after screams in the night, we’ll end up killing ourselves.” But despite his words, he remained crouched by her side, unable to make himself apparate them away even though Hermione had already stored the snakeweed and was carefully stuffing the bottle into her purse.
She knew that he was torn – torn between doing the right thing, which was beyond risky, and doing the safest thing, which was what they had agreed to do before they arrived.
“Maybe – but Harry, we can’t leave. I know that sort of scream, Harry. That woman is begging for her life, and we’re probably the only people within this city capable of saving her. She’s going to attract more people, more muggles – they’ll die, Harry. I’ll abandon my morality when it comes to defeating You Know Who and his trash, but I will not leave innocent people to die! That makes us no better than them!”
“I know – I know! Fuck!” He groaned as he stood up and grabbed her hand. She could hear the frustration in Harry’s voice. She knew that he would never be able to walk away either because it went against his nature, but she understood his hesitation and frustration. “Alright, let’s go, but don’t let go of my hand – not for a second!”
“I won’t!”
Hermione apparated them across the river. They landed on the bank with a small pop and scurried up the wet snow of the path she had been looking at earlier as they made their way toward the muffled sobs coming from a few streets over. She cast a muffling spell on their feet as they ran, not bothering to vanish their footprints from the slush as her mind panicked at the stupidity of their actions.
What are we doing, what are we doing – FUCK, what are we doing?!
Racing towards an attack in Birmingham had to be the most irresponsible and idiotic thing that they had ever done. They were asking for trouble, asking to be attacked, asking to die. She knew it was careless. She knew that in the greater picture, living was the most important thing that the two of them could do, and yet, the sound that had come from a stranger’s mouth had made her insides turn to lead.
This was what Voldemort’s war sounded like.
This was what he and his followers were doing.
These were the sounds that echoed throughout the night in Birmingham and other cities as the Death Eaters and werewolves attacked innocent, unarmed muggles and tortured them to death or left them maimed in the streets. This was the terror that they bred, the fear that they mongered, and the way they would treat the world if they won. The few accounts that Arthur Weasley had shared with them had been upsetting – but hearing it was so much worse.
It had flicked a switch in her head, one of anger, one of rashness – her desperation to help was foolish and immature, yet she could not stop herself. She had meant what she said to Harry. She would abandon her morality and kill a Death Eater without batting an eye, and she would give every piece of herself to win this war and keep him alive – but she would not leave the muggles alone to die. They had no fight in this war. This wasn’t their burden to bear. Otherwise, what was the point? Why bother to fight against Voldemort in the war if they were willing to allow small acts to happen again and again when they had the chance to stop them?
They skidded around the corner of a dark alley soundlessly, nothing but a shimmer in the night as their disillusionment shielded them from view. They stopped once only briefly to recast their shield charms before taking off again down the icy path into the black. Hermione’s heart was pounding in her chest, but her breath came in even puffs as she sprinted, her fit body working like a well-oiled machine – propelling her forward with a strength she’d never before possessed. As she moved, she realized that the terror gripping her heart was not for her or for Harry, and that for the first time that night, she was not concerned about their wellbeing. She wasn’t afraid that they would be injured. She wasn’t afraid that they would die. Instead, she was concerned for the woman who was desperately calling out into the night for help.
And for the first time ever, she was afraid of herself. Afraid of what she might do when she reached the woman in need – of what she might do to whatever bigoted, vile, worthless piece of trash thought it would be a good idea to attack an innocent muggle in the night.
-x-x-
Harry rounded the corner as fast and as silent as a snitch. His heart was pounding in his chest as adrenaline pumped through his veins and put his senses on high alert. His grip on Hermione’s wand matched the tightness with which he held her hand, prepared to apparate away at a moment’s notice once they assessed the situation. He couldn’t believe what they were doing, yet he couldn’t fathom doing anything else. It wasn’t in his blood to stand by and let an innocent person be murdered or tortured. He couldn’t walk away if there was a chance of him helping – and he knew that Hermione understood that, that she felt the same.
He had briefly tried to make his body leave, tried to do the smart thing and apparate them away once Hermione stored the snakeweed, but something in the scream resonated deep within him and froze him on spot. It sounded so much like the screaming he heard when he closed his eyes, his mother’s screams that haunted his sleep and made him wake up in a cold sweat. The scream he had heard countless times since he was eleven years old. He would never have been able to just walk away; something pulled at his gut and told him to follow. It urged him to go toward the sound despite all reason – as if it was something he had to do.
So as reckless as it was and as dangerous as it may be, he was glad that they were running through the dark back streets of old Birmingham toward the attack. He was glad he was with Hermione, and he knew this was the right thing to do.
As they rounded the next corner, the sounds of voices ahead hit his ears as they closed the distance toward the shadowy figures that lay ahead.
“SIT.”
“Aw c’mon Oscar – what the fuck did you do that for? Now we can’t take her back! The bites don’t work unless they’re done in the lab. We need to go – a bunch of muggles are bound to show up soon with the racket she made–”
“Who cares mate, that’s the whole fucking point. She does the work for us and draws them in so we don’t have to hunt them down. Besides, we’ve been working our asses off – I deserved some fun.”
Harry’s throat tightened as he and Hermione slowed, he could make out four figures on the dark path ahead from the faint moonlight glowing off the snow and a rickety-looking street light that hung off the back of the large building to their left. One of the shadowy figures was very clearly a werewolf, crouched on the ground with its head bowed in a strange sitting position. The golden band on its wrist glinted in the light as its heavy breathing filled the alley and liquid dripped from its jaws. Two of the figures were men, and both of them were standing. One was clutching his arm nervously. He was looking between the ground and the other man who appeared to be re-buckling his belt.
On the ground was the fourth figure, a slender body compared to those that surrounded it, but now silent and unmoving. Harry gritted his teeth as he felt Hermione’s fingernails slice into his skin. There was no doubt in his mind that she had drawn the same conclusion he had and felt the same burning rage. They both moved forward, approaching the figures before them quickly, hidden from view by their disillusionment and the darkness of the night.
Waves of murderous intent rolled off Hermione as the scene before them came into view and Harry’s anger flared to solar levels. Nothing about this was okay, nothing about this would ever be okay, and these two men would never see the light of day again.
“Yeah, but I don’t think that Arlo meant for us to–”
“Arlo don’t give a fuck what we do with them, he just wants us to bring them in. Besides, this way we’ll collect more,” the taller man said as he finished with his belt and straightened his pants. “They don’t last much longer than a month or two anyways, like this beast here. She’ll probably be dead in a fucking week, and I’ll have to get another – wait did you hear–”
The man who had been speaking choked on his words as blood spat from his mouth. A giant gash split across his chest, cutting him open from hip to collarbone and dumping his innards to the ground. He gasped for air, his hand outstretched as he looked to his partner in desperation before falling to his knees and crumpling to the ground. Blood poured from his mouth as he sputtered his dying breath, then his body grew still.
Harry had felt the rage radiate from Hermione as she flawlessly cast her spell without a sound and without a wand. It had hit him like a physical punch as an aura of death encased the alley around them. A chill shuddered down his spine as Hermione flickered into view beside him and her rage became visible. Her hair had half worked itself out from the braid she’d had moments ago, and it blew around her face in the freezing air as she stood like an agent of the afterlife, ready to collect the souls of those before her.
Harry moved quickly at her side. He cast the second sectumsempra of the night, wordlessly slicing his wand across the air and beheading the werewolf that remained crouched by the body on the ground. It had looked up toward them the second that they got within 30 feet, but it had not moved or made any indication of giving away their position. Harry made a mental note of it because the behaviour was abnormal – wondering if the commands that could be directed through the golden bracelets were limited or specific. After all, the werewolf had been instructed to sit and nothing else. Otherwise, it would have attacked them long before.
Now, its head slid clean from its shoulders, thumping loudly to the ground as its body fell backwards into the snow. Deep crimson red poured from its throat and soaked the ground, creating a small puddle that flowed toward the body of the woman that lay on the ground.
“Oh fuck! Oh my – what the!?” The second man’s hand went to his head as shock overtook him.
Blood from his partner had spattered across his chest and face. His mouth was open in confusion as he looked at the desecrated body of his partner. He scrambled for his wand, his eyes darting up just in time to see them. Hermione ran toward him, dragging Harry behind her but refusing to let go of his hand as they had promised. She moved like a manticore about to destroy its next target – but she stopped short of killing him and instead cast a silent petrificus totalus.
The man’s features turned motionless just as she punched him dead in the face with her right hand. A sickening crunch echoed through the alley as his nose shattered. Blood poured from his face as he fell backward stiff as a board. He landed with a thud, his head saved from splitting like a melon by the soft snow that surrounded them. Hermione stood over the immobilized man’s body, panting as her grip on Harry’s hand tense. Her eyes darted around, looking for any other threats before surveying the bloodbath they had created.
Harry quickly cast two wards around them, ensuring that no one would be able to enter the alley without them knowing about it as Hermione laid down a silencing spell. Harry then cast a detection charm, checking for others Hermione’s head turned to face the woman who was lying on the filthy ground.
“Oh my god,” she whispered. “She’s still alive! Harry – tether him to the ground so he can’t go anywhere.”
Hermione dropped his hand, and he let it slide away as he moved toward the immobilized man. He didn’t want to let go, but he knew that they were completely alone in the alley now, and Hermione was going to need both hands to try and save the injured girl before them.
“On it,” Harry used the tethering spell that Hermione had taught him while training with the shield charm to fasten the man to the ground.
He ripped the wand from his stiff hand, not taking the time to be gentle and ignoring the crack that his fingers made as they broke. He stuffed the new wand in his pocket before he cast a second petrificus totalus and set an internal timer.
“He won’t be going anywhere,” Harry said, turning to move back toward her. “We have at least half an hour before it wears off, but I sincerely doubt we’ll have that long before the Police show up – how is she?”
He knelt down beside Hermione, paying no mind to the blood that seeped into his pants and instead biting his tongue at the sight before him. The girl was mangled. A fresh bite on her shoulder oozed streams of blood. Her clothes were ripped and torn, her fingers bloodied from her attempts to fight back, and her pants were half removed.
“Fuck.” The word escaped him as a whisper as bile formed at the back of his throat.
He wished the man Hermione practically chopped in half was still alive so he could rip him to pieces with his bare hands. The girl was maybe in her twenties and looked like she was on her way home from work based on her clothing. She was breathing faintly, her eyes were hooded and glossed over, but she seemed somewhat aware and looked up toward them with anguished curiosity.
I wonder if she saw us cut them down, he thought as he leaned in next to Hermione.
“Yeah – it’s not good,” Hermione said tightly as she began fishing vials out of her purse. She handed him one he recognized, one that he had helped to created – premixed Essence of Dittany with silver powder. A ready-to-go werewolf bite cure. “I’m going to clean the wound, pass me the mixture when I ask for it. Then I’m going to fix her clothes – you’ll need to hold her in place though.”
Harry nodded, because no other words were needed. He had seen first-hand when Hermione was injured just how bad it hurt to have a werewolf wound treated. He shifted around the girl’s body to let Hermione closer to the wound and cast a warming charm on the girl to keep her from freezing.
“Hey, hi – it’s okay. You’re okay now – we’re going to help you, okay? This is going to hurt a little bit, but I need you to stay still,” Hermione said, keeping her voice calm and light as she spoke to the girl. She glanced up at Harry and nodded, then dumped the wound cleaning potion across her neck and shoulder.
A strangled cry sounded from the girl. Her eyes shot wide with panic, and her hand jutted out, grabbing Harry’s arm as she wailed in pain and tears poured from her eyes. Harry tried his best to hold her still as she writhed against the ground and distorted noises left her lips. The bite had gone into her neck, so there was likely damage to her vocal cords.
Her eyes latched to his as she groaned out once more. They were blue, light blue like a clear morning’s sky, and they were filled with agonizing pain. Harry felt a sharp stab of pain through his heart as he took her hand, gripping it tightly.
“It’s okay – it’s okay, just look at me. You’re okay – we’re going to help you, I promise,” the words poured from his mouth even though he knew he might be lying.
He had no idea if they would be able to help this girl. Not a clue if she would be okay or what sort of life she would live if she somehow managed to survive. But right now, that didn’t matter, he would not let her suffer alone, and they would not let her die without first trying to save her. He handed Hermione the mixed potion when her hand outstretched for it, but he never took his eyes away from the girl’s gaze.
“You’re okay,” Harry repeated, forcing his voice to remain calm. “It’s okay, we won’t hurt you. I promise – we’re going to heal you – just focus on me. I know it hurts, just focus on me.”
The girl’s eyes were still wide. Her grip on his hand rivalled that of Hermione’s strength, but her gaze had become clearer, she appeared fully lucid, and she flicked her eyes between them as Hermione worked on her shoulder. She clenched her jaw tight with a sharp hiss of air, ragged deep breaths pulling through her nose as Hermione placed the final touches of the mixture across her skin. He could see a million questions racing through her mind, but she was unable to get them out as she clenched her jaw in pain.
“My name’s Harry,” he said, squeezing her hand in return. He wasn’t sure why he said it, he didn’t know if it helped or made it worse for her to have a name to put to his face, but it took her attention away from Hermione, who was fussing around her wound. “Are you able to tell me your name?”
The girl’s jaw tightened one more before she opened it, taking a battered breath before she tried to make a coherent sound.
“R-Ro-” her voice cut out, and a small whimper left her lips at the pain of trying to speak, but it didn’t stop her. She closed her eyes tight and forced out the mangled sounds. “R- Rossse.”
“Rose?” Harry felt a tight squeeze on his hand as her eyes shot back open. She smiled at him, wincing at the pain in her throat as she hummed out a low yes. “Rose, okay Rose – you’re going to be okay. We’re going to fix you up.”
Her eyes darted down to Hermione, who had shuffled down along her side towards her waist and her grip on Harry’s hand tightened.
“Rose,” Hermione said gently, looking up to the eyes that viewed her warily. It was more than obvious that the girl did not want anyone going near her lower half, and Hermione was careful not to touch her as she spoke calmly. “Can I put your clothes back on? It’s cold out here, and I thought it might make you more comfortable – but I can just cover you with a blanket if you’d prefer. I know it hurts to talk, so let’s just say yes for clothes and no for blanket.”
The girl’s brow creased as she drew a jagged breath and gritted through her word, “B – Bo – Both.”
“Okay, we’ll do both.” Hermione smiled softly and glanced over toward Harry. “Harry, can you fetch a blanket from the purse while I do this – then we’ll cast another warming charm so she’s not cold as ice.”
Harry grabbed Hermione’s purse with one hand, summoning the blanket wordlessly and placing it across her stomach for Hermione to lay out. He was cautious not to look anywhere but at Rose’s face while Hermione shuffled the pants up her legs and over her hips, and he avoided touching her anywhere except for the hand that he was holding. Rose had been manhandled enough for the evening, and he didn’t want to give her any reason to think they were a threat.
“How about some warmth,” he said, hoping to ease her stress a little more and not giving a flying fuck about the laws of using magic in front of muggles.
He drew Hermione’s wand and cast a warming spell as Hermione started to lay the blanket out on top of Rose. He instantly saw a look of relief flood the girl’s face as the warmth surrounded her. Despite the slight panic that remained in her eyes, she was handling the situation surprisingly well. Then again, she could just be in shock, and she probably wasn’t processing this properly.
Harry glanced down at her neck and shoulder as Hermione tucked the blanket in along her side. His heart dropped, and he bit his lip at what he saw. Her wounds weren’t closing – at least not the way that Hermione’s had. He wasn’t expecting to see smooth healed skin, he knew that there would be mangled scarring as there was with all dark magic injuries – but he had at least expected to see the wounds close by now. Instead, blood continued to drip from the deep, unhealed puncture wounds in her shoulder, and the small portion of the skin around her throat that had stitched back together looked red and heated.
“Hermione,” he said nervously, a ball of sickness growing in his stomach as he watched the blood continue to pour. “Why aren’t they closing?”
“I don’t know,” Hermione said, returning her attention to the wounds. She was leaned over and peering down at them. The expression across her face made his heart start to race. “They should have closed by now, but they’re not – I’ve already doused it twice. She’s losing too much blood – let me get a replenisher.”
Harry watched as Hermione reached into her bag, quickly summoning a blood replenishing potion and bringing it to the girl’s lips.
“Rose, I need to you to trust me – I need you to take two big gulps of this okay.” Hermione’s voice was still quiet, but Harry could hear the undertone of anger and panic as Rose opened her mouth and willingly choked down two large gulps of the potion. It was at that moment that Harry was sure Rose must have seen them appear. Shock or not, she must have seen Hermione take out two of her attackers for her to be this trusting. Hermione recapped the bottle and dropped it back into her open purse, then pulled out a small muggle medical kit. “I’m going to try stitching this closed – I don’t know what else to do, Harry.”
“Okay.” Harry nodded and brought his eyes back to the girl who was looking at him gravely. The earlier panic had faded now something else had settled in. “This might sting a bit – Hermione’s going to stitch your wounds closed.”
Rose didn’t even flinch as Hermione threaded the needle through her skin. She pulled the gaping hole in her shoulder closed with each stitch, staining her hands with blood as she tied a quick knot and cut the string. She poured more dittany over the wound, muttering urgently under her breath before she grabbed her wand from Harry and cast a diagnostic spell, then pocketed her wand. The small three-dimensional image floated above Rose, and Harry scanned his eyes over it.
Nothing, he thought as his eyes fell to Hermione’s face again.
“I don’t see anything,” Hermione said desperately, and Harry could see her eyes starting to shimmer as she looked at the medical diagnostic again and again – hoping to find something wrong. Looking to discover the underlying problem so they could fix it. “Harry, there’s nothing. There’s nothing else – it just won’t close – fuck!”
The wound she had stitched shut split open, tearing the skin as fresh blood poured from the opening. The slightly healed flesh on the girl’s neck was bright red now, and it was starting to crack.
“Hermione – it’s coming undone,” Harry breathed as his eyes widened at the large fissures on her neck.
“Harry I – I can’t stop this – there’s nothing I can do.” Her eyes were glassy as she looked at him. He saw her swallow hard as she took a shaky breath. “I’ve read about this, remember we talked about it before? Most muggles don’t survive werewolf attacks. They – they can’t heal from it – the wounds don’t close.”
“There has to be something that we can do!”
Rose shuddered beneath them as the large wounds on her neck reopened further and more blood poured out.
“Fuck! Come on – we can do this, Rose – we can do this!” Hermione summoned the mixture from her open purse again and poured the remaining contents of the bottle on the girl’s neck. She pulled the blanket up and pushed it against the open wounds to help stop the blood flow, but more continued to pour as the Dittany mixture failed and the raw skin split wider. A sob broke from Hermione’s lips as she held the blanket tight. “Harry’s it’s – it’s not working. I – I can’t do anything else.”
Despair ravaged Harry’s body as he looked between the two girls. Rose was gritting her teeth in pain and staring up at Hermione as Hermione fought back tears and continued to fight to keep the wounds on her neck and shoulder closed. Without stopping to think, he grabbed the blood replenishing bottle, brought it to the girl’s lips and managed to get her to drink another gulp. Dropping the now empty bottle back into the open purse on the ground, he groaned and ran his bloodied hand through his hair to push it from his face. Things were falling apart before them, and there was nothing they could do – not even magic seemed to be able to save this girl.
“Maybe we can stitch it closed one more time–”
A tight squeeze on his hand pulled his attention back down to Rose. She was looking at him calmly; silent tears had started to pour from her eyes as her ragged breaths puffed out into the night.
“Harry – there’s hardly any skin there to stitch,” Hermione said quietly as she fought not to fall apart. “It’ll just split open wider - she’ll lose more blood.”
“Rose, I’m sorry,” Harry whispered as he continued to hold her hand, and Hermione pressed the blanket more firmly against her skin. “I – I said you’d be okay, but I – we can’t – we can’t get the wounds to close. I’m so sorry, Rose – I’m so sorry.”
Rose blinked at him, swallowing slowly as she continued to squeeze his hand.
“What happens, Hermione?” Harry asked, fighting to keep the pain out of his voice. “What do we do–”
The sound of a Police siren cut through the air, and both of their heads shot up. It was close enough for them to know that they were in trouble, the muggle police would be there shortly, and they would either need to leave or be caught at the scene of the crime. As it was, the only reason why no one had stumbled upon them yet was because of the warnings that the Birmingham Police had been issuing to the public. No one went out at night alone. In fact, hardly anyone went out at all – and no one was stupid enough to run toward a scream they heard in the middle of the night. Someone must have heard the commotion, though, and while unwilling to go investigate it on their own, they had called the Police.
“Fuck,” Harry cursed as he looked around them and his eyes darted back to the man pinned to the ground and covered in blood. Everything they had been doing with Rose had moved at lightening speed, they still had ample time on the clock until the asshole was unpetrified, but he doubted they had much more than a few minutes before the Police showed up. “We need to leave, but we can’t leave that asshole here. We have to question him so we can stop this.”
“We take him with us – but we can’t leave her here like this either, Harry. I’ve done the reading, I’ve spoken to the healers at St. Mungo’s – I know what will happen,” Hermione said. She shook her head in frustration as an aggravated sigh escaped her lungs. “They’ll try to stitch her up, but the stitches will just keep ripping out. They’ll give her blood and delay her death, but she won’t live. Her heart will give out from the trauma and the illness – her body can’t handle the lycanthropy. She’ll die slowly in the hospital over the course of hours or days while they try to help her. The only thing that can cure a werewolf bite is magic, Harry, and we’ve tried that.”
“Okay, well what did the healers say to do?” Harry asked as he glanced between the two girls again, wracking his brain and trying to work through the problem logically.
“They said to bring them to St. Mungo’s for attempted treatment.”
“That’s out of the question,” Harry groaned. “St. Mungo’s is being watched – she’d be slaughtered if we brought her there.”
“I know.”
“Well, what would they do as attempted treatment?” Harry pressed.
“Everything that I just did.”
Harry’s eyes jerked back to Hermione’s at the sound of her voice. It was quiet and sad, resolved and defeated. A look of hopelessness poured from the depths of her warm brown eyes as she bit her lip, and a single tear fell down her cheek. Her hands were bloodied and trembling from the cold, but she continued to hold the blanket firmly against Rose’s neck. He shook his head, he knew she was right, but his brain wouldn’t accept it.
“What if we take her with us and use more dittany?”
“You know I would, Harry,” Hermione whispered in a low broken tone. “You know I would, but the dittany isn’t working. If she was going to heal, it would have happened already. The wounds would have closed – dittany isn’t a finicky substance that only works on occasion. Her body is rejecting it, that’s why the skin is inflamed around her neck. Muggles can become werewolves, Harry – but it depends entirely on their ability to heal from the wounds. Most die.”
“Try one more bottle – unmixed. We’ll do it like how we healed you,” Harry said as he squeezed Rose’s hand. He wasn’t ready to give up just yet.
“Okay.” She nodded, sniffing from the cold and gesturing her head to the blankets. “You’ll need to hold the blanket.”
Harry used his free hand to hold the blanket in place and listened to the sirens grow louder as Hermione pulled two fresh bottles from her bag.
“Here, hold this.”
Harry took the silver powder and watched Hermione pull back the blanket. The wound now looked exactly the same as it had when they first arrived, debatably worse. It was like they had done absolutely nothing to help and the skin on her neck was red and inflamed.
“This will sting again,” Harry said softly to Rose as Hermione uncorked the bottle and dumped the dittany over her wound. The girl hissed and wriggled under his grasp as green smoke billowed from her neck and shoulder. Harry bit the cork on the bottle of silver he was holding and popped it open, leaning over Rose to dump the powder onto her wound the exact same way he had for Hermione. “Okay, now pour it on again.”
“Right.” Hermione nodded, her eyes focused as she followed Harry’s instructions, reenacting the same technique that he had used on her.
They both held their breath as they watched the skin around the punctures, urging it to close and knit itself back together the way it was supposed to. But nothing happened. The flesh around her wound just grew redder and more angry while Rose whimpered again and squeezed Harry’s hand. The sirens were wailing now, and Harry could almost make out the red and blue lights reflecting in the sky as the Police closed in on their location.
“Shit!” Hermione capped the bottle and dropped it back in her purse in frustration as the skin along Rose’s neck ripped wider. She yanked the blanket back up, pressing it to the open wound to stop the bleeding and make it easier for Rose to breathe. When she spoke again, Harry heard her voice break. “Harry, I don’t know what to do. She’s going to die, Harry.”
Harry stared in disbelief at the alley around him. His legs were freezing in the cold puddle of blood that surrounded Rose, and he could hardly feel his fingers or nose as the subzero temperatures plunged lower with each second that passed by. The sirens echoed in his head as a dark realization dawned on him – there was nothing that they could do, and it had nothing to do with their abilities.
They had planned and trained, collected resources and tools, they had done everything in their power to ensure that they were prepared and capable. But they had done nothing to prepare for the fact that sometimes life didn’t work that way, that sometimes, despite your best efforts and skills, things were out of your control. His eyes fell back to Hermione, who was looking at him in desperation. She was looking to him for another idea, for any suggestion other than what they both already knew to be true.
There was nothing they could do.
“Pl- ee,” Rose rasped as she tugged Harry’s hand and snapped him from his paralyzed state. His eyes flashed down to meet hers, and his heart caught in his throat when he looked at her. Her eyes were sad, her lower lip trembled, but a determination was settled across her face. With the tight pressure Hermione had on her neck, she was able to speak a little better. “K- Kill–”
“What?” Harry whispered, refusing to believe that she had just spoken the word he heard as panic built in his chest.
“Ki- Kill,” Rose choked on her word again but clenched his hand tightly as she fixed him with a fierce stare. She forced her mouth open and drew a shaky breath. “K- Kill – me.”
Harry’s blood ran cold, and the sounds around him started to distort as the words that Rose rasped out felt like a dagger through his heart. She wanted them to kill her. She wanted to die. His hand shook in hers as his eyes widened. Killing a Death Eater, a werewolf, or one of You Know Who’s followers was one thing, but killing an innocent muggle was completely different.
“What?” Hermione breathed, her head turning to look at Rose’s face.
Rose glared at them and tugged Harry’s hand to her chest. Her eyes darted to Hermione’s before she forced herself to speak again. “Pl-Pleeeasee – k – kill – me.”
She looked at them furiously as she struggled to swallow, her eyes darting between them as her chest rose and fell with each laboured breath. Harry could feel the unspoken words; she was all but daring them to ask ‘what’ one more time as she stared them down through narrowed eyes.
“Rose – I,” Hermione’s voice was disbelieving. She was as shook as Harry was.
The spells they practiced to kill or injure the enemy were not quick, nor were they painless. Harry wasn’t about to cut her head off, light her on fire, or make an explosion. He couldn’t kill her peacefully. Nothing he could do would be better than bleeding out in a warm hospital bed.
“Pl- Pleeeeasee,” Rose hissed, the urgency in her voice growing as the sirens rang closer.
They could hear the vehicles arriving a street over. Rose’s eyes darted from his own back to Hermione’s. Then, with a grunted effort, she reached her other hand up to grab at Hermione’s jacket and pulled her down – their faces mere inches apart as she forced the next words out of her mouth.
“Goin – t – die – an-way,” Rose stuttered. “Pl – ple – se. Hurt-ts -m-m ma - make it st-stop.”
Harry’s grip on Rose’s hand slackened when he heard Hermione take a deep breath as she leaned back from Rose. She was stone-faced and still. A silent steam of steady tears was pouring from her eyes, but she looked completely disconnected from her body. And his heart stammered in his chest as he realized what she was going to do.
“Hermione, we can’t.”
“She’s going to die, Harry.”
“Yes – I know – I know, but what can we do? You can’t just chop her head off; that’s hardly a more compassionate death than bleeding out at the hospital.”
“I’m not going to chop her head off, Harry,” Hermione whispered, her voice quiet and calm.
He watched as she pushed a stray lock of dark hair off Rose’s face before she removed her hand from the blanket at her neck. Rose smiled at her and dropped her hold on Hermione’s jacket, her arm falling with a thud to her side.
“Hermione, no,” Harry said, and his heart began racing as understanding dawned on him. Hermione slowly stood from the ground and pulled her wand from her jacket pocket. “No, don’t! You’ll split your soul, Hermione, stop! No!”
“Harry, you don’t seriously believe that do you?” Hermione turned to look at him as more tears fell silently down her face. Loose strands of hair blew across her face as the sound of voices cut through the air and the bark of a dog echoed in the night. They were sheltered by the large building to their left, and Harry knew that the Police would be forced to navigate the narrow street all the way down to the intersection behind them. “That a soul would be damaged from granting someone some peace, so they don’t die a slow and painful death? How is this any different from cutting someone open and disembowelling them? How is this any different from that death?”
Harry stilled, the barking dog was growing closer, and the urgent need to leave was growing. He knew that Hermione was right – they’d just slaughtered two men using dark magic, and they didn’t even give it a second thought. The idea that only three curses in the world were unforgivable was absurd. The two of them were lethal with a diffindo, and bombarda had been responsible for the deaths of many people over the course of history. The only reason why this spell was deemed to be horrific above the others was because its only purpose was to kill, and it had therefore been used favourably by dark wizards. The intent had to be pure, the result was instantaneous, and there was no cure or counter spell that could undo the damage.
It was an unforgivable spell, that was undeniable.
But Harry had long since thought that the name was a bit misleading or that it at least had two meanings. It could be unforgivable in the sense that it was an unjustifiable and reprehensible spell to use – which was the way that people understood it to be, and the way that it was taught in school. But perhaps it was unforgivable because you literally could not take it back, because there was no opportunity for forgiveness or honour if you misused the spell and that the user needed to be sure before he cast it.
His hesitation was entirely based on his desperation to not give up. He didn’t want to kill Rose because then it meant that the fight was over – that they’d lost, and that Tom had claimed yet another life in a war based on hate. He wanted to belief that they could still save her.
He glanced down to the wounds on Rose’s shoulders. They looked fresh and angry. Her skin was red and shredded as blood continued to drain from the holes the banded werewolf had made. They’d used an entire bottle of dittany, and nothing had changed. They could use their entire medical supply, and nothing would change. The girl was going to die, and he knew it, and she was asking them for mercy – she was asking them to spare her from the suffering. Using the killing curse was the only way to grant a quick death, and realistically it was no worse than anything they had done so far. He glanced back to meet Rose’s desperate eyes and felt a heaviness in his heart at the pleading look she gave him.
“I’ll do it,” he said quietly, watching as relief flooded Rose’s face and she pulled in a choked breath. If they were going to do it, he would rather do it. If he could spare Hermione the agony that would certainly hit later on, he would – though he knew she would refuse. In the very least, he could show his full support by offering to cast the spell.
“No, Harry,” she said softly as she looked down at the wand in her hand. “It’s my wand – I’ll do it. You need to stun the guy who’s still alive and detach him from the ground. We’ll bring him with us and question him.”
Harry sighed and closed his eyes against the red and blue that was now flashing in the air. He wanted to argue, he wanted to pry the wand from her fingers so she wouldn’t have to do it, but the logical side of his brain stopped his movements and squashed out the unreasonable ego that chattered within.
My how far I’ve come, he thought as he opened his eyes and looked at Hermione. Fifteen-year-old me would have pitched a fit.
On the other hand, seventeen-year-old Harry understood that using dark magic was dangerous enough when you were using your own wand, but casting it while using someone else’s was something else entirely. He had been lucky so far with his use of Hermione’s wand, they seemed to get along okay, and he was able to use it effectively even if the spells he cast were less powerful than usual. Since Christmas, he had managed to form a sort of understanding with her wand, and he was comfortable using it for most spells.
However, he wasn’t confident that asking it to cast the killing curse for the first time was something that he should do.
“Alright,” Harry breathed as he squeezed Rose’s hand one last time. “I’m sorry, Rose.”
She nodded at him, dropping her hold and letting her hand fall to the ground by her side. Her eyes turned to Hermione once more as she took a slow deep breath and gave a look of appreciation. Harry stepped back from her body and quickly hit the man tethered to the ground with a stunning spell before he released the tether and dragged his body toward Hermione’s feet.
“You can close your eyes if you want, Rose,” Hermione said softly as she raised her wand.
“T – Th – Thank y – you,” Rose grunted out, her face grimacing in pain as the words were forced from her torn throat. She closed her eyes, a small smile dusting over her lips again as she let the air out of her lungs in a sigh of relief.
“Avada Kedavra.”
The words were clear but hushed. They came from Hermione in a whisper, spoken firmly but softly, like she was hushing Rose to sleep with a song.
A bright flash of green shot from the end of Hermione’s wand and hit Rose square in the chest, the movements of her laboured breathing ceased immediately, and her body fell still. The small smile became rigid on her face in the freezing air as the dogs and shouts grew louder behind them. Hermione stood frozen above her, wand outstretched, unmoving as she stared at Rose’s dead form.
“Hermione, we need to go,” Harry said finally, biting down the urge he felt to vomit, or scream, or throw something nearby. Anger had started to pour through him again as he stared at Rose's lifeless body in the bloodied alley. He grabbed the remaining bottles off the ground, tossed them into the open purse, closed it, and stuffed the bag in his jacket. Then he turned back to the stunned man, grabbed the bare skin around his wrist and reached forward for Hermione’s hand.
“Wait,” she said, her voice sounding hollow as she finally moved, mechanically lowering her wand and then darting toward the dead werewolf.
Harry’s heart thumped in his chest as the first ward chimed in his head. The Police were at the end of the alley, and in about twenty seconds they would be visible to the authorities that were racing their way closer. Hermione tapped the creature’s body, and its head with her wand before pocketing it.
What the fuck, Harry thought as he watched her move before him. He was starting to worry that she may have snapped when she killed Rose – they didn’t have time to investigate the werewolves in the middle of a murder scene.
“Hermione," Harry said with desperation in his voice. "Now – they’ll be able to see us in a second and we need–”
“I know! But we’re taking these too.” Hermione lifted the corpse of the werewolf under her arm. Then she grabbed the head by the scruff of its fur and dashed back over to him.
It should have been impossible. The weight of the werewolf should have far exceeded anything that she would be capable of lifting on her own, let alone tucking under her arm like a newspaper and running several steps. He smirked despite his anger, despite his sadness and frustration over the night and grabbed her hand tightly – apparating them away with a pop before the Police crossed his final ward.
Hermione was a genius. Even after the night they had been through, she managed to collect another sample for her studies by using a quick feather-light charm. Not to mention the fact that she just saved Mr. Weasley and the Ministry from a major wizarding exposure problem by removing a decapitated werewolf body, so it wasn’t left out for the muggle Police to find.
The world warped around them and reappeared to a familiar cave by the sea. The salty, cool air bit at his face as he landed. He heard Hermione drop the corpse to the ground with a thud before she started muttering the spells for their wards and detections. He turned to the stunned body of the man he had dropped on the ground, and his jaw clenched tightly. Then he dragged the body into the cave and tethered it to the wall. They wouldn’t be returning to the safety of the North just yet… not until they had the answers they needed, and he would make sure that they got them.
-x-x-
Two Sentence Summary:
Hermione realizes that she will give anything to win this war and that she must put side her qualms with killing the enemy if they want to be successful. They return to Birmingham to gather the snakeweed and hear a scream, so they go to investigate and the following occurs: they find a young muggle woman named Rose who was attacked and raped by two snatchers, they kill one of the men, captured the second and behead the werewolf, they attempt to save Rose but realize her body rejects magic, despite their extended efforts Rose is going to die and she asks them to kill her to spare her the pain, Hermione grants her a mercy death using Avada Kedavra for the first time.
Mr. Weasley,
I hope this message finds you well and quickly. A muggle woman was attacked by a werewolf in Birmingham tonight. Her body is on the south side of the canal in an alley behind what I believe to be the old Stedman Warehouse – muggle Police will be present.
You will be relieved to know that the werewolf corpse is no longer on-site, but I believe that Ministry intervention (by trusted members) with muggle law enforcement is crucial as the remaining bodies are severely mangled, and the scene is a mess.
I apologize for the informality, but given the situation, urgency seemed more imperative. I expect to have more information shortly and will be in touch.
Regards,
Hermione
-x-x-
“Did you contact Mr. Weasley?”
“Yes,” Hermione said as she took a seat on a small rock in front of the unknown man who was currently tethered to the cave wall.
Harry had strung him up while she had cast several wards around the cave to alert them if anyone got within 100 meters of the entrance. She had not bothered taking out the tent or casting their full set of extensive wards as they had no intentions of staying at their current location longer than necessary. Once they were done questioning the man, they would be apparating back to the safety of the North.
“Already sent,” Hermione continued. “I’m ready when you are.”
If Harry noticed the emptiness in her voice as she spoke, he didn’t show it. Instead, he simply nodded before turning back to the man tethered against the cave wall. He cast a quick silencing spell to ensure that the man wouldn’t be able to scream out Voldemort’s name when he removed the stunning charm. The last thing they wanted was for Voldemort himself to show up – they needed this man alive. He was their only opportunity at gathering current information on the werewolf encounters, and they were going to get it.
Hermione sat still, a fresh quill poised over a blank page in her notebook, ready to record even the smallest detail that their captive revealed. Whatever information they got would then be passed along to Mr. Weasley and the remaining members of the Order. They had discussed the werewolf issue at length over the last few months and agreed that they would disclose information regarding the werewolf attacks to Mr. Weasley as they gathered the details and determined how the bonding process worked. They both knew that it would be impossible for them to train, locate and destroy Horcruxes, and work to defeat Voldemort while simultaneously resolving the ever-growing werewolf crisis.
The war was simply too large for them to win on their own. Thinking they could be heroes and defeat Voldemort and his forces alone was a childish notion that would cost innocent people their lives. So, even though they hated the idea of requesting assistance or involving Mr. Weasley for fear of him getting injured, they knew they needed his help. They needed the Order to support them if they truly wanted to stop the abductions of innocent muggles and prevent the werewolf army from growing any larger than it already was. It had taken them a while to come to terms with the decision to involve Mr. Weasley further, but they understood that the situation required aid. So, they had agreed to disclose the details to Mr. Weasley but keep their own involvement and any other information regarding their actions and true mission a secret.
Hermione took a muted breath and closed her eyes, using her practiced meditation and occlumency skills to empty her mind from the events of the alley and the images that seemed to be burned into her brain. It was like the entire ordeal wanted to replay in graphic detail at the forefront of her vision over and over again. She clenched her jaw tight as she forced the images to the back of her mind, silently promising herself that she would properly deal with everything later – but that right now, she had to focus. Harry needed her to pay attention while he questioned the man, and she needed her body and mind to cooperate in order to do it.
She felt a slight tremble in her right hand as a final image of Rose was stored away, and the dark feeling that she had experienced while casting the killing curse cascaded down her arm once more. She gripped her quill more tightly to steady her hand and ignored the tremble, choosing to blame it on the cold as she let out her breath and opened her eyes.
Let’s get this done and over with, she thought as she looked up to Harry.
Hermione watched Harry raise her wand, flicking it quickly as he removed the effects of the stunning charm. The unknown man’s eyes shot wide, and his mouth opened in pain as he tried to reach for his shattered nose but was unable to move his hands up from his sides. She remained quiet, her lips twitching slightly as the man struggled against the invisible chain that held him to the wall for several seconds until his darting eyes locked onto hers, and he stilled. She could feel the air within the cave tighten around her as she clenched her free hand into a tight ball and held his gaze, watching them widen in fear as his chest started to move in quick bursts.
He was terrified.
Frozen on spot like a deer in headlights. The sound of Harry’s worn shoes scuffing against the cave floor caught the man’s attention. His eyes pulled away from hers, locking to Harry’s as he moved closer and stood just to the right in front of Hermione. The man’s eyes widened further, a look of pure shock settling over his face as he took in Harry’s form.
A scoff almost passed her lips as she monitored his expressions. She wondered how they both compared to the images and stories of the ‘Golden Trio’ that Voldemort and his Death Eaters were promoting.
Was Voldemort still telling his followers that they were incompetent children a mere disarming spell could stop? Did they believe that Harry was just ‘lucky’? That he had no real skill? Did they think she was only good at books and logic and was still undeserving of her magic? Did his followers believe that they couldn’t defend themselves?
She had seen the undesirable posters that had been pasted around wizarding communities from their break-in at the Ministry, and they looked nothing like those childhood images anymore.
Harry towered above the seated man, his clothes dirtied and worn, his breath puffing slow and even from his mouth in small clouds of mist against the frigid air as the wind howled outside and tore across the entrance of the cave. The light from the small fire that Harry had conjured highlighted the bloodstains that covered the front of his robes and soaked his jeans. They ran through his long, dishevelled hair and caked his hands. They were both covered in it – in Rose’s blood, and it made them look wild and dangerous in the low flickering light.
The man’s frozen, wide-eyed, and frightened expression said everything.
No, Hermione thought as she watched a small shiver run through the man before her. We don’t match any description you’ve been given. This isn’t what you prepared for, and you should be afraid.
“You’re not going anywhere.” Harry’s voice was low and controlled as he spoke, but Hermione could sense the air of tension around him. She knew that he wanted nothing more than to eviscerate the man before them but was restraining himself in order to get what they needed. “And you’re not saying anything either – not until you understand how this is going to work.”
Harry crouched down before the man, elbows resting gently on his knees as he met him at eye level. His grip on her wand tightened, and Hermione saw the man’s eyes dart to it quickly before returning to Harry’s face.
“My friend and I have some questions for you about the werewolf activity – and we’re pretty confident that you have the answers,” Harry said, and the man’s throat bobbed as he visibly swallowed. “So, I’m going to ask you some questions, and you’re going to answer them. If you don’t – you’ll die. I know you saw what we did in that alley – so you know I’m not lying. If you call You Know Who here, we’ll be gone before he arrives and – you’ll die. I’m sure by now you’ve figured out that he isn’t above killing his own, and he doesn’t take kindly to failures. Nod if you understand.”
The man nodded quickly, his eyes still wide as they darted over to Hermione’s with a mistaken look of pleading. If he thought he would receive a better offer from her, or if he thought that she might be the more compassionate of the two and show him mercy, he was wrong. Dead wrong. He would receive no absolution from her, and she would destroy him just as quickly as Harry would. Seeing the hard look in her eyes, his expression quickly tightened into one of despair, and he brought his eyes back to Harry’s face. Then he swallowed hard and nodded again more slowly.
“Good. First question – where is the main werewolf den, is it in Birmingham?” Harry twitched his finger and removed the silencing spell.
The man’s rapid breathing quickly filled the air and he blinked between the two of them. His eyes dropped to the wand that remained unmoving in Harry’s hand and a confused expression crossed his face before he stiffened completely against the cave wall. He wasn’t expecting them to be capable of wandless and wordless magic, and the realization that Harry had cast a spell wordlessly as easily as breathing seemed to remove any shred of doubt or resistance from his body. This man obviously wasn’t a fanatic who would die for the cause. He was probably just some idiot who joined because it sounded promising, and now he was going to split at the seams and give them everything he had.
“Y-Yes,” the man’s voice came out broken, betraying him and allowing his fear to echo around the cave in the darkness. “I-It’s in Birmingham.”
“Where?” Harry asked, his tone deep and to the point. His expression remained carefully blank, giving nothing away as Hermione’s hand began to move across the blank notebook page, transcribing everything that the man said and how the questions were worded.
“Underground – in the sewers. There was an o-old, abandoned building on the north side that had several basement levels. They d-dug it out – and connected it to the sewers. It’s how we get around mostly unseen.”
“What’s the address of the building?”
“I – I don’t know.” Panic shot through the man’s eyes as he glanced between Hermione and Harry again, petrified that he did not have an answer to the question.
Evidently, he did not doubt that they would kill him if he didn’t give them what they wanted, but Hermione wasn’t surprised that he didn’t know. She suspected that the operation was layered, that information wasn’t freely passed out to everyone and that there may even be multiple dens. One for the werewolves to stay in, one for experimentation, one for holding muggles in waiting, etc… she watched him carefully as he bit his lip and scrunched his face, trying to recall as many details as he could.
“It’s near Fish Pond!” He shouted suddenly, relief flooding his face as he nodded vigorously. “Just off Netherhall Ave, I think – I heard someone mention that a while ago, so it may be near there. We weren’t supposed to know. I’ve only ever gotten to it from the sewers, I-I don’t know anything else on its exact location, but I know it’s heavily warded.”
A warm tingle in Hermione’s pocket caught her attention. The coin for the magazine was burning, which meant that Mr. Weasley had replied. She shifted the notebook on her lap to see the magazine which laid open underneath, hidden from view of the man tethered to the wall, and she saw the scrawled coded words Mr. Weasley had sent. She checked the time internally; it was 1:07 am.
How did Mr. Weasley know that she had messaged him?
A tiny smile tugged at the corner of her lips as she let out a quiet sigh. He charmed the coin, she realized. He must have done exactly what she had done to her own copy of the coin – charmed it to alert him of when the coin was modified. They always changed the cypher right before sending a new message, so she must have woken him up, and he already had her message.
Everyone always underestimated Mr. Weasley, but he truly was a brilliant man. She slid the notebook back down to cover the text and returned her eyes to the man tethered against the wall. He had begun to shiver, the frozen cold easily seeping through his damp blood-soaked clothes. She would decode the message once they were done questioning him, and she had more information to share.
“You’re turning muggles into werewolves, correct?” Harry continued his questioning
“Y-Yes.”
“Who’s Arlo?”
Hermione edged forward on her rock as Harry asked this question. It was the name they had heard in the alley before they intervened.
“He’s the one that’s doing it – he’s the one changing them.”
“How is he doing it? Most muggles die from a werewolf bite.”
“I don’t know,” The man said, flinching as Harry’s hand twitched against her wand, and a small whimper escaped him. “I swear I don’t! I don’t know! I’m not allowed in the lab – I don’t even know where the lab is! I just help bring them in and drop them off at the building. All I know is once they’re changed, they’re bound.”
“How are they bound?” Harry asked, leaning in slightly and fixing the man with an even stare.
“I-I don’t know that either,” the man nearly whined as he trembled with fear. He was coming up short on a lot of the questions and starting to feel like his time was running out. “I just know that they use a golden band – but they’re not conscious when they do it. So no one knows how the process was completed. Just that the muggle you’re paired with stays in wolf form and answers to your commands.”
“So – you just help bring the muggles in,” Harry said flatly, though the caustic undertones were unmistakable.
“Y-Yes.” The man’s eyes shifted to Hermione’s before he nodded and continued. “That’s all – I don’t know anything else. I worked in a pair with Oscar – we would just collect and drop them off. I wasn’t part of processing.”
“Oscar, your friend, he had a werewolf with him – but you didn’t, and I don’t see a band on you.”
“I d-didn’t have one.”
“Why not?”
“The bond didn’t work well on me – I wasn’t able to get one.”
“Why?” Harry pressed, his head tilting to the side as his eyes trailed over the man’s face.
“I don’t know. T-They don’t explain things to us. They tried to give me a band, but they said it didn’t work well with me, that it wasn’t taking, so they removed it. That’s all they said! Then I was just recruited to help collect. Arlo is the one behind everything – and Eric is his only other helper. Everyone else is either a bonded pair or a collector.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“I’m not sure,” the man said nervously, biting his lower lip again and frowning at the dried blood he tasted. “I was recruited about six months ago – but Oscar was there for eight.”
“How many people are bonded pairs?”
“I’m not sure – maybe thirty? Maybe more? I don’t see hardly any of them. They keep it like that on purpose – they don’t want the collectors or the pairs to know the full details of the operation.”
Hermione noted that down and added a star on her page. He had just confirmed what she suspected. Clearly, Arlo, whoever he was, was a smart man. He knew what he was doing. The operation was layered as she had expected. Arlo and Eric functioned with more information than those working for them. This man was just a lackey, just a guy with a single purpose and job, and he wouldn’t be able to give them any useful information on the bonding process or any details of how the organization was constructed.
It was annoyingly clever... and exactly how she would have structured something top secret.
Arlo had created a failsafe, ensuring that they had little information to give if anyone from his bottom tier was captured. It was probably safe to assume that there were not a lot of people outside of Arlo, Eric, and Voldemort that knew the details of the operation. Though, it was clear from his responses so far that this man listened. He paid more attention to his surroundings and to what people said than the others because he knew roughly where the den was. She suspected that most other collectors and bonded pairs didn’t since they only entered it from underground. Though she imagined Arlo had hoped that if anyone did get captured, they would remain loyal to the cause and die instead of giving out information. But that was his mistake. That was the crack in the plan and the problem when your army grew too large.
Not everyone was a fanatic. Different people have different motivations, and this guy was just a low-level thug, likely recruited with the promise of reward or because he was too afraid to say no. While he wouldn’t be able to give them everything they needed, he wasn’t completely useless.
“How many people do you bring in?”
“Maybe three or four a month? It used to be more, around five plus a month – but the muggles started to notice, so it was getting harder to find them alone. Everyone’s counts have dropped.”
“How many collectors are there?”
“I’m not sure. We don’t all know each other, and not all collectors work with a bonded pair – but there has to be at least twenty actively collecting.”
Hermione’s quill stilled over her page as her eyes shot up to look at the man. Her mind registered the sound of her quill cracking between her fingers, but she didn’t feel the splinters that dug through her skin. She knew that Harry had just done the math as well because the cave grew instantly quiet, and his body tensed.
“So – you’ve collected over six hundred muggles?” Harry asked, and the man before them fell silent at his dark and deadly tone.
A slow sobering look passed over the man’s face as his brain registered the number that Harry had stated. His eyes widened, and Hermione realized that he had never even considered running the numbers in his own head before. He had never even thought about the quantity of people that they had taken back to the den. He opened his mouth and closed it, then opened it again only for no sound to come out. Then his lip began to tremble.
“You never even thought about it, did you?” Harry’s voice was so low Hermione could barely hear it; his eyes were livid while he remained motionless. “Why so many?”
“Because they don’t last long,” the words fell like a whisper from the man’s lips as his gaze became transfixed on Harry’s. Hermione could see a gloss form over his eyes as his lip continued to tremble. “I-I never – I never thought about it.”
“Of course you didn’t,” Harry exhaled, forming a puff of mist between them.
He allowed the horrible silence to fill the void as the wind raged more angrily outside. It was making a horrendous whine as it tore across the opening of the cave and causing the flicker of the fire to move more chaotically across the rocky walls. Then the man started to realize that Harry hadn’t asked another question.
“I-I – I’m sorry,” his voice broke again, and his entire body began to shake as Harry rose to his feet. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“Everyone has a choice,” Harry said quietly as he reached his full height and looked down at the man sitting awkwardly on the ground. “You made the wrong one.”
“N-No p-please! Please don’t kill me! I didn’t have a choice. You have to understand – I’m a half-blood! My mother, she’s a muggle, she’s ill – they promised to help her! Please I –”
His voice cut off as Harry flicked a finger, casting a second wordless silencing spell to end the desperate ramble. Hermione could see terror settling across the man’s face as his mouth continued to move, begging for his life in silence. He pulled against the tether that held him and glanced between them desperately, but she tore her eyes away from his miserable form when Harry turned to face her.
“I don’t have any other questions, do you?” Harry asked, arching a brow at her in question as he let out a frustrated breath. He looked as strained as she felt, and they both wanted this night to be over.
“No, I don’t think so,” Hermione cast a silent muffiato so the man would not be able to hear their exchange and leaned over to her right so her mouth movements wouldn’t be seen. It made it much easier for her to ignore the man’s desperate attempts to get their attention and plead his case when she couldn’t see him from the corner of her eye. “It sounds like Arlo and whoever else set this up covered their bases pretty well by using a layered structure for information, probably ranks of some sort. This man won’t be able to answer any of the finer questions I have on how the bonding is completed.”
“That’s what I figured too,” Harry sighed and closed his eyes in annoyance. She knew that he was starting to feel the same nagging exhaustion that had started to creep into her bones. The cold wasn’t helping the situation either. “So – what do we do with him? Do we just wipe his memory and let him go, or do we kill him?”
“I don’t know,” Hermione bit her lip as she ran the scenarios in her head. “If we wipe his memory and let him go, You Know Who will find him, and he’ll be killed regardless. If we kill him, well then, he’s just dead, and we have to do something with the body. They’ll probably find him eventually, given what happened in the alley, and they will assume that information was gathered. We don’t want him turning up dead too quickly – or they may move locations or modify their plans before we can do anything with what we do know.”
“That’s exactly what I was worried about.” Harry nodded as he opened his eyes again and looked at her worriedly. “We need time to get this information to Mr. Weasley – see if there is something that we can do about the known den. I think we’re going to have to release him with his memories of tonight erased, so it looks like he was a coward and just ran away from the scene.”
“Right.” Hermione nodded slowly. “Then they will kill him for being a traitor, but it buys us more time and lessens the chances of them making any changes. He wouldn’t be the first of the followers to run away in a fight. If we’re lucky, Mr. Weasley can change the reports on the scene to make the whole thing look like a random accident, instead of it being a blatant attack.”
“We should give the werewolf corpse to Mr. Weasley,” Harry agreed, running his hand through his hair absently as he thought through their next steps. “Make it look like someone decent in the Ministry just happened to get to the alley before the muggle Police and took away the body. We can have them report that this guy apparated away – then it gives us time to do something about this, to disassemble their operation.”
“We’ll need to arrange a drop point,” Hermione said as she tapped the book in front of her.
“Did Mr. Weasley get back to you?”
“Yes – actually, he’s quite brilliant. He must have charmed the coin to alert him of when I changed it because he responded extremely quickly after I sent the message. I haven’t decoded it or read it yet – figured it would be better to have some information to send him, and I wanted to get this over with.”
“He’s far more clever than people give him credit for,” Harry muttered as a tiny smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, though it didn’t reach his tired eyes.
“I know,” Hermione breathed, her air misting thickly before her. “Harry – it’s possible that this man knows more than he thinks he does. I’m not skilled enough at legilimency to attempt it – if I screwed it up, it could ruin his mind, and we wouldn’t be able to release him as planned. But, well, maybe he saw something. A skilled legilimens would be able to sift through his brain and see if any other information is useful.”
“Does the Order have anyone skilled in legilimens now that Snape is gone?”
“I’m not sure,” Hermine said slowly, wracking her brain for any names of the Order members who may be able to help. “But we could ask. Either way, we need to wipe his memory up to the point that we showed up in the alley – we don’t want anyone seeing what happened or knowing we were there.”
“Okay,” Harry nodded, glancing down at her broken quill before catching her eye again. “Are you okay to do the charm? I can start decoding the journal.”
“Yeah, I can do it – here.” Hermione handed Harry her notebook and journal along with the coin, standing up from the rock and biting back the stiff soreness from her legs as she stood.
They needed to get into the warmth of their tent – warming charms just were not cutting it in the cave. She took her wand back from him and cast another charm even though it would do little to help against the bitter night air. Walking around Harry, she approached the guy who was tethered to the wall.
He was crying silently now, tears rolling down his face as he watched her move to kneel in front of him. She had no idea what her expression looked like – if it matched the death she was feeling internally – but clearly, it did nothing to ease the man’s despair as she saw a silent sob escape him, and he closed his eyes tightly. She raised her wand to cast obliviate, then paused when a thought struck her and instead removed the muffiato so he could hear her.
“I have two questions for you,” she said, her voice colder than the air as the man’s eyes flashed wide. He met her gaze desperately, searching her face for hope as he waited for her to continue. “The same terms apply here – once I remove the silencing spell, if you do anything idiotic, I will kill you.”
The man nodded, his eyes never leaving hers as he waited for her to remove the charm. She did so without even raising an eyebrow, and his ragged breath filled the cave once more.
“We took a wand from you in the alley – what is it?”
“U-Unicorn hair,” he said roughly. His voice was even more hoarse than before, and Hermione realized that he had been silently screaming at them while they spoke, and now, he grimaced as he forced the words out in pain. “Ten and a half inches, hazelwood.”
“What’s your name?”
“Evan,” he said slowly, blinking before he took a shuddered breath. “Are you going to kill me?”
“Not today,” Hermione said quietly, her jaw clenching as she mulled over what to say. He wouldn’t remember anything that had happened beyond the alley – the information simply wouldn’t exist, so it truly didn’t matter what she did now. Though, she found herself feeling torn. She wanted to scream at him, punch him again, lecture him, berate him, hate him – but she knew it would be wasted time and effort. “You won’t remember anything that happened here. You’ll be released at some point to return to your friends.”
“N-No,” he stuttered, his eyes widening as her words registered in his brain. “They’ll kill me! They’ll kill me for leaving the alley – they’ll kill me for giving up information.”
Hermione was unable to stop her eyebrow from arching at him as he spoke. She found it odd that he seemed to think that might matter – that she might care. She and Harry were perfectly well aware that he would be killed by Voldemort’s followers when they finally found him – but that wouldn’t impact their decision to let him go. She was briefly struck by the thought that perhaps she was becoming harder and colder than she realized.
“Yes,” she said slowly, letting out a cold breath of air. “I believe you’re right.”
“Y-You can’t do that – please, please! I know what I was doing was wrong, but I had no choice, I–”
“There aren’t a whole lot of options for you, Evan,” Hermione cut him off as she raised her wand to his temple and continued to hold his terrified gaze. She wasn’t sure why she was engaging with him so much given that it was pointless, but the emotion she had bottled up earlier was starting to seep out, and she couldn’t stop herself. “We can’t keep you here. You’re a threat to our safety, no one can know what happened here, and if I’m being blunt – I don’t care what happens to you, Evan. You made your bed, and now you get to lay in it. Did you care about Rose?”
“W-Who’s Rose?”
“Exactly.” Hermione’s word cut through the cave and brought down a thick pressure in the cold air.
She could feel her pulse begin to quicken as her hand twitched on her wand. Her temper was rising, she was exhausted, and the stress from the day was finally getting the better of her. It took all of her remaining willpower not to hex the man before her or beat the ever-living crap out of him with her bare hands. She felt like her skin was cracking – burning under the anger that was starting to course through her body. It threatened to break her control as her eyes narrowed at Evan and her face contorted into one of disgust.
“Rose is the woman you were trying to collect,” she practically snarled at the man before her, her eyes flashing as she poked the end of her wand into his temple. “Rose is the woman you let your friend rape, and his werewolf bite – a werewolf that used to be a muggle no less. Rose was a person, a human fucking being that you killed, simply because she was a muggle – because she wasn’t magical! You said you’re a half-blood – well, that makes you even more fucking disgusting. At least with a pureblood, I can follow the logic of how they end up the way they do – brainwashed and ignorant, raised on archaic, bigoted traditions that are illogical and baseless.
“But you,” Hermione breathed, her voice getting lower as her anger grew. “You’re a special kind of shameful – deplorable, a complete waste of air. How would you have felt if your mother had been targeted? If she was Rose? I know you said they offered to help you, but magic can’t fix everything, Evan. If you’d paid attention in school, you might have learned that. And if you’d spent any time using that organ between your ears, you would know that’s how You Know Who works – he offers you something you need to get you to join his side. Then, he uses you and throws you away. You could have gone into hiding, you could have stood up for what was right, you could have gone to someone fighting on the opposite side for help – but you didn’t – you chose the easiest fucking option because you’re a coward.”
Hermione was breathing heavily as her wand poked furiously into Evan’s temple. He’d turned his head away from her to try and relieve some of the pressure, but his eyes were still fixed on hers, and he stared unblinkingly as his breath came in pants. She could feel Harry’s eyes on the back of her neck. He was watching her carefully to make sure that she didn’t blow a fuse and just execute Evan on spot – but he didn’t step in to stop her from berating the man either.
“This is a waste of my time – you won’t remember this,” Hermione murmured angrily, feeling the blood rushing through her veins as her grip tightened on her wand. She forced herself to inhale as she readied herself to cast the spell. “But – I will make sure that you never forget her name. I’ll burn it into your mind. I’m going to engrave it into your soul – you’ll never forget what you did, what she looked like as she bled out on the ground of a dirty alleyway and cried for help. That, Evan, is one thing I promise you will never forget.”
Hermione cast the obliviate just as the tremble that ran through Evan’s body reached his legs. His eyes went dull before they drooped closed, and she worked on modifying his memories. True to her word, she removed everything that had happened after the alley. She took out all of the memories of Harry and her – the look on her face while she punched him square in the nose, Harry’s dark shadow as he appeared in the alley, the cave, the questions – everything. Everything except the small echo of Rose’s name in his voice. She left that single word intact, doing everything that she could to highlight the name in his memory before she stunned him and wrapped him in a binding chain.
“Are you okay?”
Hermione hadn’t realized that she had remained motionless in front of Evan after casting her spells. Her mind had stalled as a wave of conflicting emotions consumed her. Her wand was still outstretched and pointed at Evan, but the sound of Harry’s voice next to her ear shook her from her frozen state.
He was kneeled next to her; the small warmth from his body radiating into her arm as he reached forward to lower her wand hand. She had been sitting there consumed with anger, disgust, and loathsome understanding as she stared at the man before her. She hated that she could understand this man. That she knew why he did what he did and how easy it would have been for Voldemort to manipulate him. A microscopic part of her wondered if she should feel bad for letting him go to his death. He wasn’t a cult follower of the purebloods, just a man looking to save the life of his sick mother.
It made her want to vomit when she thought about how many people Voldemort and other power-hungry people had manipulated throughout the years. They preyed on the weak. They stalked the innocent and desperate, offering them what they needed without ever truly intending to pay up. She hated that war wasn’t easy – it wasn’t clean cut, there weren’t just bad guys and good guys. The lines were blurred, and the situation was as grey as the stone statues that littered the Hogwarts hallways.
“I’m fine,” Hermione said slowly, allowing Harry to take away her wand before she swallowed and turned to face him. “Did you decode the message?”
-x-x-
Hermione,
I think we are well past the point of requiring formalities – please, call me Arthur and never worry about sending me information quickly or as you have it. I’ve charmed my coin to alert me of your communications, so I will always be available when and as you need me.
I dispatched a trusted member of the Order to the scene, I am waiting on a full report, but this individual has indicated that they took care of the muggle Police and have control of the crime scene. Please let me know what new information you have when you can as we are currently delaying releasing any information to the Ministry while we develop a plan.
While I am still awaiting further details, it is my understanding that the scene was… a bit of a bloodbath. I trust that the two of you are okay, though I suspect you will not clarify why you knew about the incident. However, I must ask – where is the werewolf corpse?
Regards,
Arthur
-x-x-
Arthur,
Yes, we are well. Please know that we will provide any information to you that we can as we get it – though we may not always be able to disclose how we gathered the information or why we know it. We hope you can trust us in these situations and know that we will only communicate information with integrity when we are confident in our findings. It pains me to ask you for your assistance on this issue, but we are aware that it is not something that we can address alone and that we need to work together to win this war. Please know that it means so much to us that you continually offer your support.
As you are aware, there have been muggle disappearances in the Birmingham area. It started with the homeless and other people who would likely go unnoticed – though, I’m afraid now these abductions have become more brazen, and the muggle Police have been publicly issuing warnings for citizens to stay indoors at night. Harry and I have confirmed that these abductions are linked to an underground (literally) werewolf den in Birmingham that is being led by someone named Arlo with involvement from a man named Eric.
They are capturing muggles and infecting them with lycanthropy to turn them into werewolves to grow an army for You Know Who. We suspect that he and his followers are preparing for a large move in the war, which may result in an outright battle. Since wizarding blood is so valuable to You Know Who and the werewolves are such strong allies, they have concocted this operation to solve two problems:
At this time, I am unsure how the process works, but this man Arlo seems to be using bonding magic that involves a golden band to complete the process. The muggle werewolves are then bonded to a wizard who seems to be able to control them with simple commands. Once I have the bonding mechanism solved, I will give you more details but regardless of how or why – the important thing is that this is happening now, and we must do something. We cannot stand by and allow You Know Who to take the lives of innocent muggles while we claim to oppose him in the war and feign righteousness.
Otherwise, we are no better than he – and this, I’m afraid, is where we need your help.
We have confirmed that the werewolves are operating out of a den near Fish Pond, off Netherhall Ave and that they use the underground muggle sewer system to get around. We need to find a way to infiltrate this space and put a stop to this operation. We also need to find a way to more effectively warn the muggles to stay indoors at night until this has been completed.
In the meantime – we have a man with us who was part of the operation. We have questioned him, but we believe he may have more information available if questioned under legilimency. Unfortunately, I do not possess this skill, so I am unable to do it without risking damaging the man’s mind. Does the Order have anyone with this skill? And if so, would you be willing to take this man briefly into custody for further questioning before he is released?
If yes, please note that it is imperative that you obliviate the man after questioning and then release him. As I am sure you will understand and appreciate, we need to avoid suspicion until the den in Birmingham can be addressed in full. Otherwise, the operation may pack up and move, and we will be left with a cold trail
To answer your question… I currently have the werewolf corpse. Similar to the man who is with us, I need to turn it over to you, and we need the report filed at the Ministry to officially address and state the following details:
Please let me know your thoughts and if you are able to accept the werewolf corpse and the man. If so, we need to arrange a drop location.
Thank you,
Hermione
-x-x-
Hermione,
I understand and agree with your notes – I will work with Kingsley and our Order resources to properly document the crime scene with the muggle Police and at the Ministry. I will ensure that the findings are listed appropriately and that no connection is made between our involvement and any investigation into the muggle disappearances.
Rest assured that I will take care of this – you do not need to worry. I fully appreciate the subtlety of discrete political warfare and information management, and I am pleased that you are already thinking about it. I will protect this information, and it will be fully taken care of.
As it so happens, we do still have some skill with legilimency in our group – though, it is limited. We can take the man for additional questioning and will release him once his memory has been wiped. I can take the werewolf corpse as well – which I will have the appropriate people turn over to the Ministry evidence room to help avoid any suspicions.
I know that it is late, and you two are probably tired – I’m not sure that I want to imagine what you have been through tonight – but we will need to make a drop very soon if we are going to make this work and cover our tracks in order to set ourselves up for success to stop this abominable operation. So I will make contact with a few resources in order to get things started based on what you’ve just told me.
Are you able to meet at 2:47 am?
I will confirm the location with you shortly, but the format will be that of a standard drop (typical Order procedure, I never thought to tell you two these things in the past) which involves showing up at the designated area at the exact designated time and dropping the goods before apparating away immediately. You should not be present at the location for more than a second, and live drops should be stunned and bound.
Let me know if this works. I’ll send you a location.
Arthur
-x-x-
“Did you get the band off?” Harry asked as he approached behind Hermione.
They had agreed to Arthur’s drop time and then immediately got to work and split their tasks. Harry had taken over the journal communications with Arthur, coordinating the drop location, passing along additional information on the werewolf activities and informing Arthur of the victim’s name. Hermione worked expertly to examine the werewolf’s body to look for any clues or lingering magic. She jotted notes down in her book, knowing that they had limited time before they needed to apparate to the drop location, then finally began removing the golden band. She had just stored it securely in her chest when Harry returned to her.
“Just finished – was easier the second time. I think having two might help me finally figure out how they work,” Hermione said, standing from the ground and carefully returning the chest into her open purse. “Is he secured and ready to go?”
“Yeah, freshly stunned and bound – per Arthur’s directions,” Harry said as he glanced over his shoulder at the man still tethered to the cave wall.
“How long do we have?”
“Five minutes.”
“Okay, well, let’s feather-light this werewolf again and get ready.”
-x-x-
Arthur Weasley paced nervously in his basement workshop.
This was certainly not how he thought he would be spending his Sunday night. He’d gone to bed early, exhausted from the terrible week and weekend before. He had been fully ready to drift off into nothingness and let sleep take him – but when the coin he kept on him at all times began to burn against the skin of his ankle, he woke quickly and slid out of bed. He still had not told Mrs. Weasley about the magazine or his communication with Harry and Hermione, so he was thankful that his wife was a deep sleeper. After he snuck down to the basement, he decoded Hermione’s message and then contacted Shacklebolt immediately after he read it.
They were lucky.
Shacklebolt managed to get a trusted Order member to the crime scene before any other tainted members arrived. He had yet to receive a full report of the incident, but the initial update had been startling. Apparently, the alley was drenched in blood and looked very much like something out of a muggle horror movie.
After that, things moved rapidly. Each task flashed by like lightning. He switched between his communication with Harry and Shacklebolt while coordinating the drop area and arranging for everyone to meet him at one of their last remaining safe houses so the package could be questioned. It had been ages since they had completed any sort of interrogation. Snape was typically the one to do the questioning on their behalf, so Arthur truly had no idea what to expect this time around. Though, Shacklebolt had assured him that his new legilimens man would be ‘effective’.
He ran a hand over his tired face and let out a sigh.
He hadn’t been able to sneak back upstairs to change for fear of waking Molly and had instead transfigured his sleeping outfit into traditional robes, donning the old moth-eaten jacket that hung in his workshop for warmth. He would be making the drop tonight, and he would be doing it alone. He hadn’t trusted anyone else with the location information, and Shacklebolt had agreed, stating that he would meet him at the safehouse at 2:48am. So, in three minutes, he would be apparating from the Burrow to a tiny snow-covered hill on the east coast just outside of Hemsby to collect the two bodies. He would then take them to the safehouse, meet with Shacklebolt and the new legilimens, and assist with the questioning. It was going to be a long night.
He drummed his fingers nervously on the back of his chair, urging his breath and racing thoughts to calm down. For the first time in months, he might catch a glimpse of Harry and Hermione. It would only be for a fraction of a second, and it would only happen if they apparated directly in front of him, but it made him anxious with anticipation. He had no idea what to expect. Everything leading up to this moment had been so hectic that he hadn’t had a moment to think, and now his mind was flooding with questions.
How did the two of them manage to take a man captive for questioning? How had they gotten him to talk? Better yet, how on earth had they managed to bring a werewolf corpse with them while apparating? How was the werewolf killed?
He didn’t know if there had been an internal struggle on Voldemort’s side and if the man they had with them was a potential defect or if they themselves had somehow managed to injure the creature. Werewolves were not exactly the easiest of beasts to dispatch, and he found himself frowning as he pondered the different options. He hadn’t asked yet via the journal. They had been too focused on arranging the drop point and exchanging critical information that he would need to help shut this disgusting operation down. But if Arthur was being honest – he didn’t want to ask.
He was afraid of the answer, and afraid of what he might learn.
Seeing Ginny at Christmas – her determination, what she was willing to sacrifice to fight in the war and how far she was willing to go shook him. He knew that Harry and Hermione were just as tenacious if not more so, and he knew the answers to his questions might not be easy to digest. He wasn’t naïve. He knew that war changed people; he just hoped that it hadn’t changed them too much.
Arthur eyed the clock on his workshop wall; per the Order’s standard drop procedure, he was to arrive about five seconds before them and be prepared to pick up the dropped packages immediately. Counting down from ten, he closed his eyes and then apparated away perfectly in sync with his internal timer.
The cold air bit at his face the second he landed on the snow-covered hill. It attacked his warming charm and ate through his thin old coat. But he ignored it completely, casting a rapid detection spell to ensure that no one else was around before he narrowed his eyes and tried to make out any shapes in the darkness. If not for the small amount of moonlight reflecting off the snow, he wouldn’t be able to see anything, but the faint glow highlighted the hilltop and his eyes were already well adjusted from standing in his dark workshop while he coordinated their plans.
Exactly five seconds after his arrival, he heard the unmistakably pop of an apparition as a large collection of figures appeared before him, and he felt his heart stuttered in his chest. It didn’t matter that they were only visible for less than a second. It didn’t matter that it was dark and freezing and that his mind was exhausted.
He would never be able to un-see the split-second image of Harry and Hermione appearing covered in blood against the crisp white snowy backdrop.
They had landed together on the hilltop; Harry holding a man with a bashed and bloodied face by the wrist, his opposite hand gripping the back of Hermione’s neck as she held the severed head of a werewolf in her left hand and the body of it in her right. Had he blinked, he would have missed them, for they dropped the bodies and disapparated exactly in line with the procedure he had given.
But he hadn’t blinked.
He saw the blood that stained their clothes. He saw the worn looks on their hard faces, Harry’s long hair that was caked in blood, Hermione’s stained hands and powerful stance – and the unforgiving harshness that radiated from their eyes.
He swallowed hard in the cold as he stared at the bodies before him. It seemed that the questions which had addled his mind had just been answered… all in less than a second.
Along with all future Snape POV chapters, this chapter is dedicated to FluffyPandaShip – who is a beacon of light in my life. You are a wonderful human being, and you bring more joy to my world than you can imagine. I had not originally considered writing from Snape’s POV in this story. Not because I didn’t want to (far from it) but because initially, this story was going to be so much smaller than it is now. That, however, has changed – and since this story has grown, I’ve become interested in rounding it out and giving a more realistic depiction of the war from different perspectives. Your suggestion to include Snape’s POV inspired me and helped me to develop and thicken the plot just a little bit more. And, hopefully, it will give more substance to some of the other minor characters.
It seems that this story will continue to grow and expand until it is told exactly the way I want it to be.
-x-x-
Warnings:
This chapter contains: torture, murder, and Voldemort being a generally bad guy.
Nothing was written in excess or for shock value, but some may find this chapter difficult and/or upsetting to read. As such, I have placed a two-sentence summary at the bottom of the chapter so that you can skip it if you wish.
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September 1997
Hogwarts
For the first time in possibly the entire history of Hogwarts, the Great Hall was silent during dinner.
Though, it did absolutely nothing to calm the tension felt by every single person sitting there. If anything, the silence made things worse. Each clink of glass, each movement of a plate, and every scratch of a knife echoed out across the Hall as students tried to keep their heads down while they ate and avoided looking anywhere near the head table. Everyone, that is, except the exceptionally irritating and problematic redhead who continued to glare directly at him. He was fairly confident that she had not taken a single bite of her meal the whole evening.
How could she have?
She was sitting rigid as a board, clenching her fork so tightly it had started to bend and dig into the table. The daggers she glared at him were matched only by that idiot boy, Longbottom. He would take a bite of his food, shoot a glare through narrowed eyes at the head table, and then repeat the process. The two of them had already caused more trouble than he needed – organizing a break-in to his office and trying to steal the sword of Gryffindor, a fake sword, mind you, but no one else knew that. They had almost gotten it too. If he hadn’t caught them on the staircase on their way out, they would have managed to pull it off. If this was any indication of how the remainder of the school year would go, Snape was already out of patience for it.
It wasn’t like he didn’t understand the hatred, why it was directed at him, and why the students were terrified to make a peep while they ate. It was only the third week of school, and the Carrows had already set a record for the greatest number of detentions ever assigned. Snape wouldn’t have cared, if he was being honest, the students were little terrors, and more of them deserved detention, but the problem was the type of detentions that the Carrows prescribed.
Their cruel, sadistic nature was creative even by Death Eater standards. So, if his life wasn’t difficult enough as it was with keeping tabs on Potter, Granger, and the redheaded ape – he now had to manage the Carrows’s brutality and keep them from killing, maiming, or mentally debilitating the students.
So far, he had been able to keep things under control, prevent any major injuries, and even reassign several detentions to Hagrid, who he trusted to keep the students safe. Worst case, he knew that he would be able to Imperius the Carrows and then wipe their memories to prevent any devastating detentions or life-threatening situations, but he was hoping to avoid that for as long as possible. It would be risky, and it would leave evidence that would lead to suspicion. Even the students would begin to question him if he didn’t allow the Carrows to be appalling to some degree – it was all about balance.
Right now, he expected that the glares being sent by the two championing Gryffindors had something to do with that young blond boy getting the word ‘dunce’ carved into the back of his hand. The Carrows had apparently found a collection of unique quills, the ones that Umbridge had favoured in fifth year, and they had taken a liking to them. But those were the least of his concerns right now. The cuts would heal, and there would be no other lingering damage or dark magic consequences. So, while it was painful, the students would just have to grit their teeth and bear it.
Snape shot a glare to the Gryffindor table, and he was pleased to see that everyone there who had been sneaking glances at him all averted their eyes back to their plates. Everyone but the redhead. If she wasn’t careful, she was going to get herself killed, and there would be nothing that he could do to stop it. While he didn’t relish the idea of killing students or letting them die, he had always known it would become a very real possibility at some point once the war reached its breaking point. Everything that Dumbledore had planned was coming to a head, and now he was left alone dealing with the mess, living daily with the consequences of the mistake he made seventeen years ago.
A mistake he would regret every second of every day for the rest of his miserable life until he inevitably died in this war.
He had always known that things would end one of three ways: prison, death, or living out his sad wretched life alone. But, as events continued and time went on, the third option seemed less plausible. He had done too much, seen too much, and was guilty of far too many crimes to ever have his name cleared and be allowed to live a life outside of this war.
After killing Dumbledore, the first option faded too. People wanted his head. They wanted him to pay for what he did, and they would never allow him to rot away in Azkaban. This left him with only one final possibility, and in a strange way, he was looking forward to it. He was looking forward to dying; it would be nice to get some peace and quiet for once.
Besides, it wasn’t like he deserved to live out the remainder of his life after what he had done. It would be for the best when his clock ran out. The only unknown now was how and when it would happen. His only final wish was that he got to see the Dark Lord fall before he took his last breath. That was the only thing he asked for.
He turned his eyes back to his plate, deciding to ignore the Weasley girl and instead debate whether or not he should eat the potatoes that were growing cold. Nothing looked appealing. His appetite was barely existent from the stress, and he hardly trusted eating anything served to him anymore. If not for the magical properties of Hogwarts binding the House-elves so that they physically could not poison him, they would have already done it. Even still, it was clear from the food they sent him that they were displeased.
He had once received a slice of cake with the word ‘traitor’ spelled out in red icing on top. Undoubtably it was from Dobby – the elf was nothing if not bold and loyal.
Seems fitting, he thought as he rolled his eyes internally but kept his face passive and unreadable to the room. Just another way to atone for my sins – starvation.
He placed his fork back on the table, deciding it was best not to chance it. He would just make himself something to eat when he returned to the Headmaster’s quarters – nothing like plain toast for dinner for the third night in a row.
When the meal finally ended, and the students began returning to their house dormitories, Snape swiftly stood, sidestepping McGonagall as he went. She was staring at him with a mixture of emotions – sadness, disappointment, and anger. It did little to improve his mood. That was probably the number one item on his list out of everything he hated about returning to Hogwarts after killing Dumbledore – the betrayed looks that his fellow staff gave him. It wasn’t like they were ever close. Hell, he wasn’t even friendly with most of them. He had spent the last seventeen years working two jobs, following Dumbledore’s orders, and playing a role. He had never had the time or the opportunity to make friends or build a life. That was his role, that was his sacrifice, and he accepted it.
But their looks of disgust and their murmurs about his treachery felt like another weight added to the ever-growing bundle he carried on his shoulders.
Out of all the professors, he regretted lying to McGonagall most.
She had always stood by him in the past and treated him kindly despite his unpleasant nature and terrible qualities. He knew he wasn’t a good person, he had never been, but he wasn’t quite as bad as they all believed him to be either. Though, he supposed it was a testament to his performance as a double agent that they all loathed him now. At the very least, his mission had been successful so far, even if it was exhausting and difficult at times.
He feared that it would become more and more difficult to maintain the role that Dumbledore had cast him in if his co-workers continued to voice their displeasure and visibly rebel against him and the Carrows. Their incessant need to help was becoming his biggest concern, and it added more pressure to his already exceedingly difficult job. If they weren’t careful, they too would end up with their heads on the chopping block, right there next to the Weasley girl’s. He may be the Dark Lord’s right-hand man, but he could only do so much.
He barged through the door to the Headmaster’s office and sealed it behind him. He hated this room. He hated every single thing about this damned office – especially the portraits that constantly watched and critiqued everything. They were a bunch of nosey old bags with nothing better to do than listen in and give their two cents when it wasn’t required or requested. Thank Merlin they were bound to Hogwarts and the acting Headmaster so they couldn’t betray the conversations that happened in this room. Though typically, it was just the one portrait that bothered him most…
“Severus, we need to discuss something,” Dumbledore’s familiar voice called out to him from the wall on the right of his oversized desk.
Ahh yes, Snape thought as he approached the desk and draped his frock coat over the chair. He could feel his sarcasm igniting in his core as he turned to look at the portrait. There he is – my most favourite portrait of all.
“What?” Snape asked in a clipped tone. He knew this was part of the job but dealing with Dumbledore’s constant requests or need to chat, even in death, was just another reminder of his life’s mistakes.
“The Weasley boy,” Dumbledore supplied. “He’s left as I expected.”
“And what do you want me to do about that?” Snape asked as he leaned back against the desk and arched an eyebrow. His eyes flashed to the right, unsurprised to see Phineas standing proudly in his frame next to Dumbledore’s. He had clearly gathered some new information on the trio and had been speaking to Dumbledore while he was out of the office. “Go fetch him and return him to his friends? Should I tie his shoelaces for him, too? Perhaps give the three of them an instruction manual, or should I just resolve this war entirely by myself?”
“Severus, there’s no need to be snide,” Dumbledore said calmly, which only irritated Snape more. “You know they need to do this part on their own. I had anticipated Ron leaving; it just seems that Harry and Hermione took it a little differently than I thought they would.”
“Well, what did you expect them to do? Chase after him? The boy’s an idiot, even more so than Potter – and that’s saying something. Do they need him to finish the task?” Snape asked as his frustration continued to grow. It annoyed him to no end that Dumbledore had still not revealed what the task was that they were working on. The only thing he did know was that it was critical to defeating the Dark Lord. However, knowing that piece of information only made it harder to sleep, because trusting a bunch of children on a task that allegedly would tip the war in their favour was ridiculous.
Brilliant strategy, Dumbledore, he thought in annoyance as his temper started to flare. Just brilliant.
“Well,” Dumbledore paused for a moment and seemed to consider the situation. “Not exactly, though they are stronger together than apart. I suppose we will just have to wait and see what Ron does – though I expect he will return in time.”
“Great,” Snape said as he pushed off the desk and made for the door in the corner of the office that led to his own private living quarters.
It was the only place he could truly be alone, the only place that was safe for him to speak his thoughts out loud or sleep without anyone overhearing or watching his motions. It was one of the few things about being a Headmaster that he actually enjoyed, the small security of his own quarters to retreat to after long days and nights spent playing two people. Plain toast was calling his name, and he currently did not have the capacity to sit and listen to Dumbledore speak as he pretended to be helpful but really told him nothing at all.
“Now that we have that settled,” Snape sneered as he reached for the door.
“Severus, wait,” Dumbledore called. “We need to discuss how to get the sword of Gryffindor to them–”
“And what exactly would you like to discuss about that?” Snape practically spat through his teeth as he turned back to the annoying portrait. He was only a foot or two away from peace and quiet, and he desperately wanted to get some sleep before he was summoned to Malfoy Manor again. He had been summoned twice this past week, and each time, he hadn’t returned to the school until after 4 am. He did not have the energy to deal with this right now. “We don’t know where they are, which makes it a bit difficult to deliver a sword, and I’d like to remind you that you were the one who refused to tell the boy anything useful – or Granger. She at least has some brain cells. You could have given her information. Maybe told her that Phineas wasn’t a spy for the Dark Lord – that he could be a point of contact between you. They’ve been incredibly careful, and they never give away their location while he is out of the bag – not for lack of him trying–”
“Thank you–“Phineas piped up, puffing his chest slightly and giving a quick nod before Snape continued.
“The most I can do is try to charm the portrait so he can hear when the bag is opened while he’s still inside it. And as you might recall, you refused to let me put a trace on the boy. So tell me, Dumbledore, what exactly is it that you would like to discuss? How exactly is it that you would like me to deliver the sword? Shall I try mailing it to them? Send it with an owl? Perhaps put an ad in a muggle newspaper titled ‘used sword, free delivery’?”
Dumbledore frowned at him from his portrait, the crease between his brows deepening before he pushed his half-moon spectacles up the bridge of his nose. He was clearly unimpressed by Snape’s behaviour and displeased with how the conversation had gone.
“I can see that now is not a good time,” Dumbledore said quietly. “Let’s chat tomorrow, Severus – and do try to get some rest.”
“Looking forward to it,” Snape said through gritted teeth as he turned away and closed the distance to the door.
His fist balled at his side as he wrenched at the handle with his opposite hand. Dumbledore was one of the few people who could aggravate him into a physical display of emotion – the Marauders were the only other ones who had managed to accomplish that on a regular basis. He had just pushed through the door and let out a sigh when he felt the familiar burn across his left forearm.
The call from the Dark Lord.
“For fuck’s sake,” he said angrily as he turned around and stormed back into the Headmaster’s office, stopping only briefly to grab his frock coat. He apparated away before Dumbledore could open his mouth again.
-x-x-
“Ahhh, Severus, so good of you to join us.”
The purr of Lucius’ voice made Snape roll his eyes internally, though he maintained his cool look of indifference as he turned to face the Malfoy. He had arrived at the Manor only seconds after his flesh began to burn, putting on his frock coat as he walked through the gate and down the long drive to the Manor. It was irritating that he still could not apparate directly into the house, but that right was reserved for Malfoy blood only and the Dark Lord. So instead, it took him a whole five minutes to make it from the gate and into the front door. At least he didn’t have to stand outside like the rest of the Death Eaters and wait for someone to let him in. The Dark Lord had insisted that he be allowed access to come and go without waiting once he was on the property.
Tonight, he hadn’t even made it four steps into the foyer before Lucius crept up from the left. Snape knew he was there; he just hated how the man spoke as if there was a choice.
Of course I would be joining you. What an incredibly moronic thing to say, Snape thought as he closed the distance between them.
Upon first glance, Lucius looked as impeccable as ever. Expensive robes, new shoes, the classic Malfoy smirk plastered across his overly handsome face while he stood trying to look taller than he was – wanting to project his sense of ownership over his home to those who entered even though everyone knew he had long since lost it to the Dark Lord.
“Lucius,” Snape said slowly, his eyes darting over the man before him and picking up all the little details that he was trying to hide.
A slight crinkle on his shirt collar, a small scuff on his new shoe, a microscopic shimmer below his eyes betrayed the glamour he was using to cover up the dark circles, and a dullness to his hair that wasn’t usually present revealed his deteriorating health. Yes, the stress was getting to Lucius Malfoy, though Snape supposed that was to be expected. After all, the Dark Lord had infested this man’s house for the last year and put incredible demands on his family.
“We will be meeting in the second-floor drawing room tonight,” Lucius said as he stepped toward the large staircase to their right.
Snape didn’t miss the minuscule twitch next to Lucius’s right eye, and he steeled his nerves. As detached as he was from his emotions, he did not enjoy nights like tonight. The twitch had given it away. The Dark Lord had brought company to the Manor, and he suspected that the night would be a long one.
Divulging nothing on his own feelings, he followed closely behind Lucius up the stairs. He could hear several other voices as they drew closer – Bellatrix of course, she would never miss out on a night of fun, and Scabior, who had probably collected the guests.
When he entered the room, he noticed two other snatchers near Scabior. Narcissa was there too, standing quietly against the left wall and looking as worn as her husband. Then there was the Dark Lord himself.
No matter how many times Snape saw him, those blood-red eyes always sent a small shiver down his back and made his blood run cold. Snape wasn’t ashamed to say he was afraid of the Dark Lord – you would be a fool not to be. The man, if you could even call him that now, was evil, tyrannical, merciless, and an absolute abomination. Snape’s eyes shifted down to the center of the room. Someone had removed the long table, and before them sat a Goblin, Marley the apothecary keeper from Godric’s Hollow, Herbert the herbologist from Mould-On-The-Wall, and Dean Thomas – former Hogwarts student. Each of them was bound to a chair, and they all looked ragged.
“Sseeverus,” Voldemort hissed, his flat face twisting into a wicked smile as Snape entered the room and stood to the right near Lucius. “Glad you’ve made it – now we can get started. As you know, we are interested in gaining control over supplies. Several greenhouses have already pledged their allegiance, and we have come to an agreement with most apothecaries.”
Snape nodded once. He already knew this information, and he knew that by ‘agreement’, the Dark Lord meant that they had killed one apothecary owner already and kidnapped the wife of another until the man agreed to cooperate. There was no such thing as a bargain when dealing with the Dark Lord – he got what he wanted one way or another. It was just a question of how long it would take or how much you were willing to lose until you gave it to him.
“I’m pleased to introduce Marley, apothecary owner in Godric’s Hollow and Herbert, who runs one of the largest greenhouses. We’ve been interested in striking a deal with them for some time.”
They hadn’t been able to find them.
Marley had gone into hiding and spent the last few weeks distributing her goods secretly. Herbert had warded himself into his greenhouse underground, putting up an extensive fight until finally the werewolves were able to bombard their way in under Bellatrix’s command. Dean was lucky. The Dark Lord hadn’t mentioned him by name yet, so he might still survive the night. He was likely captured by accident around the same time as the Goblin, so he might manage to get away with minor torture before being held in the Malfoy dungeons. He could see Dean glancing up toward him. His cheek was bruised and split; he was trying to catch Snape’s eye with a glare, but he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut.
Snape bit back a sigh. There was nothing that he could do here. It would be unfortunate if the Dark Lord decided to kill Dean, but he wouldn’t be able to intervene. It would be Charity Burbage all over again and yet another weight to add to his shoulders.
“I’m not helping you,” Marley spat, her eyes wide with anger as she pulled against the bindings on her chair.
Apparently, not everyone here is as smart, Snape thought with an inward sigh as the Dark Lord’s eyes snapped directly to Marley. Had Marley been more clever, she would have cooperated – or at least pretended to. She could have sabotaged the goods given to the Death Eaters, worked underground with the remains of the Order, or at least kept herself alive until the war was over, then helped with the restoration efforts that would undoubtedly be needed.
Her fate was all but sealed now.
“Isss that so?” Voldemort said quietly. His red eyes practically glowed in the low light of the room as he took a step toward her.
Snape saw the woman visibly shiver; her bottom lip trembled at the Dark Lord’s closeness, and her eyes widened in fear. Still, he applauded her courage as she jutted out her chin and looked at the Dark Lord defiantly. It was just a shame that her bravery was wasted.
“Yes,” she said, head held high. If she thought she would just be held captive, she was sorely mistaken. The Dark Lord didn’t take prisoners unless they held some sort of value, and an uncooperative apothecary owner had no value. She would be replaced with someone else more willing to complete the role the Dark Lord had planned.
“And what would your family think of that?” Voldemort hissed against her ear as her whole body began to shake.
He had always enjoyed pushing into people’s personal space and pushing their boundaries; he knew how uncomfortable it made them. He knew how much people feared him, feared his appearance, and were revolted by how he moved and spoke. He fed off their fear, craving the revulsion and satisfying his power-hungry ego from their reaction. The more you reacted, the more he would take.
“I don’t have any family.”
Voldemort leaned back and looked toward Narcissa, who nodded once in confirmation. She was in charge of data collection on key personnel, among other tasks – her years of high society living, traversing gossip circles, knowing everyone in the wizarding world and their heritage had become her skill in the war. Who would have guessed that such a selfish, materialistic, and vain woman who was only interested in self-preservation would become such a highly ranked member of the Dark Lord’s circle? She had long since surpassed Lucius’s role and was actually respected by the Death Eaters and utilized by the Dark Lord with confidence despite not having the mark herself.
She hated it; Snape knew. She had confided in him months ago.
The knowledge that her information often was the deciding factor in whether or not someone lived or died weighed heavy on her mind. It had started to eat away at her soul and change her as a person. It certainly didn’t help that many of the deaths happened in her home, staining her floors both literally and figuratively. The things that happened here would never be erased, and she had said she worried that she would never be clean again.
It was easy as a wealthy pureblood to believe that you were better than everyone else, to know your superiority, to fall into step with the prejudiced teachings of your established family and support the cause. But it was different when you saw it. It was different when it happened in your home, when the blood was spilled on your marble – when it was on your hands because you pulled the trigger and you gave the nod. It was different when they involved your son and tried to put blood on his hands too. Narcissa had begun to learn the hard way that sometimes what you think things are is not their reality – and that maybe, she was wrong.
“Then we have nothing more to speak about,” Voldemort said as he returned his eyes to Marley. “Crucio.”
The woman screamed loudly. The sounds tore from her throat like broken glass as she seized in her chair against the bindings. Her limbs tried to thrash out, but they were strapped to the chair and unable to move, so the whole seat vibrated instead. Dean’s eyes went wide at the sound before he clamped them shut and turned his head away. There was no need for the torture. The Dark Lord wouldn’t question her again or ask her to help. He would kill her. He was doing this because he wanted to, because he could, and to show Herbert what was coming if he refused to cooperate. The Dark Lord never granted easy deaths because that would be merciful, and blood-traitors deserved pain and agony.
You suffered first, and only then would he kill you.
“Avada Kedavra.”
The word was spoken so normally that if it wasn’t for the bright flash of green, one might have thought nothing would happen. It felt like catching the tail end of a casual conversation. But Marley went still in her chair. The screams stopped instantly though Snape could still hear them echoing in his mind. Even if he did return at a decent hour, he doubted he would find any rest tonight.
“Herbert.” Voldemort turned, pacing down the row of chairs to the large man at the end closest to Narcissa. “I understand that you have a daughter?”
Narcissa nodded once more when the Dark Lord glanced to her for confirmation. Snape did not miss the twitch of her left hand against her robe as she gave it. Children affected her more. They were the hardest thing for her to detach herself from.
“I would like to propose a new business deal,” Voldemort said as he leaned down in front of the man and gave him a dangerous smile. “An arrangement for supplies.”
“Yes,” Herbert said; his eyes were clouded over with tears, and his hands were trembling at his sides against the chair. “Yes – we would be honoured to arrange a supply deal.”
Clearly, knowing that the Dark Lord had knowledge of his hidden daughter was enough to break the man – that combined with having a friend tortured and killed next to you. Marley and Herbert had worked together in potion supplies for over fifteen years and Leena, Herbert’s squib daughter, was his pride and joy that he had tried to hide once the shadows of war started to grow three years ago.
“Good,” Voldemort said as he turned and walked toward Narcissa. “Place the others in the dungeons, keep them unspoiled – we might need them later because of their association with Potter and knowledge of Gringotts. Make arrangements with Herbert for regular deliveries as discussed.”
“Yes, my Lord,” Narcissa nodded, keeping her head bowed, no doubt hiding her emotion.
“Lucius.” Voldemort turned toward the blonde, the motion slow and dangerous. His body practically slid across the floor as a serpent’s would. He stopped before Lucius, much too close for comfort. His eyes were lethal as they stared down the man next to Snape, who was currently doing his best not to quiver. Then he spoke again in a lowered hiss so that only Snape and Lucius could hear. “Ensure that this time you don’t disappoint me. The deliveries are required every month, and I expect you to verify the stock before you drop it off.”
“Yes, my Lord.” Lucius bowed similarly to Narcissa, though his voice wasn’t as strong. He had been on the receiving end of the Dark Lord’s wrath for quite some time. Frankly, it was a wonder the man was still alive at all.
“Severus, once the first round of supplies arrives, I need you to brew more veritaserum and deliver it to the usual location.” His eyes flicked over to Snape, but he remained standing in front of Lucius, pressing into the man’s personal space and enjoying the discomfort that radiated from his worn frame.
“Yes, my Lord,” Severus echoed like the rest, inclining his head.
“Bellatrix! Give one round to Herbert for wasting our time at the greenhouse and laying waste to our resources. He will not be spared again,” Voldemort snapped his head toward her before he turned on his heel and apparated away.
A disturbing cackle of joy split the air of the room as Bellatrix all but danced her way over to Herbert. Her smile was almost as crazed as her eyes, her wand twirling between her fingers as she cocked her head to the side to look at the man.
“Oh Herbert, Herbert, Herbert,” she cooed, puffing a curl out of her face as she leaned down to grin widely at him. “I told you, you should have come out. Crucio!”
Narcissa moved quickly. She was already standing before Dean when Bellatrix cast the spell. Herbert’s screams split through the air as he writhed in pain under Bellatrix’s curse, and the woman flinched at the sound. Snape watched as she hauled Dean from his bindings and began to lead him out of the room to the dungeons at wand point – of course she chose to take him from the room first; any young kid reminded her of Draco. But just like him, Snape knew that Narcissa would do nothing to help the other guests tonight, because there was nothing that they could do – at least not yet.
So, for now, he would do what he always did. He would grit and bear it. Snape would ignore Narcissa’s wince, he would tune out Herbert’s gut-wrenching cries, and he would dismiss the tremble he felt from Lucius’s body next to his. He would detach himself, swallow his own agony, and occlude everything away.
He would pretend not to care about the lives of the people before him, because war was toxic and crushing – and it would kill you if you let it.
-x-x-
Two Sentence Summary:
Snape struggles to prevent the Carrows from excessively torturing the students at Hogwarts while figuring out how to deliver the Sword of Gryffindor to Harry and Hermione. Snape is summoned to Malfoy Manor, where we learn that Dean and Griphook have been captured, Voldemort is working to gain the upper hand in the war and control potion supplies, then: Voldemort tortures and kills an apothecary owner who refuses to help, he forces Herbert the herbologist to work with them and provide supplies, and Dean is brought to the Manor dungeon by Narcissa who has become a prominent figure in the war.
Hermione woke with a start, her hand instantly finding her wand next to her pillow. Her fingers curled around it reflexively faster than a heartbeat as she jolted upright in bed and extended her arm. Her eyes were wide and wild as she scanned the tent before her. Her heart was racing so rapidly, she could hear it in her ears, and her body was rigid with tension as her senses grew overloaded on high alert. She completed a mental check of their wards, then cast a wordless detection spell to look for danger or intruders – but nothing was out of the ordinary. The tent was completely void of enemies, the antivenom potion was stewing quietly in the potion lab to her left, and the familiar sound of wind tearing across the tent echoed around the room.
There was absolutely nothing within the tent to cause the cold terror that gripped her heart, made her stomach knot, and her hand twitch in readiness. She was ready and willing to eradicate the nearest threat without a blink of hesitation. Yet she was left panting upright in bed with nothing there but the feeling racing through her veins. She glanced around again and again until she finally felt the warmth of Harry’s hand on her waist and his soft voice near her ear. Her pulse slowed as his thumb traced over the bare skin of her hip bone which was peeking out between her shirt hem and her pajama pants, and his words soothed the rigid stiffness from her body.
“Hey – it’s okay,” Harry whispered. “It’s just us.”
She felt her shoulders relax as she took a deep breath. The air shook as is left her lungs, and she slowly lowered her wand. It had been two nights since they made the drop to Arthur Weasley, and this had happened on both. She would wake just before dawn with a cold shiver tracing down her spine, and her body switched to autopilot. Then she would shoot upright in bed, ready to attack.
She let out a sigh and allowed Harry to pull her back down into the warm sheets, storing the wand by her pillow once more and turning on her opposite side so she could curl into his chest. He didn’t say anything else; he just wrapped his strong arms around her tightly, and she tucked her head under his chin against the bare skin of his chest.
There wasn’t anything else to say. There wasn’t anything that he could do to help her except to be there with her. Which he was and had been since the moment they arrived back in the North after dropping off the packages to Arthur.
Neither one of them had even considered their appearance before they apparated to make the drop; there hadn’t been time to check their reflection in a mirror or take a shower. As a result, they truly did not anticipate just how terrifyingly horrendous they looked until after they returned and set up the tent.
That night, they had made their way to the bathroom to clean up, both of them moving slowly with exhaustion as the adrenaline from the night’s events finally wore off. Finally, they entered the small room, only to find that they were caked in dried blood and worn with dirt. She looked like something from a nightmare with a ghastly expression. Both of them appeared vicious and hardened. Hermione’s hair was protruding at odd angles, the knees of her jeans were ripped from kneeling on the ground, and the grime and blood that stuck to her seemed like it was permanently a part of her body.
Harry had been no better. His ponytail could hardly be called a ponytail anymore – it hung low and limp from the back of his head, held mostly in place by the dried blood and frozen water that coated it. He, too, looked like he had been rolling in a dirty, bloodied pool, which was not far off from what they had been through. It was in that moment as she stood before the mirror that Hermione wondered if Arthur had caught a glimpse of them on the snow-covered hill, though part of her hoped he hadn’t. She wasn’t sure how to feel about him knowing what they had been through or what they had become.
Three scourgifies and a hot steaming shower later, Hermione still hadn’t felt clean. The blood, it had been everywhere. Both she and Harry had burned their clothes Monday morning after they first awoke before starting the antivenom potion. They hadn’t discussed it; they both just knew that they never wanted to wear or see those clothes again because the fabric would never be rid of the death that lingered within the fibers.
Despite burning the clothes, the feeling had remained. She wasn’t sure if she ever would ever be clean again, and she knew that the stains from that evening would forever be inked into her heart. The images of Rose lying in that dirty alley haunted her mind and swam before her vision every time she closed her eyes. It was what had woken her each night since she killed Rose with the killing curse.
It was always the eyes.
The light blue eyes – clear like a morning’s sky – which shook her awake and left her panting for air. There was no hatred in the eyes, no anger, no despair, no nothing. They were empty and dead. Small crinkles lingered near the corners from when the woman had smiled, but they looked unnatural and didn’t match the emptiness that radiated from the dark pupils. It wasn’t horror that startled her awake either, and it wasn’t even anger; it was an unparalleled sense of despair and sadness that surged through Hermione and rattled her mind.
She wasn’t in turmoil over her decision to kill Rose and grant her final wish of death; instead, she was haunted by the unrelenting anguish she felt over why it had happened in the first place. It was the terror of their entire situation that ate away at her. It was all the unanswered questions – how many others had suffered before this? How many others had bled out and died alone and confused? That was what haunted her through those eyes. Then, there was the thought that sparked within her mind each time she stared into the darkness – the one that made her stomach knot with sickness.
How many more until we can stop it?
Her only hope was that with time it would fade. That maybe, if they won the war, she would be able to sleep peacefully again. While she would never know how many lives were truly lost because of one man’s prejudice, at least she knew that it would stop eventually. The rest would be saved, and the heinous experiments would stop. She would be sure of it if it was the last thing she did, and she would never forget Rose’s memory.
She knew that it was affecting Harry as well. It wasn’t just about who cast the final spell or who said the words in situations like this. He was there. He had held Rose’s hand. He had gazed into her eyes and tried to keep her calm while she was dying. Hermione could see the way it bothered him, how his shoulders tensed, how he tossed in his sleep, or how a distinct little line of worry would appear across his brow while he was deep in thought. They were both carrying the baggage of that night, and she didn’t know if it would ever become less heavy. It added to the intensity of their already paranoid behaviours, and she was seriously beginning to wonder how, if at all, they would ever acclimate back into ‘normal’ society.
She slept in Harry’s bunk every night. She had been doing so since December after she nearly died in the pond retrieving the sword. They didn’t bother expanding the bed, because they didn’t want more space. They both felt safer in the small bunk squished up next to each other closely for warmth. Harry always slept with his back against the tent wall, Hermione on her side curled into him and facing the tent door. Her wand was always next to her pillow, less than an arm’s length away in case they needed to grab it. Her purse was on the nightstand by her head, ready for use, the tent was guarded by a dozen different detection spells and booby traps, and they both had started to sleep with a charm cast that amplified any sound other than normal ambient noises throughout the tent so they would be woken up if someone actually did manage to get by their wards.
On top of that, they always set up the tent with the back wedged against a cliff, or boulder, or some other solid rock foundation so that their bunk was safe against the impenetrable surface. Neither one of them fancied an ambush, and if it did happen, they sure as hell were not going to be backstabbed through a tent while they slept. At this point, the idea of sleeping in a house without an easy escape route, or staying with other people, or staying in one location for more than a few days at a time gave Hermione crippling anxiety – so she had stopped thinking about it entirely.
Their situation wasn’t good.
Logically she knew that their behaviours had become extreme, and yet that didn’t seem to matter anymore because she couldn’t imagine doing anything differently. So, she would just need to deal with that when they came to it. It was a problem for later. For now, laying in the bunk next to Harry and traversing around inside the tent was the only place she truly felt safe. And she was okay with that.
She sighed into Harry’s chest as she closed her eyes and nuzzled her nose into his warm skin. The scar from the locket was still there. It had healed, but like the scar that ran down his left arm and the ones that traced across her chest, it would never go away. Dark magic had tainted them both, and she speculated that they would face much more over the course of the war. In fact, it was possible that both of them would come out looking like Alastor Moody by the end of it. She supposed that wouldn’t be the worst thing. At least they would be alive, which would be a greater success than what she had already braced herself for.
The wind tore across the tent again, shaking it violently but calming her nerves as she pressed further into Harry. The more the weather worsened, the better she felt and the easier she could breathe. They were camped so far North that they were in complete whiteout conditions. No night watch was necessary, and she knew that they would be safe while the antivenom potion simmered for the rest of the day before she could bottle and store it. The air was so frigid outside that warming charms were insufficient to get by for longer than half an hour, which meant that no one would be able to make it through their wards or get anywhere close to the tent.
She highly doubted that anyone was out in this area anyway, and if they were, they would probably die from exposure or be forced to apparate away before they became a threat. She breathed out a final breath and used her meditation to calm her nerves. She would try to get one more hour of sleep before pulling herself from the bunk and resumed their work.
-x-x-
The remainder of the week passed by in a blur.
Harry researched Horcruxes and tinkered with a few new spells he had learned from Hermione’s books while she focused her attention on the golden werewolf bands, determined to get as much information to Arthur as possible. Most of the spells he had found were defensive, though several of them were rather nasty attacks – including one which essentially froze an opponent similar to how liquid nitrogen would. If cast successfully, one could tap their opponent with a hammer, and they would shatter into a thousand pieces. Hermione had said she’d never seen anything like it, and Harry thought it would be another good skill to master and add to their arsenal.
When they weren’t researching, they were brewing any final potions that they could. They repacked their supplies, organized their medical kits, practiced spells and healing, and duelled in the cleared out main tent area using the ring format they had developed months ago. The events of the alley had acted as a catalyst to their already burning motivation. Both of them moved and worked as if chased by Fiendfyre – completely immersed in their work and unyielding in their dedication.
They kept in touch with Arthur throughout the week and learned that everything had been successfully covered up at the Ministry. The werewolf corpse was burned as part of the mandated disposal process before anyone could identify it as being non-magical, and You Know Who’s men seemed to dismiss interest in the case rather quickly as they had more important things to attend to. While Arthur kept the details brief, as he also needed to protect his own information and actions, he did inform them that the Order’s new Legilimens was able to get images of the werewolf den from Evan’s mind. They had pulled several more useful memories for further examination and then wiped the man’s brain back to where Hermione had left it before they let him go. Both Hermione and Harry suspected that Evan was already dead, and based on the quiet from the Death Eaters and the additional muggle disappearance reported Wednesday in Birmingham, it seemed that the werewolf project was still underway.
Arlo and You Know Who were completely unaware that the Order now knew about their operation, which was exactly what they had wanted.
Arthur didn’t tell them any details of their developing plans to disassemble the werewolf den, but he assured Hermione and Harry that they were working on it and that he would keep them posted and tell them what information he could. Unfortunately, it was not so simple as storming the base once they had Evan’s memories. Resources were scarce, and reliable Order member lives were valuable. Recon was required, information needed to be gathered, a plan fully assembled, and volunteers selected before any sort of mission would be underway. So, while they waited for new updates on the progress from Arthur, they kept busy, and on Thursday, Hermione finally made a breakthrough.
“Harry!” Hermione called loudly, disrupting Harry from his practice of neatly slicing a solid block of ice into several different pieces with wordless and wandless magic. “Harry! – I’ve figured it out. It’s bonding blood magic! It’s in the bracelet – and it is based on Tolipkins’s research!”
Harry had just finished his fourth cut and was about to get up from the table to come join her on the tent floor when she all but apparated over to him in excitement. She vanished his neat little ice blocks from the table with a flick of her finger and cast a drying spell before she dumped a pile of paper onto the smooth surface. She almost clambered over the top of it to point to a book that she had marked and highlighted. One of the golden bands was now very thinly sliced into different sizes and wrapped in a cloth, so she didn’t have to touch it, and she placed it gently to the side before she continued speaking at a fast pace.
“Harry, it’s blood magic,” Hermione said excitedly. “Blood bonding magic, not soul bonding – but they added a stasis charm! I never would have figured it out without examining the corpse and taking a sample. It’s a combination multipart spell modified from several different pieces of old research, but the entire thing is unbalanced! That’s why it doesn’t always work and why the werewolves die after a few months! The stasis charm was never intended to be used on humans. This Arlo guy, he’s pulled it from research done in the early 1900’s by a witch who was trying to keep plants from changing forms. She was a herbologist. She tested the charm on Mandrakes with great success but not on people – it’s not designed for that!”
Harry’s eyes darted over the page that Hermione was pointing to. It was an article detailing the work done by a lady named Cecile – she had created the spell in an effort to save her crops and plants after an economic downturn. Home potion brewing had started to decrease in popularity, and then the economy went south. Wizards struggling to find work did not have the money to purchase the required ingredients to make their own common household potions, so they went without as they could not afford to buy them anymore.
Cecile was having trouble selling her stock and balancing her plants with the market demand. She had lost a significant amount of money when her Mandrakes and other plants could not be sold and had to be disposed of after they passed their prime usage age. She used the spell to preserve the plants in their current state for up to three years at a time, and it helped her manage her potion ingredients – but she had never formally published or documented the spell, keeping it for only her own use. The book Hermione had was an obscure old work that contained copies of articles from a now non-existent wizarding journal magazine called World Magizene. The article was an interview with Cecile, and it even included a sketch of the woman next to her personal garden.
“This Arlo man, he must have found this article and then somehow figured out what the spell was. Maybe he questioned the family or found her research notes,” Harry said as his eyes finished scanning the article and looked back up to Hermione, who was nodding. “Or – maybe she wasn’t the first or the last herbologist to create this spell. Surely others have had the same problem and then dabbled in creating a solution. There may be greenhouses out there right now that use similar spells.”
“Exactly!” Hermione agreed. “But he either never bothered or wasn’t able to adjust the spell so that it worked on humans properly. Magical properties and spell creation are not so different from muggle chemistry – except that the properties are much more complicated to manage and resolve because they often change or don’t follow any particular rules. But this equation on humans never balanced; it was self-decaying. With the spell Cecile created, the stasis charm worked because it allowed the cells of the plants to regenerate over and over from exactly the state they were in when the spell was cast – it never allowed them to age or change. It puts the plant in a loop, forever stuck at that point in time until the spell was removed.”
Hermione took a breath and shook her head in disbelief. Harry could see her mind reeling. It was moving faster than she could manage to get the words out.
“My guess is, after he infects the muggles with Lycanthropy, he waits until the first full moon and then casts the stasis, locking them in werewolf state,” Hermione said. “But they’re dying, and it’s because their cells aren’t replicating properly. Some replicate too much while others renew too little. So from the second that he casts the charm, they have a limited time to live because of the damage it causes. Even if there was a way to remove the stasis charm, they would likely still die.”
“So, it’s almost like having cancer and senescence happen at the same time, but he can’t be bothered to fix it because it works just long enough for their purposes. It’s not worth his time to fix it. They just get more muggles,” Harry said thoughtfully, and he saw Hermione smile proudly at him.
“I didn’t know that you knew what senescence meant,” Hermione said, sifting through the papers on the table before them.
“I listen,” Harry said, glancing over at her. “And read.”
He smiled and shook his head. While the news wasn’t happy – she had once again blown him away. He knew that she had been busy, but somehow seeing her research was still always astounding. Her attention to detail and ability to sift through huge quantities of data was unmatched, and frankly, magical. He saw scribbles of her working out potential spells and her arithmancy calculations to determine how the stasis charm might work. It was starting to feel like things were falling into place.
“Or, he can’t fix it,” Harry muttered when he came across a particularly difficult arithmancy calculation she had completed. “Human biology is much more complex than plants. I’m not sure it’s possible to create a stasis charm that would work on a person like that.”
“I’ve never heard of one before,” Hermione agreed as she slipped into the seat across the table from him and pulled out some more papers. “The closest thing I’ve come across is petrification – but that’s not the same thing as a stasis charm which keeps the charmed item alive and exactly as it was in one form without damaging it. It’s an incredible feat. No wonder why herbologists would keep it secret if they managed to figure it out. It would give them a huge advantage.”
“So how did he tie that in with a blood bond?” Harry asked after he noticed that her stasis paperwork didn’t seem to have any mention of the actual bonding.
“That’s where the bracelet comes in,” Hermione said, pointing to the golden pieces but not touching them. “They’re gold-plated silver, and it’s where the blood bond is permanently held. Think unbreakable vow but designed to be breakable because you can physically remove the bond. Blood from the collector is embedded into the band that’s placed on the werewolf, and blood from the werewolf is embedded into the band worn by the collector. Then, Arlo bonds them with the servitude bonding magic that Tolipkins experimented with. The bond only works if they’re both wearing the golden bracelet.”
Harry watched as Hermione slid a long scroll of parchment towards him. It was covered in her writing and notes, the scribbles jammed in all over the page documenting the countless iterations she had run while completing her calculations and examining the details of the golden band. After she had a second set of golden bands, she was less concerned about destroying their only sample and was able to run several more tests, including ones destructive in nature. At the bottom, he saw the starred text and immediately understood why she was showing it to him.
“There are three distinct blood samples,” he said as he picked up the page, eyes wide in surprise of her findings.
“Exactly – I wouldn’t have been able to figure it out without the second set. The werewolf is bound to the collector in a complete servitude bond, so it only has the blood of the collector in its band. The collector has the blood from the werewolf and the blood from someone else. This third blood sample was consistent across the two sets, so I’m assuming it must be Arlo’s,” she said as she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “What it does is, it bonds the collector to be loyal to the intent of the overall servitude bond. Basically, it forces the wearer to follow the direction as set out by Arlo at the time of banding. It creates what I’ve decided to dub the intent bond, and that intent is actually reflected back to the werewolf through the collector. It’s probably why it didn’t work on Evan – or some other snatchers – because they weren’t truly willing to serve the overall master plan. They’re not true loyal supporters of You Know Who – they’re just people trying to save their own ass.”
“You had said Tolipkins’s banding magic was unbalanced,” Harry said slowly as he flipped the page over to examine her work, trying to find where the unbalance was shown in her calculations. “So, the werewolves are just being blasted by both sides – death by stasis and death by a servitude bond? It’s no wonder they don’t last longer than a few months tops.”
“Well,” Hermione said quietly, her shoulders slumping before she continued. “From what I could tell, and from the calculations that I ran off what I could pull from the golden bands – it seems like he was actually able to balance the bond that Tolipkins created. It was the addition of the intent bond being reflected back to the werewolf that solved it. The problem with the original servitude bond is that it was inherently unbalanced. There was nothing being given by the collector in the equation, and the person bound to servitude can never truly fulfill the bond – because permanent servitude is an impossible feat. Tolipkins hadn’t considered that because he was only interested in having a servant, he didn’t want to contribute anything, and he didn’t care if his subjects died. The werewolves are only dying from the stasis spell, Harry, which is terrifying. Imperius is bad enough – they don’t need a second method to place people under servitude. Especially not one that works indefinitely.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Harry groaned as he dropped his head into his hand and took a deep breath. This was about as bad as it could possibly be.
“I wish I was,” Hermione grimaced as she spoke. “But that’s not even the worst part.”
“Of course it isn’t,” Harry groaned as he lifted his head and met her eyes. She looked tired, worn, and disturbed by her findings. The excitement of what she had accomplished was wearing off, and now she was left with the reality of the information – he could see her posture change and her demeanour become more solemn. “What’s the worst part?”
“Arlo added ancient runes,” she said quietly, nodding toward the golden band on the table. “They’re engraved as part of the blood bond – to make it additionally effective. Instead of using his physical blood, Arlo could have added a third rune to balance the original Tolipkins equation. The blood wasn’t actually required to create an intent bond.”
“Which runes?” Harry felt his chest tighten once more as he began to comprehend just how evil the bonding bands could be.
“Ehwaz and Tiwaz,” Hermione said softly as she watched his face.
“Loyalty and authority,” Harry responded, his jaw clenching as he let out a tight breath.
Ancient Runes were difficult. They all had several meanings, and their combinations were complex and challenging to decipher. They depended heavily, if not entirely, on the intent behind them when placed. Hence, why there was an entire field dedicated to studying them and their use. He hadn’t taken the class while at Hogwarts, but he had picked up Hermione’s textbook over the last few months and read through it to get a bare minimum understanding. He was familiar now with the most common runes and their meanings, which was better than nothing, even if he wouldn’t be able to look at a combination and figure out what they did together.
But with Ehwaz and Tiwaz – it wasn’t difficult to pick out the intended meanings.
“Harry, this is bad,” Hermione said quietly, her eyes now downcast on the band. “If Arlo knows, if You Know Who knows – this could be the start of something terrible.”
“Hermione, he can’t know. He can’t possibly know that he balanced the bonding charm. The werewolves are dying; he probably hasn’t tried it on anyone without that stasis charm,” Harry said, shaking his head in denial. There was no way Arlo knew, or they would have progressed into even more disturbing territory by now. “We would see those bands popping up everywhere if he knew.”
“I agree – but Harry, it’s only a matter of time until he figures it out. Or until someone else does. Then what?”
“Then we deal with it like how we have been dealing with everything else – but we try to stop it before it gets to that point. We need to let Arthur know, but only Arthur. The last thing we need is for other people to get their hands on this information and think that they can repurpose it for the ‘greater good’ or Merlin knows what else.”
“His work needs to be destroyed, Harry – before someone else finds it,” Hermione said, nodding in agreement to his words as she restacked her papers. “We need to tell Arthur to burn that entire facility to the ground. Now that I’ve seen the solved arithmancy calculations – I can already see how it could be modified in any number of different ways with no issues. I’ve spent only a day with the results, and I already know you could use it to track people. You could even use it as a health monitor. Someone else can easily figure this out.”
“Maybe not easily,” Harry gave her a small smile. “But, we’ll write Arthur today and let him know immediately. Did you figure out how he is successfully infecting them? Most muggles reject Lycanthropy and die.”
“That’s the only part of this I don’t know,” Hermione said with a sigh as she rubbed her temple. “It’s unrelated to the banding. He could be injecting them with small amounts, maybe healing them as they transform? Typically, Lycanthropy is passed through bites which are traumatic – it’s possible that muggles are better able to process the infection when their body isn’t under stress from trying to heal dark magic.”
“Yeah, not to mention we have no idea how many muggles he infected until he was successful and got the process down pat,” Harry murmured angrily under his breath.
That was the absolute worst part of all of this and the thing that made Harry’s skin crawl. How many lives had Arlo spent in the pursuit of his experimentation? How many more would be lost until they and Arthur were able to dismantle the den and the operation?
It killed him that they couldn’t just go and destroy the den now. He hated that he knew he had to wait. They had to be clever and cunning, and remain careful and cautious. This war wasn’t on the battlefield yet, and if they wanted to avoid even more loss of life, they would try to keep it that way while they continued to fight in the shadows for as long as possible. They needed to save whatever lives they could until they were ready to strike so that when they finally did make their move, it would annihilate the operation in its entirety.
“I’ll get the journal,” Hermione said slowly as she removed all her documentation from the table and brought it over to her work area.
“It’s okay. Put your notes back – I’ll grab it.” Harry pushed himself from the table and made his way over to the potion lab to grab the journal that Hermione had left in there.
He knew that she was particular about her notes and would want to take a moment to store everything properly. He wished that she didn’t have to use her talent to research such a disgusting experiment. He wished that she was back in school in her seventh year, enjoying her studies, taking far too many classes, and loving every second of it while she stressed and fussed about exams and essays. He would have joined her in the library. They could have studied together. They could have sat together in the common room while they ate the food that Dobby snuck them from the kitchen. He would have asked her to go to Hogsmeade with him. He would have bought her the most unique and fascinating book for Christmas after spending hours searching for the perfect one in Diagon Alley.
He grabbed the journal from the potion lab table and turned to see her bent over her notes. Carefully rolling the papers and folding her calculations before storing them in the tiny desk she had created by transfiguring a spare chair in the main room. The thought pained him, and he made a mental promise to ensure that Hermione got her final year after the war was over. If she wanted to, he would return to Hogwarts with her. He would arrange a way for them to go – he’d talk to McGonagall and sort it all out.
He sighed soundlessly and made his way over toward her, watching the way she shuffled the papers in hand and the way her shirt rode up her back as she bent over. It was a waste of time to dwell on their current situation and what could have been. Wishing that they were back to their warm, comfortable days at Hogwarts before shit hit the fan wouldn’t get them anywhere – no matter how badly he wished it were true.
But he could safeguard her future.
He could ensure that she had her chance to finish her studies and graduate with nothing but O’s on her NEWTs. One way or another, he would make sure that she got to finish her schooling. She didn’t need it. She had far surpassed anything that would be taught at Hogwarts, but he knew that she would want to.
It struck him as he approached her that they may never have ended up together had this war not happened. Had Ron not left, had the Horcruxes been easier to find, had things been less difficult than they were – they may have remained just friends. He closed the distance between them and wrapped his arms around her small waist, pulling her back into his chest and nuzzling his nose into her neck. He could feel her relax in his arms as she leaned back into his warmth and tilting her head to the side for him.
Despite everything that had happened, regardless of every terrible situation and devastating discovery they had endured thus far – he was happy with the way things were, because he had her, and he knew they could make things right.
Along with all future Snape POV chapters, this chapter is dedicated to FluffyPandaShip.
-x-x-
September 1997
Hogwarts
“SEVERUS!!”
Phineas practically screamed his name as he entered the Headmaster’s Office. It was late, very late. He had just gotten back from another dreadful night at the Manor and was hoping to slip by the sleeping portraits to his quarters unnoticed so he could pass out on his bed. Apparently, Phineas had other plans, as he appeared positively frantic – yelling and waving his arms to get Snape’s attention.
“What?” Snape asked, his voice not as sharp as he wanted it to be.
There had been too many nights with no sleep, and now he sounded like he was going soft. He would have to watch himself in front of the students, perhaps break out his secret stash of specially brewed pepperup potion that didn’t make steam pour out of your ears. It was perfect for hiding illnesses and could be used as a quick pick-me-up to get through the day. Brewing it was challenging and expensive, though, so he only used it when it was absolutely necessary.
“Hermione has been injured!” Phineas yelled, the fear evident in his voice. He was standing halfway into his portrait, the left half of his face disappearing into the edge of the frame as he bridged the space between this one and the one Granger and Potter kept with them. He was clearly listening to whatever was going on on their side while he spoke.
Well, that’s a first, Snape thought as he quickened his pace toward the desk.
Not only was Phineas typically indifferent about Granger, but he was also a bit hostile toward the muggleborn witch on occasion. And he had never called her by her given name. Phineas also, along with all other portraits, would not go to such lengths to be in two places at once. Porting between portraits required effort, and most paintings could not be bothered with it. They simply wanted to observe the world around them and provide their irritating and unnecessary commentary. Yet here Phineas was, forcing himself between two frames in alarm while he screamed about Granger.
“What do you mean Granger has been injured?” Snape asked, the sharpness returning to his tone as he stood before Phineas and raised a brow. This better not be some ridiculous potion brewing accident. He had always suspected that Granger brewed potions beyond her capability ever since his supplies were ransacked during their second year, and she mysteriously disappeared from class for a month. “What happened?”
Snape had tinkered with some charms over the last week, working to find a way so that Phineas would be able to listen in on Potter and Granger while he was inside the purse where they kept him. He had been hoping that it might give them a better idea of their location so that he could deliver the sword of Gryffindor – otherwise, Dumbledore’s plan was going to crumble before it even got started. He had done something similar in the past, so he did not anticipate it to be an issue, but Granger was clever – apparently cleverer than he had anticipated, and she had sealed her purse well. It had taken him the entire week to figure out how to implement the charm, and even then, it only worked when the purse was left opened, and they were close enough for Phineas to hear them. It was like trying to listen through a closed doorway half the time – but the door was eight inches of solid lead.
Phineas had told him that her purse was ‘huge’ and a ‘fascinating’ place to be stored even though he disliked it. He even proclaimed that one time, when they jammed him back into the bag in a hurry, the cover that she kept over him had slipped up a few inches, and he was able to peer around. He asserted that he’d seen ‘mountains of books’ and ‘endless containers’ within its depths.
At the time, Severus had found this difficult to believe and scoffed at the portrait. Phineas was clearly looking for attention and trying to make his task of sitting in the dark waiting for information seem more interesting than it was. If Granger’s purse was as he claimed, then it would have required her to use a complex mobile undetectable extension charm that could be carried through space without the contents inside shifting. He’d only known two other people who had accomplished such a thing to the size that Phineas described – and both of them were dead.
However, much to his annoyance, as his attempts to charm the portrait failed time and time again this past week, he began to wonder if Phineas may not have been exaggerating. Perhaps one day, he would be able to examine the purse and see for himself, satisfy his curiosity as it were, but for now, they were set-up the best that they could be – short of Phineas trying to convince the pair that he was supporting Dumbledore and was on their side. Snape scoffed at the thought, that would be a wasted effort. Phineas’s hostility toward Granger at the start had lowered his credibility and made the trio question his loyalty. They would never believe anything that he said to them at this point.
The whole situation gave Snape a headache. It would have been much simpler if Dumbledore had just told Potter that Phineas was an ally, but there was no reasoning with that old man. He was determined to stick to his plan and refused to consult anyone on the details or adjust it as conditions changed.
“I’m not sure – Potter is tending to her now. She – she’s trying to help him,” Phineas replied, his eyes glancing back toward the frame as he focused on the noises that only he could hear. His agitation unsettled Snape. He was shaking in his frame, and his eyes were creased with worry.
Snape had never seen the man look so utterly distraught.
“How serious is it?” Snape said, his tone dropping as he stepped forward toward the frame.
“I can’t tell – Potter is cursing. Hermione is – well, she is making the most god-awful sounds, Severus – oh my word! It was a werewolf! Severus, they had to have been attacked by a werewolf!” Phineas’ eyes were wide, and Snape saw him brace himself on the inside of the portrait frame. “She asked for silver and dittany – there’s no other explanation!”
“Where are they?” Snape snapped, his tone deadly serious now. A werewolf attack was not trivial. It was not something that Potter or Granger would know how to treat – they would need assistance. Bite victims were almost exclusively brought to St. Mungo’s for healing, but that place was out of the question. Potter may as well turn himself directly over to the Dark Lord if he planned to go there.
“Severus, you cannot go to them. They cannot see you,” Dumbledore urged from his frame. He already knew what Snape was thinking and was shaking his head in rejection. “They must not know your allegiance–”
“So Granger bleeding to death is a better option?!” Snape threw back at Dumbledore, his temper flaring now. This man was so willing to sacrifice others for his plans, and yet often, people didn’t even know that they were a part of them to begin with. Brilliant and kind as he had become, Dumbledore was a manipulator at heart who glorified his own intentions by claiming that he knew a person was capable of accomplishing what he had set out all along – that he only wanted what was best. It was all too easy for him to ignore any collateral damage along the way. “I’ll obliviate them after if I have to – Phineas, where are they!?”
“I – there’s no way to tell. I hear – I hear water, waves! Waves! They’re near the shore!” Phineas said desperately as he craned his neck to hear better.
“We live on an island – how is that helpful?” Snape spat as he paced in front of the portraits. Losing the idiot Weasley boy had not been a true loss; he did not contribute much to the trio – but if Potter lost Granger, he would surely be doomed to fail. Any dunderhead could see that she was the brains of the operation and acted as the sane and logical glue that held the group together. “Have they said anything else? What are they doing – what is Potter doing to treat her?”
“Dittany and silver – she told him to mix in silver with the dittany after he cleaned her wounds. He – he’s trying to give her blood replenisher now, Merlin, that girl – she’s still giving him directions, but she can barely speak.”
“How much blood replenisher?”
“Two bottles.”
“Two bottles?! Fucking Merlin – if Granger used standard-sized bottles for her storage–” Snape ran a hand through his hair and dropped it angrily at his side, not bothering to finish his sentence. Phineas and Dumbledore both knew how significant requiring two bottles of blood replenisher was. Most wizards would have passed out or died from that much blood loss. “Do you know if the wounds closed? Has Potter said anything about the wounds? If they don’t close, she’ll bleed out no matter how much replenisher he pours down her throat.”
“Severus, calm down. They will be fine–” Dumbledore tried to cut in, but Snape and the other portrait ignored him.
“He hasn’t said anything – I just hear waves and rustling and – and Hermione’s moaning. Wait – wait – he’s giving her calming draught, and then he said he’ll set up the tent. I – I think she might be okay. He said he would help her get cleaned up.”
Snape let out a breath and sat back on the edge of his desk. This was definitely not how he thought his night was going to go, 0 to 60 miles an hour, as the muggles would say. He wasn’t even a father – how the hell did he manage to get stuck watching the three most troublesome kids in the entire school outside of the Weasley twins. It was like Potter was a magnet for death, destruction, and problems. Why Granger was friends with him, he would never understand.
“Keep an eye on them, Phineas. Let me know if anything changes – and let me know exactly what Potter says – and any remarks he makes on Granger’s health. If she was infected, they will need wolfsbane potion so she doesn’t kill him on the next full moon. If you find out where they are – tell me.”
“Understood,” Phineas said before he slipped out of the frame, moving entirely into the one stored in Granger’s purse.
“See,” Dumbledore said calmly. “They can do this on their own, Severus. You need to have more faith in their capabilities.”
Snape’s shoulders tensed, and his upper body went rigid as he slowly raised his eyes to stare at Dumbledore’s portrait. The old man was looking pleased with himself, completely calm as if unfazed by the last few minutes of intense exchanges. He hated the knowing expression that he always wore – as if he somehow knew something that everyone else didn’t. It made Snape’s blood boil with irritation. It was so irresponsible, so illogical, and so fucking narcissistic to never question your own knowledge.
“There’s nothing wrong with having a contingency plan, Albus,” he said slowly, glaring at the man as he crossed his arms over his chest tightly. “It’s not about faith – it’s about being realistic. They’re still kids in case you’ve forgotten, kids who have never received medical training or basic survival skills. I’ve long since petitioned to have a basic medical course taught as a mandatory weekend event, but no one else seemed to think it was necessary. I’m happy to give credit where credit is due, but Potter gets by with a lot of help from Granger and a fuck ton of luck. You cannot expect people to perform when they are underprepared and have huge holes in their knowledge base. It’s irresponsible, and it’s how people die.”
“Phineas just said Harry managed to close Hermione’s wounds,” Dumbledore dismissed the comment and stared down his long nose at Snape.
“No – he’s only confirmed that Granger isn’t dead yet,” Snape sneered. He could feel the final threads of his patience break. “I understand you have your reasons, Albus. You always have, and I respect your intelligence enough to know that you do actually have a master plan – but you have got to start being more realistic! You’ve withheld information from Potter for years, and now you’ve sent him off on a secret mission vulnerable and unprepared. It’s great that you think so highly of his capabilities, but he is still only human. Forgive me for having a vested interest in ending this war – instead of just wanting to join Potter’s fan club blindly so I can watch him in awe while hoping to see him do something spectacular!”
“Harry is not James, Severus,” Dumbledore said wisely, ignoring the scorn that dripped from Snape’s mouth as the corner of his eyes crinkled. “He is capable of more than you give him credit for. You need to stop projecting your hatred and low opinions on the boy, hasn’t it been long enough?”
Snape scowled.
Dumbledore always did this.
Any time he criticized Potter or remarked on his unremarkable nature as a student, Dumbledore would blame Snape for projecting his hatred of James onto the boy. He would claim that Snape refused to see Potter for who he really was or acknowledge his accomplishments – that he only saw James and was actively trying to discredit the boy any chance he got. He wasn’t wrong, at least not usually, but he was wrong in this case. His assessment of Potter’s skills to survive a war now that the Dark Lord was at full strength was accurate. He knew this because he lived it every fucking day. He knew what Potter would be facing, and he was tired of Dumbledore using his hatred of Potter’s father as a scapegoat for his ridiculous ‘master plan’ schemes.
“Are you saying that you wish me to stand by and let Granger die, or the Weasley boy if something goes wrong? If somehow things don’t go to plan, if somehow you’re wrong and they get stuck, are you asking me to stand aside and just let it happen?”
Snape stared Dumbledore down, watching as the old man’s brow furrowed and his jaw clenched. He’d forced him into a corner, highlighted the crux of his plan. Dumbledore wanted the trio to complete the mission alone as unaided as possible, but he was clearly not willing to sacrifice any of the kids – at least not yet. He wouldn’t admit to it, though, not out loud; that would be admitting a fault in his plan. That would be admitting that there may be a day, somewhere in the not-so-distant future, where he would call on Snape to once again risk his life to save theirs.
He was willing to do it; he just wished Dumbledore would own up to it.
“I thought so,” Snape sneered as he pushed himself off the desk to make his way into his quarters.
There was no need to wait in the office for an update from Phineas. He had charmed a bell in his bedroom to ring when Phineas appeared and had news to share, so he would return when he was needed. At this point in time, there was nothing else he could do except get some sleep, eat some calories, and try to become a functioning human again. He had no idea where they were, so Granger was truly in Potter’s hands now. He hoped, for her sake, that the boy put more effort into aiding her than he did other tasks.
As he reached the door to his private quarters he paused in his tracks and turned back to the portrait. He knew that Dumbledore was angry with him and that the final comment that flittered to the tip of his tongue would only make him angrier – but he would deal with that later. The old man needed to hear the harsh reality of the situation.
“If that boy doesn’t learn that he needs to take this seriously and start training, they’re both going to die.”
-x-x-
October 1997
Hogwarts
Snape quickly ducked, the top of his head narrowly missed by the violent firecracker that circled the hallway and continued to explode, sending sparks in every direction while bright colours danced across the walls. It was, undoubtably, a Weasley twin creation. Though how the hell it had been brought into the castle undetected and set off in the hallway just outside the Carrows’s classroom was yet to be determined. His first suspect was that blasted redheaded Weasley girl, his second was the dunderhead Longbottom, and his third was Bones – the unsuspecting, innocent in appearance Hufflepuff, who seemed to have formed a close bond with the Gryffindor rebels.
“Fuck!” He ducked again, thankful that the hallway was closed and warded so the students wouldn’t be able to see him struggle.
He had tried several counter-spells to disarm the blasted firework already to no avail. It was now burning holes in the walls and creating green smoke that smelled a lot like burnt hair. Though, his biggest issue was that he could hardly step out from the small alcove that he was currently squished into to get a decent shot at the bloody thing. There were plenty of options involving dark magic that would have ended this in an instant – but that would only result in endless lectures from Dumbledore about casting something evil on Hogwarts grounds. He rolled his eyes at the thought, yet he was smart enough to know dark magic on school grounds could damage the castle or leave lingering effects – and Hogwarts was already drenched in centuries of magic. So, begrudgingly, he was stuck battling the firecracker with only clean magic.
Wordlessly he cast another immobulus around the corner of his hiding spot, hitting the firecracker directly in its center. It dropped to the ground with a heavy thud – but Snape knew better than to think the battle was over. He had already hit it three times, and each time, the thing would roar back to life with a vengeance after fifteen seconds and continue sputtering around the hall. This time, however, he was prepared.
Hit me once with your sparks – shame on you, Snape thought as he ignored the aching burn on his shoulder, quickly shrinking the firework down to the size of a bowtruckle before casting a protective barrier between himself and the cursed creation. Hit me twice – well, fuck – shame on me then. It won’t happen again!
Pulling a bottle charmed to be unbreakable out from his pocket, he cast a second immobulus on the device before he used his wand to stuff the firecracker inside the bottle, sealing the jar tightly. He had briefly considered letting the firecracker outside simply because he did not want to deal with it, but that would only result in more damage to the school and injured students.
He stared at the jar in his hand, counting the seconds as the thick green smoke around him finally started to settle low to the ground. His grip tightened, and sure enough, when he reached fifteen seconds, the miniature firecracker roared back to life and began bouncing around inside the bottle, rapidly filling the space with brightly coloured sparks and green smoke.
No matter, he thought as he let the tight breath in his chest out. It can explode all it wants in there – it’ll burn out eventually.
Pocketing the bottle with his left hand, he ignored the pain from the burn on his shoulder and flicked his wand with his right hand. The singe marks around the hallway disappeared, and the green smoke vanished. It took him several more minutes to put the armour suits back in order before he finally removed the wards and left the hallway. He didn’t bother removing the stink of burnt hair. He left it lingering for the Carrows – they could sit in the stench until it naturally aired out.
Using a glamour, he covered up the injury on his left shoulder. The students absolutely could not know that any of their attempts to help had been successful, and he did not have time to properly heal it. He needed to get to the Great Hall before dinner ended. He needed to once again try to cast fear into the hearts of these suicidal students before one of the Carrows granted their wish and killed them on spot.
He arrived there quickly, fixing his face with a stern scowl before he laid his hands on the large doors. Yet when he burst through the entrance to the Great Hall, his cloak swirling dramatically behind him as the room fell silent and students hurried to look down at their plates, he caught the eye of the triumphant redhead and her friends. She glared at him boldly; a smirk etched on her face as Longbottom winked – WINKED. Of all the displays of rebellion he had seen thus far, that was a first, and as he made his way to the head table, he began to seriously doubt his ability to keep them alive.
-x-x-
November 1997
Hogwarts
“Any news, Phineas?” Snape asked, entering his office and making for his desk. He had a long night of brewing ahead of him for the Dark Lord, but as always, if Potter and Granger’s location was known, he would make delivering the sword a priority.
“Unfortunately not, Severus. They’re still being incredibly careful not to say anything about their locations – though it seems that they did spend the day training.”
“Again?” Snape looked up from his desk; his brow arched curiously. Potter and Granger had allegedly started to train sometime in October – he had no idea what it entailed and, frankly, he had suspected that it would become something of an unkept New Year’s resolution that dwindled off after only a few short days. “I thought you said they trained yesterday?”
“They did,” Phineas said with a smile. “It seems that Hermione and Potter train most days.”
“Hn.” Snape flicked his eyes down to his paperwork once more.
He would never get everything done, what with the demands from the Dark Lord – this job was bullshit. He sighed and looked over to Dumbledore, who seemed to have a wary expression.
“Have they mentioned the Weasley boy?” Dumbledore asked Phineas.
“No – in fact, I would say that they never mention him,” Phineas replied with a sniff, turning his nose up. He was never shy to make his opinion of someone known, and it was obvious that he did not think highly of the redheaded dunderhead. Though, his opinion on the matter wasn’t shocking.
What was curious was how Phineas had nonchalantly started addressing Granger only by her given name since her injury. Snape had assumed that he made the slip in the heat of the moment while he was riddled with panic and concern. Yet each day since he continued to address her on a first name basis, and Snape started to suspect that the wizard may have even grown fond of the witch over the last few weeks.
“I see,” Dumbledore said with concern. He pushed his glasses up his nose and sighed deeply. “I had expected the boy to return by now – but for him to return, Harry and Hermione must be – in a way – hopeful of his return for it to work.”
“And this,” Snape muttered under his breath as he turned a page over. “Is exactly why it’s a good idea to have contingency plans in case conditions change.”
He did not miss the scowl that Dumbledore gave him from the corner of his eye.
-x-x-
December 1997
Hogwarts
“Severus, what do you know about the werewolves and their involvement with You Know Who?”
Snape sighed; it was like he could feel the question rattle down his weary spine as he closed the door to the Headmaster’s Office behind him and warded it. He was tired, hungry, sleep-deprived, and drenched in cold water from the latest gift that the students had left outside his office.
Where to even start with that question? He thought as he stripped off his soaking frock coat and dropped it on the hook near the fire. Of course, the water was charmed so that it could not be vanished away, and no drying charm would work – he had already tried two before he even opened the door to his office. A part of him was starting to wonder if the other professors might be assisting the band of Gryffindor rebels by teaching them advanced magic on the side.
“What happened?” He ground out, making his way over to the portrait and stopping to grab a headache curing potion from the small left-hand drawer of his desk. The dull thudding at the back of his head would become nauseating if he did not act quickly.
“Hermione and Potter were attacked again and–”
“Again!?” Snape practically choked on the potion as he blurted out the words while trying to swallow. It was a bad combination, and it left him coughing and hacking while Dumbledore muttered for him to breathe and relax. “What the fuck happened this time?”
“They’re okay! Sorry – I should have led with that,” Phineas shrugged sheepishly in his frame.
“You think?” Snape muttered as he collapsed into his chair and flicked his finger to increase the flames of the fire. A shiver was running down his spine, but he refused to allow his body to tremble. He could only imagine the luck the duo had happened upon to escape a second werewolf attack largely unscathed. It was miracle enough that Granger had avoided becoming one in September.
“My apologies, Severus – anyways, they were attacked, though it seems that Potter received only minor injuries. But it raises the question – what in Merlin’s beard is going on? Hermione and Potter are not the only ones running into the creatures. Why Tilda mentioned to us just yesterday that there have been attacks in Birmingham ongoing for a while, but no one is doing anything about it.”
Snape flicked his eyes over to the sleeping witch in the portrait across the room from Phineas as he set the now empty potion bottle on his desk. He wasn’t surprised that Tilda had some information on the events ongoing in Birmingham. It was even possible that she had more information than he did, but she’d never share it.
“The werewolves have joined forces with the Dark Lord,” Snape said, leaning back in his chair and refocused his eyes to Phineas. “They joined a while ago – what you’re talking about is probably linked to the ongoing secret project that the Dark Lord assigned to Bellatrix.”
“Oh,” Phineas’s face fell, and Dumbledore sighed disheartenedly next to him.
“As you both clearly know,” Snape continued as he unbuttoned the cuffs of his sleeves. “Bellatrix does not trust me – so she has never told me anything about the project. The only information I have is from what I can gather covertly on my own or from what Narcissa can tell me when we have the chance to speak privately at the Manor, which isn’t often. The only thing I do know is that the growing werewolf numbers are linked to the attacks. My guess is, they are collecting people to grow an army, possibly completing the infection in a lab-type environment to allow for a higher success rate. Which just means that Potter and Granger better keep up their training – the world will only grow more dangerous in the months to come.”
“As if the snatchers weren’t bad enough already,” Phineas sighed.
“Severus, we may need to find a way for you to address the werewolf issue,” Dumbledore said gently, and Snape could not help but roll his eyes. “We cannot let it get out of hand, or we will not be able to counter their forces when the time comes.”
“Yes, but we both know that Bellatrix isn’t someone I can work information out of – to get what we need, I’d have to find another way in.” Snape clenched his jaw as Dumbledore nodded at his words. “Right – I’ll just add it to the list of things to do then, right next to delivering the sword, brewing the potions, and saving the damn world.”
“Severus, it cannot be helped. You’re the only one who can gain access to the information unnoticed, and you agreed to this. You gave me your word. Right now, I fear the situation may be even more dire than we anticipate, and if we do not move astutely, we may risk many innocent lives and failure of our cause,” Dumbledore said. He had kept his tone kind, and while Snape knew he meant well, it did not stop the flare of anger that swept through his body. He didn’t want to hear Dumbledore get on his soapbox and preach. The cold from his soaking wet clothes was eating into his body, and he desperately wanted to warm up.
“I’m aware,” he exhaled and closed his eyes briefly before he pushed himself up from his chair. He was done for the night. He wanted to go peel off his layers of clothes and take a warm shower. The draft in the castle was terrible in December, and the heat from the fire wasn’t helping him any.
“Oh, there was something else. I uh, well I thought you might be interested to know,” Phineas’ words were quiet, almost hesitant. As if he had contemplated saying them at all, and they stopped Snape in his tracks on the way to his quarters, making him turn back around to face the portrait.
“What?” The irritation rang out in his voice, but Phineas knew him well enough to know he was also curious. Otherwise, he would not have stopped in his retreat to solitude.
“It appears that Potter taught Hermione your spell.”
“Which spell?” Snape asked. He was only aware of Potter knowing the one, but nothing would surprise him anymore. He could hardly fathom Granger agreeing to learn sectumsempra or that they were capable of using it – so perhaps the little cheat had managed to steal some of his other more useful spells before leaving the school this past June.
“Sectumsempra,” Phineas said slowly, his eyes cautiously watching Snape for any reaction. “It would seem that they both experienced their first kills tonight.”
Snape saw Dumbledore’s eyes go wide from the corner of his gaze. The old man’s mouth had opened briefly before he managed to clench it shut again. It wasn’t something in the realm of possibilities that Dumbledore had considered. He had never even imagined Potter or Granger being capable of doing something like that, and if Snape was being honest, neither had he. He stood still on spot, water dripping from his robes onto the floor and creating a small puddle as he stared at Phineas, completely void of any physical reaction until he cleared his throat once.
“I see,” Snape said quietly. “Continue to keep an eye on them, Phineas. Let me know if they handle it poorly.”
He turned on his heel and pushed his way through the door to his quarters, locking it securely behind him.
He cut across the floor quickly, undoing the buttons down the front of his shirt and peeling the cold fabric from his skin. It tried to cling to him as he removed it, but he barely noticed it as his body moved on autopilot, and his mind raced. Potter had taught Granger sectumsempra. And not only had he taught it to her theoretically, but she had allegedly learned how to use it effectively, and so had the boy. His brain struggled to accept the information. It profoundly differed from his current understanding of the pair’s abilities.
It was possible that Phineas was embellishing again.
He paused to remove his boots and peeled off his over-saturated socks. He was no longer aware of the cold that riddled his body as he made his way to the bathroom. Tapping the showerhead with his wand, hot water immediately began to pour out as steam clouded the room, though not before he saw his reflection in the mirror. His marked and scarred body stared back at him briefly before he tore his eyes away from his battered frame and shucked off his pants, stepping into the shower stall as the last corners of the room grew heavy with steam
A weird feeling began creeping through him as he stood under the water.
He had always been of the opinion that Potter needed to step up his game, that he needed to take the war seriously, and that if he didn’t start doing what had to be done, he wouldn’t make it. Yet as the words ‘Potter and Granger killed people’ ran through his head, he found his brain unable to form an image of the scenario and unwilling to accept the new data. It was impossible for him to imagine Potter being capable of such a thing. The boy had the anger, sure, but his skill was always lacking. Whereas Granger had the skill, but not the stone heart required to go through with it.
They were, and would probably always be, just kids in his mind.
Though he wasn’t foolish enough to believe that children were inherently innocent, the Dark Lord himself was a prime example of how false that notion was. Still, he never imaged the duo taking the step into the ‘grey area’. The area that so many witches and wizards avoided. The one that made people uncomfortable and scared, the one that made them question their morality. Everyone always assumed that killing another human or an intelligent being was pure evil and that only a monster could do it, but they were wrong.
It was so much more complicated than that.
He inhaled deeply and let the warmth seep into his bones. Clearly, this war was going to be one that contained many surprises.
-x-x-
December 1997
Hogwarts
Severus woke to the gentle ring of the bell that sat next to his bed. He had only been asleep for a few hours. Tonight, being Christmas Eve, had been a rare evening with no calls from the Dark Lord and no traps lingering outside his quarters – since the majority of the students had returned home for the holidays. So, after attending the Christmas Eve dinner with his fellow professors and the approximate twenty remaining students, he had quickly retreated to his quarters and slammed the door shut behind him, falling gratefully onto his bed and passing out quicker than a blink.
He had planned to take full advantage of the quiet and rest during the break while restocking his potion stores. He had been using more pepperup and headache cure than he had anticipated at the start of the year; it had become at minimum a weekly requirement just to get by. With the bell ringing loudly now, that the goal had clearly been a pipe dream – Phineas and the duo would see to it that he did not gain a single night of rest during the break.
Pulling himself from bed somewhat begrudgingly, he moved soundlessly to the door. He summoned his robe from the hook on the wall and pulled it on before he moved into the Headmaster’s Office.
“What is it, Phineas?” He flicked his wand and lit the fireplace, ignoring the groans he got from the portraits, who had been sleeping and now squinted angrily at the source of light.
“They’re on the move!” Phineas said quickly. He was once again straddling the portrait frames and listening to the other side.
“They move constantly,” Snape scowled at him and then pinched the bridge of his nose in irritation. “Hence the difficulty in delivering the sword – why is this any different?”
“Because they used Polyjuice potion to disguise themselves before they went – I heard them talk about it, they must be going somewhere more public. I’m sure I’ll find out where in just a moment since they were chatting quite a bit more than usual about their plans tonight. I thought you might want to get ready with the sword.”
“Right,” Snape sighed as he turned back to his quarters. They couldn’t delay things and if the opportunity came. He needed to be ready to deliver the sword. “I’ll go change.”
He was back in less than a minute, dressed warmly in his normal white shirt, black waistcoat, trousers, and charmed dragonhide boots. He had thrown on his frock coat too, for if and when Phineas gave the signal, but for now, he sat at his desk working through mountains of paperwork with the Sword of Gryffindor settled next to him as he waited. Phineas had returned to Potter’s portrait, and Dumbledore was, for once, kind enough to pretend to be asleep while Snape worked and watched the minutes tick by. He was beginning to doubt that the opportunity would present itself tonight when Phineas suddenly appeared in his portrait once more.
“SEVERUS! You Know Who, he almost got them! They went to Godric’s Hollow–”
Snape groaned in pain and grabbed at his forearm tightly. The dark mark was burning into his skin more viciously than the night that the Dark Lord had first returned.
“FUCK!” He yelled as the pain grew to be excruciating. He grabbed the sword and ripped Dumbledore’s portrait back so he could hide it securely. He felt his stomach start to roll as his knees quaked. It felt like a white-hot iron was being shoved into multiple points on his body.
“Severus!” The concern in Dumbledore’s voice was startling. Snape barely managed to swing him back in place and see the fear in his eyes before he apparated away.
He landed hard in the snow outside the Malfoy Manor’s gate, collapsing to his knees momentarily as the pain seeped up into the base of his neck. It took all his concentration to pull himself from the ground and make his way down the drive toward the Manor. He barely registered the crumpled figure that lay on the floor of the Manor before him when he barged through the doors and made for the staircase. It was Lucius. He was crippled over in agony and gripping his arm to his chest as a thin trail of blood dribbled from his mouth. The idiot must have bitten his tongue from the pain of the Dark Lord’s call, and due to his weakened state of health, he was unable to pull himself up from the ground. Snape groaned outwardly and clenched his jaw, grabbing Lucius by the scruff of the neck and hauling him from the ground.
“Get up, you fool – do you want to die and leave your wife and son here alone?” The words were vicious and cruel. Snape spat them against the man’s ear as he half dragged Lucius up the stairs toward the second-floor dining room. Lucius was a coward, a bigot, and a moron – but his wife and son didn’t deserve to be left alone living with the mess he had created because he had made bad choices.
He could hear the voices of a few others as they approached, and he quickly wiped the blood from Lucius’s jaw with the cuff of his sleeve before he pulled them through the door.
Narcissa was standing next to Draco, gripping her son tightly and holding the wall for support. Bellatrix looked to be enjoying the agony while she glanced around anxiously, waiting for the Dark Lord to appear. Peter, who was crumpled in the corner, was the only other to have arrived since he essentially lived at the Manor, though more would be coming. Snape could already hear Yaxley and Greyback making their way up the stairs behind them. He pushed Lucius over toward his wife and made to stand off to the side as his fellow Death Eaters trickled into the room. Before he could turn back to Lucius, the Dark Lord appeared.
“WHERE WERE DOLOHOV’S MEN!” Voldemort’s scream was wretched, and the flinch around the room was visible. Red eyes circled, looking for the man in question. Dolohov was just coming in through the door and had stumbled against its frame at the force of the Dark Lord’s appearance.
“My Lo–“ Dolohov collapsed to the ground, screams ripping through his throat as Voldemort turned his wand on him to cast a brutal cruciatus. The sound reverberated through Snape’s body, and he saw Draco flinch inward to his mother from the corner of his eye.
Despite the horrible sounds, for a moment, relief washed over the faces around him. They were monsters, all of them, because they were desperately thankful for the Dark Lord’s direct attention on Dolohov. For it meant a brief reprieve from the agony that shot from their arms. The Dark Lord had never been good at controlling his rage, but if he picked a direct target, they would receive the brunt of it. Snape ignored the guilt he felt over hoping Dolohov’s torture lasted as long as possible to spare him and the Malfoys so they could breathe but for a minute.
“Where were your men, Dolohov?” Voldemort said again, approaching the now drooling form that remained lying on the ground.
“My Lord,” Dolohov panted, his eyes half-lidded as he tried to pull himself from the ground. “They were in the village – they were positioned at the perimeter–“
“But they served no purpose there, did they?” Voldemort spat, his red eyes burning into the man with disgust. “They didn’t even notice that Potter had arrived in Godric’s Hollow this evening. If not for Nagini, we wouldn’t have known. You were to implement an anti-apparition ward around the house, yet somehow – Potter managed to disapparate just as I arrived!”
Dolohov dissolved into screams again as Voldemort cast a second cruciatus and stood watching the man as his limbs spasmed against the ground. When the torture finally ended, the agony that radiated out from the dark mark returned at full force.
Yaxley was now leaning against the wall of the dining room for support. Peter had fainted long ago on the ground in the corner while Bellatrix remained upright, clutching her arm as her signature disturbed smile lingered on her lips. Snape forced his body to remain ridged even though he could taste bile at the back of his throat, and it felt as though someone was replacing his blood with acid.
“Yaxley,” Voldemort said, his red demon eyes turning to the man to his right.
“Yes, my Lord?” Yaxley stepped forward stiffly, his right knee buckling. A twitch had formed at the corner of his mouth, and his eyes were squinted in pain.
“Find someone better suited to serve as your right-hand man. The next time I make a request, and it isn’t followed through – you will be the one held accountable.”
“Yes, my Lord.”
“I want wards set up around Godric’s Hollow and Hogsmeade – I want to know if anyone comes and goes. Increase all patrols, double your men at St. Mungo’s, and get more snatchers on the streets of every wizarding town!”
“Yes, my Lord, right away,” Yaxley bowed his head., his entire body trembling now.
“Potter is using Polyjuice, so that means they’re using potion ingredients. Narcissa!” Voldemort turned to the woman who had quickly shifted in front of her son. “Lockdown the final apothecaries – I’m done playing games with these fools. If they won’t cooperate – kill them.”
“Yes, my Lord,” she said through clenched teeth, barely able to nod her head.
The agony from the mark had started to cause muscles spasms, and Snape could feel his spine stiffen. The second he could no longer feel his legs, he doubled his occlumency efforts to lessen the effects of the pain.
“And someone clean this garbage off the floor!” Voldemort screamed before he disapparated with a final blow through the mark.
Yaxley collapsed against the wall, Lucius fell to his wife’s feet, Bellatrix gasped in a bizarre sort of pleasure, and Greybeard fell into the chair beside him as his eyes rolled back into his head. Snape was fairly certain he heard Draco throw up and Narcissa fall against the wall – while he himself felt the hot blood that encircled his fingers from where his nails had cut into his skin. The room was quiet except for the heavy breathing and Draco’s whimpers of pain.
It would be several long minutes before anyone else dared try to move.
-x-x-
“Severus, are you alright?” Dumbledore and Phineas’s voices rang out when he apparated into the office and stumbled against the door to his quarters.
“Fine,” he grit out through bared teeth as he forced his hand to open the door before him.
It was the final barrier until he could release his occlumency and allow his body to react to what had happened. He fell through the opening, collapsing to his knees just inside and throwing the door shut with his magic. Then he began to pant, his body shaking uncontrollably as his knees gave way, and he crumpled to the floor.
Once Snape had given himself a full minute to breathe at the Manor, he forced his limbs to respond to his commands, moving his legs and making his way over Dolohov’s unconscious body and down the stairs until he pushed out into the cold. Even then, he had not allowed himself to react to the agony. His body moved mechanically. He used his last remaining strength to continue his hold on the modified occlumency he used to withstand torture so he could get to the gate of the Manor.
It was something he had developed over years of working as a double agent. Something that he created based on his muggle knowledge of human biology and the body’s nervous system. Using his magic, he was able to block the signals from his pain receptors from being detected in his brain, and to a certain extent, he was able to stop feeling altogether. It had allowed him to better withhold information and withstand questioning – though he was only able to do it for so long. Thus, the secret was to withstand the pain as long as physically possible and only use the technique when he was at risk of breaking his cover, needed to leave the situation as quickly as possible or didn’t want to show any weakness before his companions.
Hence tonight, he was the first to leave the Manor while his companions would remain there in agony for a significant while longer. By now, the other Death Eaters would have only just started to drag themselves around the dining room – still unable to move and likely crying out in agony as their muscles seized. They would be desperate to remove themselves and seek solitude so they could whimper and cry shamelessly, but most of them wouldn’t be able to.
The memory of the night felt like an ancient one now.
He was unable to make his limbs hold his weight to pry himself from the floor, so he rolled onto his back with a groan. He was about to face the severe consequences of his own invention. The modified occlumency only delayed the brain’s detection of the pain – it did not eliminate it. The damage to his muscle tissue had still occurred, and the signals had still been sent. While worth it in the moment, the after-effects would be about three times worse than if he had just allowed himself to feel the pain at the time. But he had no interest in rolling about on the floor of the Manor with the rest of them, watching silent tears roll down Narcissa’s face as Draco fainted from the pain.
He much preferred to retreat to the castle, to drink his calming draught, his dreamless sleep draught and to pass out for hours until he awoke stiff and miserable as always.
His hand trembled toward the pocket on his cloak. It was stocked with miniaturized potions in case of an emergency. He usually had blood replenisher, dittany, and headache cure, among other things – this was not the first time he’d been in such a condition. He grabbed a bottle of calming draught and returned it to full size wordlessly, biting the stopper out and spitting it to the ground. His hand shook violently as he raised it to his lips, a steady stream of hot tears pouring involuntarily from his left eye as his body reacted in overdrive to the agony he had delayed. He forced himself to swallow the liquid, and then he began to count backwards from fifty; that’s how long it would take until the potion kicked in and eased his burning nerves.
He closed his eyes, breathing deeply in and out as his limbs continued to shake and his skin burned as if set on fire.
-x-x-
December 25, 1997
Hogwarts
The gentle ring of the bell echoed through his subconscious. He made to move his hand to tap it so the ringing would stop, but his arm was like lead, dead and unmoving at his side. His chest felt heavy, and for a moment, his brain concluded that he must finally be dead. That was, at least, until the dull ache of his muscles began to radiate through his body and he recalled the events of the evening before. A deep, ragged groan escaped his lips, and he hauled himself up, slapping the small bell silent.
“Why couldn’t I just be dead,” he breathed and ran his hands over his face.
After the calming draught had kicked in the night before, he had managed to drag himself into bed and drink two other potions before blacking out. Now he forced his aching and torn muscles to move toward the door as his head started to throb.
“What?!” He wrenched the door to the office open roughly and leaned against the frame, not bothering to move any further than necessary.
“Severus,” Phineas said slowly. He sounded hesitant, and Snape could see that his eyes were tracing over his ragged form with concern.
A low growl came from the back of his throat as he rolled his eyes. He was perfectly well aware he looked like shit – and he did not want any pity.
“I’m already up. Let’s not waste it – what now?”
“I told you we should have waited, Dumbledore,” Phineas muttered before clearing his throat. “It’s Hermione and Potter – I know where they are. They’re in the Forest of Dean.”
Snape’s eyes widened, and he pushed himself from the door frame to hobble into the office. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, Severus – positive. They’ve mentioned it twice now. Hermione used to camp there as a child, so they were talking about it. It doesn’t seem like they will be moving any time soon – perhaps you can bring them the sword.”
“The Forest of Dean is rather large,” Snape said slowly as he sank into his desk chair and grabbed a headache curing potion from the lower drawer. “Do you have any idea where?”
“No,” Phineas frowned, and he looked rather sympathetic. It made Snape uncomfortable to see such an expression on his face, so he scowled back in return. “Unfortunately, I don’t.”
“Alright,” Snape averted his eyes and downed the potion. “I’ll start looking for them today – keep an eye to make sure that they do not move locations. I’ll check in with you as I search – just give me a moment to change.”
“Severus, perhaps you should rest first–“ Phineas started, but Snape cut him off.
“I’ll rest when I’m dead.”
He pushed himself up from the chair and hobbled back to his quarters, closing the door and making for his private potion store that he kept in the large wardrobe by his bed. Grabbing several unique bottles, he made his way to the bathroom and downed them, grimacing at the taste and turning on the shower. Nothing ever beat natural healing – or a trip to Madam Pomfrey – but right now, a bunch of his own healing potions would do the trick. They would get his body functioning so he could go traipsing around a massive forest looking for a needle in a haystack.
Snape snorted; first, he wanted a hot shower.
He emerged from his room twenty minutes later, dressed and armed with a collection of special potions of his own creation, his limbs once again moving fluidly like a well-oiled machine. When he returned from the Manor, it was late into the night, and he had passed out for the majority of Christmas day – the sad humour was not lost on him that he had spent Christmas, traditionally a day to be with friends and family, alone in agony.
No matter, he thought.
It was better to search the forest during the night anyways. It would lessen the chance of an encounter with a muggle partaking in ridiculous snow activities. He gathered the sword from Dumbledore’s portrait before apparating into the cold darkness. He started on the Eastern side, planning to work his way through the middle and then move North. He apparated, cast detection spells, walked several feet, and then repeated the process. It was slow, and by the time first light crept through the trees, he was feeling tired, hungry, and annoyed.
He apparated back to the castle around 9:00 am to confirm with Phineas that the duo had not moved location, ate a quick breakfast, glared at Dumbledore, and then returned to the woods to search again. It wasn’t until he reached an area particularly off the beaten track in the North, upon the wee hours of the morning December 27th that he stumbled upon something interesting. It was faint, incredibly faint, and had he not been strolling deliberately slowly while casting both human and ward detection spells, he would have missed it, but it was there. The faint trace of a ward registered about 200 feet away on his left. Casting a disillusionment, he crept forward; his ears strained against the quiet of the forest while he approached.
What he found left him speechless.
It wasn’t a traditional ward. It did not block people from entering or act to befuddle so as to keep unwanted humans away without them realizing it. It was barely detectable. Only someone skilled in casting a ward detection spell or trained to observe for them would have noticed it. He stayed several feet back from the invisible wall, tracing his wand near it as he examined it. A small smile curled at the corner of his mouth without him realizing it.
“It’s an alarm,” he murmured. Not so different from the one he used on his own chambers and had modified to create the bell for Phineas. It was designed to alert the caster if someone crossed it, to give warning of approach. He cast a second detection spell and was unsurprised at the findings. “Clever girl.”
There was another ward beyond this, possibly even a third beyond the second. Granger, or at least he assumed that it was Granger because he doubted that Potter had come up with the idea, had cast a layered alarm system around their location to give them time to escape if anyone approached.
He frowned.
It would be impossible for him to cross. If he did, he would trigger the alarm, and they would be gone before he got anywhere close to them. He didn’t want to alert them – he just needed to somehow get their attention so that they could retrieve the sword. To make matters worse, the sword had to be obtained through an act of heroism, or it would disappear from their possession. Even if he could apparate right in front of them, which he doubted was possible – if Granger was casting these types of spells, she would have warded her location to be undetectable – he couldn’t just leave the sword at their feet and say ‘here you go!’.
“Fucking bullshit plan,” he groaned as he ran a hand through his hair. Everything Dumbledore had a hand in was more complicated than necessary. He moved along the ward, examining the landscape and looking for a way to make his task possible. It wasn’t until he recalled the pond that he had passed on his way toward the ward that an idea struck him. “Well, I suppose it’s not the worst idea in the world.”
Making his way back to the pond, he walked out onto its center, cut a hole in the ice, and examined the depth of the water. It needed to be deep enough to force Potter to fully submerge himself and struggle to get the sword.
It needs to be dangerous – but not too dangerous, he snorted at the thought. His urge to be sarcastic about the ridiculousness of his situation getting the best of him as he dropped the sword in. Just almost kill him, but don’t totally kill him – just enough to really let his courage shine through, like how Dumbledore would want. Merlin, this is fucking absurd.
Once he had finished setting the sword, he froze the ice back into place and vanished his footsteps from the snow. As stupid as the whole thing seemed, he was pleased with how it turned out. You could just see the glint of the sword through the ice, and it would be impossible to miss it against the barren landscape.
Now, all he had to do was implement the final step and hope that Potter took the bait.
-x-x-
His patronus approached the first ward cautiously, brushing against it with a sort of curiosity that he still, to this day, had not managed to understand. While a patronus was not a sentient being, they certainly had the odd behaviour that might lead you to think it so once you learned the extent to which you could use them. Her form was beautiful, gentle, and her eyes appeared filled with emotions that he knew were not there. It made his heart ache as he watched it and fought to push the thoughts of Lily back down into the black depths of his heart.
He hated casting it.
He never cast it in front of anyone, and he would never cast it again if he could help it. Had he cared about himself more, he might find it upsetting that his only happy thoughts were of a dead woman. A woman he had loved desperately, foolishly, and completely unrequited since he was eleven years old. Instead, it just made him feel pathetic, and it caused a dull ache in his chest.
He scoffed; his life was a sad joke.
The doe gently pushed forward through the ward, moving carefully inward to the North. He knew it would do as directed. It would approach Potter and Granger and gather their attention; then it would lead them back to the pond. If they didn’t follow – then he would just have to try again, but for now, he moved back toward the pond to wait.
There he stood, faced with yet a second problem that needed to be resolved rather quickly. There was no way in hell he was letting that sword out of his sight until Potter or Granger grasped it firmly in their hands, and he was confident the task was complete. However, he was keenly aware that there was no way for him to stay within line of sight without Granger detecting him based on the wards he had examined.
He needed to hide. He needed to ensure that he did not register on any detection spells cast during their approach, and there was only one way to do it. His nose scrunched in disgust as he pulled the bottle from his cloak and returned it to full size.
It was a horrible concoction he had discovered by accident while working on a project for Dumbledore years back. The potion made it feel like there was a block of ice sitting in your gut while your body was frozen from the inside out. It slowed your heartbeat to a dangerously low level and changed your physical and magical signatures so much you didn’t register as anything more than a mouse. The downside was that it made you unable to move quickly or do much of anything until it wore off – this made sense considering that the potion nearly killed you, keeping your body barely functional.
He continued to frown in anticipation as he pulled a second small bottle from his coat. This beast would skyrocket your heart rate and send your adrenal glands into overdrive. It felt very similar to being hit in the chest with a giant hammer, and it would counter the effects of the first potion.
It was a dangerous game to play, using potions to alter your body rapidly between two extreme states. One of these days, his heart would give out, and he would surely die from the abuse he had put his body through. It was only fair. Magic may be magic, but you couldn’t toy with yourself in the extremes that he had without consequence – unless you were prepared to follow the Dark Lord’s footsteps and lose yourself completely in the process. Since he wasn’t, it was only a matter of time until the damage was permanent. Though he doubted it mattered. The war would kill him before he had to deal with the tremors, the hardened heart muscles, the kidney failure, or the permanent sensory damage – so he opened the first bottle and swallowed the contents.
The cold wind blew across his face as he waited.
It had been many long minutes, and he had yet to see his doe return. He could hear his own heart thudding agonizingly slow in his chest, and the cold that consumed his body was insufferable. He would be shivering if he was capable of such a thing, but right now, the most he could manage was to lean against the oak tree on his left while sitting in the snow disillusioned. He held the second potion loosely in his hand, ready to counteract the effects of the first and step in or return home when the time came. He was just starting to consider giving up when he caught a glimpse of silver against the darkness, and his breath stilled in the air.
Just how many wards did they have?
He watched quietly as Potter and Granger followed behind his patronus. They stopped to cast what he could only assume was a detection spell before they cautiously moved to the edge of the pond. Their ungloved hands were clasped tightly together, and Granger held her wand up to shine a light over the ice. They were both looking toward the cleared spot where the doe had stood only moments ago. He noted that Potter seemed to be wandless, which was odd, that the pair moved as if they were a single unit, which was new, and that they both seemed healthy enough despite their multiple runs with the werewolves.
Which was unexpected.
It was curious and mildly fascinating to watch them move while they thought they were alone, seeing their eyes dart around – fierce and wary with each step more cautious than the last. He could hear them muttering when they reached the center, and Potter pulled the girl toward the ice.
They moved logically, which was somewhat surprising. Snape watched as they worked their way through the problem until they reached the inevitable conclusion that they would need to enter the water. He suspected that Harry would dive right in, bold and courageous – stupid, like his father – not hesitating for a second while his ape brain moved into true Gryffindor form. So his brow furrowed in confusion when he heard them mutter in discussion, and then Granger proceeded to remove her coat. Potter looked about to stop her, but she spoke to him sternly, and he relented before pulling her into a tight hug. It was not what he had expected – yet it was nothing compared to what came next.
Snape had barely begun to wrap his head around the idea of Potter allowing Granger to go into the water instead of himself when his eyes widened at the display before him. Granger had just kissed Potter – and Potter was now kissing her back. His mind reeled in confusion, slowed by the effects of the potion. He was unable to process the data properly. He thought Potter was with the annoying redhead, that Granger was with the idiot redhead, and for the first time in possibly his entire life, he felt dumbfounded.
He truly didn’t give a shit about who Potter snogged or who Potter wanted. He could care less. Frankly, any information on Potter’s love life was disturbing to him and made him massively uncomfortable. What startled him was the heartfelt goodbye they gave each other. It caught him off guard and made him feel like a dirty old professor involuntarily peeping on his students. He felt like he was missing some vital piece of information and was intruding on the situation completely unprepared. He averted his eyes the second that Granger reached to remove her pants. While it was the logical thing to do before submerging oneself in freezing water, he did not wish to see it.
He didn’t look back until he had heard the splash from Granger enter the water.
Then it was just him and Potter. He scowled as he watched the boy. He was poised over the entrance to the pond intently, waiting for Granger to return. Each second clocked by at an agonizingly slow rate.
What the hell is taking her so long? Snape sneered as he watched Potter’s form.
The pond wasn’t that deep. He had placed the sword there because it would have been reasonably challenging to get, not because it would be impossible. The hardest part about the task was enduring the cold, not the depth. After another minute ticked by, Snape found himself uncorking the bottle of crimson liquid he had been holding in his hand.
Something was wrong; he could feel it.
“FUCK!”
Potter’s voice rang out through the forest, and he waved Granger’s wand at the ice hole while Snape downed the second potion in a single gulp. He clutched at his chest in agony as his eyes shot wide and his heart began to accelerate like a steam engine, fighting against the effects of the first potion. It felt like someone had just broken every single one of his ribs with a hammer. He clenched his jaw to stop the groan that threatened to escape him as he stumbled forward from the tree and made his way toward the pond. Potter had ripped off his jacket and glasses and dove headfirst into the pond – leaving the wand behind on the ice.
“What the fuck happened?” Snape hissed, taking advantage of the duo being underwater to groan in agony while the adrenaline pumped through his body. His hands shook violently. He pulled his wand from his arm holster and positioned himself behind the nearest tree – preparing to step in and pull them both from the water when suddenly Potter shot from the surface, landing hard on the ice with a deep thud.
The boy fought with something wound tight around Granger’s neck. He squinted his eyes to see it, but it didn’t make any sense. He had checked the pond to ensure there were no Grindylows or other dangerous creatures before placing the sword. Yet Potter could not get the item off and instead tore the sword from her frozen grip and threw it across the ice.
What the fuck?
Snape was about to stun the boy to stop the crazed behaviour and take over when Potter pointed his wand at the girl’s chest and cast a heart restarting charm. Granger shot back to life, and for the second time that day, Snape felt like he was missing something, something massively important, and he was the only one in the vicinity that didn’t understand what was going on.
Snape pulled back toward the tree, wand still raised, heart pounding and brow furrowed in confusion as the scene continued to play out in front of him.
He should have left the second that Granger rose from the dead, but he froze on spot when he heard Harry speak. His heart started to beat in his ears at the word that he heard. His hand trembled as the air shifted and Granger stood holding the sword firmly in her hands – preparing to strike the small locket which Potter held. His blood ran cold as the Dark Lord’s voice rang out into the night and began taunting the girl with cruel and malicious comments. His eyes shot wide, and fear gripped his heart. He stumbled backward into a bush as a wave of air pulsed out across the pond when the locket was shattered – Granger’s scream of defiance ringing in his ears.
The information he had been missing hit him hard as a bludger. Snape saw the pieces fall into place, understanding now what Dumbledore had been hiding. He heard the word echo in his head as the ever-burning flame that fueled his anger exploded with blind rage. He disapparated the second Potter had pulled Granger into his arms in triumph.
-x-x-
“YOU SENT POTTER AND GRANGER TO DESTROY HORCRUXES ON THEIR OWN?! ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE!” Snape launched himself at Dumbledore’s portrait the second he appeared in the office and slammed his hands against the walls on either side of the frame. His brain didn’t even register the gasps and fearful looks that came from the surrounding portraits.
“How did you – Severus, what did you do?!”
“What did I do? WHAT DID I DO?! What have you done! How long have you known this – how long have you kept this a secret?!” Snape bellowed in Dumbledore’s face. He was breathing heavily from the potion he had taken in the forest, and his anger was shaking his entire body. For the first time ever, he wished that Dumbledore would return to life just so that he could kill him all over again.
“Severus, calm down–“
“Do you even care what those things might do to them? Do you know the lingering effects of being exposed to them? What they’re capable of?! One almost drowned Granger in a pond tonight!”
“Severus, look, there’s a reason why–“
“You’re unbelievable, you know that?!” Severus pushed himself away from the wall and paced in a circle, willing his heart to calm down before it exploded in his chest or he punched a hole in Dumbledore’s portrait. They were both very real possibilities. He was flooded with more adrenaline than his body could handle, and his emotions were manic. He ran both hands over his face as he shook his head. “How many?”
“There is a reason I didn’t want you to have this information, Severus. If the Dark Lord finds out that you know–“
“HOW MANY?!” He screeched, coming to stand before the portrait again. His chest heaved as he fought for air, and his eyes dared Dumbledore to ignore his question once more.
“Seven,” Dumbledore said quietly, his face both angry and sad. Disgust lingered in the corner of his eyes as they traced over Snape’s face. He had always disagreed with Snape using the potions he’d created unless, of course, he directed it.
“Seven,” Snape uttered in disbelief, falling back against his desk and gripping the edges tightly. “Fucking hell, Albus – how could you be so irresponsible? You have people waging a war that they can never win. He’ll never die until they’re all destroyed.”
“You’ve taken that stuff again, haven’t you,” Dumbledore sniffed, his eyes sliding over Snape’s dilated pupils once more before trailing down to the tremor in his hands. “You know that messing around with those potions is going to kill you one of these days. If you don’t keep your heart rate down, you won’t make it through the night! So calm yourself, Severus!”
“My fate was sealed years ago – don’t lecture me. You even gave it your stamp of approval for Merlin’s sake,” Snape glared back at him. “Stop trying to change the subject – how many Horcruxes are left?”
Dumbledore paused, tightening his jaw before he begrudgingly responded. “Did they destroy the locket?”
“Yes,” he answered sharply. “And for the record, that’s what I did – I gave them the damn sword as you requested, but Granger nearly died retrieving it because the locket tried to drown her. I stayed to make sure they both lived. They destroyed it immediately after before I was able to leave.”
“Well, then there are four remaining.”
“It’s why they need the sword.” Snape shook his head, still struggling to digest everything. The effects of the potion were finally starting to slow, and he could feel his heart rate decreasing. “What are they?”
“We don’t know,” Dumbledore said soberly. “Harry and I retrieved the locket the same night as the astronomy tower. We were never able to finish locating the remaining objects, and that is the task that I have left to Harry. He has, of course, enlisted the help of Hermione and Ron.”
“So they have been wandering around for the last six months, alone, trying to find the remaining Horcruxes and the sword. I suppose it explains why the Weasley brat tried to steal it. But for fuck’s sake, Albus – they have nothing to go on, no support–”
“They are more capable than you think, Severus. They will find the remaining Horcruxes,” Dumbledore sighed and took a long pause. “Severus, there is something I must ask of you – something I debated asking you long ago before I died.”
“You mean before I killed you,” Snape said bitterly, his eyes circling back to Dumbledore’s.
“It was a request I made of you, Severus, and you spared me from a long and slow death – for that, I am and will forever be grateful to you,” Dumbledore said somewhat sternly, and Snape turned his eyes away. He couldn’t stomach the look that Dumbledore was giving him. “I knew if I told you what I must ask of you now – that you would discover the Dark Lord’s secret, and you would have realized that he had made Horcruxes. I suppose… that since you now know, it is as good a time as any. Severus, there is something that Harry must do, but not until the time in which the Dark Lord is most weakened – when he is fearing for his life, once all six Horcruxes have been destroyed.”
“Six?” Snape arched a brow in confusion, looking toward Dumbledore once more. “You said there were seven.”
“Yes,” Dumbledore said sadly, and he pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. “When the Dark Lord tried to kill Harry, and Lily cast her own life between them as a shield, the killing curse rebounded on the Dark Lord, and a fragment of his soul blasted apart from the whole and latched itself onto the only living soul left in the collapsed building.”
Snape felt his jaw go slack as the gears in his head clicked into place – already piecing together what Dumbledore was avoiding saying bluntly.
“That piece of his soul lives on in Harry, Severus, and it is that which gives him the power of speech with snakes – the connection between their minds which he has never understood.”
“Potter is the seventh Horcrux.” The words fell from Snape’s lips as a whisper. “So the boy… the boy must die?”
“Yes,” Dumbledore said slowly, nodding his head. “And the Dark Lord himself must be the one to do it, Severus. That is essential.”
“You want me to tell him he must die,” Snape’s mouth was still ajar. “I thought – all this time… that we were protecting him for her. For Lily.”
“We have protected him because it has been essential to teach him, to raise him, to let him try his strength,” Dumbledore had shut his eyes tight as he spoke, and he wore a very pained expression. “Meanwhile, the connection between them grows ever stronger, a parasitic growth: sometimes I have thought he suspects it himself. If I know him, he will have arranged matters so that when he does set out to meet his death, he is prepared. You’ll recall before I died, I told you that I would have one final favour to ask after my passing when the time was right – this was it, Severus. You must tell the boy that he must die.”
“You’re unbelievable,” Snape breathed, a tightness forming in his chest. “You’ve kept him alive so that he could die at the right moment – you’ve raised him like a pig for slaughter.”
“It is what is necessary. Don’t act shocked, Severus. How many people have you watched die or killed yourself over the years?”
“Recently? Only the ones required per your plan,” Snape bit back, pushing away from his desk. “I knew you were using me. I knew it from the moment I declared my loyalty to you and began this double life, but I did it anyway. I knew you used people like tools until they were no longer useful, and then you throw them away – but I never expected you would stoop so low as to use a child. Growing him into exactly what you needed, patiently waiting until it was time to send him off to the butchers!”
“Don’t tell me you’ve come to care for the boy, Severus?” Dumbledore looked rather surprised and a bit hopeful. “After all these years of tormenting him so.”
“Care for him?” Snape spat, his hand trembling as he raised his wand and cast the one spell he had sworn earlier that day he never wanted to repeat. “Expecto patronum!”
The silver doe burst forward from his wand once more, prancing delicately around the office until she faded away from view. His chest constricted, and he felt a pull through his heart that he had not experienced in years. His throat closed shut as the weight of the world collapsed in on him.
“After all this time?” Dumbledore’s soft voice cut through his thoughts, and his eyes flashed toward the old man as his gaze hardened.
“Always.”
He moved across the office and pushed through the door to his quarters, slamming it so hard behind him the walls rattled throughout. He warded it, silenced it, and then let a ragged cry split from his lips as he grabbed the object nearest to him and hurled it into the wall, dropping to his knees as it shattered. The last time such a violent wave of emotion had wreaked havoc over his body was the night that Lily had died – and tonight, it felt like he was losing her all over again. But this time, his entire life was not only a long compilation of failures, it was also a lie.
He didn’t care about the Potter boy.
He had never cared about the boy, but everything he had done, every breath he had taken since he pledged himself to help Dumbledore, had been to keep him safe in her memory. He was to protect her son, for her, because Potter was the last living piece of her left – because it was what she had done in her last moments, and because he owed it to her for what he had done. Regardless of how much he despised the boy, he never wished him dead. He never wished him harm, even if he did wish that Potter wasn’t such an annoying little twat.
More than anything, though, he wished that Lily was alive and that he had died in her place. He should have. He yearned to go back in time and correct the worst mistake of his life, the moment he had unknowingly betrayed the woman that he had loved and condemned a family of innocent people to death.
It had taken years for him to learn, to understand how truly horrible he was. How selfish he was, how undeserving he was of her or her love. He had long since accepted that they would have never worked. It was a fantasy, nothing more – a childhood infatuation prolonged by desperation and loneliness – and for all her perfection, she was flawed too. It took losing the love of his life for him to become a better person, for him to become someone whom she may have tolerated. It took sentencing countless innocent people to death and still many years after that for him to learn that he was wrong – and that he had been wrong about many things.
So, he continued to love her. Not romantically, but with a sense of indebted servitude. He continued to hold himself accountable for his actions and swore to dedicate his life to her in payment for his failure as a human being. Ensuring Harry’s safety was the one minuscule positive impact he could make in the world. It was the tiny secret legacy that he could leave behind, for her, so that when he did finally die, he would know that he hadn’t been a complete monster.
And now, after everything, Dumbledore had taken it all away from him. He’d taken that wish of providing protection away from Lily.
Thank you, SnowMione18, for reminding me to incorporate more romance and relationship building. This chapter is dedicated to you.
-x-x-
March 1998
Hermione’s eyes fluttered open. Her nose was nuzzled into Harry’s chest, right next to the scar left by the locket, and she could hear his even breath ghosting across the top of her head. She had woken once already, per her usual routine, trembling and looking around wildly with her wand raised. The familiar flash of green light and dead eyes haunted her mind and pulled her awake with fear. Though thankfully, over the last two weeks, her reaction to the dreams had improved, and she was able to return to sleep much quicker each night – turning over to face Harry and curling into his strong arms. For the moment, it seemed that Harry was still deeply asleep. So she moved a little closer, relaxing in his warmth, breathing in his scent, and enjoying the feel of their limbs being tangled together.
She felt calm, laying there in his arms. Or at least as calm as she figured was possible until the war was over.
She tilted her head back a few inches to look at his face. He looked peaceful, and a small smile tugged at her lips as she gazed at him. It had become such a rare occurrence for him to look so calm. Over the last eight months, his resting face had become serious and thoughtful, and his boyish innocent charm, while still there deep underneath the surface, was no longer prominently displayed across his features. She only ever caught glimpses of it when they were both wrapped in bed, huddled with blankets, and she knew that it was a testament to the strength of their bond.
Harry felt safe with her. He trusted her. He would let down his guard around her, and she would do the same. They had become inseparable, possibly even codependent, but not in a detrimental or pathetic way. She pressed her nose back into his chest and relished the warmth against the cold, which had quickly claimed her skin from the seconds apart.
So far, she had hardly allowed herself to entertain the idea of what would come after the war. There was no point in thinking about it. With everything going on around them, with their constant battle just to survive, she had no time to worry or fantasize about what life after the war might be like. Aside from the odd wandering thought of ‘how will I adapt?’ or, ‘will I return to school?’ and the occasional, ‘I don’t feel safe around people, and I don’t want to talk to them… so how will I deal with that?’ she had all but buried the ideas and questions into a neat and tidy little box at the back of her mind.
It sat in the same place where she had buried her feelings for Ron after he left.
The only difference was that she had resolved Ron’s box much more quickly and it was now completely gone from her head. Over and done with, efficiently unpacked and processed, because in the case of her feelings towards Ron, the answer was easy: she didn’t have any feelings for him anymore.
They had rapidly died after his absence. Once she had had time to clear her head as she healed from the werewolf wounds and started to think clearly, objectively, she realized that he was not the man that she wanted him to be and that her attraction to him was little more than an infatuation based on childish hopes. It had never been grounded on any particular solid reason.
Thinking of it now, she almost laughed at the idea of ever finding him attractive in any way, shape or form.
This box, though, the one that contained her future, was heavy, large, and made her feel anxious.
She had never been an overly social person to start with. Similar to Harry, the friends she made at Hogwarts were the first true friends she had ever had. She loved her friends. She wished the best for them, and she desperately wanted them to be safe. When they first left the Burrow, she had missed them terribly and wished that there was some way to see them – but as the months clocked by, she found herself becoming more and more reclusive, secretive, suspicious, and hardened. Especially after Ron and the wicked burn of his abandonment when they had needed him most.
Now, she was folding inward on herself and Harry, and if truth be told, she was absolutely terrified to see their peers and friends again.
Firstly, because danger followed her and Harry like a shadow, everywhere, constantly, and she did not want to endanger their friends. She would not be able to handle it if something awful befell Ginny, Neville, Luna, or anyone else from the gang because she and Harry showed up and inevitably brought death alongside them.
Secondly, and this was the part that concerned her the most – she had no idea what to say to them or how to say anything to them. While she and Harry did talk frequently, and to an excessive amount when planning or practicing, it was different from any other relationship she had ever had. An immense amount of their communication had become non-verbal. Harry understood her, he knew her, and she knew him. She didn’t need to explain herself in full, and yet she knew that he would get it. When it came to the idea of speaking with anyone else or having a normal conversation, it just made her anxiety spike.
She was out of practice; they both were. It was obvious just by looking at them that they were no longer typical teens, and they no longer fit into a normal world – though frankly, she wondered if they ever had. Now, her already existing social awkwardness was exacerbated.
She knew that their friends who remained at Hogwarts were fighting on their own front, waging war in any way that they could, and facing their own perils – but they still had each other. They still had the normalcy of being at school with other students and professors, and owls and post. They still had family and friends to fall back on and it provided them with some semblance of structure and community. Their world was so vastly different from what she and Harry had been experiencing that they were hardly comparable. She and Harry were out in the woods, travelling across the country every few days, running from snatchers and werewolves while they fought to obtain regular supplies.
She didn’t like the idea of comparing, and she wasn’t trying to say that they were worse off – she was just worried that she and Harry might have become too detached. She was worried about how they would handle seeing their friends again. She already knew they wouldn’t react well to large crowds, and the idea of ‘rejoining society’ or ‘coming back to the world’ terrified her.
It would be a process, a long hard process where she already knew it was highly unlikely she would ever feel safe enough to sleep without him around.
She sighed. This thought was one that she only allowed herself to mull over while she laid in bed next to Harry each night, stealing his heat and tracing her fingers along his skin – because she felt safe with him, so the thought wasn’t quite as terrifying.
She gently placed a kiss to Harry’s collar bone, slowly moving her mouth along his neck, up his jaw to the corner of his mouth. Stubble had grown in along his jaw, making the skin feel rough against her lips. She hadn’t brought up what would happen to the two of them when everything was over because deep down, she knew they would stay together. It was all in the non-verbal communication that they shared. It was in the way that he looked at her. The way his hand lingered on hers and in how she looked to him and watched his movements. The idea of existing without him in a large world filled with other people that she may or may not have to interact with was just out of the realm of possibilities.
They would be together.
This she knew.
She kissed the corner of his mouth as she mulled the thought over. It wasn’t out of possessiveness or neediness, and it wasn’t clingy or desperate – it was just something that she knew. And she knew that her confidence in their relationship stemmed from mutual respect, love, and a deep appreciation for him. She was more confident in that fact than she was that her heart would take its next beat.
“Mmmm.”
A low hum came from Harry’s chest as she kissed him, and she saw the corner of his lips twitch upwards. The sound vibrated deeply against her and sent a small shiver down her spine. She kissed him again when he slid his leg forward, pushing it between her thighs until it rested snugly against her center.
“Good morning,” he murmured, eyes still closed. He was clearly enjoying the light peppering of Hermione’s lips across his skin as he wrapped his hands more tightly around her.
“Good morning,” she whispered in return and laced a hand around his back up into his wild hair. She breathed lightly against his lips before a question flittered to her tongue from her earlier thoughts. “Harry?”
“Mhm?” He hummed, his hand shifting to trace small circles against the small of her back. Lightly working away at her stiff muscles as his eyes remained closed and he waited for her to continue.
“When this is all over – assuming we don’t die that is–“
“Of course.” Harry nodded a fraction. There was no humour in his voice; he wasn’t mocking her or being rude with his acknowledgement. They were both comfortable mentioning the possibility of death even though they both vehemently refused to let the other die.
“You’ll stay with me, right?” She whispered. Harry’s eyes snapped open the second her question left her lips, and she was met with bright green in the dim morning light. Her eyes darted between his, gauging the intensity at which he was watching her, and her fist tightened unconsciously in his hair. “Like this? I can’t even wrap my head around what’s to come, but – we’ll stay together, right?”
“Always,” he said gently, though the firm tone was unmistakable. Then his brow furrowed in question; clearly, he had also thought that the answer was obvious, so he had never brought it up. “What’s on your mind?”
“Nothing really,” she said honestly as she slid her leg over his, moving her body closer to him before she gave him a sad smile. “I was just thinking about Hogwarts, everyone there, and what it might be like to see them again, and I just thought, well – I can’t imagine sleeping without you. Or how on earth we are supposed to go back to how things were before.”
His eyes softened as he looked at her, a thousand unspoken words passing between them before he pulled her closer to him, kissing her deeply. He had thought of it too, of course he had. His hand on her back slid up her side to rest firmly on her ribs, and she felt her body tremble with anticipation under his touch. She pressed herself more firmly against the thigh that was between her legs. She loved the feel of him against her skin. She loved that he always made her relax under his touch and that he understood what she meant. He knew what she needed, and he was willing to give her the closeness and reassurance she was craving.
“Hermione,” he breathed against her lips as he pulled his head back to look at her. “Things will never go back to the way they were – but, wherever we go, whatever happens after – we’re going to stay just like this.”
Hermione smiled at him before she moved forward to capture his lips once more. Something about the warmth of being under the heavy blankets that separated them from the freezing tent air filled her with a sense of need, and she quickly found herself drowning under Harry’s lips. She panted against him as he rolled her over onto her back and pressed his thigh harder against her center. The weight of his body on top of hers made her heart flutter in her chest as she gripped at his shoulders and tried to pull him impossibly closer. Her hips arched up into him as a small groan escaped his lips. He bit her lip gently, his tongue tracing over her swollen lip as he gripped her small frame tightly.
Their location and skill with magic wasn’t the only thing that had changed since Birmingham.
Their physical relationship had, too.
Ever since the day Harry had taken her on the rug in the living room when they had both been pent up, angsty, and aggressively adamant to refuse defeat, things between them had changed. There was a distinct shift in the sex that they had. It went from gentle and tentative to heavy and hot. They were urgent, desperate, and occasionally rough.
Perhaps it was the anxiety they both felt as they continued to relentlessly train, plan their next moves, and await news on the werewolf den that was seeping out into their sexual activities. Perhaps it was just a natural progression in any relationship; after all, they were completely comfortable around each other now, and she wanted to be closer to him. Or maybe it was tied to the shift in their demeanour as a result of the war. She would never know, but regardless, she regularly found herself grabbing at him roughly as his hand knotted in her hair, and they both gasped for breath.
She had no complaints.
She liked it.
It made her feel alive. It made her feel like she still had some sort of control over her life despite the disaster and chaos that surrounded them. So, maybe that’s what it was; it was their way of being free from the war. Or maybe it was just hormones. She really had no idea; all she knew was that she never wanted it to stop.
She moaned as Harry pushed against her body, pressing her into the mattress. She traced her nails across the skin of his shoulders as his lips moved along her neck. She could feel his hardness through their pajama bottoms, and she needed more. She needed to satisfy the deep craving that had stirred in her core the moment Harry kissed her deeply. She moved her hands down his frame, grabbing at the band of his pants and pushing them down. He leaned to the side on his elbow, his lips never leaving her skin as he took over and started to remove his pants. She followed suit, quickly working to shuck off her bottoms before tossing them to the ground near her purse.
“Harry,” she groaned as she felt his stiff member between her legs, and she had to resist the urge to just pull him inside of her.
She wanted to try something different, something she had heard the girls mention at school. So, she pushed against his shoulder and forced him to roll over onto his back. She moved with him, straddling his legs and sitting on top of him. A low groan left his lips as she ground her center against his length, resting her hands flat on his chest.
Their eyes met.
His were half shut, lustful with the faintest hint of feral desire. He wanted her. She could see it, and she could feel it in the way that his hands gripped her hips. It made her shudder as she moved against him but refused to let him slip inside – only teasing him with the gentle roll of her hips.
It was a new feeling, something very equivalent to power or control, and she found that she liked it. His hands tightened on her hips as he pulled her down further and moved with her motions. She could see him fighting the urge to push himself between her slick folds as he watched her move above him – waiting for her to continue the lead she had so clearly claimed. He was captivated, and he was controlled despite his want. His left hand slid up her side, pushing up her tank top as a low hiss escaped his lips.
“Fuck, Hermione,” he groaned, his hips pushing up into hers.
She briefly removed her hands from his chest to pull her shirt off over her head, completely unfazed that she was now straddling him naked – baring her body and her scars to him fully in the morning light. She had come a long way from being insecure about her looks, and as she watched Harry’s gaze trace over her skin, she could see the hunger. Which only made her own desire grow.
“You are so fucking beautiful, Hermione,” Harry murmured, his voice low and dark with want. “Uungghhh, I want you.”
Her mouth twitched into a faint smirk before she bit her bottom lip.
She had never been on top, and she was amazed at how natural it felt, how easy it was for her hips to move over his. She reached down between them and gently grabbed him, aligning him with her entrance before she began to lower herself. Her eyes fluttered closed at the feeling. She wasn’t sure if it was something that she would ever not get chills from as her body shuddered and adjusted to his length.
It was tight.
It was always tight, but yet he slid into her easily from the wetness that had been building between her legs. She heard him groan beneath her, and she peered down through the bottom of her lashes at him to see it. An almost painful expression of pleasure was struck across his face as he stilled his hips, resisting the urge to thrust up into her hard.
“Fuck, Harry,” she breathed, dropping her head so her forehead rested against his. She felt so full. It was the best feeling in the world, and she groaned as she rocked her hips gently, gripping his shoulder more tightly. “I love the way you feel.”
“Ungghh,” Harry groaned and pulled her lips down to his quickly as he pushed his hips up into her. He devoured her, and she let him, willingly opening her mouth and moaning as his tongue traced over her teeth.
Their movements grew quicker and deeper with each motion. It only took a second for her to get the timing right, and soon Hermione was panting over top of him. Her hands clutched at his chest as each roll of her hips became rougher, and Harry’s grip on her hips tightened. She could hear herself moaning. She could feel his warm breath on her face as he panted. His nails dug into her skin, and then he thrust his hips up with each roll and hit the glorious bundle of nerves deep within her – causing her head to roll back as expletives poured nonsensically from her lips.
“Fuck Harry, fuck Harry, Harry – oh my god – right there. Merlin – don’t stop pushing up!” Hermione groaned as sweat started to form on her back.
She continued to rock her hips back and forth. She pushed her hair back from her face to keep it from swinging wildly with their motion, and she let her fingers trail slowly down her front, a daze consuming her body as the sensations quivering through her grew exponentially.
“Shit – Hermione – I’m going to come,” Harry panted. “Fuck! Don’t stop, I want you to come – I want you to ride my cock until you come.”
His deep baritone reverberated through her. His words sent a primal chill of immense pleasure down her spine all the way to her toes as her mouth fell open and her head lolled back. She’d never heard such dirty words leave his mouth before, but she found no embarrassment with it – only the deep wave of carnal lust and arousal. It made any rational thought vacant the premise of her mind as she rocked her hips harder, and more nonsense poured from her lips.
She had never, not ever, felt the coil wind so impossibly tight at her center. She could feel the muscles in her body contracting as the pressure grew. She felt drunk with bliss as her heart raced. It felt as if she had lost control of her body and mind.
A deep low guttural moan escaped her lips as white blinded her vision, and she came harder than she ever had in her life. Her whole body shuddered, her back curved, her eyes screwed shut, her body glistened with sweat as she rocked herself against Harry in jerky motions. She felt him grow even harder still, then he came undone beneath her. She heard a deep growl escape his chest as he gipped her like death and thrust himself into her hard.
Her brain had stopped working. It was official, she was down for the count, and she felt like she couldn’t breathe. Waves of pleasure rolled through her body as Harry pulled her down against his chest, kissing her fiercely as they both continued to grind against one another, drawing out the almost unbearable bliss from their orgasms as she collapsed against him entirely. They stayed that way for several minutes, Harry kissing her languidly as his hands lazily trailed circles across her skin. She felt like she was melting into his body as she moved her lips against his until she finally felt him soften within her. Their lips fell apart slowly, both of them panting and looking at each other with hazed, sex-addled stares.
“I love you, Hermione,” he murmured, the words soft as they puffed out against her face, and he brushed a strand of hair from her cheek. A drunken smile splayed across her face as she rubbed her thumb over his arm.
“I love you, Harry.”
“You want breakfast?” He asked, still breathless. She could see his chest rise and fall quickly as a smile lingered on his lips.
“Mm – shower first.” It was all she could manage to say. Her heart was still racing, she was covered in a sheen of sweat, and her body felt shaky from the unfamiliar motions of riding Harry.
“Yes – definitely. Good idea.”
They slowly pulled themselves from bed. Hermione silently vanished the after-effects of Harry’s orgasm from her body so as not to make a mess before she summoned some fresh clothes from her purse, which laid partially open on the floor from when she had summoned an extra blanket in the night. Then they both made their way to the bathroom and cranked the heat on the water, washing quickly before they started their day.
“So, I think we should make a plan to go to Xenophilius’s in the next week or two,” Hermione said as she scooped a spoonful of oatmeal and paused before taking a bite. “I just finished bottling the last of the calming draught we could brew and – well, we are completely out of ingredients except for some odds and ends.”
Harry nodded, picking up his already finished bowl and bringing it over to the sink. They both knew that obtaining any more ingredients was out of the question – the Death Eaters had officially locked down the apothecaries, and Arthur had advised them to avoid any wizarding cities at all costs. If they needed anything else specifically, they would need to arrange a drop with Arthur, but that would only put the man at risk both for purchasing the ingredients himself and for completing the drop. Hypothetically they had more than enough blood replenisher, calming draught, dittany, antivenom, pepperup, and a variety of other potions to make it through the war. Though, in Hermione’s opinion, a million bottled potions still wouldn’t make her feel prepared.
Then again, nothing would.
“I agree,” Harry said, taking a seat across from her again after cleaning his bowl and waiting for her to finish eating. “I want to run a few more spells with the wand from Evan first – but I thought we could go toward the end of March. We can get a few more practice rounds in and plan a way in.”
Hermione nodded, chewing her oatmeal thoughtfully as she started making plans in her head. Evan’s wand had proved to be most interesting. While it was fantastic to have two wands again – his seemed peculiar in its functionality. The wand blatantly refused to cast a bombarda yet seemed to have a particular affinity to sectumsempra. It disliked unlocking charms, producing nothing but red sparks out the tip when they tried it and yet seemed fond of summoning charms.
Despite their best efforts and even an arithmancy calculation she had attempted over the last two weeks to try and predict what the wand would reject, they were unable to predict its finicky yet consistent behaviour. Thus, they had been left with the only reliable option of testing each and every spell that they knew while they kept a mental list. Thankfully, Harry and herself did not require a wand to cast most spells anymore, including a bombarda. But having a semi-functional wand was always better than having no wand, and it was good to know what they could use the thing for.
“There were a few other medical spells I wanted to run through as well,” Hermione said as she finished her breakfast and pushed herself up from the table. Despite their extensive workout routines and training, it was odd that she somehow always felt stiff and had sore muscles after sex with Harry. She assumed the activities must use very different muscles groups… or that the intensity of their sex had escalated more than she realized. “Let’s aim for the 27th as a goal. I’d suggest we use one of the two of our last Polyjuice transformations for the visit, but I suspect Xenophilius will need to know that it is us. I doubt he would invite strangers in. So, we are going to be stuck walking a decent way to his house.”
“Yes, I had thought about that,” Harry sighed, running a hand through his messy hair and propping his chin upon his folded hands. “Luna had mentioned that her mother set up some sort of bizarre anti-apparition ward around the perimeter, so we will have to apparate nearer to the Burrow and then walk in. It will be risky – I have no doubt that the Lovegood’s are being watched after what the Quibbler ran.”
“I know,” Hermione said grimly as she stretched her arms above her head in preparation for what always came after breakfast, their workout routine and intense rounds of dodging and throwing mild hexes at each other in the snow. “We can disillusion, shield, and cloak our way in. If something happens inside though, we’re screwed – we can’t apparate within 200m of their house.”
“We will just have to remain disillusioned and refresh our shields. No one will be expecting that – it will give us an advantage to get away, and then we run like hell.”
“Yeah,” Hermione sighed. “Once again I’m left wondering if the world has a grudge against us – or that maybe someone is secretly routing for Tom because sometimes it just feels like everything is trying to kill us.”
“No kidding,” Harry snorted as he pulled himself up from the table and followed Hermione over to the open space in the living room so they could complete their pushups, crunches, and other exercises. His voice took on a somber tone as he continued to voice his thoughts. “Though really – it’s because they’re well organized and prepared. The Ministry and public didn’t want to listen when we had the chance to properly prepare. They dug their heels in and stuck their heads in the sand – and now we are paying the price for their actions or lack of action, I should say. All we had was a small band of dedicated Order Members with minimal direction and no real funding or resources leading our defences. He had a whole damn following that worked tirelessly in the background collecting resources and getting prepared for years. It’s our own fault.”
“It’s their fault,” Hermione corrected as she kneeled on the floor and began her first rep of pushups. “You warned them – we tried. But we were just kids, Harry. You can’t lump yourself in with them and take the blame on this one. At the time, we had no idea what was coming.”
“Maybe,” he breathed as he completed his tenth pushup with ease. “Though it hardly matters now. We are still the ones wading through the shitstorm.”
“Well – you’re certainly right about that,” Hermione muttered.
-x-x-
March 26, 1998
The previous twelve days passed by quickly, with Hermione and Harry moving campsites only once – to a still farther North location near the edge of the water on a frigid cliff. Every morning they awoke to the cold, hauled themselves from bed, and trained all day. They had already repacked her purse and medical kits three times, each time making minor changes to allow for better efficiency that could mean the difference between life and death during a battle. They had reviewed her map of Ottery St. Catchpole and the surrounding wizarding communities, devised a plan of entry, and selected the best place in which to apparate to Xenophilius’s in a few days’ time. They discussed the possible locations of Horcruxes and, unfortunately, agreed that at some point, after taking the trip to Xenophilius’s, they would need to return to Hogwarts – but they placed that on the back burner, agreeing not to touch it until they had spoken to Mr. Lovegood.
They spent the majority of their time physically training, running laps, extending their shield charms, practicing the new medical skills Hermione flagged, learning Harry’s new-found liquid nitrogen spell, and practicing their duelling. The pattern was so ingrained in them that their bodies moved mechanically with no complaint as their movements became more silent, more precise, and more deadly day by day.
The only thing that changed as the days went by was the number of exercises that they were able to complete, the amount of weight they could lift, and the number of spells they were able to cast from Evan’s overparticular wand. They had spent over four hours the previous day wielding hexes at each other in the tent, neither one of them faltering once from their circle. They gave up only because Harry’s stomach had rumbled, drawing them out from their obsessive state and making them realize that they had practiced for an hour and a half longer than what they had initially intended.
Two days ago, they received an update from Arthur, which indicated that he and his team had finally gathered enough information to confirm the pattern of werewolf activity around Birmingham and that Shacklebolt had given his full support to begin plans of an offensive attack. Over the next few weeks, the Order would be collecting resources and devising a strategy for entry. One that would ensure a quick in and out mission which resulted in the complete annihilation of the den and the capture, or death, of Arlo. Arthur had personally assured Hermione, he had vowed really, that he would destroy Arlo’s research and burn the place to the ground. The news had caused Hermione’s heart to catch in her chest as a tiny flame of hope sprang to life in her heart. It made it easier to focus on their own task knowing that something was happening within the Order.
‘Finally,’ she had whispered into Harry’s shoulder as she held him close. ‘Rose might rest in peace’.
Today, the weather had begun to warm, and while the frozen cliff side was still covered in snow and ice, the air was mild, and the sun was peeking out through the clouds. In the morning, they decided to take advantage of the odd sunny day and venture forth from the tent to train aggressively, agreeing to stop only when the timer sounded. If you got hit, you reset and continued. After three hours of running around in the snow, slipping on the ice, ducking and dodging, and rolling around as they hurled spells at one another, they were exhausted, and neither one of them had landed a single blow despite the fact that they were giving it their all.
Hermione ran and rolled under a silent stunning charm that Harry had cast sans wand.
He’d boxed her into a corner against the cliffside, and she was cursing her choice to roll left instead of right. She had done it to avoid a rather nasty looking ice crevasse, but now she was running out of places to go and was relying on her circle training to avoid his spells. If he grew any closer, though, she would be able to punch him in the face or the ribs – which was something she would do without a second thought in a real battle.
Their physical training had not just been for agility while duelling. They had begun to incorporate anything and everything that they could get their hands on, including firming up their punches and reading about some more… unpleasant techniques, such as gouging out your target’s eyes with your thumbs. It hadn’t exactly made for light bedtime reading, but she would rather know how to do it and not need it than find herself in a situation where she was magicless and unable to defend herself.
She glanced rapidly to the rocks behind her.
There was no way she would be able to cross around behind him, but there was nowhere left to go but up. She saw his next spell the instant he cast it, a petrificus totalus, and she moved without thinking, not taking even a second to consider if the idea would work. She jumped, high, reaching her hand up to the rocks behind her and casting a silent sticking charm. Harry’s spell hit the rock beneath her, flying through the space where her legs had been only a moment ago as she firmly planted her feet on the wall behind her. Then in one swift motion, she pushed forward, removing the sticking charm and launching herself into a roll over top of Harry. She had barely hit the snow before she threw herself to the right and rolled to face him, avoiding the stunning spell he’d cast as he spun around. She popped up to her knees, wand raised with the stunning spell on the tip of her tongue as the timer went off, and they both froze.
“Sticking charm?” Harry breathed heavily, reaching out his free hand to pull her up from the ground.
“Yeah,” she panted. “Sort of boxed myself in there – didn’t see anywhere else to go but up.”
“Creative,” he grinned, pushing some loose strands of hair from his face and grinning at her. He had become accustomed to the motion, doing it without even thinking now since tying his hair back never seemed to hold up. “I’ll keep that in mind. I hardly think anyone would be expecting that one.”
“Honestly – I’m not even sure that I was expecting it,” she laughed as she followed him back to the tent.
They ate a quick lunch, scarfing down the food and stretching at the table in preparation for round two. With a rare sunny day like today, they would be fools to hide indoors. They both planned to work themselves outside until they had nothing left to give – duelling in the tent just wasn’t the same, and it was nice to be able to practice outside without having to limit themselves on duration so they wouldn’t freeze to death. So, they returned outside after cleaning up the kitchen and began their second round of training. Three hours later, Hermione had managed to catch Harry in a leg locker curse a second before the timer went off, and they both collapsed, panting in the snow.
“I had an idea,” Harry said after he drank deeply from the glass of water that Hermione had brought out after their session ended. “We should practice our aim.”
“You want to shoot clay pigeons.” Hermione nodded, knowing precisely where Harry’s train of thought was going.
“Exactly.” He passed the glass to Hermione and re-tied his hair into a ponytail as she took a long drink. “I thought that maybe we could find something we don’t really need – or I guess, something that we won’t care about if it gets destroyed. Someone can charm it in the air and move it around while the other shoots at it.”
“It’s a good idea, Harry,” Hermione said as she pulled herself up from the ground. She outstretched her hand, summoning her purse wordlessly and catching it firmly after it flew through the tent flap directly into her hand. “I’m sure we have something in here that we can use.”
“Perfect.” Harry rolled his neck and stood from the ground. He twirled Evan’s wand lightly in his fingers while he watched Hermione peer into her purse. “What do we have in the bag.”
“Well... for clay pigeons,” Hermione muttered as she rummaged around the purse. She figured that either old clothing or pillows might be the best bet. Then a small, humorous smile tugged at her lips when her eyes circled onto something of a brilliant orange colour. “What about theses?”
Hermione pulled out two brilliantly orange Chudley Canon socks and held them up to Harry. The expression on his face was priceless as he snorted and shook his head.
“Damn, I forgot about those horrid things – you know that Ron used to wear those constantly, right? Either he had a million pairs, or he just washed them every day.”
Hermione gave Harry a deadpanned look.
“Yes, you’re right – he probably has just that one pair, and he definitely wore them all the time without washing them,” Harry said, conceding easily as his nose crinkled at the idea. “I can’t believe you’re touching those.”
“Ew – Harry. Obviously I washed them before I packed them. I’m not stupid. I knew Ron had a habit of never washing his stuff. Actually,” Hermione said thoughtfully as she charmed the sock to float and raised it in the air. “I washed everyone’s stuff before I packed it.”
“Are you saying that you handled my unmentionables before we were together?” Harry feigned shock and took a step forward to aim his wand at the sock.
“Pfft, please,” Hermione scoffed as she made the sock wriggle around in the sky. Harry still managed to hit it on his first try with a stunning charm. “I both saw and handled your unmentionables plenty of times before we got together.”
“Wait, what? When?” Harry glanced at her and landed a second hit on the sock without much effort as it swirled around in the air above him.
“Harry, you arriving in the Hospital Wing was like – a regular yearly event. And sometimes, when you were passed out, you would turn over in your sleep, and your boxers would show if the blanket slipped down. I would pull it back up over you to protect your modesty. Then, there were the few times over the years where we met in your dorm room, and you were literally sitting on your bed in your boxers. And there are all the times that I helped tidy up around the Burrow and did laundry while you guys were out riding brooms.”
“Oh yeah,” Harry said, a fond smile crossing his face. “I’d forgotten about that. It feels like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it? Do you think Ron will be mad if I light his sock on fire?”
“I’m pretty sure that you would be doing him a favour,” she snorted, he was clearly itching to try incendio with Evan’s wand.
Mentally, she noted that this was the first time they had spoken outwardly about Ron. She was a bit surprised to realize that it didn’t feel awkward. Months ago, she would have been unsure of how the topic would go down given that Harry knew she briefly fancied him. But now, they were both so comfortable and confident with each other and their relationship, that discussing the missing third of the golden trio didn’t feel like anything.
It was just another topic.
She loved Harry, he knew that, and he also knew that there wasn’t even an inkling of anything remotely close to feelings left in her body for Ron. To her, talking about Ron now felt rather similar to talking about the weather last year or muggle sports teams; it was just something that existed, but she didn’t really feel anything about it anymore.
“Besides, Ron’s not here so–“ Hermione paused and shrugged. “Worst case, if we ever see him again and he asks about the old socks, we can replace the stupid things.”
Harry blasted the sock, and it ignited brightly at the exact same moment that all of their wards and proximity alarms sounded. Hermione’s head swam at the noise; it sounded like a nuclear alarm blaring in her mind. The sensation was overwhelming, and she gritted her teeth in pain as she jumped to Harry’s side.
He quickly dispelled the alarms as his hand closed tightly around hers, both of them lowering into a defensive crouch and turning toward the figure that had appeared just to their left. The burning sock crackled, flames blowing in the wind as it floated slowly to the ground.
It didn’t make any sense.
Nothing – no one – not a damn thing should have been able to apparate to their direct location because they were essentially unplottable. They were undetectable. Hermione’s mind raced as every muscle in her body tensed in preparation for a fight. They would need to capture the intruder and leave immediately. They needed to know how the hell they had been traced so that they could ensure that it didn’t happen again.
A stunning spell was just leaving her wand as Harry’s hand tightened around hers, and her eyes widened – seeing what he did. At the very last second, she managed to pull her wand up, and the spell blasted over the top of the figure’s head, just grazing the fire-red hair as the burning Chudley Canon sock floated down before him.
“Bloody hell!! What was that for?!”
Ronald Weasley ducked. It was a delayed reaction and had Hermione not managed to pull her wand up at the last second, the spell would have hit him square in the face. She watched as the boy ran a hand through his hair, glancing curiously to the burning sock which was now resting by his feet before he turned his head up toward them.
“Hey,” he said sheepishly, giving them an awkward smile.
Warnings:
This chapter contains: disturbing concepts/ topics centered around the werewolf den operation.
******************************************
February 22, 1998
Northern Order safe house
“Arthur.”
Shacklebolt’s unmistakable deep voice drew his attention as he attempted to balance the collection of bodies that he was currently holding in his arms after apparating into the living room of the Order safe house. He had stood in a daze on the snowy hill for two long seconds more than he should have, his eyes looking into the darkness where Harry and Hermione had once stood before his brain finally snapped back on task and forced his body to move. He had collected the pieces of the werewolf from the snow and tightly grabbed the unconscious man’s wrist before leaving the frigid cold. The apparition was made a lot easier due to the feather-light charm that the pair had cast – but it was still difficult to hold all the pieces in his arms.
“Kingsley,” Arthur breathed, snow falling from his hat onto the ground as the werewolf’s head slipped from under his elbow. It dropped to the floor with a thud, rolling through the slush and leaving a dark red trail until Shacklebolt jumped forward and grabbed it. “Shoot, sorry about that – I’ll clean that up.”
“What the – how did this happen?” Shacklebolt asked as he eyed the trail of blood that now covered the floor. He lifted the head before him and narrowed his eyes in confusion. “Who killed it?”
“No idea,” Arthur lied. He knew. Or at least he strongly suspected that he knew exactly who killed it. But he thought it was best not to dwell on the details at the moment, given the situation. There were more important things to attend to. “I didn’t even see them – they made the drop quickly per protocol and disapparated. Though, I think that’s best, no? Sometimes the less information we have, the better, especially when their safety is critical for success. We both know that Dumbledore left them with a secret mission.”
“True, but if we did know a little bit more, we might be able to help them out. It worries me that they are out there on their own with everything that’s going on. They could have been injured running into a creature like this… but there isn’t much we can do if we don’t know where they are,” Shacklebolt said slowly as he vanished the blood from the floor with a wave of his wand. He was the only other person that knew Harry and Hermione were involved in the incident, though his knowledge was limited to only what Arthur had disclosed. Everyone else would be under the impression that Thomas, their ally from the Ministry, had discovered the scene and dispatched the beast – and Thomas would maintain that story as well. Shacklebolt took a deep breath before he continued. “We’ve got a room set up – Nasir is in there now waiting.”
“Thanks,” Arthur said, motioning to the freshly cleaned floor with his head. He figured that Nasir must be the new Legilimens that Shacklebolt had vouched for, and he wondered what the man might be like. “What of the werewolf corpse – will Thomas be coming to collect it?”
“Yes, he should be here momentarily. A quick in and out – I told him that we would leave the body here in the living room so he can pick it up.”
“Of course,” Arthur said as he easily carried the weightless furry body into the center of the room and placed it next to the head that Shacklebolt had set down.
Only very few personnel had apparition rights into the small northern cottage that acted as a backup safe house. It was rarely used, mostly because the surrounding area was wild, rugged, and dangerous, but also because the cottage was so small. But it was perfect for impromptu interrogations, especially given that the Burrow was being watched and Grimmauld Place was compromised. Arthur grabbed the unconscious man’s wrist once more and followed Shacklebolt toward the small back room. There was no point in waiting for Thomas. He would only be there for a blink while he grabbed the body, time was of the essence, and he would need to get it back to the Ministry as quickly as possible.
“Arthur, let me introduce you to Nasir,” Shacklebolt said, stepping to the side as he gestured to the man on his right with a wide arm. “A friend from a previous lifetime of mine, before I was placed in a desk job. He was stationed in Bulgaria in ’95 to keep an eye on Karkaroff, and You Know Who’s followers. He’s been undercover there for the last three years – but after the loss of Dumbledore, I worked to pull him out. Good men are hard to find, and Nasir here is one of the best. He trained briefly with Severus in Legilimency before going undercover, so he is our only resource left.”
Arthur’s eyes fell on the man that stood before him. His tanned skin, dark eyes, and high cheekbones were far more attractive than what he had been expecting to find based on the introduction that Shacklebolt had just provided – almost uncomfortably so – as if someone had designed him to perfection. He stood straight as a board, tall, strong, and despite the slightly worn look of the man’s robes, they were neatly pressed. He was also young, somewhere in his thirties, and it somehow seemed unfitting of a man who had been deep undercover for the last three years in a country notoriously dangerous for its support of the dark arts.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Arthur said, extending his hand and noting the strength he felt in Nasir’s palm as he shook it. “I imagine that getting out of Bulgaria was a task and a half.”
“You could say that,” Shacklebolt chuckled. “But times are dire, Arthur, and we need reliable men.”
“Isn’t that the truth,” Arthur breathed, aware that Nasir was watching him closely. It felt eerily similar to Snape’s gaze – always watching and picking up on all the little details that people tried to hide. If Nasir had been successful with a three-year undercover operation in Bulgaria, he was undoubtably talented.
And dangerous.
“The pleasure is mine,” Nasir’s voice was rich, and the baritone filled the small room. He had a hint of an accent, but it was unplaceable as if gathered from many years of travelling across the globe. “I understand that you have been instrumental in the fight and that you’ve organized several successful missions thus far.”
“I’m sure that Kingsley has oversold me,” Arthur smiled politely, silently wondering just what information Shacklebolt had told the man before him. He trusted Shacklebolt. The man was discreet and understood the importance of secrecy, but meeting a new person and trusting them instantaneously was a difficult task. Their experience had not been the best over the years, and it was a feeling Arthur struggled to shake. “So, I assume you were an Auror with Kingsley, yes?”
“Not exactly,” Nasir replied smoothly, a small shimmer in his eyes. They lingered on Arthur’s briefly before they glanced down to the man he was holding. “This must be our guest. You’re looking for some particular memories, correct?”
“Yes.” Arthur’s brow furrowed slightly at the lack of response, but he pulled the unconscious man from the ground and easily plopped him in the open chair. “I’ve been told his name is Evan – and we need to know what he knows about a werewolf den in Birmingham.”
“A werewolf den,” Nasir said, arching an unemotional brow at Shacklebolt. It seemed that he had not been informed of what he was investigating. “I see. Well, I can certainly pull out what’s there. Do you want to keep the memories or just have me relay them?”
“Pull them, please, if you don’t mind,” Arthur interjected before Shacklebolt could give an opinion.
“Of course,” Nasir smiled politely, but the movement didn’t reach his eyes, and it looked unnatural.
He clearly picked up on the implication of Arthur’s response: Shacklebolt trusted him, but Arthur did not. With a flick of his wand, chains bound the unconscious man to the chair, and Nasir stepped before him, tapping Evan gently on the head and muttering a silencing spell before he woke their guest. The man’s eyes shot wide and darted around. He opened his mouth, attempting to communicate something, but the sound was inaudible from the silencing charm Nasir had cast.
“Good evening, Evan.” Nasir’s low deep voice stalled the movements of the man’s mouth, and he shuddered in his chair before meeting the man’s eyes. “I’m going to have to ask you to remain still. Otherwise, I will ensure that you cannot move at all, permanently. Do you understand?”
Evan blinked rapidly three times, confusion riddled his face, but he nodded once and settled in his chair.
“Good.” Nasir bent low, grabbing Evan’s jaw and tilting his head upwards before he muttered a single word. “Legilimens.”
Arthur watched as Evan’s eyes went wide. He jerked once in his chair as Nasir stared unblinkingly into his eyes, combing through weeks of memories and data. It was deadly silent for a single minute, then Nasir exhaled and dropped Evan’s jaw, straightening back to his full height and turning toward Arthur.
“I’ve located the memories that you’re looking for, but someone has already been in there. There is a chunk of time missing after the alley, and it can’t be explained by him being unconscious. It would be unnoticeable to most as the memory work was well done, but only an expert in memory modification knows how to extract a chunk of time and hide the loss.” Nasir paused and eyed Arthur. “What’s most curious, though, is that someone has burned the name Rose into this man’s mind. It is… inescapable while in there.”
“Are they capable of that, Arthur?” Shacklebolt asked, his face scrunching in concern.
“I’m not sure,” Arthur hesitated, not liking that Shacklebolt had made mention of a ‘they’ being involved.
He did not want Nasir to be aware of anyone else but Thomas. Besides, something in his gut told him it was best to keep the recent changes he had witnessed in Harry and Hermione secret. It wasn’t a matter of trust – it was a matter of logic. If Harry and Hermione had developed new skills, it would be in their best interest to keep that information private so that they could use those skills as an element of surprise in the future. He had never been a fan of lying, but he also knew that intent was what mattered, and the bigger picture was more important. Shacklebolt would forgive him later if his knowledge of their skills or whereabouts was revealed.
“Does it impact the memories we need?” Arthur asked.
“No.” Nasir continued to watch him unblinkingly, and Arthur started to feel like the man could tell that he was lying. Though thankfully, he refrained from commenting on it. “I was simply noting that it was curious since it seems to have been done with a significant amount of rage. If you have a flask, I can extract what you need and clean up his mind so he can be released.”
“Here,” Shacklebolt said, pulling a large glass vial from his cloak and handing it to Nasir.
“If you could-” Arthur cut in a second before Nasir made to extract the memories. The man’s dark eyes flicked from his wand back to Arthur, and he waited for him to make his request. “Ensure that the final memory was the last available one in the alley.”
Nasir nodded and turned back to his work.
A nagging thought pulled at the back of Arthur’s mind as he watched Nasir raise his wand. Thomas had told him in his initial report that the victim’s name was Rose. It was on the picture ID card that had been in her blood-soaked jacket, and it had been what Harry had told him in their communication as well.
It can’t be a coincidence, Arthur thought as the ball of nerves that had been growing in his stomach all night from the new information rolled over. They must have done it – they must have wanted to make sure he would never forget.
He knew that this Evan man would be killed by the Death Eaters once released, and it would probably happen within the next twenty-four hours. Yet despite this fact, despite knowing that it ultimately would not make any difference in the grand scheme of things, he could not help but want to ensure that their efforts endured. He wanted the name to remain for the last few hours of this pitiful man’s life the same way that Harry and Hermione clearly had. He clenched his jaw, then before he could think better of it, Arthur interrupted Nasir again.
“Sorry, and if you could,” Arthur said, and Nasir paused once more. His eyes seamlessly flicking back to Arthur as a single perfect brow arched in question. “Leave the name Rose.”
Nasir stood motionless; his eyes fixed on Arthur for several long seconds before he responded.
“Arthur, I do not think that it would be possible for Merlin himself to remove that name from this man’s mind.”
-x-x-
Reviewing through the memories that Nasir extracted had been upsetting. Disturbing. Disheartening. Arthur did not have the words to describe how the images made him feel, but what he did know was precisely where the werewolf den was located. Now, they needed to do something with that information. They needed to make it count and put a stop to the abominable practice and unnecessary deaths of countless muggles.
He had released Evan to meet his death two hours outside of Birmingham center and then returned home, crawling carefully into bed next to Mrs. Weasley to grab just a few hours of sleep before waking for work. Had it not been a Sunday, they would have stayed and made a plan right away. But, unfortunately, maintaining their appearance in the everyday wizarding world was equally as important as any other aspect of the war.
So, he went to work, and he did his job.
He ignored the comments and cruel requests made by the Death Eaters that had infiltrated the Ministry and kept his head down, all while trying to ignore the images that consumed his mind. Shacklebolt had agreed that they needed to shut down the werewolf operation as soon as possible. It would be critical to the success of the war since they would never be able to combat the forces of the growing army, and they could not allow any additional muggles to be attacked. Arthur told Mrs. Weasley about the situation, leaving out Harry and Hermione’s involvement and instead focusing on what would need to be done. Then he reached out to Remus, who agreed to meet with Shacklebolt again the following evening to discuss a plan. However, what he had not been anticipating was seeing Nasir by Shacklebolt’s right-hand side when he arrived the following night.
“Kingsley,” Arthur said with a nod before looking toward Nasir, who was standing both very still and very quietly. “May I have a word?”
“Of course.” Shacklebolt nodded and followed Arthur toward the back room. “Did Remus say he would be coming?”
“Yes, he should be here shortly,” Arthur said, maintaining his pleasant tone until they were inside the back room and he had shut the door. “You didn’t say that you were bringing Nasir back again – I thought he would only be assisting with the memory collection portion of this?”
Shacklebolt exhaled and shook his head. “Arthur, you know we don’t have enough people for this. We were barely keeping up with things before, and now we have to find a way to disband a werewolf operation. We need more people if we are to be successful.”
“How did you meet him?” Arthur asked, his voice flat and his eyes serious. “Never, not once throughout the entire duration that I’ve known you have you ever mentioned the man. Forgive me for seeming skeptical; I don’t mean to question your judgement Kingsley, but why are you involving him and why now?”
“Because we need more people, Arthur–”
“Please – don’t feed me crupshit and expect me to eat it,” Arthur retorted, cutting Shacklebolt off with a tight voice before his eyes softened and he exhaled deeply. “Kingsley, you know that I trust you. But we could have called in Andromeda or even Bill or Molly to help with this. I understood why we needed him to collect the memories as none of us had the skill – but why is he here tonight?”
“Because we will need him, Arthur,” Shacklebolt said slowly, rubbing a tired hand over his jaw. “He has a skill set that you and I don’t have, one that earned him a spot deep within the Unspeakables, in a sub-unit that isn’t spoken of. That’s how I met him – sending him undercover to Bulgaria was a joint department operation that we set up four years ago.”
“What skill set?” Arthur’s pulse had quickened at the mention of the Unspeakables.
They were a relic department in the Ministry leftover from darker days. They were a constant thorn in the side of the Ministry and a sore topic with the public. There had long since been petitions to have the group disbanded entirely, but it had never made any progress because the Unspeakables were deemed a requirement even though no one knew what they did. It was just widely accepted and understood that they handled a lot of the dark, nasty, and unpredictable aspects of magic and that their purpose was to protect, ensure safety, and resolve ‘issues’. Though the vagueness still sparked unease with many, so their recruitment had been drastically cut in an effort to cull their purpose in place of disbanding the group entirely.
It truly was a fitting name given that anyone who joined the department could never speak of their work or their life, and they often lost their name over time. Rarely did you even know who they were. It was common knowledge that these people were like ghosts, flitting in and out of reality, disappearing for years at a time only to return looking older or younger or exactly the same as if no time had passed at all. It was impossible to pin down their motivations, their loyalty, or their purpose – they were mysteries. Impossible to read, eerily silent figures that often came across as detached and robotic.
Thus, people were afraid of them because they were dangerous.
“Interrogation, surveillance, torture, sabotage – he is the invisible man that you send in when you need something done. His undercover work in Bulgaria over the last three years is the only reason why this war is not coming at us from both fronts,” Shacklebolt said grimly as his face grew serious. “What he did before Bulgaria, what the Unspeakables had him do, I honestly can’t say Arthur. But he saved my neck before he left. We can trust him.”
“Merlin,” Arthur sighed and closed his eyes. It was possible that ‘Nasir’ wasn’t even his name. It was possible that the man was older than himself or Shacklebolt, or that Shacklebolt had no idea who this man really was. “I hope you’re right.”
A small pop from the room behind them pulled both of their eyes to the door. Remus had arrived, and he would no doubt be wondering who the stranger in the living room was. Resigning himself to trust Shacklebolt for the time being and hoping that it did not come back to bite him later, Arthur followed Shacklebolt back out into the living room. Remus was standing several feet back from Nasir and looked a bit surprised.
“Remus.” Arthur forced a smile and approached him quickly. “Thank you for joining us – it is very much appreciated. How’s Tonks?”
“She’s well,” Remus said calmly, his eyes darting back to the unfamiliar face in the room. “I’m happy to help in any way that I can.”
“Remus,” Shacklebolt said, extending his arm and giving Remus a warm handshake. “Welcome, I’m glad you could make it. I would like you to meet Nasir – he will be helping us out in our upcoming efforts.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Remus said, offering his hand to Nasir, who took it with a polite nod. “Arthur mentioned that there was something urgent we needed to get started on – but given the situation, he thought it best to avoid putting too many details on paper. So, you’ll have to forgive me; I’m not fully aware of the situation yet.”
Arthur launched into an explanation of the situation as they all took a seat. He relayed the information that they had pulled from Evan, the whereabouts of the werewolf den, the ever-growing army of enslaved muggles, and the fact that bands were being used as some sort of control method. Remus’s expression was tight as Arthur shared the information that he had, but he noticed Nasir appeared calm, cool, and collected.
So much so, it was unnerving.
“How do the bands function?” Remus asked, the words coming out in a rasp.
Arthur’s heart softened at the sound. The poor man was probably having a rough time hearing the information. Being a werewolf himself, Remus’s life had been difficult, lonely, and filled with despair and prejudice. Though, that was exactly why Arthur wanted his help.
Aside from the obvious fact that Remus would have intel on werewolves and what to expect from a den learned from the spying he had done for Dumbledore, and how to approach the situation – he would also, more than possibly anyone else in the Order, be wholeheartedly invested in putting a stop to the operation.
“I’m not sure yet.” Arthur hesitated. “But I will have that information soon. It’s being looked at, and the individual completing the research has my full confidence.”
“Well, regardless of the banding, we need to develop a plan for infiltrating the den. We only have the resources to do this once, and when we strike it must be effective. Otherwise, they will move locations, and we will never find them again. We’ve been lucky to discover the information that we have, and we need to use it wisely,” Shacklebolt said as he looked between the men. “We also need to decide what to do with the muggle werewolves – assuming we are able to take any into custody.”
The room was quiet for a moment. Each man tight-lipped as none of them wanted to say what they all feared.
“It is highly unlikely that you will be able to save any of them,” Nasir said, his rich voice catching all three men’s attention. He was the first one to speak after the silence had filled the room, and he sounded entirely unbothered by his own words. “When the time comes to infiltrate the base, you will need to be prepared to kill them.”
“Unsurprising opinion coming from an Unspeakable,” Arthur breathed as Nasir continued to look at him with a flat stare. “We should at least prepare ourselves to take them in – have wolfsbane potion ready, supplies, and places for them to go.”
“The transformation on muggles is far more devastating than it is on wizards, Arthur,” Nasir said calmly. “Even once disbanded and unfrozen from their perpetual wolf state, assuming that we can do it, would you really want to leave these people to live out a life alone and in agonizing pain after what they’ve already been through?”
“I think that they should at least be given the choice.”
“He’s correct, Arthur,” Remus said, his voice sounding defeated. He dropped his head into his hands, and he spoke into his palms. “The transformation wears on muggles. They don’t properly heal from it in between each cycle the way that we do, as they lack the magic required to do so. As a result, it destroys their body over time, and they live short lives. They would be forced to live away from their families in a world that they don’t understand while slowly dying.”
He took a long pause before he lifted his head and looked around the room.
“That said,” Remus all but whispered. “I agree with Arthur. They should at least be given the choice. We cannot just walk in and slaughter them; they deserve better than that.”
Nasir flicked his eyes between the two men but remained silent.
“We can work to procure additional ingredients for wolfsbane potions,” Shacklebolt said with a sadness to his eyes. “We will be limited, though. If their numbers have grown to the extent you believe they have, Arthur, we cannot save them all.”
“So, what’s the next step them?” Remus asked, looking to Arthur and Shacklebolt.
“We need to verify the den location. The memories that Nasir pulled showing the location of the den are over two months old. We also need to get an idea of their traffic, numbers, and defences. This is critical for our success before we can launch an attack,” Shacklebolt replied.
“Once I receive additional information about the bands, we can use it and the information from our surveillance to develop a plan,” Arthur added.
Remus nodded. “How long?”
“I’m hoping to act within the next three weeks,” Arthur said, his statement receiving a raised brow from Shacklebolt.
“Arthur, we need time to complete a proper investigation of the location. I’m not sending anyone in until we are certain.”
“Yes, I understand that – but we also cannot waste time. They are preparing for something big, and we need to act before they do.”
“Potions aside, I can gather the intel that you require within eight days,” Nasir said as he eyed the exchange between Arthur and Shacklebolt closely. “After that, it’s up to you how long it is until we strike.”
“You’ll gather the intel?” Arthur stared at the man with surprise.
“I was, as you have so kindly pointed out, an Unspeakable,” Nasir said, though his empty voice didn’t sound pleased at all. “It is what I do. Having anyone else tag along would only delay your efforts and increase the likelihood of being caught.”
“Nasir offered after you left Sunday,” Shacklebolt said quietly. “I think it is best that we use his skill – and during that time, we can make preparations and preliminary plans. It will give us the best chance of saving any survivors that we find.”
“How do you intend to observe the den?” Remus asked, leaning forward on the table. “They will not only have wards but there will also likely be a watch. Werewolves have a keen sense of smell, and they will pick you up within a mile of that den. Not to mention the fact that they are underground – the echo from the muggle sewers will only aid their hearing.”
Nasir only stared at the man, blinking slowly before he finally responded. “It won’t be an issue.”
“I understand that as an Unspeakable, you’re used to secrets and working alone, but that isn’t how this Order works,” Arthur said firmly, his brow furrowing as he looked at Nasir. The tension in the room had started to grow between the men. “If you are going to help, then you need to be willing to work with us, together, as a team. Remus has information that can aid us. If you complete the surveillance alone and it goes poorly, we will not get a second chance.”
“I understand your apprehension, Arthur, and I am aware that you do not trust me – but I’m sure you appreciate that some information is better left unsaid as it could be detrimental to the bigger picture,” Nasir said as he gave Arthur a knowing look. Arthur felt his heart stutter and his chest tighten; it was like the man knew that he was withholding information of his own. “I am happy to work with Remus and get a better understanding of what to expect. But let me assure you that I am more than capable of completing the observation on my own. I am here of my own volition, Arthur. Despite what you may think, I have no other motivation, and I am not interested in getting myself or anyone else killed during this process.”
Arthur clenched his jaw. He hated being in this position. He didn’t want to be difficult, and he knew that they needed all the help that they could get. He desperately wanted to believe that Nasir was a good man who could be trusted and that he truly was here to help without any secret master plan, but it was incredibly difficult to allow himself to do it.
He had done it in the past. He had trusted Peter by the word of James. He had trusted Snape by the word of Dumbledore himself, and both times the results had been devastating. He eyed Shacklebolt with a wary look and then let out a heavy sigh.
“Fine, but we should meet nightly to discuss your findings,” Arthur conceded.
“Early mornings would be best. If the muggles are confined to werewolf form, they will be most active between 6 pm and 5 am,” Remus said, standing from his seat. “We should arrange to have a standing meeting each morning at 7 am to discuss the observations.”
“That’s a good idea.” Shacklebolt nodded, the tension in his shoulders subsiding a little as it seemed like the room may have finally reached an agreement. “Nasir – can meet us here tomorrow morning then?”
“I will be here at seven.” Nasir nodded before turning his attention back to Remus. “Would you mind answering a few questions that I have?”
“Of course,” Remus smiled, placing a gentle hand on Arthur’s shoulder and moving toward Nasir. “What would you like to know?”
-x-x-
He sat clutching the warm mug between his fingers. Despite it being well after 11:30 at night, he was having a coffee. He needed it. He felt drained. The hot steam curled off the surface of the milky liquid and filled the space between him and Remus. Mrs. Weasley was bustling in the kitchen with her own mug and would be seated shortly – but for now, he sat in silence, unsure of where to start.
“Who is looking at the bands?” Remus finally asked, his hands curling around his own steaming mug as Arthur gave a sigh. “I’m assuming you withheld that information because of Nasir. Or is this something that I too should not be made aware of?”
“It is a bit of a tricky situation,” Arthur replied as he met his gaze. “I don’t trust Nasir, but I’m afraid that this may indeed be one of those moments where the fewer people who know about it, the better. Though you know the individual well, and they are, without a doubt, exceptionally clever.”
Remus’s eyes widened a fraction, but he didn’t press for any additional information. He had either gotten the hint or not, but he wouldn’t ask for confirmation.
“I understand, Arthur,” Remus said. “Believe me. And I share your concerns about Nasir, but Kingsley seems to trust him, so I think we should too. At least until he gives us reason to doubt him. So far, he has been nothing but helpful, even if he is a bit detached.”
“Well, it’s not like we have much choice,” Arthur said, rubbing a hand over his weary face as his wife finally took a seat next to him. “I just hope that it doesn’t become our downfall – we can’t handle another blow.”
“How did Kingsley meet this man?” Mrs. Weasley asked, raising her tea toward her lips and blowing gently against it. “It’s odd that he hasn’t come up before now, don’t you think?”
“That is precisely what I said to him tonight,” Arthur sighed, taking a sip of his coffee and relishing in the taste as it rolled across his tongue. “Apparently, he was an Unspeakable – but Kingsley worked with him on a mission in Bulgaria to help stop the rise of You Know Who’s followers in the East.”
“Hmn.” Mrs. Weasley crinkled her nose in doubt. “I still don’t understand why he is the one collecting the information. For all we know he could be alerting them or setting up a trap that will devastate our forces. Shouldn’t someone have gone with him?”
“We discussed that,” Remus said softly, his eyes falling to Mrs. Weasley and sparing Arthur from having to recap the tense conversation they’d had only an hour ago. “Unfortunately, werewolves have a very keen sense of smell, excellent eyesight, and tremendous hearing. Between that and the wards that are no doubt surrounding the den, it’s risky to send too many people into the area. Additionally, Kingsley has assured us that Nasir possesses a unique set of skills that will allow him to spy undetected.”
“I’m sure.” Mrs. Weasley set her cup down and scowled. “I don’t trust it.”
“None of us are fond of the idea, Molly,” Arthur said over his mug. “But there isn’t much we can do – Kingsley was second in command after Dumbledore. He is technically in charge of the Order, and he trusts Nasir. We do need the help, and as Remus said, so far, he has helped.”
“I still think you should have gone with him.”
“Molly, Arthur is about as covert as an erumpent when it comes to surveillance,” Remus said. “His talent has always been in planning and secret-keeping, not spying. And I’m not any better.”
Arthur snorted into his coffee and gave Remus a soft smile. It felt strange to laugh. It was so lighthearted. So extremely distant and different from how he had been feeling over the past months but hearing Remus chuckle while Mrs. Weasley rolled her eyes made the weight on his shoulders feel a bit lighter. A sad smile passed between them, a quiet moment of friendship as they both sipped their coffees.
“I guess we wait and see what happens tomorrow morning,” Arthur said. “Nasir left to go start his observations tonight.”
-x-x-
Black eyes circled the snowy ground.
It was cold, the snow was deep, and the faint light from the evening had long since departed. Everything was quiet, and any small sound rang out harshly against the empty night as he passed silently through the wards that surrounded the Birmingham den. So far, after two hours of external observation, he had not witnessed any movement. Not a single indication that there was a den of vicious werewolves only a hundred feet away beneath the abandoned building before him.
The wards were thick and layered – someone far more talented than a lowly snatcher had cast these, and they encased the area around the den like a dense fog. The werewolves must exit the den over 600 feet out from its location, for he did not catch a glimpse of a single one. He would need to circle back around the following night to find and document their exits. They must be blocked off before the strike took place, so they would need to herd them back to the center so that the attack was both effective and swift.
The abandoned building was laced heavily with silencing charms, withholding the screams and growls that radiated from deep underground. There were only two guards. They moved in a constant circle, patrolling the perimeter as pairs – a human and a werewolf, the golden bands glinting against the snow as the beasts walked robotically at their owner’s heel. It was a strange sight to see and one that would unsettle many. But he slipped by them unnoticed, black against the black sky and soundless in his movements.
Entering the building was easy.
No one had bothered to patch any of the damaged and broken windows on the top story – why would they? The wards were supposed to have been effective after all. It was always when you became overly confident in your own abilities and the strength of your army that you left yourself most vulnerable. It was a common flaw he had seen countless times before, one he had anticipated and one that he had planned to exploit from the moment he left the safe house.
The second he entered the building, the silencing charms became ineffective – having only been placed on the outside of the building to keep the sound contained. Pained screams echoed through his ears as he made his way down, deeper, through the abandoned floors and under the ground. He carefully captured every detail, every smell, and every noise as he memorized the layout.
The base was deep. It extended approximately four floors underground – two were pre-existing, but the deepest two were freshly dug, extended and held up by magic. Most of the rooms seemed to be unused, save for two large, round, deep holding pits. From the look and smell of it, it was where the werewolves were kept when they were not being used. At the time, though, only two were in the largest pen, and they were asleep. They looked thin, mangey, and worn – like they were held together by feeble stitching, and they might fall apart at any moment.
They had been left there to die and would be served up as food to the healthier ones.
Unlike the members of the Order, he was familiar with the deepest, darkest, and most disturbing traits of humanity. He knew that you could not house or feed so many creatures without significant effort – so why waste the meat that they already had? If they were dying at a regular rate from being muggle, it was the logical thing to do. He didn’t need to see the pile of bones in the corner to know that he was right, and it was just another reason why death would be the greatest gift you could give these creatures. Though it would also make it impossible for them to determine just how many lives had been lost over the course of the operation.
As he pressed his way forward, the screams began to grow. Unsurprisingly, he came across several small rooms, one of which appeared to be holding four muggles – no doubt recently collected. Three seemed resigned to their fate and were huddled against the wall, knees tucked under their chin, eyes downcast while trying to become as small as they physically could. One was screaming wretchedly. Her cries tore from her throat like broken glass as she pounded on the door, refusing to be quieted.
He moved past them, for there was still more to see, his slow and silent movements completely unnoticed in the dim lighting.
At the end of a long dirt hall, there was a room. It was open and quiet and seemed to be a makeshift laboratory. Odd pieces of muggle equipment had been brought in and set up. There was a medical table in the center, and a workbench that contained an assortment of papers, notebooks, maps, and cauldrons simmering over low flames. The wall was covered with a rather large map. It had several dots and circles – perhaps illustrating the locations in which they were raiding.
It seemed that this was the room where it happened. Opened and unused bands covered a table against the left most wall, and a row of large syringes lay next to them.
Injections.
Of course.
It would be the only way to ensure a stable infection, to prevent the muggles from dying from the trauma of the bite. Though even then, there would have been losses as many muggles rejected the lycanthropy disease. But that only meant more food for the successful subjects. Rows of vials sat upon a shelf – filled with a clear liquid, already prepared for use. Efficient and expected. Most of the room looked organized, yet the syringes and medical gear were unhygienic. He doubted that they bothered to clean them in between injections.
His timer sounded in his head, and he retreated from the room, making the slow and steady journey past the holding rooms, past the dens, and back up through the decrepit building. He would need to return several more times to map their movements and numbers. He needed to create a pattern and predict their actions to optimize their attack. But for now, he must return to the cottage and relay his observations. So he crept through the small broken window and fluttered silently into the cold night air.
AN:
You have been on this journey with Hermione and Harry since the beginning, experiencing it and changing with them as they go. But for them, it has been seven long, hard months since they have seen anyone – during which time they have faced many dangers, grown paranoid, and become somewhat codependent. Please keep this in mind while reading this chapter. Their reaction to Ron may feel extreme, but I am not writing this maliciously and there is intent behind each action. It will take time for Ron to grow and mature, just as it will take time for Hermione and Harry to readjust to the rest of the world and human interaction – but hope is never lost.
**********************************************
If Ron had been expecting a triumphant return or a warm welcome, he was sorely mistaken.
Harry and Hermione stood rigid in front of him, eyes cold, wands pointed directly at his chest as they took in his presence without a word. Harry watched as the awkward smile on Ron’s lips became unsure. It seemed that the redhead had finally taken note of their defensive crouched position, locked hands, and the deafening silence which surrounded them. He began looking between the two of them nervously, biting his lip as the tension grew uncomfortable. Then, Harry’s instincts kicked in, and he raised his wand higher to aim at Ron’s face.
“What did Dumbledore leave you in his will?” Harry asked.
Based on behaviour alone – Ron’s slow reaction to Hermione’s spell, his language usage, and general mannerisms – Harry was ninety-nine percent sure that this boy was indeed Ronald Weasley. However, given the circumstances and their track record of bad luck, he had no intentions of messing around.
“W-What?” Ron stuttered. His eyes grew wider at the question, and Harry saw his shoulders square defensively. “Harry, it’s me. I–”
“Answer the question, Ron, or you’ll wake up tethered to that rock,” Harry said dangerously, and Ron froze at the sound.
“His deluminator,” Ron responded, the words a low whisper as confusion started to form on his face.
It was a starting point, but unfortunately for Ron, at least one other person knew about that gift. Harry wracked his brain. It was difficult to know what to ask when someone could have used legilimency to comb through Ron’s thoughts and steal his memories. He quickly sorted through of list of questions; then his mind circled onto a better test question.
“What did you see in the mirror of Erised?” Harry asked. This he knew for a fact was something that only Ron would know as Ron had been too embarrassed and insecure to tell anyone else about it. So, if he answered correctly, it was Ron. Or perhaps still a very convincing and well-researched imposter, Harry’s skeptical brain reasoned.
“I saw myself,” Ron said slowly, a growing look of unease settling over his face as he eyed Harry’s wand warily and continued to flick his gaze toward their intertwined hands. It was abundantly clear that this was not going as Ron had expected, but Harry didn’t care. Right now, this wasn’t about Ron, it was about their safety, and if Ron cared about them at all, he would understand their hesitation and answer the questions. “I was Quidditch captain and Head Boy.”
Harry tilted his head in a slow single nod then lowered his wand a fraction, but Hermione did not. Instead, she flicked her wand, and a diagnostic bubble appeared beside Ron as he stumbled to the side in surprise.
“Woah, what are you–”
“Don’t move,” Hermione cut him off, her voice emotionless and cold. It was a command, and Ron froze once more, a deep frown forming on his face as he watched Hermione examine the bubble and then slowly lower her own wand.
“It’s him,” she said to Harry, and he finally allowed their hands to fall apart between them.
“Well, of course it’s me,” Ron said somewhat indignantly as he took a step forward, and Hermione instinctively inched back. Harry was fairly sure that she didn’t even realize that she had moved, but Ron noticed it, and his visible discomfort grew.
“You could have been anyone,” Hermione corrected, her eyes narrowing suspiciously as she looked at Ron. “How did you get here?”
“I apparated,” Ron said as the confusion continued to circle on his face. He bit his lip nervously again. He was gauging them, and his brain didn’t seem able to process what he saw as a line of worry formed between his brows.
“Obviously,” Hermione said dryly. “I want to know how? How did you apparate here?”
“With Dumbledore’s deluminator,” Ron said, reaching to pull it from his jacket pocket and quickly slowing when both Hermione and Harry instinctively flinched before him. It hadn’t been intentional, it just happened, and Ron’s eyes widened further. Then, he carefully and slowly pulled the device from his pocket. As he held it up, he spoke his next words in a pained and soft voice. “I was only going to show it to you – here.”
He held out the device as if reaching toward a wounded animal. Hand outstretched from where his body remained, careful not to encroach on their space any further – instead, giving them a choice to reach forward and take it on their own.
For the first time since his arrival, Harry wondered what they must look like to the redhead. This had been his best friend – his first friend. The boy who had welcomed him into his family, taught him about Quidditch, followed him into the Chamber of Secrets, and numerous other dangerous situations. He had helped Harry form a life within the wizarding world. And yet, he couldn’t help but recoil from the boy and eye him with caution. He had hardly thought about Ron for the last few months, but now it was painfully obvious as he stared at the boy – he didn’t trust him. Not at all. More than that, Harry felt nothing but suspicion and anxiety as he glanced down to the silver device presented before him and quickly took it from Ron’s open palm.
It had been seven months.
Seven long unbearable months since they had seen anyone let alone the boy who had abandoned them in a fit of rage. Seven months since they had heard his voice, seen his face, or had to interact with another human being outside of letters to Arthur Weasley – which wasn’t even close to the same thing.
Seven months and Harry had written Ron off ages ago.
To him, it felt like a lifetime had passed. Ron looked so unchanged, and yet Harry felt like he had somehow aged three decades. Staring at Ron was like looking into a long-forgotten past that had been overshadowed by pain, violence, and endless hardships. This was more than a clash of timelines; it was a clash of worlds, and it was impossible to reconcile.
Harry had already dealt with the anger and the heartbreak of Ron’s departure. He had already gotten over the frustration of losing his best friend, and he had moved on. He’d had to. They’d had no choice. They hadn’t had the luxury of being able to sulk around and wait around for him to return when he had been the one who decided to leave. Ron had known what was at stake when he left, and it wasn’t as if he and Hermione had chased him away.
And yet, unbelievably, here they all stood – together once more.
Ron had inexplicably shown up out of nowhere, intruding on them, all while trying to act as if nothing had changed. It was absurd to think that a friendly ‘Hey’ was the appropriate greeting after such time. It was ridiculous to think that Ron had thought that it was a good idea to come back at all. It was so absurd that Harry struggled to figure out what to say as he stared at the boy who looked the same as the day he had left, and he felt nothing.
Not a single thing.
Whether it was heartless or not, the truth was, Harry really didn’t care what they looked like to him. He didn’t care that Ron looked uncomfortable, that his awkward smile had faded to be replaced with a wary expression, or that he was approaching them in the same manner that one would address a dangerous creature. If anything, it was probably for the best that Ron appeared to be stunned into some kind of calm and unsure stupor at their new appearance, because it was delaying the inevitable dramatic explosion that he knew would happen once Ron inevitably went back to being ‘Ron’.
In less than a minute, Harry had already seen the signs.
Ron’s eyes kept flicking to their joined hands. He had been annoyed that they wanted to confirm his identity. He didn’t understand their concern over his arrival, and he would no doubt notice the changes to the tent and the changes in their behaviour. It was only a matter of time before Ron stopped being nervous, and his temper got the better of him. His hesitant demeanour would fail, and he would explode into a fit, making accusations and demanding answers to questions that he had no right to ask – acting as if they owed him the same trust and loyalty that he had received during the summer.
Perhaps Harry had become too pessimistic. Perhaps he shouldn’t assume to know the boy who stood before him, but it was hard to doubt his instinct after seven years of evidence that suggested Ron had yet to grow up.
Harry bit down a snort at the thoughts – as if he or Hermione owed Ron anything after what he had done. Harry dropped his gaze and turned the deluminator over in his hand, examining it closely. It looked the same as before, and he knew in his heart that this boy was Ronald Weasley.
Yet, he didn’t really know what to do with that fact.
“How did it work?” Harry asked, unable to come up with anything else to say as his eyes lifted to meet Ron’s gaze once more.
“I heard your voices,” Ron said slowly, almost hesitantly. “Both of you said my name. I had been trying to find you two for the last two weeks, popping in and out of Shell Cottage – so when I heard it coming from the deluminator, I clicked it. It was the first time I’d heard any noise coming from it – I didn’t even know that was something it could do. But the light in my room went out, and another one appeared just outside my window. I grabbed my backpack and went out to look at it, and it had that sort of pulsing light like you get around a port key, you know?”
Harry inclined his head almost imperceptibly, but Hermione stayed silent. Ron’s new attempt at a faint smile fell, and he cleared his throat before he continued a bit more awkwardly.
“I uh, well, I approached the light, and it sort of floated into my chest. I know it sounds unbelievable, but I knew at that moment that if I disapparated, I would be brought to you guys – so I did, and that’s how I got here.”
“You disapparated,” Hermione said, her voice emotionless as her eyes traced over Ron’s face.
“Yes.”
“After you looked for us for two weeks,” she said flatly, and even though her voice held no inflection, Harry instinctively grabbed her hand to calm her down. She was livid, and Ron was lucky that she hadn’t hexed his balls off already.
“Er, yes.” Ron started to look anxious again, and he rubbed the back of head nervously. The quick and unexpected motion sent another involuntarily jolt through the duo, and Ron’s expression became tight as he halted his movements. “It’s a little chilly out here – maybe we could go talk inside the tent, we could catch up.”
Stupid, Harry thought as Hermione’s grip began to crush his hand.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Hermione said, her voice dripping with acid as her eyes narrowed once more. “Is it too cold out here for you?”
“Uh-hh, no.” Ron looked even more distressed. “I just thought it might be a bit more comfortable.”
A slow moment passed, and then Harry felt Hermione drop his hand. She snatched her purse out of the air as it flew toward her soundlessly, then she turned sharply to retreat into the tent. He watched Ron’s expression as she disappeared inside.
“So, erm, are we going inside then?” Ron asked awkwardly. Several slow seconds passed between them until Harry finally spoke.
“After you.” Harry gestured out with his hand, though there was no invitation in his voice. He remained unmoving, waiting for Ron to go first as there was no way he would turn his back to anyone but Hermione anymore. It wasn’t worth it.
“Okay,” Ron breathed, taking a nervous step past Harry and walking toward the tent.
When they entered, Hermione was leaning against the kitchen table next to her opened purse facing the door. Her arms were crossed protectively over her chest as her hand gripped her wand tightly. She looked angry, and her eyes immediately locked back on to Ron.
“Why now?” She asked, not waiting for Ron to drop his bag on the ground or remove his jacket.
“What do you mean?” Ron asked, removing his jacket slowly, careful not to make any sudden movements. Harry did not bother taking his off and instead stood at an angle off the side – placing himself close to Hermione but slightly in front so he could monitor both of their faces. Out of the two of them, he knew that she would be the most likely to lose her temper when it came to Ron.
“I mean, it’s been seven fucking months. Why were you looking for us for the last two weeks? Why come back at all now?” Hermione asked, her harsh question exactly capturing what Harry had been wondering himself.
Why the hell had Ron come back now?
If it was purely because this was the first time he could find them, then that would at least make a small amount of sense. As far as Harry could remember, he and Hermione had not mentioned Ron’s name since he left until today. Or at least, today had been the first time that they had spoken about Ron outwardly without anger, hatred or some other form of misgivings – so perhaps that was tied to how the deluminator worked. But if that was the case, why the hell did he specifically say that he was looking for them the last two weeks? Why mention that at all? And better yet, as Hermione had asked, why did he even want to come back after so much time away?
“I spoke to my dad a bit ago,” Ron said, biting his lip nervously and twisting his hands in front of him. “He uh, sort of talked some sense into me about how I had been acting. So I started trying to look.”
“So, you waited seven months – then felt bad when your dad what, called you out on it? Then you started looking for us in March?”
“It wasn’t the first time that I looked for you, Hermione,” Ron said tightly. “I regretted leaving the second I did!”
“Then why not come back then?” Harry asked, crossing his arms over his chest but keeping his expression carefully blank.
“I wanted to.” Ron’s voice was starting to become a bit desperate as he glanced between the two of them once more. “But I apparated into London when I left and ran into some snatchers. I lied to them about who I was and managed to get away – they weren’t too bright. I think one of them may have been part troll from the smell.”
Harry very nearly outwardly cringed.
If Ron thought an attempt at humour was wise in a moment like this, he was even more of an idiot than Harry had remembered. Hermione glared at him like stone, and Harry’s own face faltered into one of irritation as he watched Ron’s brow furrow once more.
“Anyways, they started arguing – they had my wand see, but I managed to hit the one holding me while they were distracted, stole his wand, disarmed the man holding mine to get it back and then apparated away. I splinched myself in the process,” Ron said, holding up his hand as evidence, and Harry noted the two missing fingernails. He couldn’t stop the frown that began to cross his face. “By the time I got back to the riverbank that we had been camped on, you two were gone, and I couldn’t find you.”
“How terrible that must have been for you,” Hermione said, the hint of sarcasm in her voice not going unmissed by Ron.
“Look, I’m sorry,” Ron said, taking a small step towards her but stopping when she leaned back, and Harry inched closer to her side. “Bloody hell–”
Ron groaned and ran a hand through his hair.
“You guys are behaving like I might attack you any second,” Ron said, his voice sounding strained with hurt as he looked between them desperately.
“Maybe that’s because we have been attacked nearly every second,” Harry said dryly, his annoyance starting to grow. But Ron was the one to lose his temper first.
“Merlin’s beard – you guys aren’t the only ones who’ve been attacked, you know? I know what it’s like out there!” Ron said, his agitation visibly starting to grow as he raised his voice and shot Harry a glare. “I’m sorry that I left – I wish that I hadn’t, but I do know that things haven’t been easy out there.”
“Yes, I can imagine that life at Shell Cottage must have been so trying,” Hermione countered, her voice becoming caustic. She looked about two seconds away from hexing Ron into oblivion. “What with your missing fingernails and all, it’s a wonder that you survived.”
“I’m sorry,” Ron practically yelled, his voice echoing out through the tent as his temper rapidly got the better of him. “I’ve already said it! How many more times do you need to hear it? I’m sorry! I’m sorry that I left – if I could take it back, I would, but I can’t!”
“Well, I’m glad that you’re sorry, Ron,” Hermione said stiffly, her eye twitching as she continued to stare at him and fight to keep her anger in check. “It shows that at least some part of you understands that what you did was–”
“WHAT I DID WAS WRONG!” Ron bellowed, his face red with anger as his desperate eyes swept between them, pleading to them, begging them for the forgiveness he so desperately sought. “I GET IT! You’re angry. I get it! Look, I’ve already apologized. I said I was sorry! What more do you want from me?!”
Hermione’s eyes went dark.
Her shoulders stiffened, and she slowly stood from her leaned position against the table, staring Ron down as if he were the mud on her boots. Harry’s hand twitched on his wand. While he was right there alongside Hermione in her disgust and burning rage, the last thing that they needed was a dead Weasley in the tent. He didn’t feel like putting in the effort to dispose of the body, so he was prepared to disarm her if necessary. Though really, it would do little to prevent her from attacking Ron if she wanted to. They had far surpassed the need to hold a wand or speak anything to wield deadly magic, and she could easily shred him to pieces without blinking an eye if she wanted to.
“I didn’t say that what you did was wrong, Ronald Weasley,” Hermione whispered. Her voice was venom as she spoke, and Ron quieted under her stare, the anger and colour quickly draining from his face as his expression filled with fear.
Harry watched in wait.
It was the first time since Ron had apparated into their campsite as if nothing had changed and like nothing had happened between them that he was finally looking at Hermione. He finally saw who she really was, what she had become while he was gone, and that she had entirely changed. He could see the darkness that she carried in the depths of her eyes and the stone-cold precision of her body as it moved. A shudder ran through Ron’s lanky frame as she stepped closer to him, and it became clear that he was afraid.
“Choosing to save your own neck above others isn’t wrong. It’s cowardly. What you did was selfish and poorly thought out,” Hermione spat the words like daggers, but she hadn’t raised her voice a decibel. “What you did, broke our trust. You shattered the very bones of our friendship. You damaged the binds that have kept us together all these years – after everything that we’ve been through – you abandoned us, Ronald. We agreed to fight this war together. We promised that we would help until the end. Did you think that you could escape it by just leaving?”
Ron audibly gulped as Hermione took a second step toward him, and Harry saw the visible shake in the boy’s back leg as she closed the space between them.
“You don’t get to waltz in here after seven months and pretend like nothing happened. You don’t get to be angry with us because you were hoping that everything could go back to how it was because you’re sorry. You lost that right when you chose to walk away, when you chose to save your own neck because things got too hard – because you wanted to bow out of this war. You don’t just get that back – it’s a privilege that is earned! You want to stay and help? Fine. I’m not stupid enough to turn down assistance when it’s offered because we need all the help we can get, but I will not tolerate you getting in our way either. I will remove you from this tent if you so much as hint at fucking up again, and this time, it will be permanent. And – don’t – you – dare – think for a second that you showing up changes what you did, or that it makes up for anything!”
She paused, looking him over from head to toe, nose crinkled in disgust as she brought her eyes back up to his and fixed him with a lethal look.
“We are not friends, Ronald. That ship has sailed. This is real life – you don’t get a free pass after what you did. You want to be friends again? You earn it.”
-x-x-
To say that things in the tent were tense would have been a massive understatement. It would have been like calling the Quidditch World Cup a small backyard gathering or saying that a dragon was no more dangerous than a flobberworm. Yet despite this, and beyond any reason that Harry could possibly comprehend – Ron stayed.
He suspected it was largely because he was too embarrassed to return home for yet a second time and that he had nowhere else to go. Or maybe, it was because Hermione’s words had stunned him into an even deeper trance that caused him to become silent and shaky for the rest of the evening. Or, perhaps the most likely reason was that deep down, Ron still thought that given enough time, things would gradually return to normal and that Hermione’s speech was just an angry outburst at his initial return.
If this was indeed the case for him staying, which Harry highly suspected it was, Ron would be waiting indefinitely for Hermione to ‘calm down’. He also suspected that Ron did not truly understand what Hermione meant when she said she would remove him ‘permanently’ from the tent. Otherwise, he probably would have left.
After Hermione had all but physically destroyed Ron, she retreated to the potions lab to go through their medical supplies – for an unnecessary fourth time – but Harry knew it was because she couldn’t stand to look at Ron, let alone engage with him further. She was angry and annoyed and no doubt panicking. His return had not been a part of their plan, and now she was most definitely adjusting their schedule and checking their overall supplies as well.
Ron’s eyes shifted nervously around the tent, taking in the changes and modifications that they had made with raised eyebrows, but thankfully, no comments. Harry stood quietly, watching him. He had nothing to add to what Hermione had said and was united with her in solidarity. When Ron gave him an awkward smile and Harry gave him nothing in return, it finally seemed like Ron started to understand that the opinion was shared between the two of them and that Harry would not be dishing out forgiveness as easily as he had in the past.
After five excruciatingly long and silent minutes, Ron finally spoke to Harry in a hushed voice, asking what happened to his bed.
“We needed a lab,” Harry replied, and then he decided to avoid the next question. “Take Hermione’s old bunk.”
Ron nodded nervously and brought his bag over to the bed, placing it at the foot and pulling out a few small items.
“Did you bring any food or supplies?” Harry asked, hoping to Merlin the boy was at least smart enough to come prepared.
“Uh – er, no. I – I only have a few snacks.”
The quiet snort from Hermione in the lab did not go unnoticed as Harry sighed and Ron’s ears flushed pink.
“I’ll start dinner,” Harry said as he finally moved, going to collect the purse from Hermione and taking off his jacket.
Dinner was uncomfortable.
Harry exchanged his usual seat for the one next to Hermione, and they all ate in silence. Neither he nor Hermione felt comfortable discussing their plans or their progress with Ron. The reality was, they did not trust him. He was a flight risk and, therefore, a security risk. If they told him anything new and he left again, there would be no guarantee that he wouldn’t be captured and tortured for information. It was a risk they weren’t willing to take, and one that they didn’t even need to openly discuss – a single glance between them, and they had both silently agreed.
Frankly, it was a miracle that Ron hadn’t already inadvertently ruined their efforts with what he did know. The only reason Ron had not been captured so far was that he hid in the safety of Shell Cottage since September. So, as they all ate in silence, Harry began to wonder how Ron’s return would impact their plans – though the discussion would need to wait until he and Hermione could speak privately.
“We train at 7 am,” Harry said to Ron when he had finished chewing his last bite.
“Okay,” Ron said, nodding slowly and watching Hermione nervously as she collected the plates and avoided his gaze.
Then the tent returned to its awkward silence once more as Harry picked up a book and Hermione went back to the lab. Ron, who seemed to have no idea what to do with himself and Harry felt no desire to instruct him, fiddled aimlessly with his bag until he finally settled down with a book. Harry knew that he wasn’t actually reading it. He didn’t turn a single page in the three hours that they all sat in silence after dinner.
“I’ll take first watch,” Hermione said tightly after the evening had grown late and she finally exited the lab. She gave Harry a quick look before she pulled on her coat and trudged out of the tent – they would talk later.
Harry nodded, and Ron followed suit in an attempt to look agreeable, even though he had no idea that this was not the typical procedure for them anymore. They didn’t need a night watch. They’d given it up ages ago. The wards were sound, and since no one else on the planet had a deluminator, there would be no other unexpected guests. However, they refused to leave Ron’ unattended’ in case he got too uncomfortable and decided to bolt again, and they certainly weren’t going to trust him to take a night shift. Harry had nodded stiffly when Ron had offered, but he had zero intentions of taking the redhead up on the offer. Besides, they weren’t comfortable with the idea of them both being asleep with him there because they weren’t even comfortable with his presence while they were awake.
Harry didn’t need to talk to Hermione to know that. He could feel it in her body language and had confirmed it from the small-agitated glances she had sent him throughout the evening.
Thus, re-establishing a night watch was really the only thing to do that resolved all their issues.
When 3 am finally arrived, Harry silently left his bunk and scowled at the snoring sounds that Ron was making before he pulled on his jacket and went to relieve Hermione. His attempts at getting sleep had been futile. It was entirely impossible to doze off without Hermione at his side. His nerves were on edge from every sound that Ron made, and his thoughts were racing. So instead, he had spent the last few hours thinking and critically analyzing their new situation.
He knew that Hermione was doing the same just outside the tent as she maintained the completely unnecessary night watch, and this was the reason why he had stayed in bed instead of rushing outside the second Ron fell asleep. She needed time to think on her own. She needed to analyze, plan, examine, and reconsider their options the same way he had been. It was how they worked and why they had been so effective for the last seven months. They researched and thought, then discussed their findings together once they were ready and organized.
Ron’s return was no different than any other problem that they had encountered thus far. So, naturally, they both went about it as they usually would.
“Hey,” he said quietly, placing his hand on her shoulder and giving her a light squeeze.
“Hey,” she whispered. She scooted over on the rock she had collected for a stool, and Harry sat down beside her. “Did you sleep?”
“No.”
“I don’t think I will either,” she sighed, her voice so light it was barely audible against the wind.
“I know.”
“Harry, this is bad – no matter how many times I’ve gone over it in my head, the result is not good. We don’t have enough food or supplies. I didn’t factor this in. He’s untrained too – he won’t be able to keep up, and he’s going to be a constant flight risk. Telling him any information is completely out of the question because we can’t trust him to stay. He already left once.”
“I know,” Harry said again, this time with a deep sigh. He dropped his head into his hands. She was hitting every single worry that had been running through his head the last few hours, and she appeared to have drawn the same conclusions. “If he stays, we’ll have to head further South back into risky territory so that we can collect more food.”
She nodded. For the last several weeks, they had been living conservatively off their grocery stores as they had all but run out of money. They’d been supplementing meals with food they managed to scrounge up in the Northern woods and from the ocean.
“We can’t function with no sleep either – this is going to catch up to us eventually, Harry,” she whispered.
“Yeah, I thought of that too. But I can’t sleep without you there and, frankly, I don’t even think it’s worth trying to. We already know it won’t happen, so it would just be a waste of time and will result in us being dead tired. It’s not like I want to hide anything, I don’t care what he thinks, but I don’t want to deal with him freaking out and exploding either – he’ll just bail again, and who knows where he’ll go. Maybe we can ward his bed? Something to alert us if he moves so we can still get some rest.”
“Maybe,” she said slowly, pulling the collar of her jacket up against the wind. “We can’t go to Xenophilius’s.”
“No,” Harry said, shaking his head. He had figured she would say that, but he disagreed. “We have to go, Hermione, and we’re not going to delay it. If we do, we will be exhausted, tired, and even lower on resources. It will put us even more at risk than we are now. The longer that he’s here, the more comfortable he’ll get. This shocked stupor thing that he’s in will wear off. Right now, he’s really nervous about us and is more likely to listen without blowing up or self-imploding in pity when he realizes that we don’t need him here and that his presence is largely a handicap. We can take advantage of that – we’ll go to Xenophilus’s, but he stays here.”
“You seriously think he will agree to stay behind?” Hermione turned to look at Harry with her eyebrow arched. “Do you actually want to leave him unattended or with our tent and supplies?”
“No – but we could always stun him, maybe stuff him in your purse.”
Hermione snorted and leaned her head against Harry’s arm. “We could always bring him and leave him as a lookout? I agree with what you said about him being nervous. I think he’s more likely to accept that role now than later. Or we tell him that we operate on an ‘every man for himself’ philosophy – that if he doesn’t keep up, we’ll leave him behind.”
“Would you be able to do it, though?” Harry asked, his breath ghosting across the skin of her forehead as he turned to look at her. “Leave him there? I know you’re mad – we’re on the same page on that front, Hermione, but would you be able to leave him to die?”
“I don’t know,” she said slowly, and Harry could hear the trust in her voice. It was mixed in with her turmoil. She knew that he would not judge her regardless of whatever her response was. He hadn’t asked the question to act as a moral prude whose goal was to shame her into realizing that all life was equally important or sacred. It had been a genuine question out of interest. “Maybe – maybe not. I’m angry about him returning with no supplies and acting as if nothing has changed. The whole idea of him thinking that he can just show up after seven months is ludicrous. I’m honestly still not sure why he even came back at all. But – he isn’t an evil person – and he doesn’t deserve to die. He’s just an idiot who hasn’t grown up at all. He was too immature to handle this before, and now things are even worse. Though really Harry, could we afford to leave him behind at this point? He knows about the Horcruxes. He knows so much about us and Dumbledore’s plans. It was fine when he was safe with the Weasley’s, but if he was captured now, it would be devastating to our efforts. And if he leaves us again, I doubt he’ll go back to Shell Cottage because he’ll be too embarrassed.”
“I know.” Harry kissed the top of her head lightly. “The purse idea is starting to sound pretty good right now, isn’t it?”
Hermione snorted again before she turned her head to capture Harry’s lips, her heart aching as she tried to pull him closer, and his hand slid around her waist. He moved his mouth against hers slowly, lovingly, as the cold wind whisked across their skin and the stars shone brightly against the black sky. Her eyes had fluttered closed, and she opened her mouth wider as his tongue gently slid over hers. It eased her heart, her mind, her soul – and when they finally broke apart, she felt like she could breathe again.
“Let’s see how training goes tomorrow,” Harry said quietly against her lips. “But one way or another, we stick to the plan – we’re going to Xenophilius’s the following day.”
-x-x-
Training the next day did not go well.
Well, it did from Hermione and Harry’s perspective. Despite the fact that she did not sleep the entire previous night, she rose from bed at 6:30 am and pulled Harry in from his watch to eat breakfast with her. Ron continued to snore, so they ate without him, and then they began their physical workout in the living room at 7 am on the dot. They managed to increase their reps by another count and completed a second round of burpees just because.
Ron remained asleep when they headed outside to begin their duelling practice, and Harry nodded in agreement when Hermione warded the potion lab and the desk area before they left the tent so that he would not be able to touch anything. Then, after spending several minutes confirming their plan, they began a harsh round of training.
At precisely 11 am, Hermione rolled through the freezing wet snow, prepared to pop up and send a leg locker at Harry when movement in the right corner of her eyes caught her attention, and her body reacted on instinct. She hurled two stunning spells and a leg locker in quick succession only to watch as Ron fell to the ground unconscious by the tent’s entrance. With a groan of annoyance, she rolled her eyes and pulled herself up off the ground. Then she flicked her wand at the unmoving redhead to remove the spells.
“Merlin’s balls,” Ron groaned as he pulled himself off the ground and looked up to Harry and Hermione. The pair were covered in sweat and snow, both panting, with dark circles lingering around their eyes. “What are you guys doing? I thought you said you started at seven?”
“We did start at seven,” Hermione said, biting back her annoyance as Ron brushed the snow off his pants. He already seemed miles more comfortable than the night before and was starting to slip back into his regular behaviour. It was truly incredible how daft the boy could be.
“You didn’t wake me up,” Ron said as he rubbed his side. The sting from the stunning spell no doubt ached.
“I didn’t what?” Hermione snapped, her eyes widening at the audacity of his words.
You’ve got to be kidding me, she thought as she glared at the boy in disbelief. Her hand tightened on her wand, and the air crackled around her. She was about to stun Ron a second time when Harry cut in.
“I told you what time we start at. She’s not your mother, Ron,” Harry said sternly as he strolled toward the two of them. “It’s not her job or mine to get you up. If you want to train with us, and I suggest that you do, next time, set an alarm.”
Harry stopped three feet away then turned to glance at Hermione, who looked ready to explode.
“Let’s break for lunch and go over the plans.”
She nodded. Physically biting her tongue as she stalked past Ron and into the tent, ignoring the look of embarrassment and frustration that was plastered on his face.
-x-x-
“You want me to what?” Ron asked, his expression bewildered after Harry had spoken.
“I want you to be our lookout,” Harry repeated, his voice flat as Hermione sat at the table and picked at her toast.
It was the approach that they had discussed the night before and finalized before their morning training, but Ron was not as accepting as they had hoped. Hermione continued to avoid the boy’s gaze as much as possible because she was still too angry – though that only seemed to irritate Ron.
“Why wouldn’t I just come with you?”
“Because we don’t know what to expect when we get there, it could be dangerous.”
“So, wouldn’t it be safer if we were all together – more strength in numbers, right?”
Harry hesitated, a deep breath exhaling from his chest while he thought of how to respond. Hermione felt for him – she was glad that he had taken the lead on addressing the redheaded elephant in the room. She didn’t have the patience to do it. There was no easy way to tell Ron that he was a threat to their safety and success because he lacked the skills necessary to survive. Though, it was the truth. He was putting their mission and their existence at risk.
“We need a lookout,” Harry said carefully. “Someone outside of the wards that can watch for any uninvited guests and alert us if they show up. You missed training today, Ron – so we’re not really sure where you stand with your duelling or how to complement your skills with ours. Things have been getting pretty rough out there, and Hermione and I have been preparing for this for a while – while assuming that it would just be us two. So we’ve planned the approach that way, and we don’t have time to come up with a new strategy. But we could use your support as a lookout.”
“Right.” Ron’s face turned red as his anger flared despite Harry’s diplomatic reasoning. Hermione could see him biting the inside of his cheek to keep from exploding from the corner of her eye. He was already a ticking time bomb. “And how will I alert you if someone shows up?”
“Hermione will give you a coin, you tap it twice, and we’ll know.”
“Where is it that we’re going?” Ron asked, his hands visibly shaking with anger now.
“Xenophilius Lovegood’s,” Harry replied.
“So, after this mission, if I come to training, I can join you two on the next one?” Ron asked, but his eyes were skeptical as he glanced between the two of them.
Hermione noted the way that his hands balled into a fist on the table. He had clearly been hoping that the metaphorical ‘dust’ would settle overnight. She scoffed inwardly at the thought. He really didn’t get it, and he also looked uncomfortable with how closely Hermione was sitting next to Harry on their side of the table. She had to admit that the set-up definitely gave the feel of ‘us versus you’, but Hermione could only acknowledge it and move on for the time being. It hadn’t been what they intended, she was just in her usual seat, and Harry had naturally moved to her side.
Besides, it wasn’t their job to coddle him.
At this point, it was already taking an exceptional amount of effort just to tolerate having him physically in the tent at all. Every unfamiliar noise he made, every movement, and sound had them flinching, jumping, or sending their hearts racing in panic. Not to mention that they were putting him in danger of being injured. Their senses were keen from months of training, and their sharp reflexes were in overdrive. It was draining fighting against it. She had already almost killed or stunned Ron four times since he arrived, not including the three times that she did hit him that morning.
She couldn’t even imagine how many times Harry had caught himself almost doing it. It wasn’t intentional. It was reactive. They were positively wired, sitting on edge and exhausted from their lack of sleep the night before. And while Hermione could understand Ron’s anger at being assigned the bullshit lookout position, it was difficult for her to be sympathetic when she was barely holding herself together and was one bad reaction away from splitting him open. And regardless of Ron’s feelings, the reality was that this mission wasn’t about him, and it wasn’t even about them. It was just another task that they needed to complete in order to end this war.
“If training goes well.” Harry nodded in response to Ron’s question, though they both knew the odds of that was unlikely.
“Alright,” Ron said somewhat begrudgingly, clenching his jaw tight to keep his anger at bay.
So far, Hermione was shocked to see that he had managed to prevent his second detonation, though it was growing closer like a building storm. She could feel it in the air, and she knew it was held off only because Ron was still more unsure of the two of them than he was angry. He had been eyeing Harry’s long messy hair and scruffy jawline since he arrived and watching their movements in confusion. However, it was only a matter of time until the scales tipped and his anger took over.
“When are we going tomorrow?” Ron asked.
“In the morning,” Hermione supplied, her eyes still transfixed at the table. “We’ll eat at 7 am, then pack up and be there for 8 am. We’ll show you the lookout point once we arrive. It should be a quick in and out – if anything goes wrong, apparate away, and we meet back here. So make sure you learn the location.”
Ron only nodded in response, and Hermione felt the tension in Harry’s shoulders lessen when the redhead stood up from the table to go shower. At the soft click of the bathroom door, Hermione cast a silencing spell.
“He’s going to explode, Harry,” she said as she turned to look at him. “I know we agreed to this plan – but this is risky. If he loses his temper at Xenophilius’s we could be in serious danger.”
“I know,” Harry exhaled deeply. They both knew there were no other viable options aside from actually stunning him and leaving him somewhere safe until they could return. “Should we tell Arthur? Maybe see if we can send him back or something?”
Hermione snorted at Harry’s sarcasm.
“We would have to stun him and make it a drop. He won’t leave on his own to go back home,” she sighed in frustration. “Harry, we can’t even shield him. If I cast that charm on him, it will be like the hilltop battle all over again when I cast it on that werewolf. The spell will be red.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Harry nodded. She could see a million scenarios running through his mind as he brushed his hair back from his face. “We just keep him at the lookout location. It’s away from everything else, and he knows where to go if anything goes wrong. He can, at the very least, apparate. He won’t go back to Shell Cottage a second time – he’s too embarrassed. So, if we chase him away or make him leave, it could be worse. He’ll be out there wandering around on his own – a high risk of being caught. At least this way, we can keep an eye on him and make sure that doesn’t happen. Maybe even train him a bit.”
“I know,” Hermione groaned and dropped her forehead to the table. She contemplated bashing it there to combat the overwhelming frustration that was consuming her. She could feel it crawling uncomfortably through her muscles and eating away at the back of her mind. “That’s the only reason why I didn’t chase him away when he first arrived – it’s far too risky. He’ll get picked up because he’s too stubborn to go back to the safety of the cottage. Fuck! He already told us it almost happened to him once. But I am not dying for him, Harry, and neither are you!”
She breathed heavily against the wood surface as she forced all the air out of her lungs. Her breath condensed on the cold wood and she watched the small patch slowly fade away before another thought struck her.
“Do you think he will leave his post?” She asked quietly.
“Fuck,” Harry breathed; the thought had not even crossed his mind. “He better not. If he is stupid enough to do that, then I’m at a complete loss – we can’t babysit him if he is actively trying to sabotage our missions.”
Hermione nodded her head against the wood as her shoulders sagged. She felt Harry place a hand gently at the base of her neck, and she closed her eyes.
“I’m tired, Harry.”
“Me too.”
“We need to sleep tonight.”
“I know.” He rubbed gentle circles into her neck, and she felt some of the stress fall away from her body.
“Even though I hate the idea of both of us being asleep while he’s in the tent, we can’t go a second night without rest. We both need to sleep tonight – it’s more important than anything else that we’re rested and functional for tomorrow. Especially now that he will be tagging along.”
It went without saying that they both knew sleeping together with Ron in the tent was pretty much the worst idea ever.
It was a risky move. If Ron noticed them, it would indeed be the most sure-fire way to make his ever-growing explosion erupt with a vengeance. They were both acutely aware of it. They both knew that the issue of their relationship would have to be addressed eventually, but neither one of them was looking forward to it. Yet they also had no interest or desire to hide it from him or anyone else, especially if that meant risking their own wellbeing and putting themselves in danger due to sleep deprivation. Hermione wasn’t so disconnected from the world that she had become completely tactless – she wasn’t going to fuck Harry or make slow love to him while Ron was there. But she did need her sleep. And that meant she needed Harry.
There was no other option.
“Mhmm.” Harry pinched the bridge of his nose under his glasses. This was just another challenge that they did not need or want to deal with because Ron would inevitably make the situation about him. “We’ll just have to ward his bunk.”
“And wait till he falls asleep.”
“And then deal with whatever happens. I’m serious about stunning him if we have to,” Harry sighed and pushed himself up from the table. “I’ll get the map.”
They spent the remainder of the afternoon reviewing the maps and plans. They disclosed only what information they absolutely had to with Ron and kept the remainder to themselves. When night finally fell and Ron had passed out in his bunk, Hermione crawled into bed next to Harry. She was glad that they had both agreed that a proper night’s sleep was the most important thing that they could accomplish tonight despite the known risk of Ron exploding. Her body ached. Her mind was sluggish and worn from the stress of having Ron in the tent. She didn’t like that she felt slow and weary, it just made her stress levels higher, and it affected her concentration. Completing a second round of night watch would be reckless and irresponsible when they both knew that neither one of them would be able to sleep without the other.
Though, Ron’s snores were hardly going to make it any easier.
Hermione scowled toward his bunk and cast a silencing charm around it, sighing in relief when the noise stopped, and the tent fell back to its familiar quiet. After a moment’s hesitation, she cast two small wards around Ron’s bunk – one to alert them if he sat up in bed and one to prevent him from getting more than a foot out of it. Based on his sleeping habits, it was unlikely that he would wake before them – but she knew that she would not be able to rest without the wards there for fear of him waking up, bailing on them, and putting them and their mission in danger once more.
Besides, it was always better to be safe than sorry.
Harry pulled her back against his chest, his familiar arm snaking around her waist as the cool tent air eased her eyes shut, and she fell into an uneasy sleep.
-x-x-
Hermione woke with a start, a loud gasp ripping from her chest as her hand thrust forward, lighting the tent with her wand as she shivered and looked around in terror. She felt Harry’s hand on her hip, and she sighed as her shaken mind began to calm. Cool sweat covered her forehead, and she bit back a groan.
Just a dream – the same dream as always. Breathe. Relax. The cold air stung against her lungs as she felt Harry sit up in bed next to her, and she let him pull her against him.
“It’s okay,” he murmured into her ear as she leaned back into the solid warmth of his body. It was the only secure thing that made her racing heart slow. “You’re safe, I promise.”
“What time is it?” She felt too shaky to check herself. Instead, she lay cradled in his arms, lowering her wand and returning them into darkness.
“5:30 am.”
“That’s later than usual.”
“Mhmm.” His hum rattled against her chest, and she closed her eyes tight, wiping the sweat from her forehead with her sleeve.
“I’m going to just get up then – take a shower.”
“Okay, I’ll start breakfast.”
“Alright,” she breathed, as Harry kissed her neck gently. She pulled herself from bed on shaky legs, scrapped Ron’s wards, and quickly summoned a fresh set of clothes from her purse before padding softly to the bathroom.
-x-x-
“I could have slept on the floor.”
The hollow sound of Ron’s voice pulled Harry’s attention away from the eggs he was cooking. Hermione was still in the shower, the plates were already set out on the table, and Ron was now sitting up in bed, his feet resting against the cold floor while he fixed Harry with a strange expression. It was tight, bitter, unsure – he looked disturbed and confused, as if he had not quite reached a conclusion yet, but was afraid of the answer.
“It’s not a big deal,” Harry said quickly, hoping to dismiss the topic.
Ron had likely woken when Hermione blasted the tent with a violent beam of light. They had both known that it was a risk when they decided to sleep normally, but Harry couldn’t regret it. He felt rested and alert, which was better than he could say he felt the previous day. Ron had probably heard them together, as it was unlikely that he saw much of anything in the darkness or blazing light, and had been laying in his bed contemplating it for the next half hour. That was the most likely reason for his pinched face and angry curiosity. It wasn’t surprising, but Harry couldn’t help but inwardly scoff at the resentment he showed.
It was unfounded and so typical Ron.
“Or we could transfigure that chair into another bed,” Ron said, not letting the topic drop.
He clearly wasn’t satisfied with Harry’s response and was digging for information that Harry knew he would not truly want to know. Yet he didn’t have the balls to ask outright and was beating around the bush like a coward.
The water in the bathroom shut off.
“That’s Hermione’s workspace,” Harry said in a clipped tone, placing a hot mug of tea in front of Hermione’s plate and ignoring Ron’s eyes. “Tea, coffee, or water?”
“I’m sure it would be fine to change a chair into a bed just for the night,” Ron continued as he pushed himself from the bunk and made his way to the table. It seemed the final remains of the stunned stupor that had encased him upon his arrival was dissolving rapidly, and the old Ron was starting to shine through much more clearly.
Up until now, Ron had likely assumed that they had only shared a bunk because there was no place else to sleep – though he clearly didn’t wholeheartedly buy the explanation that his own mind had come up with. Since they could have created a third bed for the night. Harry clenched his jaw and bit back his annoyance. The boy was like a dog with a bone, and he didn’t know when to stop. This wasn’t important right now. They were about to embark on a dangerous mission, and that was what they all needed to be focused on.
“She doesn’t sleep well alone,” Harry said bluntly, finally turning his eyes toward Ron and fixing him with a firm stare – daring him to press the topic further. He should have just obliviated the memory from him, but it would be wasted efforts since it would just keep happening. “She has nightmares.”
“Why?” Ron asked, hands curling tightly around the back of the kitchen chair as Harry slid the eggs onto a plate and set them in the center of the table. The anger in his voice was growing now, and it was starting to piss Harry off.
If you can’t handle the answers, don’t ask the questions, Harry thought in annoyance as his eyes hardened.
“Bad experiences.” Harry crossed his arms over his chest, placing himself directly across the table from Ron. The air grew tight, and it felt like the tent was shrinking around them. The tension was palpable, growing thicker with each breath, and Harry was shoving down his growing urge to punch Ron in the throat. “Tea, coffee, or water?”
Ron opened his mouth to respond, probably to yell and make accusations – turning their conversation into a full-blown argument – but his attention was pulled toward the small bathroom hallway at the sound of the doorway opening. Hermione padded out toward Harry, hair freshly dried and tied into a loose braid along the back of her head. Harry’s eyes shifted over to her, and he couldn’t stop the twitch of his lips or the spark of warmth in his heart at the sight of her thick, fuzzy, purple socks as she grew closer. They went well with the sweater she was wearing. It was one of her favourites after all.
Hermione probably hadn’t looked at the clothes she had summoned after waking in terror and making her way to the bathroom. She wouldn’t have even thought about them after putting them on in the small bathroom. It didn’t even register in Harry’s mind that her favourite sweater had a small v-neck, and her topmost scar was peeking out three inches at the neckline.
But it registered for Ron.
Harry heard the sharp intake of breath across the table from him and glanced back at Ron with a raised eyebrow, confused as to why Ron’s face suddenly looked shocked. It took a full three seconds for the realization to hit him. Harry would have stunned the boy silent before the words exited his mouth – but he’d been too slow in making the connection because he no longer noticed her scars as something significant. They had become a part of her, just another part that he loved.
“Merlin, Hermione – what happened?!” Ron’s words were breathless as he stared at her chest, and Hermione’s face contorted into one of confusion.
“What?” She asked, the sharpness of her voice dampened by her own confusion. She tracked Ron’s eyes and looked down, freezing on spot when she realized where he was staring.
Harry’s hands balled into fists, a low hiss coming out between his clenched teeth as he glared at Ron and took a step forward. Ron didn’t deserve a magical hex – no, he deserved a good old-fashioned beating.
“Nothing,” Hermione said slowly, her hand catching Harry’s sleeve tightly and stopping him in his tracks. Her gaze rose back up to meet Ron’s, and Harry did not miss the flash of anger and hurt that cut across her eyes. It had been ages since she had even thought about her scars, and Ron’s inconsiderate reaction was just another reminder of how difficult it would be to readjust to other people – which was something he knew she already worried about.
His arm twitched in her grip. It took all his self-control not to pull away from her and lunge across the table to strangle the redhead for his blatant and bold insensitivity. He wanted to, but he knew this was Hermione’s business. It was her fight and her body – so it was up to her to handle it. She didn’t need him to defend her. So, despite his burning anger, he stayed where he was, leaning into her touch on his arm as a wave of pride flooded through him. He was immensely proud of her for not covering up the mark and transfiguring the collar of her shirt after Ron’s remark.
She shouldn’t have to, and Ron should have known better.
“That doesn’t look like nothing,” Ron said, still in shock and unable to look away.
“Keep looking at my chest, and I’ll gouge your eyes out with my thumbs,” Hermione said, her voice cold as her eyes narrowed into a death glare. Ron balked at her words and pried his gaze from her neck, instead refocusing on her eyes with concern. She dropped her hand from Harry’s arm and took two confident steps to her chair at the table. “I had a bad run-in a while ago, but it’s none of your business.”
Ron’s eyes darted back to Harry’s as if for clarification, but they only widened when he saw Harry’s furious expression and balled fists. He swallowed. The seconds ticked by as Ron’s eyes flicked between the two of them – looking like he was trying to solve a puzzle. Then eventually, his eyes began to narrow. Hermione’s scar had distracted him from his previous train of thought and his anger with Harry, but now, it was beginning to settle back into place.
Then Ron’s face twisted into a look of disgust and unjustified hostility.
“Is it related to why you two slept together last night?”
There it is, Harry thought caustically. The only thing you actually want to know. You don’t even truly give a shit about what happened to her, do you?
Ron had spoken the words with such disdain it made Harry’s insides twist over. The redhead was livid with them. He was hyper-fixated on their closeness. He’d been fighting against acknowledging it since the moment that he arrived because he was too nervous, too scared of them, and too desperate to obtain their forgiveness to address it. He’d likely been attributing their behaviour to them being wary of his return, but after hearing them together last night, he was running out of excuses to explain away the close behaviour. And now, his insecurities had flared, and his anger was returning full force.
How Ron had foolishly thought that after seven months, Hermione might still have an interest in him or that their dynamic would be the same was beyond Harry’s comprehension. Especially given the circumstances of his departure.
Regardless, it was clear that he was desperate to know just how close they really were. It seemed to be the only thing he cared about and the only thing he was putting any effort into. Yet he still wouldn’t outright ask, and he was still desperately hoping that Hermione sleeping in Harry’s bed wasn’t what he thought it might be – that maybe it was something else, anything else. At this point, though, Harry wouldn’t be surprised if a part of Ron did hope that his worst fears were true because then he could feel justified in his betrayal. He would be the victim, and they would become the betrayers. The inevitable impending nuclear eruption was balanced on the edge of a knife, and they had all but just handed him the match.
Hermione pulled out her chair slowly, taking a seat and picking up the tea that Harry had prepared for her. She held it in both hands below her chin, comfortably taking in the warmth before she took a small sip.
“Eat your eggs, Ronald,” she breathed, a tone of finality in her voice as she caught Ron’s eyes and fixed him with an even stare. “We’re leaving in twenty minutes.”
Happy belated Chinese New Year Appleblossum24! This Wednesday chapter is for you. 2020 is the year of the rat, and it is supposed to be the year of new beginnings – new opportunities for finding love, earning more money, and being successful!
-x-x-
A muffled pop echoed out into the mild, damp air as three invisible bodies appeared at the edge of the forest on the east side of the Lovegood’s property. They were far enough away from the Burrow to avoid suspicion, and nowhere near what Hermione had expected was the traditional location for arriving at the Lovegood’s household – as now they had to cut across some unattractive terrain to get inside the wards. Though, that was just a small sacrifice to make as their location provided good coverage of their arrival and multiple hiding places that would allow their newly acquired ‘ lookout ’ the opportunity to spy unnoticed. Frankly, she doubted that he would do much ‘ looking out’. Nor would he add any value to their mission or accomplish much other than overdramatic brooding and ridiculous seething.
She just hoped that the idiot would remember to apparate away if anyone did show up.
She bit back an outward groan as Ron angrily dropped her hand with a jerking motion the second the ground stopped moving, and they had safely arrived. It was childish, but it was no matter. She didn’t exactly enjoy holding his sweaty hand, and she had only done it so that she could bring them to their destination. She could hardly say that she was shocked or startled by the furious energy that seemed to be leaking from his body. She understood it – but that didn’t mean that she thought it was justified.
Breakfast had been tense, more than tense, it was like sitting inside a pressure cooker, and it felt like having her brain pushed out through her ears. Ron had obviously heard her in Harry’s bed that morning when she woke the tent with her wand light. It wasn’t surprising. She knew it was bound to happen. Though she had hoped that it wouldn’t happen the first night so they could deal with this later. Now he was livid. Yet, like Harry, she didn’t regret it.
They needed sleep.
End of story.
However, Ron being Ron had refused to let the topic go. He may have audibly shut up when she denied him a response and sent him a death glare, but he was very clearly still fuming about it, overthinking it and waiting for a second opportunity to bring it up. In classic Ron fashion, he refused to grow up and see the bigger picture, and once again, Hermione found herself in a position where she could understand his feelings – sort of – but she didn’t agree with them.
He wasn’t being reasonable, and his behaviour was dangerous. As a result, Hermione couldn’t stop the burning disgust and anger that she felt over how he was handling his own voluntary return. The boy was moronic; how he could come back thinking that nothing had changed between the three of them or that he would be welcomed after seven months away was insane. Why on earth would they be excited to see her? How could he possibly think that they would be anything but pissed while harbouring loathing disgust about his actions? What did he think they had been doing these last few months, crying in sadness and awaiting his return?
He had always been short-sighted, but this approach was stupid, immature, and crude even by his low standards. He was completely unable to regulate his emotions or use the organ that rested between his ears, and it made her sick with frustration.
Of course he would only focus on their relationship. Of course he would gawk at her scars and make inconsiderate comments. Of course the boy would allow his rage and hurt to blind his ability to think and try to see things from their perspective.
It’s not like we’re in the middle of a war or anything, she thought caustically.
Or like a psychopathic demon is chasing after us.
Or like we are the only ones with the information required to win the war and defeat said demon.
Or like the entire wizarding world is unknowingly depending on us to succeed.
Fucking moron.
She eyed him from the corner of her vision when they landed. She didn’t need to be able to see him to know that he was still scowling in disgust or that his ears were still bright red with anger. She wondered how long her calm and stinted words at the breakfast table would keep him quiet. At the time, he had dropped to his seat with a tightly clenched jaw, sat stiffly, and picked at his eggs until Harry kicked him out of the tent so he could pack everything up. Hermione had stood outside more than ten feet away from him, completely ignoring him while she charmed his ‘ lookout ’ coin. Once everything was packed, Hermione quickly cast a disillusionment on them and grabbed their hands firmly to apparate.
She looked out at the muddy marsh before her, her skin bristled in the light breeze that pulled across her face, and she bit down a second angry groan.
This is a mistake, she breathed.
They should have stunned him. They should have done something, anything, but brought him here. He was even more of a liability now than he was twelve hours ago when they sat around the small wooden table having an awkward dinner. He was agitated and unfocused. He was hostile towards them and irrational about everything, and now he was about to be left alone as a ‘lookout’ while she and Harry walked back out into the shitstorm of the world for the first time since Birmingham. Their situation was not good. She could feel the wrath radiating off of him in waves, and it set her nerves on edge.
Something was going to happen. She could just feel it, and it was going to be entirely his fault – except could she even blame him at this point? She knew the risk, as did Harry, and yet they still brought him along because there just wasn’t a good solution to this problem. So how could she blame him if something happened?
Failure was all she could expect of him anymore. He had blamed them, abandoned them, disappointed them, and constantly let them down over the years – and then he had capped that glorious six-year history off by fully deserting them last September. And since his return, he had done absolutely nothing to show any growth – neither physically nor emotionally.
And now we are fucked .
It truly didn’t matter what they did now. It didn’t matter if they left him, brought him, returned him home, or brought him to the cottage. She and Harry were completely and utterly fucked. She had briefly considered backing out of their plan to proceed after breakfast and leaving Ron with Arthur – she trusted him to keep Ron at home and in check. But she didn’t trust Mrs. Weasley, and there was no way that Arthur could keep Ron hidden away for potentially months without her knowing. Not with that cursed clock anyways. Mrs. Weasley would know in a heartbeat if her son was being held captive in their own house, or anywhere for that matter.
Hermione let out a sigh.
She should have hexed the blasted clock when she was at the Burrow the previous summer, but at the time, she hadn’t known that Mrs. Weasley’s son was going to walk out on them and leave them alone to fight the terrors of the war.
She had contemplated obliviating him to remove the critical information from his mind so that even if he did run off again, he wouldn’t be a risk. The problem there was that she lacked the skills to artfully pull out multiple occurrences of single concepts or memories that stretched out over massive lengths of time. She was well accomplished in removing blocks of time regardless of how far back she needed to go to get them. But to remove Ron’s memories of the Horcruxes specifically would be like trying to pull out multiple single threads from a complex, tightly-knit blanket without ruining the blanket.
It was possible if one was skilled enough.
But she had never done that before. Could she do it? Probably, given enough time and practice, but could she do it in an hour before going to Xenophilius’s so they could stick to the plan? No, definitely not.
She doubted that she could even do it in a day, and attempting it without further research or practice would risk permanently damaging Ron’s mind.
So, she had contemplated obliviating everything about this mission from his head, but that had felt extreme even to her. The gap would be massive. It would extend for months, his family would notice, and if anyone caught him to interrogate him, it would be obvious that someone had been in his head. She couldn’t imagine that the Weasleys would be pleased, and that would only make this harder.
At the end of the day, she was just trying to do the right thing – reasonably balance the risk that Ron posed against the possible impacts of their chosen solution. She didn’t want to hurt Ron; she just wanted to ensure their safety and the safety of this mission. So given the time constraints, she did what she could and picked what looked like the best option.
Then, she just added an extra charm to the coin she gave him and bit down her nervous anxiety.
No matter what they did, there was always a risk that Ron would find a way to ruin it. So, for the time being, until she either practiced her memory charm work or they found a better option – they would keep him close and babysit him. That way, they could watch his every move and prevent him from single-handedly ruining the war efforts.
“This is your post,” she heard Harry say in a toneless voice to her right after he had cast several detection spells around them. She knew he was pointing to the treeline edge even though she couldn’t see it. “You have the coin?”
“Yes,” Ron said, his voice was tight with barely controlled anger. It made her want to roll her eyes.
“Good. Remember, if you see anything – tap it twice and apparate back to the cliff,” Harry said as he stepped toward Hermione.
“Don’t forget to refresh your disillusionment charm either,” Hermione added, keeping her hands clenched at her sides to help control her flaring temper. “It will wear off after 10 minutes or so. I’m not sure how long we will be gone, but hopefully, you won’t need to do it more than twice.”
Ron didn’t respond.
She could feel him standing just a few feet away, but aside from the awkward tension and angry vibes, she got nothing in return. Hermione closed her eyes tightly as a fresh wave of stress crept through her veins, and she resisted the urge to punch his invisible face. She wouldn’t miss – even with the disillusionment.
She let out another quiet breath and forced her shoulders to drop. She hated this. She hated that this was the situation she and Harry had found themselves in after all the training they had gone through. It was like life was truly determined to try and screw them over.
“Cast a silencing spell on yourself as we discussed, and don’t leave the treeline. Stay here, stay out of sight, and keep your eyes open. We don’t know if there are any alarms that will summon snatchers – so be prepared to move and move fast,” Hermione said coldly, forcing out the rest of their agreed-to plan. Though, honestly, she wasn’t sure why she was bothering. The dolt probably wasn’t listening to her anyways. “We’ll be back shortly.”
With that, she turned on her heel and grabbed Harry’s hand, instinctively knowing where it would be, and then she made her way out into the small marshy bog that covered the distance between them and the strange-looking house. It rose vertically against the dim morning sky, tall and straight, very unsimilar to the Burrow’s leaning and crooked structure. She often wondered if wizarding homes were always magical or if some of them were just charmed muggle homes. In the case of the Burrow and the Lovegood’s, she had no doubt that they were magically constructed from the ground up.
“How much longer do you have on your shield?” Harry whispered near her ear after they had cast a silencing charm around themselves and gotten a few steps away from their ‘ lookout ’.
“Seven minutes, then I’ll need to recast. Harry, Ron is going to pop. This was a mistake.”
“I know. I’ve been thinking that since breakfast, but I couldn’t come up with a better idea at the time,” Harry squeezed her hand as they continued to squish their way through the soggy bog. They had been hoping that it would still be frozen from the winter, but it appeared the mild, southern late-March weather had thawed it out some. “You were going to stun him this morning, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” she sighed, faltering only slightly to pull her foot from the suction of the mud. “I heavily considered it.”
“What stopped you?”
“Mrs. Weasley,” she groaned as she continued to vanish their footsteps and silence their racket. “I was contemplating bringing him to Arthur – I trusted that he would keep Ron locked up somewhere safe with no questions asked until we came up with a better solution. But Mrs. Weasley would have found out and pitched a bloody fit, I’m sure. So I decided against it. If I could trust Ron to stay put himself, which I don’t , I would have brought him back to the cottage. If he was anyone else or had a single reasonable bone in his body, we could have arranged to go there and talk to him after this mission. Then we could have explained to him why he needs to stay there – but obviously, that idea is just laughable.”
They both paused momentarily when they crossed through the wards. The unfamiliar tingle across her skin made her body feel like it was buzzing with a little cluster of friendly bumblebees. It was a strange sensation and not like any wards she had previously encountered. She supposed it made sense, given that Luna’s mother had created these entirely on her own. She would have been a curiously fascinating witch to meet.
They waited for several seconds just inside the wards, prepared to dart backwards, prepared to defend or attack if necessary if snatchers showed up – but nothing happened. Then, taking another tentative step forward, they continued on.
“I added a second charm on the coin as a backup measure,” Hermione noted as she steadied Harry through a particularly mucky area.
“What did you add?”
“I added a small tracking charm to it, so as long as he keeps the coin on him, we can find him. It doesn’t work over great distances. I didn’t have the time to set up a full-scale trace, but Ron was never great with apparition anyway, so I figured he wouldn’t get too far. Hypothetically, we should be able to find him if he runs off again.”
“Clever – so worst case, if we return to the treeline and he has abandoned us once again, we can go collect him and then bring him to Arthur.”
“Exactly. It was the best backup measure I could come up with on the spot. Frankly, it’s the only reason why I even considered proceeding with our original plan after what happened this morning. I’m just hoping he doesn’t manage to disapparate and get caught in the small amount of time we’re with Xenophilius.”
“Pfft,’ Harry snorted. Her fear wasn’t that farfetched. It was entirely plausible for Ron to get caught in less than fifteen minutes. “So, assuming he doesn’t leave – how bad do you think it will be when we get back and return to camp?”
“Bad – like nuclear warhead level of bad,” she said flatly with no emotion. “I’m not worried about him, though, Harry – I don’t care that he’s upset.”
“You’re worried that you might do something.” Harry nodded alongside her and let out a breath of relief when they reached solid, firm ground.
Their boots were covered in mud, and it had tracked up their calves. A quick wave of his wand removed the majority of the muck, but their pants were still dirty. The rest would have to be managed with a warming charm on their legs as the stubborn mud was clearly reluctant to leave their skin – no surprise, given whose house it was.
“Yes,” she admitted quietly.
It was true. She wasn’t afraid of Ron. In fact, the thought of being afraid of him almost made her laugh out loud. He wouldn’t even be able to raise his wand, let alone cast anything at her before she disarmed him – possibly literally – and she wasn’t afraid of hurting him emotionally either.
She didn’t care that he was upset or that his ego had been bruised. He was being immature and selfish while she and Harry had done nothing wrong. What she did care about, though, was two-fold: one, having a second and unnecessary death on her conscious, and two – most importantly – failing their mission. Pissing Ron off so much that he left for a second time and put them at risk because he would inevitably be caught was not something that she would tolerate. She’d be able to track him, sure. The coin had a relatively decent range on it, and they would be able to find him and return him to Shell Cottage or the Burrow. But it wasn’t like she and Harry could constantly pop all around Britain collecting Ron every time his feelings got hurt, and he decided to run away out of embarrassment. Besides, even he would eventually figure out how they were finding him, and then he would throw out the coin.
This was the only reason why she had not confirmed his suspicions at breakfast and told him of their relationship.
If she had, he would have left and ruined their plans. They would have lost the day while they searched for him and dragged him back home, and she couldn’t allow that. Their mission was more important than Ron or his need for information that was none of his business. Whereas now, after denying him a response, she could at least hope that he would hold it together for fifteen minutes while they got what they needed because his curiosity and anger would get the better of him. He would stay because he needed to know. Then, they could all return to camp and discuss the situation like rational adults, calmly and reasonably.
She snorted inwardly.
That was a pipe dream if there ever was one. In reality, it was much more likely that they would return to camp, Ron would blow up, and if she could manage not to kill him – which she was seriously beginning to doubt – he would disapparate. Either way, though, as long as she could defer it from happening until after this mission, it gave them time to go collect him, drop him off to Arthur and then establish a new plan. Perhaps there was a way to convince Arthur and Mrs. Weasley that their son was a threat to the success of the war. Perhaps she could even take some proper time to obliviate the specific memories from his mind over the course of a week or two. It was something that they would need to work out later. For now, she needed to stay focused on the task at hand and get what they needed from Xenophilius.
Harry gripped her hand tightly as if having read her mind.
“Let’s get this done and over with,” he said gently. “Then we can figure out what to do.”
As they approached the broken-down front gate, three signs came into view. They were all hand-painted, and at one point, were bright in colour. The first read ‘The Quibbler. Editor: X. Lovegood’, the second: ‘ Pick Your Own Mistletoe,’ and the third ‘Keep Off the Dirigible Plums.’
Cautiously, they made their way through the creaking gate and down the overgrown zigzagging pathway to the front door. Hermione recognized one of the bushes that was still covered in small, thin, orange radish-like fruit despite the cold – Luna occasionally wore them as earrings. She would have to remember to ask the girl what they were called if she ever managed to see her again. From the outside, the house appeared deserted and rather unkempt. It sort of looked like how Hermione felt on the inside, and a small tinge of sadness edged through her body with the thought.
They were not the only ones struggling with the war.
Aside from the sleepy-looking owl perched by the open window of a second-floor room, there was no sign of life around. At the faint knock that echoed on the door, Hermione knew that Harry had announced their presence. They waited in the damp, cool air of the morning in silence, her heart beating at a steady pace while her muscles tensed in anticipation.
She was nervous about speaking with another person and even more nervous about going into unknown territory, but having the conversation on the doorstep wasn’t exactly inconspicuous. Despite this, her instincts still scream against it. Inside was dangerous, confined, limiting – not a good place if they needed to flee quickly.
After a long stretch of time, Hermione began to wonder if they were too late, that perhaps Xenophilius had been taken and was being held elsewhere. Or the much darker reality that he may already be dead. She was about to motion Harry to leave when she heard a thudding inside the house behind the door and watched in surprise as it was wrenched open by none other than a very dishevelled and confused-looking Xenophilius.
“Who’s there?” He whispered, his eyes darting around the empty space before him.
He was barefoot despite the cold and was wearing what seemed to be a thin, stained nightshirt. His long white, candyfloss hair was unkempt, almost as unruly as hers or Harry’s, and it was a far stretch of appearance since the last time they had seen him at the Burrow. Hermione cancelled their disillusionment charm with a twitch of her finger and watched as his eyes grew wide and he fell against the doorframe in shock. It was very apparent that he recognized them.
“Mr. Lovegood,” Harry said calmly as his eyes warily searched the man before them. “May we come in?”
The man seemed incapable of speech. He clung to the doorframe, unmoving until his head started to nod, the movements becoming faster and faster until finally he slipped from the doorframe and stumbled back into the house. His erratic behaviour was unnerving, and Harry only clutched her hand more tightly as they pushed their way cautiously inside behind him and closed the door.
Xenophilius had stumbled back several feet into the kitchen. He stood before them, hand desperately clutching at the dirty kitchen table before them. His eyes were twitching, and he seemed like he was struggling internally with something. His mouth would tremble, and he’d open it only for no sound to come out until his body quivered and he’d shut it again. He looked distressed, beyond distressed really, and the house looked like it had been torn apart in a fit of rage or by a band of Death Eaters.
Unease settled across Hermione’s heart as she quickly took in their surroundings, and she clutched her wand more tightly. She only had another three minutes left on her shield until she would need to recast it again, but more than anything else, she just wanted to leave. It wasn’t right. Something wasn’t right, and she knew that Harry felt it too. She wished she could speak to him without Xenophilius noticing so she could ask if he’d picked up on anything strange.
Finally, Xenophilius seemed to find his voice, and he grimaced as he spoke. “Would you like to come up for tea? The living room is far more comfortable.”
“No, thank you, sir,” Hermione said slowly, her eyes never leaving his frame as she nudged Harry’s arm. “We only had a quick question we hoped to ask you.”
“Ah yes – yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, of course – of course. Please, have a seat here.”
He stumbled his way along the table toward the cluttered kitchen counter and began pulling out tea mugs despite them having declined his offer. He grabbed a can of loose leave tea and poured it directly into the mugs, filling them with cold tap water as Hermione and Harry cautiously inched their way toward the table.
The room was in disarray.
The cupboards, which looked to be previously painted bright primary colours, now looked dingy and grey. There were dishes everywhere and large collections of books and papers scattered across a side table and the floor. A dirty wrought-iron staircase in the center of the room that led to the upper levels was littered with clothes, and each step was covered in papers. Hermione eyed everything with caution, her hand flinching as Xenophilius began banging around looking for what she could only imagine was the sugar container, and her eyebrow raised a fraction when she watched him scoop empty spoonfuls into each cup. She and Harry exchanged a wary look. The glass jar was completely empty – but Xenophilius did not seem to take notice, and they both knew that this man was damaged and deranged.
“Sir, I wanted to ask you about the symbol you wore around your neck at Bill and Fleur’s wedding this past summer – the triangle with the circle in the middle. Can you tell us what it means?” Harry asked quickly. He was just as uncomfortable as she was and wanted to get this over with.
Xenophilius froze at the counter, and his body rattled once more. It looked like he was straining against something, and Hermione’s chest began to grow tighter with fear.
Are those tremors an aftereffect of extreme cruciatus torture? She wondered. What happened to him?
Something was very wrong with this man. Turning slowly, Xenophilius carried over three cups of cold water and tea leaves and set them on the kitchen table before them. His face was strained into a tight and ridiculously phony smile, though his arched eyebrow of curiosity did seem to be genuine. It was like his body was acting spastically.
“Are you referring to the sign of the Deathly Hallows?” He asked, and he reached a hand up to pull out the necklace that lay under his dirty nightshirt.
“Yes, sir – that symbol. What are the Deathly Hallows?” Harry continued, hoping to stay on point and end this quickly.
The first honest emotion, aside from curiosity and fear, slid across Xenophilius’s face in the form of a smile. He sat down carefully at the table and clutched his mug tightly in his hands, then motioned across the table to the vacant seats. Harry inched forward to an empty chair across from him, pulling Hermione with him by the hand, and sat awkwardly. Both of them perched on the edge of their seat uncomfortably and prepared to bail at a moment’s notice.
“I suppose I’m not surprised you haven’t heard of it – as not many wizards believe. Witness that knuckle-headed young man at the wedding who attacked me for wearing it – claiming I was sporting the symbol of a dark wizard! Hah! Such ignorance – there is nothing dark about the Deathly Hallows, at least not in that sense. Wearing the symbol is simply a way to reveal oneself to other believers.”
He took a sip of the disgusting cold brew that he clenched in his hands like a lifeline and seemed completely unaware of it being cold – or that his lips were now covered in soggy bits of tea leaves. Though Hermione felt it was best not to point it out.
“And what is it that you believe?” She asked quietly, watching the way the man continued to almost vibrate at the table. “What does the symbol represent?”
“That you believe in the Deathly Hallows,” Xenophilius stated obviously. He seemed confused by her question, and he gave them another pained smile. “The symbol simply represents the Hallows.”
“What are the Hallows?” Harry asked more bluntly, and at that, surprise crossed the man’s face.
“Are you not familiar with the Tale of the Three Brothers?”
Harry frowned, and Hermione did as well. Of course they were. They’d read it several times over the course of the last seven months. Every time they opened Dumbledore’s copy of Tales of Beedle the Bard, they came across the tale. It was just a story, one of many in a children’s book. A children’s book that Hermione still had no idea why Dumbledore had left to them.
“Yes,” Harry said tightly, his hand still firmly holding Hermione’s. They would both need to recast their shield in a moment.
“Well, that story contains the Deathly Hallows – it is about them.”
“I don’t understand,” Harry said slowly.
Xenophilius jerked up from the table with a violent shudder, causing Hermione and Harry to flinch and raise their wands. They watched as he scrambled from his seat toward the table in the corner that contained a mountain of papers and began rooting around.
“Recast your shield,” Harry muttered, and Hermione only nodded in response.
They both recast their shields while Xenophilius continued to rustle with the books, muttering to himself and completely unaware of the purple flash behind him that signified the successful implementation of their spell. The anxious anticipation that had been plaguing Hermione since the moment they left the safety of their campsite was growing, and now it was beginning to rattle her nerves beyond what she was capable of dealing with. Something was wrong. Everything in this house was wrong, and the man before them seemed to be out of his mind and at odds with his body. He’d clearly been ransacked, tortured, harassed, and Merlin knows what else. Suddenly he turned back toward them with a wide grin, a blank piece of paper and a quill clutched tightly in his hand. He made his way back to the table on unsteady feet and slapped the page down against the dirty surface.
“Yes, yes, yes, the Deathly Hallows – see, do you see them now?” He started to draw the familiar symbol as he named each shape he sketched. “The Cloak of Invisibility – the Resurrection Stone – the Elder Wand – and together these three pieces make the Deathly Hallows.”
He looked rather pleased with himself as if he had just bestowed some invaluable knowledge upon them. Then another much more violent shiver ran through his body and his hand clenched hard around the quill as if he were in pain.
“The book doesn’t name those as the Deathly Hallows,” Hermione said cautiously. She’d pushed back in her seat to gain more distance from the wreck of a man before them.
“Of course not – it’s a children’s tale,” he breathed, another violent shudder running through him as he clenched his teeth and gripped the table’s surface. “It isn’t meant to instruct. But together, these three elements make one the master of death.”
“Does the Peverell family have anything to do with this story?” Hermione asked after a moment’s pause. She’d been wondering why the symbol showed on the headstone in the cemetery and now seemed like as good a time as any to ask – since she wasn’t really sure exactly what Xenophilius was getting at.
“Well, of course!” Xenophilius looked rather taken aback by her question as his hand started to shake against the table more frequently. “They have everything to do with it – they are the three brothers: Antioch, Cadmus and Ignotus! They were the original owners of the Hallows, the wand, the cloak of true invisibility – not some charmed disillusionment fabric or bedazzling hex – I mean a cloak which truly allowed for invisibility, and the resurrection stone! The stone that can return life to the dead. But let me assure you, young witch, that this is no mere story .”
“Wait – you’re saying that these exist?” Harry said in disbelief.
At that moment, the door to the house slammed open, and Ron trudged inside. Xenophilius jumped at the noise and then began to quiver continuously as his hands gripped at the fabric of his nightshirt once more. Hermione and Harry had leapt up from their seat at the sound, wands raised at the boy and eyes livid.
“ What are you doing in here?” Hermione hissed, her eyes flicking between the redhead before her and the grown man to her right, who looked like he was having a full-body convulsion.
Is he seizing? Is this how bad convulsions can get from extended torture? What the fuck did they do to him?
Questions circled her head rapidly, but she bit them down and refocused on Ron, feeling her rage expanding beyond her control.
“You’re supposed to be our lookout!”
“Yeah?! Well, I got tired of waiting for you and not knowing what the bloody hell is going on! Being a ‘lookout’? Seriously?! How stupid do you think I am? It’s a bullshit job, and you know it! So why don’t we cut the crap and –” Ron froze. His gaze had latched onto their interlaced fingers, and his eyes turned furious as he stared at the nonexistent space between them. “ Why are you holding hands AGAIN?!”
“Are you fucking kidding me, Ron?!” Harry groaned as he rolled his eyes, and his grip tightened on his wand. “It’s so we don’t get separated, and in case we need to apparate away, you fucking idiot! Now get outside!”
“No! I want to know what the fuck is going on!” Ron yelled, stepping forward into the kitchen and starting to close the distance between the three of them. “And don’t you fucking lie to me, you backstabbing bastard!”
“Alright, that’s enough!” Hermione raised her wand to his face, intending to stun him and put an end to this absurd confrontation.
Fuck it, she thought. Arthur can have him, AND I’ll obliviate him .
“I’m s-s-sorry!” Xenophilius wailed as he collapsed to the ground, and his entire body began to writhe in pain. Hermione’s eyes darted to him, and she twitched, torn between stunning Ron and attempting to help the man. “G-G-G-Go! GO! You must go! I tried! I’m s-sorry.”
“Tried what?” Ron asked stupidly, pausing in his steps to stare at the convulsing man in confusion at the same time Hermione froze.
Her brain processed Xenophilius’s words before he had even finished speaking them, and in an instant, everything clicked. It was like the pieces of the puzzle had finally fallen into place, and Hermione’s eyes widened in understanding. This was why the house felt so strange, why everything was so disgusting and neglected – why Xenophilius had been shaking and twitching. It was why his body seemed out of sync and bizarre. Why it seemed like he had been fighting against something since the moment they arrived on his doorstep.
It was because he had been. It wasn’t just tremors – he was fighting against the wards, against an imperius curse – but he was no longer able to.
“GET OUT NOW!” She screamed, pulling Harry and diving forward.
The side of the house exploded. Large chunks of stone and wood shot like shrapnel through the house as the sound of the blast threatened to burst their eardrums. Hermione rolled to the side, electing to drop Harry’s hand to avoid being hit by the iron staircase that flew over her. Her shield would have held against the blow. It had already protected her from several large pieces of stone and wood – she knew that. But it wasn’t like they could apparate from the house anyway, so she would rather save the strength of her shield for when she truly needed it. Besides, they would both need as much agility as possible to make their way outside – they’d been launched to the back corner of the house, and burning wreckage and debris stretched between them and the only exit.
With a quick and disoriented glance around her, her stomach lurched. The house looked like a war zone. Like it had just been bombed and set on fire, and her ears were ringing. Smoke and dust filled the air, and to her right, she could barely make out Xenophilius laying on the floor, a pool of blood around his head and a large stick of wood protruding out from his thigh. Whether or not he was dead or just unconscious, she didn’t know. For Luna’s sake, she hoped it was the latter. Papers were scattered and falling everywhere around them as burning chunks of debris began to pour from the levels above them. The house groaned deeply, a creaking sound emanating from the base and echoing up the walls to the floors above.
It’s going to collapse.
H er heart stuttered in her chest. She crawled to her knees, only to immediately fling herself to the side to avoid a spell that shot from above. Her breath came in pants as she coughed against the smoke and peered around her once more, only to see half a dozen black-cloaked figures appearing around the house. She could barely make out their yelling. She couldn’t see Ron – his body must have been blasted off beside her or possibly out into the yard. The reality that he might not have survived the explosion without a shield did not escape her as she rolled toward the exit. She knew that Harry was just off to her left and was making his way there already.
Turning quickly, she managed to avoid another attack and countered by slicing open the first black-cloaked figure that she saw. She could just make out his strangled cries in the confusion as she clambered over the rubble and desperately made her way to the light from the opening in the side of the house.
“Get outside!” She screamed again. She knew that Harry would know what to do, but if Ron was still breathing, he would panic. She hoped that he might hear her direction and at least make an attempt at escape. She couldn’t say she was worried about him, but she was worried about him getting caught.
Running through the burning books and shattered glass, she saw what she could only assume was Harry tumbling through the opening before her and narrowly missing a stunning spell. The silent return fire through the opening was undoubtably his, and she heard the scream of another faceless black-cloaked man as he blasted hard into the remains of the wall behind them.
Our shields will hold! Our shields will hold! We will have enough time!
She repeated the words in her head like a mantra as she ran, dodged, and scrambled across the uneven ground while sending counter attacks behind her. They would be able to get away. They just needed to avoid the barrage of spells that were being hurled at them until they could get past the wards and apparate to safety – and with their shield, they could even handle a few hits.
She ducked as chains flew past her head and frowned. Why were they attacking with binding chains?
Two steps more, and she pulled herself through the opening where the door used to be. She rolled, ducking the hex that flew over her head from behind and remained low in a bear crawl as she moved toward Harry. He launched a string of counterattacks over her to give her cover as she made her way across the glass and broken stone that littered the yard. She had just popped back up to her feet to launch yet another attack when she saw a struggling figure in the arms of the large man that exited the house behind her.
FUCK!
“LEMME GO!” Ron was kicking against the tall, thick body of Fenrir Greyback, and it was a sad and futile effort to behold. His eyes were wide, his wand was already captured, and his face was red with wasted efforts as he screamed. But apparently, he wasn’t dead yet.
Loud popping sounds rang out around and behind her – she gasped in shock as thick arms wrapped around her waist and a hairy hand closed over her wand hand.
They have apparition permission through the wards!?
Her body reacted on instinct. She drove her head back and smashed the face of the man who had grabbed her off the ground. Her vision swirled, but she managed to tug her wand free from his grasp with the distraction.
Her shield was still active. It was fading, but with it still in place, so she could slice the man open behind her without risking her own safety – and that was exactly what she did. The sickening sound of flesh splitting open behind her rang through her ears as she dropped to the ground. She heard the heavy thump of the body fall. She could feel the heat from his blood seeping into the back of her jacket as her shield gave a final flicker and then faded completely.
Apparently, it wasn’t based solely on duration – it also depended on usage, and she had been pummeled only seconds ago by varying amounts of debris. They’d never tested their shields to this extent before. So she hadn’t known how a constant barrage of attacks would affect it. She fell to her knees and raised her wand.
“STOP! Or I kill your friend!”
The words echoed out across the remains of Xenophilius’s yard, and Hermione instantly stilled. Her heart flooded with panic, her wild eyes flashing as she looked for Harry. He couldn’t have been caught – and a quick glance confirmed that he wasn’t. At least not exactly. Harry was standing frozen on spot to her left, and there were two wands pointed directly at his temple by two very angry looking snatchers.
Harry was eyeing them from the corner of his gaze, and his wand was twitching in his hand. His long shaggy hair had slid from his ponytail during the explosion, and it hung down just past his shoulders as a dirty, slightly matted mess from the battle. It was coated in blood, hanging over part of his face, and his glasses seemed to be missing. They must have been broken in the explosion. He wouldn’t be able to see well, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to pull out one of his spare pairs without someone attacking her.
She felt her heart sink as her eyes shifted across the mess toward the voice, knowing that it was only Ron who had been captured. Fenrir stood more than ten feet away. His hand now wrapped tightly around Ron’s throat. His nails were digging into the boy’s skin and turning his words into strangled cries of pain. His wand was pointed to the redhead’s temple, and a sick look of joy covered his face.
He could give Bellatrix a run for her money.
Two more men stood before her. Their wands were aimed at her face, but she didn’t feel fear as she struggled to catch her breath. Her wand shook in her grip as her eyes darted between them – assessing every possible option for how to continue. Yet the only conclusion that she seemed able to reach was that they were out-numbered, handicapped, and they were thoroughly fucked.
Her heart raced as she rapidly ran the scenarios.
If she attacked one of the men before her, the second would surely kill or stun her. She no longer had a shield for protection, and at this close of range, it was unlikely that the snatchers would miss. She doubted that Harry still had his shield either, so if he attacked the first man beside him, the second would counter him as well.
While she and Harry were fast and could produce an impressively quick succession of spells, she doubted that even they could launch two consecutive attacks at two different targets that were more than four feet apart without suffering a counter blow when their attacker’s wands were mere inches from their faces. They had never practiced attacking two separate targets at once, and they had not anticipated being surrounded so extensively without having their shields engaged.
With both of them being so closely held at wand point, they would not be able to disarm or neutralize every opponent around them without getting injured. Therefore, the only way they could successfully attack would be to recast their shields first before attacking. If she and Harry quickly recast their shields, they would be able to reengage in battle and attack effectively. But before they got anywhere near Ron, Fenrir would kill him or apparate him away for questioning.
Hermione paused in her analysis as she examined that point.
No, she thought. If they were going to kill Ron, they would have done it already.
The threat on his life was a ploy. It was a tactic to get them to stop fighting because they were wanted for questioning – desperately so, by the looks of it. She and Harry had killed how many of their men so far? Three? Four? She’d lost count because it wasn’t an important detail, and yet everything that these snatchers had thrown at them thus far wasn’t lethal. Every spell in the onslaught was stunners, chains, binding curses and leglockers. Not a single deadly or dangerous curse had been hurled their way despite the fact that she and Harry had blatantly dismembered members of their team.
Perhaps it was because Xenophilius had delayed them? Perhaps these men were under orders from someone of a much higher rank and were bound to follow directions? Maybe they weren’t allowed to harm potential captives? Or maybe, she and Harry were assumed to be valuable captives? Or, and she hoped this wasn’t the case, they knew exactly who they were already.
Harry must have realized this too, and it was the only reason why he was currently unmoving. He was calculating. The blatant visible anger and frustration across the faces of the snatchers before them was just more proof on the matter. Something was holding them back, something far more powerful than their own willpower or preferences. Really the only remaining question was: did they actually know who Harry was?
And it was the only question that mattered now.
She had no doubt in her mind now that Fenrir, regardless of what he wanted to do, would not kill Ron. At least not yet. And that meant that their worst fear of him being captured and exposing their secret mission was coming true. She could feel the tightness across her chest return as her jaw clenched harder. Everything was unravelling. Everything was falling apart.
They would take Ron away, and they would tear through his mind in exactly the way that they had anticipated. It didn’t matter that Hermione and Harry could simply recast their shields, disengage and make a run for the wards. They would make it, she didn’t have a doubt in her mind about that, but it didn’t solve the problem.
The problem was Ron .
Regardless of what she and Harry did from this point forward, Ron would be taken in for questioning, and as a result, their mission would fail. He wouldn’t be able to withstand the torture, and their chances of defeating You Know Who would instantly decrease from low to impossible.
Anger burned in her throat as her eyes flicked back to Ron, who was struggling feebly against Fenrir’s firm grip. He was looking at her desperately, trying to call out. He looked scared.
Her fist clenched.
They had been outmatched, and their loss was entirely his fault. She wondered if he even had the capacity to realize it or if he was still completely ignorant to the giant chasm that was the difference in their skill. Had he seen the man behind her get sliced in half? Did he know that she’d done it?
The worst part of everything was knowing that had Ron not been here, she and Harry would have already been back to the safety of the north. Instead, they stood at a standstill while they weighed their options. She re-ran the scenarios once more in her head to confirm, and she drew the same conclusion.
There was only one solution to this problem.
They surrender and submit themselves to whatever questioning might come, all while looking for a future opportunity to escape together. If she attempted to kill or obliviate Ron now, thereby cutting their losses so that she and Harry could escape safely – it wouldn’t work. Once she cast the spell, she’d be instantly stunned. Harry would have to cast a shield charm at the exact moment she made her strike, and then he would have to battle all four remaining snatchers and Fenrir and collect her body and escape. Besides – she didn’t have a clear shot at Ron from their position, and she couldn’t cast obliviate without moving her wand. It would be a dead giveaway. If she shielded first, Fenrir would leave. They could track Ron’s coin, maybe, depending on how far they went. But by the time they got to him, they’d have already started the interrogation.
Ron was weak-minded.
It wouldn’t take long for them to find what they wanted.
Her eyes flicked to Harry, and she caught his gaze for a split second before looking away. Yet in that brief moment, she saw it. Defeat. He knew it too. He had reached the same inevitable conclusion, and the tiny shake of his head answered the only question she had.
He didn’t have a clean shot of Ron either.
If he attempted a strike, it would miss, and Fenrir would apparate away while the remaining snatchers attacked.
They were done.
She let out a low sigh, and at the sound, she could see Harry’s shoulders lower as his face tightened. She’d just told him that she couldn’t do it either, not without running the same risk that he would if he were to try it. Slowly, they both began lowering their wands, only to have the snatchers rip them out of their hands.
“Good,” the taller dark-haired snatchers before her said, though his body didn’t relax in the slightest. He continued to eye her with a combination of disgust and wariness. “Two on each person, don’t lower your wands for a damn second – you saw what they did. I want them bound and silenced! NOW!”
Tight bindings of rope formed around her middle, forcing her arms to her sides and restricting her breathing into low shallow gasps. Two silencing spells rang out across the cool morning air as she and Harry were grabbed roughly by the back of the neck. She would no longer be able to obliviate Ron or cast her shield – she’d not managed to master those wandlessly yet. She could still disarm and attack the snatchers, sure, but why bother? They would need to wait until they could get their hands on Ron, literally, and then make an attack before immediately escaping.
“Alright,” the taller snatcher called out once he determined that Hermione and Harry were sufficiently restrained. His eyes never left her. His wand never moved from her forehead as she felt the wand from the second snatcher dig into her shoulder blades. “To the Manor, NOW ! I want to know who the FUCK these people are and why the hell Xenophilius felt the need to prevent our arrival for so long!”
Hope split across her chest at his words, and she forced herself to maintain a resigned expression.
So they don’t know who Harry is!
There was still a chance that they could escape without it being discovered. They just need a second, just a blip in their captives’ concentration or an opening outside of anti-apparition wards to do it.
Suddenly a familiar tug pulled behind her naval, and she felt her body being squished. The air in her lungs compressed. She felt like she was choking on her tongue from the pressure of the ropes across her chest. It was by far one of the worst apparitions she had endured.
When the violent twisting world finally slowed, she staggered. This man, whoever he was, was terrible at side-alongs, and the binding ropes nearly made her pass out. She was lucky she hadn’t been splinched in the process. Before a millisecond had passed, before she could even process a full thought or realize that it was raining, she was shoved roughly through a large metal gate, and she stumbled to her knees on the muddy gravel path. Her skin scraped, then she was jerked up from the ground once more as a snatcher grabbed her neck.
“On your fucking feet, bitch!” The man behind her hissed in her ear.
She clenched her jaw, burying the anger that coursed through her veins as she was shoved forwards. Despite the disorientation from the choppy apparition, she had not missed the tingle that touched her skin as she crossed the gate.
More anti-apparition wards .
They were not going anywhere.
She turned her head to glance at Harry. He was grimacing as well now. H had obviously noticed the wards too, unlike Ron, who just continued to struggle stupidly against a man two times his size. If he didn’t stop, he was actually going to die. Fenrir could rip his throat out with his bare hands with minimal energy.
They hadn’t silenced him, which was curious. Maybe they didn’t view him as a threat?
She moved awkwardly along the path, her soaked and muddy shoes scuffing across the wet gravel as the snatcher behind her seemed to take joy in pushing her forwards roughly before abruptly yanking her back, so she staggered every few steps. If the opportunity came up – she would kill him too.
Meanwhile, the taller snatcher, who seemed to be some sort of leader, stayed at her side and never looked away.
After several more jerky steps, she glanced back to Harry once more. His long, wet, and dishevelled hair was still hiding his scar. These idiots had been distracted by the battle and by the fact that Xenophilius had protected them and prevented their arrival. They had not searched them for any identification or asked them anything yet, and Harry looked nothing like his wanted photo. Neither did she, for that matter, but whoever was in charge of this initiative would – and they would instantly know that this was Harry despite the grimy appearance.
Dread filled her heart as a new wave of panic hit. She could taste the bile at the back of her throat.
No! No, no, no, no, no, NO! She thought desperately, tears stinging at the corner of her eyes. She felt like she was being stabbed in the chest. This can’t be happening . They cannot have him! THEY CANNOT HAVE HIM! I WILL NOT LET THEM! He will not die. HE WILL NOT DIE!! I won’t let it happen!
Without a second thought, she allowed the sharp shove from the snatcher behind her to throw her off balance. She directed her stumble to the side, rolling her ankle in the process and trying to fall toward Harry. The snatcher behind her yelled and tightened his grip on her neck. His nails dug deeply into her skin, but not before her head tapped Harry’s shoulder, and she sent a silent stinging jinx at his down-turned face. She was jerked upright roughly as Harry then stumbled and fell to his knees.
“Get her away from him!” The taller snatcher yelled, and she was immediately pulled back into the other snatcher’s tight grip. “Get him up! What the fuck happened?!”
Harry had not made a sound as he fell, despite the undeniable sting of the spell, and his body remained tense as he was pulled up from the ground roughly by his own two snatchers.
“I don’t know, Scabior – he must have just tripped over her?” Harry’s large snatcher said, though his expression looked fearful.
“Well, move him forward. Keep them apart – I don’t want to take any chances. Xenophilius tried to shelter them for over ten minutes – so they must be someone important.”
“Alright, alright – I got him, okay,” the large snatcher mumbled as he shoved Harry forward in front of Hermione and maintained a strong grip on him.
Greyback continued at the front of the procession, seemingly indifferent to the struggles behind him and drawing amusement from tormenting Ron and making him squirm in pain. Hermione could hear his low growl of a chuckle each time Ron let out a desperate cry. They continued on for another long minute, the heavy rain soaking through her clothes and causing her hair to stick to her face until they rounded a collection of trees and a large Manor came into view. Hermione’s heart plummeted. She felt a wave of sickness wash over her.
We should have just left him .
Fear gripped her soul as her waterlogged limps were forced forward through the mud, and nails bit into her neck.
We should have risked it. I should have sent him back. I should have just obliviated it all. Anything, I should have done anything but this.
They had been brought to Malfoy Manor, and they were fucked.
Completely. Utterly. Fucked.
Warnings:
This chapter contains: Graphic depiction of torture, violence, blood, gore, cutting, cruciatus curse usage, explicit language and many other unpleasant things that may be triggering.
Nothing was written in excess or for shock value, but some may find this chapter difficult and/or upsetting to read. As such, I have placed a two-sentence summary at the bottom of the chapter so that you can skip it if you wish.
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Harry stood rigid before the large wooden doors of the Manor. Even without his glasses, he could tell that the doors were solid, thick, expensive, and laced with intricate details. In the dim, rainy morning light, he could make out what seemed to be more than two dozen different windows just on the left side of the mansion.
This place was huge.
It was no wonder that Draco was such a pompous, arrogant asshole. Growing up in a castle while being told every day that you are better than everyone else around you would inevitably result in you becoming a giant prick.
He kept his eyes downcast, only sneaking glances from behind the curtain of sopping wet, dirty hair that hung down over his now contorted face. It stung. It stung like a bitch – but he wished that he could have hugged Hermione for her brilliant quick thinking. He had been trying to figure out what to do from the moment they arrived, but it was impossible to hex oneself in the face with a stinging jinx.
Now, at least the scar on his forehead was hidden, and he wasn’t walking around like a billboard advertising who he was. And given the fact that his head wasn’t exploding with agony, he figured it was safe to assume that Voldemort wasn’t around today. At least not yet. So they might yet still have a small chance at getting away if they could survive questioning and watch for an opening. Thankfully, his glasses had been smashed in the explosion, which also helped make him less recognizable. However, not seeing clearly would handicap his ability to fight if they engaged in another skirmish. It was part of the reason why he had indicated to Hermione that there was no way he could have hit Ron. With his poor vision and blocked aim, it was an impossible task. Frankly, he was astounded that he’d been as proficient as he had been at Lovegood’s. If he wasn’t so intimately familiar with Hermione’s body, how she moved, and the way that she dodged in liquid fashion, he might have accidentally hit her in the battle.
He bit back a sigh as his gaze travelled to the redhead.
Ron, the absolute fucking moron who he planned to deal with the second they got out of here, was still struggling against Greyback – though the majority of his noises now gurgled deep at the back of his throat. He could see the odd kick of the boy’s legs as Greyback knocked heavily on the great wooden doors. Silently, Harry hoped that Ron would just choke himself out, maybe even suffocate. It would spare him the turmoil of deciding whether to obliviate or kill him later. Though, he doubted he would be so lucky. Life didn’t work like that for him and Hermione. Instead, it would take everything that it could from them and leave them broken, beaten, and battered.
He couldn’t see Hermione anymore. She was still behind him, being kept a few feet back from him, but he knew that the disgusting piece of trash that held her was enjoying it far too much. He clenched his hands at his sides and took another shallow breath. The ropes around him burned at the flesh that they touched. He could feel it against his wrists and across his collar. He wondered if Hermione’s were the same. He wished he could talk to her. He wished that they had a way to communicate silently. It was something that he would ask her about if they didn’t die in the next few hours.
Finally, the door opened, and he could make out the slender frame of someone standing in the dim light of the entranceway, but he didn’t know who it was.
Fucking bullshit eyesight, he groaned internally.
“What is this?” The figure at the door asked. The voice was female. It was familiar, but he had only ever heard it a few times. He wracked his brain and squinted his eyes to try and see. “Where did you find them?”
“They were visiting our dear friend, Xenophilius,” Scabior said from behind Harry. “Though for some reason – the man felt the need to try and keep that secret. So, we collected them up and brought them in – as instructed.”
Harry noticed the bitterness in the man’s voice at the last word. He had suspected that these men were operating under the direct orders of someone else. They had to be; otherwise, they would have been hurling more than stunners during their fight. Now it had been confirmed, and clearly, they were not too happy about it.
“Is this all of them – or did you leave any behind?” The words were harsher. Cold, as if asking something slightly different than the words spoken.
Greyback growled. “You know damn well we can’t, Narcissa – you fucking made sure of that, didn’t you.”
“It was only these three,” Scabior said, ignoring Greyback and taking a step forward. “Still in one piece, as directed – though we lost four of our men because of you. I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“The guidelines for processing young captives isn’t your job, Scabior,” Narcissa said in a clipped tone, her words echoing out harshly into the rain. “Your role is to collect and not ask questions. It is the order of the Dark Lord himself. If you are unhappy with it, I suggest you take it up with him directly.”
Silence filled the space between the snatchers as Narcissa stood firmly in the doorway for a long moment before she stepped aside and opened the door fully.
“Into the front drawing-room, on your right – remove their silencing, and then you’ll receive your payment.”
Harry’s feet moved forward from the rough shove against his neck, and he passed through the door behind Ron. As he moved past Narcissa, he cocked his head to the side and took her in. She was well dressed, tall, looking as regal as ever, and she was staring at him with a blank expression while her eyes followed him through the door. The front entryway was large, but it was nothing in comparison to the room on the right that he was shoved into behind Ron.
Morning light began to shine in through the windows, and it highlighted the spotless dark wooden floors, a glowing fireplace, a large glittering chandelier, and several sitting chairs and bookshelves. If not for the fact that they were in Draco Malfoy’s house – the place where Voldemort spent a good majority of his time – he might have considered the home pleasant, well decorated even. However, given the situation, it just felt foreboding, and it smelt of lingering death.
How many others have been brought here? He wondered as he was shoved forward some more to stand in line next to Ron.
His eyes flicked to Hermione once he was turned back to face the doorway. He could see her limping into the room, and he felt his anger flare once more. The disgusting pig who held her had his arm wrapped far too possessively around her waist. It was too low on her hips, and he looked like he was enjoying holding her close against him. It made Harry’s stomach roll, but he kept his jaw clenched carefully shut despite the fact that the silencing charm had been removed.
They were still outnumbered, wandless, and unable to apparate to safety. Now was not the time to do anything rash, and reacting would only put Hermione in more danger.
Narcissa followed behind her and closed the door to the room. “Who do we have?”
“We don’t know who yet,” Scabior said bitterly. “In case you forgot what I just fucking said – they took out FOUR of our men, snapping them like twigs! We were more focused on disarming them and bringing them here than interrogating them.”
“Well then, perhaps you should look for better recruits if three teenagers can overpower you in a matter of minutes.”
Greyback growled, and his hand tightened on Ron’s neck. “You didn’t see what they did. They obliterated them.”
“Well, it’s no matter now,” Narcissa cut him off quickly and stepped forward. Her blank eyes never left Harry as she spoke. “We’ll get this sorted out and–”
The door to the room burst open, and a small cackle filled the air. Harry felt his blood run cold. He knew that laugh. He heard it in the back of his head every time he thought of Sirius.
“Oh Cissy, what a wonderful collection we have here today,” Bellatrix said, her dark whisper filling the room. Harry felt the snatcher behind him tense. She made her way across the space to stand before them, her eyes devouring them like they were a delicious meal before they began to widen with visible excitement. “I’ve asked your dear husband to join us – and from what I see so far… this looks like a promising bunch.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Bellatrix,” Narcissa said, her gaze flicking between her sister to the door as her husband slowly entered. Lucius made his way over to the fireplace and leaned against it heavily. The way his body sagged made Harry think he might have been injured. “We haven’t confirmed who they are yet.”
“Oh please!” Bellatrix laughed with a bark that made half the room flinch. “They might be idiots, but I am NOT! This, my dear sister, is them. I know it is. I can feel it… the trio – a redhead, a dirty mudblood with hair like a wretched beast’s, and – Potter. Our golden boy. We shall call the Dark Lord, and we shall be rewarded for turning him over–”
“Absolutely not,” Narcissa cut her off and stepped forward. Her next words were hissed in a low whisper though she kept her face indifferent. “Do you forget what happened last week, Bellatrix? We will not call the Dark Lord until we are certain – or this time, he will not be so forgiving.”
Bellatrix scowled, but the fear in her eyes was evident. She rolled her eyes to play it off and tossed her hair over her shoulders.
“Fine, Cissy,” she crooned. “Always so proper and diligent – then what do you suggest we do?”
“I was just about to search them,” Narcissa replied stiffly, moving toward Hermione as she started patting her down and casting summoning spells.
Her purse was the first thing to be collected, and Narcissa opened it curiously before continuing the remainder of her search.
“We could summon Draco,” Lucius offered quietly from the fireplace, he was attempting to keep his voice powerful and strong, but he appeared completely the opposite. “He did attend school with them for six years – I have no doubt that he would be able to identify them.”
“I will summon him.” Narcissa nodded, her hands moving quickly over Hermione’s small frame. “We can summon Severus as well.”
“ABSOLUTELY NOT!” Bellatrix all but screeched as she moved before Harry and grabbed his face. “Summon Draco, but leave him out of it!”
Harry clenched his jaw, biting back the urge to snap at her fingers with his teeth as she pushed his dirty hair back from his face and tried to peer at his forehead. Her hands were frigid like death, and her nails dug into his skin as she tried to smooth out the wrinkles above his eyes to see if there was a scar.
“What happened to his face?” Bellatrix ignored her sister’s movement as she bypassed them to move toward Ron while Bellatrix continued to inspect him.
“I don’t know,” Scabior said stiffly. “He wasn’t like that when we caught him, something must have happened when we apparated.”
“Useless,” Bellatrix snarled as she shoved Harry’s head back against the large snatcher behind him and turned to glare at her sister, who was now moving over to inspect Harry. The crazed witch looked livid as her wand twitched anxiously in her hand, and she circled before them like an animal ready to attack. “Was there a scar on his forehead before you apparated? Or were you too stupid to take note of that as well?”
“It was made abundantly clear that we were to collect only. Your sister made sure of that!” Scabior growled, stepping forward in anger. “So how about you just pay us our fucking money so we can be on our way.”
Bellatrix raised her wand and pointed it at the man as a sickening smile curled across her lips, and a disturbing whisper hissed through her teeth. “Oh, give me a reason – just one would be enough. No one would miss you.”
“Bellatrix!” Narcissa’s calm voice cut across the room as she finished patting down Harry’s pockets and pulling out their contents. He could feel her magic as it searched through his clothes, looking for anything that might be hidden, but she avoided his eyes as she searched him.
“Fine, fine – so overdramatic, Cissy,” Bellatrix pouted and twirled her wand back to her side. “Now… who do we question first.”
She eyed them all, moving before Ron, grabbing his face and inspecting him in a similar fashion to how she had just examined Harry. Seeming unsatisfied, she shoved him away roughly and moved to Hermione. The second she grabbed her chin, Ron cried out.
“DON’T TOUCH HER!”
A smile curled across Bellatrix’s lips once more, and a low chuckle escaped her as her grip tightened on Hermione’s chin. “Oh, I think we know the answer to that now.”
Harry bit his tongue so hard it started to bleed, his hands clenched tight at his sides, and he glared at Ron.
YOU FUCKING IDIOT! He internally screamed as he tried to catch the redhead’s attention to tell him to shut up without saying it aloud.
Any noise he made or any reaction he showed would only make it worse. How did Ron not know this? It was like he wanted Hermione to be tortured – like he wanted her to suffer. How thick could a person be? Did he have no common sense whatsoever?
“STOP – DON’T TOUCH–“Ron’s voice was cut off, and he went silent as Narcissa hit him with a silencing spell. He still struggled against Greyback’s hold, only for his eyes to bulge as the werewolf’s grip tightened.
“I think we are more than done with that,” Narcissa said coldly, her eyes darting quickly to Hermione, who was practically pasted to the snatcher behind her before she returned her gaze to Greyback. “Bind him like the others before you strangle him, Greyback. Bellatrix, we need to go through their belongings first – there might be something in there that–”
“Surely that is something that Lucius could do,” Bellatrix sighed with an overdramatic roll of her eyes. Yet she obeyed her sister and dropped Hermione’s chin, slapping her roughly on the cheek before leaning in with a whisper. “I’ll come back for you soon.”
Harry wondered what must have happened ‘last time’ for Bellatrix to abandon the idea of torturing someone so easily to search a bag instead. It must have been pretty bad if she was willing to delay her favourite activity, and he wondered if it was related to Lucius’ slumped form and quiet disposition. Usually, the man would be thrilled at an opportunity to harass potential muggleborns and ‘muggle lovers’, but instead, he remained steadfast by the fireplace with his mouth shut in a tight grim line.
Bellatrix roughly pulled the bag from Narcissa’s grip and tapped the opening with her wand, lazily summoning out different odds and ends as Narcissa eyed the snatcher that held Hermione with an unreadable empty look. Though, the woman’s eyes darted to the man’s hand that was moving disgustingly across her body.
“I’ll get your payment so you may leave,” Narcissa said tightly, moving to her husband and outstretching her hand. Harry saw Lucius pull out a small pouch from inside his robes and hand it to his wife. His arm trembled as he did so, and it only further confirmed Harry’s suspicion that he was unwell.
“Instead of my usual fee – I would like to keep the girl,” the snatcher behind Hermione said.
Harry’s stomach rolled as he saw the man’s hand slip dangerously low on Hermione’s hip, trailing down her side and along her leg. His mouth was pressed against her ear as he pulled her close to his body. Hermione’s eyes narrowed into slits and her body tensed against him, but she kept her mouth clenched tight.
Bellatrix snorted as she pulled another book from the purse, not really paying attention to the contents or caring what was inside it. “You want a mudblood for a toy? You truly are a disgusting bunch, the lot of you. But fine – you can have her when I’m done.”
Ron jerked violently against his binds next to Harry.
“No,” Narcissa said firmly as she strolled forward with a bag of what Harry could only assume was coin.
“And why not, dear Cissy? We have more than enough mouths to feed here already – give her to the dogs,” Bellatrix said dramatically as she continued pulling items from Hermione’s purse. Harry saw his broken shard of glass float to the ground as the teapot followed. Then she smiled wickedly. “Or were you and Lucius planning to experiment later? Developed a taste for something more exotic, have we?”
“Don’t be vile, Bellatrix,” Narcissa snapped. “You know the rules – they are to be kept undamaged in case they are needed later.”
Bellatrix rolled her eyes yet again and pulled another book from the purse, not bothering to drop this one softly and instead letting it fall with a heavy thunk. Thankfully, at least from what Harry could see, so far, nothing of value had left the confines of Hermione’s purse.
“You will take your coin – and only your coin,” Narcissa said darkly, her eyes fixed on the man still holding Hermione. “Now get your h–”
“WHERE DID YOU GET THIS!!!!” Bellatrix screamed, and Harry’s eyes shot toward her.
Her wand was raised. Her shoulders were shaking dangerously. She was pointing her wand at Hermione’s face, and she was holding the Sword of Gryffindor. She dropped the purse to the ground. It fell with a soft thud, landing open and completely forgotten in the rage that devoured Bellatrix attention.
No one moved. The room was stunned silent as Bellatrix’s rage unfurled, and Narcissa’s eyes widened as a calculating look crossed her features. So far, whether intentionally or not, the blonde woman seemed to have been keeping her sister’s sick habits at bay – but Harry doubted that she’d be able to continue to do so now.
“Let me call Draco. I–”
“OUT!” Bellatrix screeched at the snatchers, cutting Narcissa off and stepping forward. “EVERYONE OUT NOW!”
“You still owe us our payment!” Scabior challenged, his voice angry as he stepped forward with his own wand raised.
Bellatrix moved faster than Harry’s fuzzy vision could capture. Ron dropped to the floor with a thud as his body was stunned stiff as a board, and Greyback flew into the wall with a heavy thud. Harry felt his own body go rigid as he dropped face-first to the ground, his nose breaking against the dark wood when he landed. Unable to move his neck, he couldn’t see anything going on around him, but he heard Hermione hit the floor next to him.
Lights flashed above him as the wands of the snatchers, including the ones that they had taken from them upon their capture, flew around the room. He heard them clattering in the corners as Bellatrix wreaked havoc and screamed at the snatchers to leave. Lucius was yelling. Narcissa was moving before him and casting out binding curses as footsteps echoed across the room until everything finally went silent.
“Take them to the dungeon,” Bellatrix panted, her feet finally moving against the floor toward Narcissa, who stood directly in front of Harry. “Call Draco – this mudblood and I are going to have a chat.”
“Bellatrix, they are to be kept undamaged until we can confirm their use,” Narcissa said quietly, her words a cautious whisper that Harry could barely hear.
“You may have managed to keep them from the dogs because you’re in charge of captives, Cissy,” Bellatrix’s low hiss was barely audible, and Harry had to strain his ears to hear it. “But I am in charge of security around the vault – and I outrank you with everything else. This is mine. Or are you questioning the Dark Lord?”
At Narcissa’s silence, Harry could only assume that she had no response. Or she had spoken so low he couldn’t hear it.
“Your weak stomach and soft-spot for children will be your downfall, Cissy,” Bellatrix breathed. “And it is why you will always answer to me. Take them to the dungeon – now.”
Harry felt himself be levitated a few inches off the floor, he watched as it moved beneath him, and he was transported out of the drawing-room, through the entranceway and down a long dark hallway. The soft click of Narcissa’s heels was the only thing that filled the void as they made their way through the huge mansion and then down a flight of dark, cold steps. They paused at the bottom, and Harry heard Narcissa muttering something though he couldn’t pick up the words. Then the sound of a squeaking metal gate clanged before he was tossed unceremoniously into a dark stone cellar.
A deep tingle crossed his skin as he was thrown over the threshold, and his body became limber once more. The ropes around him vanished, and the body binding came undone. He landed with a hard thud, rolled onto his knees, and quickly turned back toward the entrance in time to see Narcissa shutting the iron-barred gate. Without pausing to think, he tried to hurl a silent stunner at her, and she froze. Then her eyes slowly moved to gaze at his face.
They were curious, hesitant, and afraid. He was a mere foot away from her, separated only by the metal bars, and he could see everything on her face. Her bizarre expression betrayed the blank and indifferent demeanour she’d expressed upstairs. It was the most emotion he had ever seen the woman show. She was opening evaluating him. Her eyes darted over his face as the silence rang painfully through his ears. His heart hammered in his chest, unsure of what was going on as she continued to stare at him, and he stared at her.
“You can do no magic in this dungeon,” she whispered finally. “It will only drain you – save your energy.”
Harry’s heart faltered. He stared at her in disbelief, unsure if he had even heard the words, as Narcissa turned on her heel and quickly made her way back up the steps. The entire exchange felt like it had dragged on for an hour, but it had occurred in under ten seconds, and he felt breathless with confusion as he watched her go.
“Blood hell!”
The loud groan from Ron echoed through the chamber and instantly cracked Harry out of his daze. He felt a wave of blinding anger surge through his body as he turned toward the redhead that was just pulling himself up from the ground.
“You fucking moron,” Harry swore, the words low, deep, and murderous. They rumbled through his chest as he stalked toward Ron, who was now standing and rubbing his side. Harry grabbed him by the jacket and slammed him against the nearest support column, not batting an eye at the loud thud that echoed around the room as the boy’s head smashed against the wall. “Were you trying to get her killed?!”
“Me?!” Ron hissed in pain as he began trying to grab at Harry’s hands. He was unable to push Harry off, so instead, he just shoved at him roughly. “You didn’t even try to stop them! You didn’t say a thing!! They had her, and it was like you didn’t even care, Harr–”
Harry growled and punched Ron hard in the temple. He let Ron’s body fall from his grasp from the momentum and watched as the redhead hit the ground with a loud thud. His groan echoed throughout the room, and he grabbed at his head in pain.
It had been an instinctual reaction, and it did nothing to help the problem, but Harry didn’t care. The dumbass was about to say his name out loud. For all they knew, someone could be listening to them right now. But even if they weren’t, he still would have hit him because anger was pouring through him in waves so violent, he couldn’t control it. He wanted to strangle him. He’d never been so angry in his entire life; he felt like puking as he clenched his fists tightly to his sides.
It was the first time in his life he genuinely wanted Ron dead.
“Don’t fucking use my name!” Harry seethed, his shoulders heaving as he fought to restrain himself. His voice was so dangerous that Ron froze on the floor before him and looked up at him in terror. “How STUPID are you?! The only thing keeping us alive right now is the fact that they don’t know who we are!”
Though, Harry suspected that Narcissa knew exactly who he was, and that raised another round of questions that he did not have the time or brain capacity to address. Right now, the only thing that was circling through his mind was Hermione. And all he cared about was what was going to happen to her. His stomach twisted as horrible images flooded his mind, and his fists clenched tighter. It was taking every ounce of his remaining self-control not to murder Ron with his bare hands.
If he was able to use magic, he would have gutted Ron right then and there, without a second thought and without caring about the repercussions. After the war, if he was trialled for the murder of an Order member, he would have proudly raised his hand to confirm that he did it. He would have volunteered the memories too – just to show them how the pieces hit the floor. The wards on the dungeon were the only reason why Ron was still alive.
“I didn’t say anything because the more you react, the more they respond – they were looking for our weaknesses! Do you seriously think that she will give them information?! NO! You – stupid – mother – fucker!” His voice hissed out in a deadly whisper. Ron had begun to inch away from him on the floor, and Harry hadn’t realized that he’d taken another two steps forward. “They picked her because YOU reacted! YOU will be brought up there next because now they know that you will give them what they want once you hear her screaming! She’s going to be tortured because of YOU! BECAUSE THEY KNOW IT WILL HURT YOU! BECAUSE YOU COULDN’T KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT! BECAUSE YOU DON’T FUCKING THINK! FUCKING HELL!! I WILL KILL YOU IF SHE DIES!!”
Harry turned and punched the column to his right with his left hand so hard that Ron ducked instinctively before him. The boy’s eyes were wide with fear, mouth hanging open in shock as he watched Harry lose it from his cowered position on the ground.
A sickening crunch split through the dark room. Pain shot up Harry’s hand like fire as he screamed with rage and sunk to his knees. A low, vicious growl cut through his throat as agony overtook him, and he held back a wretched sob in his chest. He threaded his hands into his hair and inhaled sharply as the pain scorched down his arm to his shoulder. He’d done it to stop himself from killing the coward that shivered on the floor to his left. Because he knew that the pain would distract him, it would force him to refocus on the actual problem of escaping. If he could not control his emotions, he was no better than Ron.
He would put them at risk.
It was stupid, he knew. His hands had more than a few broken bones, and it would be hardly useable until he could heal it – but he just could not bring himself to care. He felt like his heart was breaking in his chest as the world fell apart around him. He couldn’t do this without her. He couldn’t lose her – he couldn’t, he wouldn’t. And if she died, he would die too. He would never be the same. He would never survive this war. He’d finish it, sure – but it would destroy him.
He dropped his head and let the air out of his lungs. He needed to calm down. He needed to think. He needed to ignore Ron. Ron was nothing. He needed to come up with a plan of escape.
He wiped his definitely broken hand across his probably broken nose, the blood from his collision with the floor smearing on his cheek and covering his still wet sleeve. He forced himself to breathe slowly, in then out, and each shaky gulp of air stung painfully in his chest as he desperately tried to bury the terror that was threatening to consume him. He continued the process with his eyes clenched shut until his hands stopped shaking.
“Is it you?” A familiar yet timid voice rang out behind him, and Harry flinched at the sound. He turned around quickly, standing to his feet and squinting into the darkness at the approaching figure.
“Luna?” His eyes widened as she approached in the dim light. Her features were fuzzy, but her white-blonde hair was unmistakable even in the dark.
“Yes.” She nodded, approached him carefully. Her calm eyes focused on his as she took slow, tentative steps toward him.
She stopped about a foot away, eyes never leaving his. There was no terror or fear in her gaze as she watched him. Only an odd look of understanding and comfort, and he felt his heart ache. Of course it would be Luna who did not fear him or his outburst of rage and instead gazed at him with only trust and understanding. She’d always been openly accepting of people no matter the situation. She gave him a faint smile, then took another small step forward into the light from the door, and Harry felt his face crumple.
Even without his glasses, he could see the sharp edge of her cheekbones. Her hair was dull, much like her father’s, and there was a deep bruise that covered her cheek. She looked like a bag of bones. Her clothes hung loosely off her frame, and dark circles ringed around her eyes. Her body seemed to quiver constantly from the chill of the dungeon. She looked absolutely terrible, and Harry felt the anger seep from his body as if someone had pulled the plug on a tub and his breath caught across his chest.
“How did you get here?” He murmured. The words fell easily from his lips, but they sounded broken.
Talking to Luna had always come easy to him in the past, and that fact did not seem to change regardless of his newly acquired social anxiety. She made him feel comfortable, she always had, and he found focusing on her made his rage toward Ron drain even faster. She was the reason he and Hermione were fighting this war – people like Luna. Their friends. The decent people in the world who deserved a chance to live free. They were the people who needed him to calm down so he could get out of this Manor and continue destroying Horcruxes.
“I was pulled off the train at Christmas,” she said slowly, her eyes moving curiously over his face in their typical mystical manner. She raised a tentative hand toward his head, inching it slowly closer until she brushed the hair from his forehead. Harry flinched at her touch, but he didn’t pull away and instead allowed her to take in his appearance. “Stinging jinx?”
“Yes.” The word came out as a whisper, and his heart rate slowed to normal once more.
“Smart.” She smiled again, much more firmly this time. Then she dropped her hand to his shoulder and gave it a tight squeeze. The touch felt weird, foreign. The only one who ever touched him now was Hermione, and yet the warmth that Luna was radiated towards him felt so nonjudgmental and safe that he couldn’t help but take it in in hopes of calming his own nerves further. “She always was very clever – she’ll be okay.”
Harry felt his steel heart crack once more, and his eye twitched. “Yes, she will.”
“Dean is here too – and Mr. Ollivander and Griphook,” Luna said quickly, removing her hand from Harry and stepping back.
It was like she could tell that he had finally calmed to a rational level, so she moved toward Ron and offered him her hand. He had been sitting on the cold floor holding his now swollen temple watching the exchange with a bizarre scowling expression. Begrudgingly he accepted her hand and stood to his feet, then stepped back to lean against the wall.
“They’re near the back,” Luna said, gesturing with her head. “I think that Mr. Ollivander is still sleeping.”
Harry heard the sound of scuffing footsteps approaching against the low echo of the voices from the parlour above, and he saw the tall thin frame of Dean appear, but he couldn’t make out the others in the darkness without his glasses. Dean stopped a few feet before him and stood awkwardly, his hand gripping his opposite arm as he fixed Harry with a wary expression. He looked afraid, hesitant. Harry suspected it had something to do with the exchange he’d just had with Ron.
“You look like shit,” Dean said quietly, an uncertain smile brushing across his lips after a long pause lingered between them.
“So do you,” Harry snorted, offering the battered-looking boy a grimace and hoping that it might appear at least a small amount reassuring. He had no fight with Dean, and it was strange to see the boy looking at him so fearfully. “How long have you been here?”
“Since autumn.”
“Autumn? That’s a long ti–”
A long blood-curdling scream echoed throughout the house, and Harry froze mid-sentence. It was unmistakable. It was gruesome, and it made his blood turn to ice.
A shiver slid down his spine as his body tensed, and the sound rang out endlessly, impossibly continuous as if powered by an infinite amount of air. Luna shuddered before him and clasped her hands over her ears. She was shaking more violently now, and Dean quickly put an arm around her. Harry turned back to the entrance as the taste of blood and bile mixed in his mouth.
Hermione was being tortured, and she sounded like she was dying.
-x-x-
When Hermione fell to the floor, a small part of her was grateful. Despite the fact that her cheekbone likely shattered on impact, at least it removed her from the disgusting snatcher’s claws – he had been inching his way closer to the hem of her pants with every second that passed, and thinking about what could have happened made her sick.
From where she fell, she watched what she could as Bellatrix hurled curses like a whirlwind, screaming at the snatchers and unleashing her wrath. Her face landed facing Harry and Narcissa’s boots. She saw the witch collect her wand from the floor and heard the disgusting crunch of Harry’s face as it collided with the floor. His nose would be shattered from the collision.
Her relief vanished instantly the second that Narcissa was directed to remove Harry and Ron from the room, because now she was left alone with three stunned snatchers, Lucius, and the deranged Bellatrix Lestrange. Who was panting heavily, her eyes blazing as she threw the sword to the ground and approached her like a lion would approach an injured gazelle.
“Well,” she said slowly, a tone of crazy in her voice as she loftily strolled over to Hermione, flipping her over onto her back with her wand. “Now that that’s been taken care of – we can get some things cleared up.”
“Bellatrix,” Lucius’ voice cut in nervously. “If we wait for Narcissa to call Draco, surely he can confirm if–”
“I DON’T GIVE A FUCK WHO THEY ARE!!” Bellatrix screeched as she turned toward Lucius; her wand shook with rage. “I WANT TO KNOW HOW THE FUCK THEY GOT INTO MY VAULT! AND HOW THEY GOT THE SWORD!”
Lucius flinched at her voice and shrank back against the fireplace with a stumble. His eyes darted between Bellatrix and Hermione’s small form on his drawing-room floor, but he did nothing.
“So, let me ask you again, mudblood.” Bellatrix returned her attention to Hermione, her body shaking with anger. “How did you get that sword?”
Hermione laid unmoving despite the fact that the body binding curse had been removed. She fixed her eyes on Bellatrix as she watched the demented woman drop to kneel by her side. It didn’t matter what she said – Bellatrix would never believe any of the words that came out of her mouth. She knew that she would be tortured regardless. And it would happen so that Ron and Harry could hear it, and then they would be brought up for questioning. She knew this with every fiber of her being, and she desperately hoped that Harry was working on a means of escape. She trusted herself to stay quiet. She knew that she would never betray Harry or their mission – but she did not trust Ron to keep his mouth shut if they brought him upstairs again.
He had already failed to do so since their arrival, and his uncontrolled outburst had condemned her to what was about to come.
“ANSWER THE QUESTION!” Bellatrix spat as she closed the distance between them and grabbed Hermione by the neck. Hermione could feel the woman’s nails leaving marks next to the ones made by the snatcher only moments ago.
“We found it,” Hermione whispered hoarsely, unable to breathe with Bellatrix gripping her like death.
“BULLSHIT!”
“We did – we just found it,” she answered before drawing in a ragged breath, then sputtered as Bellatrix pulled her head up from the floor only to slam it back against the ground. Black spots clouded her vision, and she groaned and tried to draw in more air.
“She can’t answer the question if you are choking her silent, Bellatrix,” Narcissa said. She had returned swiftly, and her robes swished past Hermione’s view as she came to stand a few feet away from Bellatrix’s hunched form. Her expression was wary, and her words cautious as if worried that she might make matters worse.
“Too right you are,” Bellatrix whispered in a low and dark tone. “But she is lying – I can see it in her eyes.”
“If we summon Severus, he can perform legilimency on her to–”
“NO!” Bellatrix screamed again, slamming Hermione’s head once more into the ground in punctuation. “There are other ways of making people talk, Cissy. Summon Draco – and get the rat!”
Narcissa hesitated momentarily before exiting the room in another flourish, leaving her husband by the fireplace once more. However, it was glaringly obvious that the man was in pain and wished he was anywhere else. He was desperately looking around the room, focusing on anything but Hermione as she choked again for air.
“Now, let’s see if we can loosen your tongue – perhaps get your friends a bit more willing to talk, yes? I’ll get you to tell the truth while we wait for Draco – crucio!”
Up until this point in her life, Hermione had assumed that being mauled by a werewolf was the most painful thing that anyone could experience. She thought that the physical tearing of her flesh, the thudding agony of dark magic, the blood loss, the shock, and the trauma must be worse than any hex or any spell.
But she had been wrong. Immensely wrong.
She had clenched her jaw shut in anticipation, fully planning to deny the woman any satisfaction by containing her cries of pain. She refused to feed Bellatrix’s sick, perverted habit of torturing her victims into madness, and she swore to herself that she would not submit to the agony or give this woman anything. But instantly, she realized it was not something that she had any control over. The pain, this pain, was like nothing she had ever experienced before in her life.
And it consumed her.
Her body tensed. Every muscle and every fiber of her being screamed in pain as her nerves were set on fire. It raced down her spine. It shot through her organs. It rattled through her brain and forced her back to arch. Her body buckled as her mouth flew open against her will, and the most god-awful cry cut through her lips.
It sounded inhuman; she didn’t even recognize it for the brief moment that she was aware she was making it. Then her brain switched off as it was consumed with the raging inferno that ravaged her like someone was shoving a white-hot poker into every cell that made up her body at exactly the same second. Her legs shook, her arms flailed, and she felt her throat tearing as the muscles in her limbs ripped. It was endless, an eternity. She couldn’t breathe, and yet her cries just kept coming – and then it stopped.
Her body convulsed, she couldn’t feel the motions, but she could hear them as her breath came in horrid gasps, and she desperately tried to pull air into her lungs. Tears poured from her eyes involuntarily, and a sob escaped her lips. Her mind was swimming. She couldn’t see. Bellatrix danced in and out of focus before her, and she barely noticed the sound of Narcissa returning.
“Where did you get the sword!” It was Bellatrix’s voice, she knew it was, but she couldn’t process it, not properly.
Instead of giving a response, a low groan seeped through her lips as her eyes rolled back. Her head thumped hard against the ground for a third time, and her eyes shot wide. She sputtered and gasped, looking around blearily. She could see Lucius by the fireplace – he looked like he was in shock, and Narcissa was standing with a pinched and disturbed expression across her face a few feet back.
“WHERE DID YOU GET THE SWORD?!”
Her eyes flashed back to Bellatrix. Her face was livid, she looked insane with rage, and her grip on her neck was still firm.
“We found it,” the words were a low whisper, and she watched as Bellatrix’s face contorted.
“CRUCIO!”
She screamed again. Her legs shook against the wooden floor so harshly that had Bellatrix not been holding her down by the neck, she surely would have vibrated clear across the hardwoods. She didn’t know how long it lasted or how many times it happened, but each time she refused to say anything else in response, and each time Bellatrix bashed her against the ground and screamed in her face. At some point, she heard footsteps by the door, and her brain registered Draco Malfoy’s voice. She vomited and gagged, though she didn’t remember doing it. She didn’t know if it happened more than once or if it happened continuously, but she could taste it against her tongue. Her heart hammered dangerously fast against her ribs as her body spasmed uncontrollably.
How long have I been here?
The question circled in her head in between each bash against the ground. It felt like an eternity. It felt like she’d lived a lifetime here on the floor, covered in her own vomit, screaming and wailing and gasping for life. The tiny part of her rational brain that remained told her that it must have only been minutes, that it would be impossible for anyone to endure this for anything longer than that. But that voice grew quieter with each spasm, and she found herself lost inside the wreckage of her brain.
After what must have been the fourth time, she coughed, and blood poured from her mouth. She could feel it dripping from her nose and leaking down the edges of her face. She took a long, ragged heave as she felt Bellatrix remove her hand from her throat and her head lolled to the side. It was getting so hard to breathe; her body didn’t want to do it anymore.
But she was okay with that.
She could feel her heart slowing in her chest as her lungs started to give out, and her eyes wandered the room off to her left.
Blue.
All she could see was blue eyes – just two pairs, was one crying? They were watching her, like little glowing balls of light. Then a disturbed sense of humour washed over her body. She snorted, blood spewing from her lips as a mad sound poured from her body. A deranged smile cut across her face, her head rolled back to the ceiling, and her eyes fluttered closed.
Fuck these assholes, her barely conscious brain thought as her eyes rolled beneath her lids and her arms continued to twitch at her sides. I’ll die on your floor. On your perfect fucking floor. I’ll ruin it with my mudblood blood, my filthy filthy blood. I’ll fucking ruin it. It will never be clean.
She wasn’t sure if she’d said the words out loud, she couldn’t distinguish much of anything anymore, but she heard a small noise of a scuffle on her left and then warm hands pressed against the back of her neck. Someone was pouring something down her throat. She tried to push away, but her arms wouldn’t do what she wanted them to, and she coughed and choked. It tasted like… some sort of disgusting pepperup?
Then her eyes shot wide. It felt like someone had rammed a bludger into her heart. Air poured into her lungs as her mouth opened wide, and her spine arched backwards as a cry erupted from her lips. The room swirled back into focus as a rush of warmth filled her body, and her heart began beating more firmly. Narcissa was kneeling beside her, clutching a small empty flask in her hands, and her expression looked angry.
“If you keep this up, she’ll die before we get any information, Bella! She can’t answer the questions if she’s dead! She needs to be lucid – there’s a reason why Severus is in charge of interrogation!” Narcissa shouted over her shoulder before turning back to face Hermione.
Her eyes looked almost pleading as she continued to grip the back of her neck softly.
“Hermione, think,” she whispered so low that Hermione wasn’t sure she had heard it. Then she spoke her next words much louder. “Where did you get the sword, girl?”
“It’s a copy,” Hermione breathed hoarsely, finding her brain was more functional than it had been a second ago.
Whatever potion Narcissa had given her was like a sharp kick to the gut, like a hit of some drug that amped up her body and forced it to live. Though it clearly didn’t contain any veritaserum, or she wouldn’t have been able to lie. Her eyes darted everywhere as her body trembled, taking in her surroundings properly for the first time in what felt like decades. Draco stood by the doorway looking as if he’d just been sick. Lucius was standing with his back turned, still resting against the fireplace – but now she realized that Scabior and Greyback were awake. They stood off against the far wall while a third snatcher stood frozen near Lucius, his eyes focused firmly on the floor. She still could not move her limbs – her muscles were too torn and tired from the rounds of cruciatus. So, she stared up into Narcissa’s gaze in confusion, unable to rationally process the concern that seemed to be riddled on the woman’s face.
“It’s just a copy,” she repeated more firmly though her voice was still torn. Her eyes searched the woman’s above her, looking for something, anything – but she felt like she was grasping at straws. “We found it – thought it was real. We thought that it might be useful someday, but it’s fake. It can’t even cut a pie.”
She didn’t know why those words poured from her mouth, but they did. They didn’t really even make any sense – was she going mad and trying to be funny? Something strange passed over Narcissa’s face above her.
“Draco, get the goblin!” Bellatrix yelled, then she made her way back over to Hermione and shoved Narcissa aside. She kneeled down to the ground, straddling Hermione’s shaking form and pinning her to the floor once more. Something cold pressed against Hermione’s neck, and her eyes widened. “We’ll know soon enough whether or not you’re lying, mudblood.”
Hermione’s head was forced back by the pressure against her neck. She assumed it must be a blade, and she knew that she should move away from it, but she had nowhere to go since she was pinned against the ground. She bit her lip as she felt it digging into her skin. She tried her best to stifle the cry that came from her lips – but the blade felt no different than the cruciatus before. It burned her from the inside out, and it made her whole body shudder.
“I will make you tell me the truth, mudblood bitch,” Bellatrix whispered, bending low and speaking the words directly into Hermione’s ear. “I will make you scream so loud that they tell us everything.”
Bellatrix pried her left arm away from her body and pinned it to the floor with her knee. Hermione felt the cool air against her skin as she heard the material of her jacket split. She jerked against the woman as hard as she could. She knew what was next, and she desperately tried to pull away only to have Bellatrix jabbed the knife into her shoulder and bash her head into the floor once more.
An incomprehensible noise gushed from her lips as the dagger burned into her skin and her eyes bleared with fresh tears.
“If I find out you’re lying – I promise you that your death will be slow, excruciating, and everlasting.” Bellatrix finally leaned back and pulled the dagger out with a quick jerk.
Hermione wailed and rocked beneath the woman as pain radiated from her shoulder throughout her chest. Before the pain subsided, she felt the dagger slice through the flesh on her arm, and she screamed out once more. The blade was cursed. It had to be – cursed with dark magic, and it emanated the same effects as the cruciatus curse that Bellatrix loved so deeply. The knife burned against her skin as mark after mark was made, and Hermione thrashed against her, deep, harrowing snarls pouring from her lungs as the burning ceased to stop.
“Bellatrix!”
The voice was Draco’s. It was tight and cautious, and it stilled Bellatrix’s motions. Hermione rolled her head to the left heavily, spitting the fresh blood from her mouth to the floor, wishing she could spit it in his face as she gave him a look of death. She cursed him mentally. Cursed his family, his home, his aunt, and everything that these people stood for. He looked terrified, and his eyes flicked down to her arm, which she could not see before he met her eyes once more.
He hesitated.
“I have the goblin, as you requested,” Draco said slowly. “Perhaps you would like to question him instead.”
His choice of words was odd, and Hermione narrowed her eyes at him. She would have thought about its significance if she were capable of it, but the burning sensation in her arm thudded like a dull, hard ache, and it made it difficult to focus on coherent or logical thoughts.
“Goblin! The sword on the ground there – is it real?”
The goblin, who was being held at wand point by Draco, hesitated. His eyes darted to Hermione and then back to the floor. Hermione screamed, her body shaking violently against the hardwoods as the knife cut through her skin once more. Her voice broke, and a nauseating gaging sound broke from her chest as her left arm vibrated loudly against the floor. But still, she remained lucid. Still, her heart kept beating.
The potion that Narcissa had given her was forcing her to stay awake despite the natural need of her body to lose consciousness. No human being was built to withstand such torture. Bodies weren’t designed to process this level of pain – the brain had a built-in fail-safe exactly for that reason: you either went mad, or you blacked out. And right now, her body was prevented from doing either of those things despite the fact that she so desperately wanted to fall back into the blackness that had consumed her before. She was ready to die, after all. She had been for months, and yet now she was incapable of it.
The goblin’s eyes went wide with shock at the sounds pouring from her body. He darted forward, snatching up the sword with shaking hands, looking at it rapidly.
“No!” He said quickly, his eyes moving back to the witch above her. “It’s fake.”
“That was quick,” Bellatrix said lazily as she paused her etchings in Hermione’s arm and flicked a finger toward the goblin. A slice cut across his cheek, and he flinched. “Are you sure? I’d hate to think you were just saying that.”
Bellatrix returned to Hermione’s arm as if to prove a point. Letting the goblin know that his quick diagnostic would not necessarily stop the torture, so he had better do it right. Hermione’s eyes rolled as her throat finally gave out, and her strangled cry was cut short. Her gaze rolled back to her left, and she caught sight of Draco, her rapidly racing brain taking in his hunched posture, his ghastly expression, and the arm that clutched his stomach.
Too cowardly to do anything about it though, aren’t you?
“I’m sure,” the goblin said more carefully, his eyes returning to the sword as he turned it over in his hands in an effort to make his examination look more thorough. “It is a goblin-made blade – this, is just a cheap replica. It is nothing like the original.”
Bellatrix stopped cutting and turned to face the goblin. Her expression was bored as if Hermione no longer gave her any satisfaction now that she couldn’t make any noise. Like she had finally had her fill. Hermione sucked in a soundless breath, her eyes trailing to the ceiling above her as her body burned and trembled.
She couldn’t move her limbs. She could hardly feel her left arm – which was surely a bad thing given that the potion was making her feel all of her other limbs quite clearly. Her throat felt like someone had poured acid down it, then made her each sea urchins. She wondered if her voice would ever be the same – assuming she lived much longer. The hot tears that had been cascading down her face continued in a slow, steady stream.
She felt ruined.
She felt dead.
She may as well have been. In fact, she wished she was. If she was dead, no one would need to save her – no one would spill information.
Every muscle ached, every bone burned, every nerve blistered in agony, and her mind – although clear from the potion – was broken. Her body was a fractured shell of what it had once been. The lingering tremors that coursed through her made her sick with pain. If she had the strength left, she would have vomited out her organs and curled into a ball and wept like a child. Yet she remained splayed on the floor under the weight of a madwoman, who was now screaming at the goblin and adding cut after cut to his face in relentless rage.
“Draco,” Bellatrix called in a sickly-sweet voice. Her grip on Hermione’s jacket remained tight even though her attention was now turned to the terrified-looking blonde. “Did you recognize the boy?”
“W-What?” Draco asked. His eyes were still fixated on Hermione’s form though he looked miles away.
“The new boy in the dungeon – did you recognize him?”
“I – I–” He hesitated, then slowly shifted his eyes to meet Bellatrix’s gaze. “I didn’t look, Aunt Bella – I only summoned the goblin as you asked.”
“Alright then,” Bellatrix sighed, turning her eyes to Peter. “Wormtail – go fetch the boy and bring him here. Now that the sword is sorted, I want to know if it’s Potter – and grab the redhead too. I’ll get him to talk.”
Bellatrix remained seated atop Hermione’s broken and battered body, appearing perfectly comfortable with her perched position as Hermione kept her eyes trained to Draco’s boots. She ignored the woman’s gaze because she did not want to do anything to antagonize her further – because she couldn’t do this anymore.
She couldn’t handle another round – neither her body nor her mind. As it was, she was straddling the cusp of practical recovery. She had studied the long-term effects of torture after the fake Moody demonstrated the three unforgivables in class. She knew what happened if one endured too much. She knew that some of the damage may be permanent, that she may never be the same again, that her body may never stop twitching, or her mind might be lost. There was nothing she could do about it now, so she tried to bury the anguish that was creeping through her tired mind.
But it was nearly impossible.
She wanted to scream, she wanted to cry, she wanted to vomit, she wanted to lay alone in a broken pile on the floor.
She wanted to die.
Merlin let me die.
A slow hot tear slipped down her cheek as she forced her mind to focus on Harry. He was more important – she didn’t matter. What had happened, what would happen, was what it was, and wallowing over it did her no good. If she was lucky, she would be granted death – but right now, she needed to think. She could not spare herself a second thought. She needed to force her fragile brain to function despite the fact that it was still scorching from torture.
Harry was about to be brought into the room, and if Draco identified him, then all of this was for nothing. Everything she had endured was wasted. Everything would start again, but this time it would be Harry. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes tightly.
Not Harry. Not Harry. Not Harry. Please, you cannot have him.
She felt Bellatrix trail a cold finger down her cheek.
Please no more.
The door to the room burst wide, and her eyes flashed open at the sound to see Harry standing in the open doorway behind Draco. A bolt of purple was erupting from the end of the wand he held tightly in his grip. She felt her heart stutter in her chest as her eyes focused on his face. Then something deep and primal stirred within her. It raged through her body like a hurricane, extinguishing the agony that had been squeezing her to the brink of death. It pushed away the pain. It ejected the exhaustion that riddled every fiber of her being. Her eyes shot wide, and a vicious, monstrous snarl escaped her lips.
Time seemed to slow down before her, a surreal sensation surrounding the room as she watched everything unfold without sparing a moment of thought. Bellatrix, who had only just turned to view the door, froze as her eyes widened in shock. Hermione wrenched her hands from the floor, grabbed both sides of the woman’s head like a watermelon and extended her thumbs. Her left hand missed because her arm didn’t work very well, but she felt her right thumb hit its target. It punctured the soft tissue as she pulled the woman down and rammed her head against her skull. A scream erupted from Bellatrix as the purple shield charm Harry had cast enveloped Hermione’s body. Hermione thrust her hips upwards and tossed the witch to the side with a violent cry of pain.
Harry had rushed forward, disarming a bewildered Draco and catching his wand from the air as if it were a snitch floating lazily before his face. Lucius thudded to the floor like a rock from a silent stunner. Draco backed up in terror with his hands raised open-palmed before him as Greyback was launched against the wall for a second time. The sound was revolting as Harry rolled forward and dodged Scabior’s feeble attempt at a counter before the snatcher fell to the ground with a thud. Goblin in hand, Harry darted across the floor toward her, his eyes fire as they flicked back to catch Bellatrix’s wand. The woman was clutching her face and staggering to her legs.
Hermione hauled herself from the ground with an arduous grunt, stumbling heavily, her legs wide and shaking beneath her like an unstable two-legged tripod as the entire left side of her body sagged. She felt Harry grab her tightly around the middle as he threw a curse at Bellatrix. The witch dodged it, only barely, rising to her feet like the evil demonic creature that she was – blood poured from her left eye socket as her hand tightened around her dagger.
Hermione outstretched her right arm, and the snatcher that had been lingering near Lucius with a raised wand split into three pieces. Narcissa stood stock still to his right; wand held tightly against her side as his blood and organs spilled over her boots. The woman’s gaze was unreadable, but it did not leave Hermione’s face.
Without pausing and ignoring the agony that shot through her body, Hermione summoned her purse from the floor, abandoning the few objects still scattered across the ground.
“NOW!” Harry yelled, and a loud pop rang out through the room.
Hermione’s hand closed around the material of her purse just as she caught sight of a dark figure entering the room behind Draco’s stunned frame. Whoever it was, they were tall and dressed in all black – but it wasn’t Voldemort. Before her mind could process anything further, she felt a tug behind her naval, and she disappeared with Harry in a second loud pop.
-x-x-
Two Sentence Summary
Harry is brought to the Malfoy Manor dungeon by Narcissa, where he meets up with Luna, Dean, Ollivander, Griphook and punches Ron in the face because Ron reacted during questioning, which led to Hermione being selected for torture first. Hermione is extensively tortured by Bellatrix Lestrange, during which: her left arm is carved up, she is stabbed in the shoulder, she endures multiple cruciatus curses and is questioned about the Sword of Gryffindor – which she claims is fake before Harry bursts into the room, and apparates her to safety.
Warnings:
This chapter contains: violence, blood, explicit language, dealing with the aftermath of torture, and many other unpleasant things that may be triggering.
Nothing was written in excess or for shock value, but some may find this chapter difficult and/or upsetting to read. As such, I have placed a two-sentence summary at the bottom of the chapter so that you can skip it if you wish.
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The world swirled rapidly around her, contorting back from the momentary black and the agonizing pressure of apparition – but something was wrong. They were moving too quickly; the fall was abrupt and uncontrolled. Hermione’s addled brain barely registered the smell of the ocean and the sound of the waves as her eyes winced at the bright light of early afternoon.
She was falling. The wind was rushing past her face and screeching in her ears until suddenly she collided with the ground, and all the air in her lungs was forced out in a painful grunt. She felt the impact all the way from her head to her toes – her rolled ankle from the walk to the Manor thudded, her broken cheekbone exploded with pain, and her left arm was caught and crushed beneath her body. She gasped for breath only to find that water and sand filled her mouth. Panic flooded her mind.
I’m drowning!
Despite the agonizing pain, she forced herself onto her right elbow and lifted her head from the water, coughing and hacking and drawing in air as sand fell from her lips. Her eyes were wide. They darted around, taking in her surroundings as she felt a fresh wave of cold water wash over her feet up past her hips.
Shell Cottage.
She could make out the small home several hundred feet down the beach. They’d arrived quite a distance away, and they’d landed in the water as opposed to the sand. The potion that Narcissa had given her was still causing her heart to race, her brain to function clearly despite the pain, and her senses to magnify. She had no doubt that it had not only kept her from death in the Manor but that it was the only reason she had been able to stand and attack before Harry somehow apparated her away. Despite being beaten and battered, she’d cleaved that snatcher into pieces with a single raised hand.
Why Narcissa would give her such a thing was a mystery she would need to think on later. She could still picture the woman’s blue wide-eyed stare as Hermione stood on trembling legs before her, and blood flooded over the woman’s pristine shoes. Yet Narcissa had not raised her wand at them. She had stood solid as a rock with her weapon at her side. The whole of it hadn’t made any sense. Surely there were other ways Narcissa could have kept her alive throughout the torture. Surely the woman would have at least raised her wand to defend herself – but she didn’t.
So Hermione had sparred her and chose to retrieve her purse instead. After all, Harry had spared Lucius and Draco, and that was another something that she would need to figure out.
She groaned and dragged herself forward from the water. The shield spell that Harry had launched at her when he burst through the door had saved her life just now. Yes, the impact had hurt, but nothing else had been broken, and it had prevented her head from exploding like a melon on the ground after falling over three hundred feet from the air. Her mind raced as she crawled herself forward.
Harry. Where was Harry? How did they get here? How did he apparate? Where was Ron? What had happened? How did he escape? Why had he shouted ‘now’ before they left?
“H – AR – RY!!” She screamed for him, yet barely any sound came from her torn vocal cords. What did leave her lips was ragged and broken, and she knew that no one would hear it against the sound of the water that was washing up onto the shore.
Moving purely on adrenaline with her heart pounding solid as a steam engine in her chest, Hermione relentlessly drove herself forward, clawing at the sand and forcing her legs to move her to her knees. Her left arm hung limp at her side as she placed her weight on her right arm and crawled on her knees. She panted, groaning in pain. Despite the potion coursing through her veins, her entire body rattled like the rickety old wooden roller coaster that her parents had taken her on as a child. She grunted as she stumbled forward into drier sand. She could see figures coming out of the tiny cottage in the distance, but she still could not see Harry – where had he landed?
“H – AR!” This time even less sound came out, and she felt blood trickle down her chin.
FUCK! She cursed inwardly as she looked back to her right. Her voice was gone now, and the more she tried to use it, the worse it would get.
But she had to find him.
“HERMIONE!!”
Her head flashed to the left in time to see a blur of black racing toward her. She knew it was Harry – she knew it. Even though the shield charm he had cast on her was still in effect and would prevent her from any further physical harm, she wasn’t worried. Strong arms wrapped around her waist and hauled her from her knees off the ground, standing her upright and carrying her away from the water. She’d recognize the feel of him anywhere, his sound, his movements, his smell – she knew him. He was like an extension of her own body. She leaned on him heavily, her legs wobbling beneath her as they moved, her damaged ankle throbbing with each step. Then gratefully, he sat down on the ground and pulled her into his lap, wrapping his arms around her tightly.
“Hermione.” His voice was tight with pain as he held her.
She buried her face into his shoulder as her whole body started to tremble harder. She had thought she might never see him again. She had thought she would die alone on that floor – covered in her own vomit and blood. She thought she might lose him. She thought it had been the end – that he would be brought up next, that he would suffer the same fate, or that Voldemort would return to the Manor and find him. Her fingers curled into his jacket as fresh hot tears poured down her cheeks, and she clung to him.
He was her lifeline, her only reason for fighting through it.
Never again, never again. I’m never leaving your side again – I can’t do this without you.
She wished she could say the words out loud, that she could whisper in his ear how much she loved him, how much she needed him, but only broken sounds came out. Thinking of him was the only thing that had kept her sane. Knowing that she was protecting him was the only thing that had forced her to endure. And when she couldn’t take it anymore, she had been ready to die for him, ready to submit to the blackness, ready to let it happen – but now that she held him in her arms again, she berated herself for thinking she could ever give up.
She needed to be here for him. She needed to be with him. She would go through it all again for him, and she would do anything for him. She wished she could tell him how fucking terrified she had been and that she was never going to leave his side again – that she loved him more than anything. But she couldn’t, so she just buried her face in his hair and wept in silence as his voice echoed in her ear.
“Hermione – fucking hell,” his voice rumbled and broke each few words he spoke. “I thought I’d lost you – I thought you might be dead. Fuck I thought I’d lost you – never again – never again. I’m never going to leave your side again. You’re okay – you’re okay, I’ve got you.”
She felt his lips grazing against the skin on her temple before he carefully grabbed her body and pushed her away from him so he could get a better look at her. His eyes were pinched painfully as he cast a diagnostic bubble on her and summoned the purse. She shuddered at the feel of a silent warming spell encasing her like a heavy blanket. She could only imagine what she must look like. Based on his expression, she figured it was less than ideal.
She kept her right hand gripping the collar of his jacket tightly as he pulled out several potions and ran his hands carefully over her body – inspecting the damage and deciding what to tend to first. From a quick glance at her diagnostic bubble, he brought a blood replenisher to her lips, and she diligently swallowed a quarter of it.
They both knew she wasn’t going to die. The floating orb by her head showed extensive damage to her nerves, organs, and bones – but she would live, despite the fact that her body was aching with steady pain that radiated throughout her yet had no clear epicenter. Instead, every cell in her body was simultaneously groaning in pain. Yet despite this, her body continued to push onwards, her heart continued to pump, and she would live to see tomorrow.
An excruciating tomorrow. A tomorrow where she may find out that her left arm, which currently hung limply by her side, may never work again. It may become a permanent reminder of the hell that she had been through, of the hell she still felt as it hung dead and useless at her side. She may have ever-lasting nerve damage; she may permanently shake. The thoughts grew sickening, and she forced the feeling in her stomach to ease as she focused her eyes only on his.
He was the only thing that mattered. She would deal with whatever was left of her body later. So she watched as Harry grabbed a bottle of cleaning potion and dittany from the bag. His movements were robotic and functional, distinctly separate from the anguish that shone in his eyes and the steady mumbling of words that poured from his lips.
“You’re okay – you’re going to be fine; I’ve got you. I’m so sorry, Hermione. So sorry – you’re okay – I promise – never again.”
“Harry Potter.”
The weak voice cut through the air, and Harry froze. He had been carefully cutting away the fabric over her shoulder wound to expose it since it was the worst physical wound she had sustained, and thus he’d rightfully decided to treat it first. But his head turned to the right at the sound, and Hermione’s gaze followed. She recognized that voice. Her body jerked as her eyes widened, and her mouth fell open as her heart ground painfully in her chest.
Dobby was standing just a few feet away, his huge eyes shining as his small hand clutched at the collar of his overlarge shirt – right above the silver hilt of where Bellatrix’s dagger was buried in his chest.
No, Hermione felt what little was left of her heart break. Not Dobby.
Her mind reeled into action, the potion driving it forward with vigour. Her injuries could wait – at this point, they wouldn’t be getting any worse. The damage was done, Bellatrix had seen to that, and most of it was nerve related. The wounds from the dagger had clotted somewhat, possibly as a result of the potion Narcissa had poured down her throat, so she wasn’t bleeding out. Harry’s diagnostic bubble had already confirmed she wasn’t knocking on death’s door. Being in intense pain was not the same thing as dying, and her blood levels were adequate once more after drinking the replenisher.
She was injured, yes, and her physical wounds needed treatment, yes, but she was alive and wouldn’t be keeling over anytime soon. Besides, they had nothing to treat the lingering tremors and pain that radiated through her body from the cruciatus curse anyway – because there wasn’t really anything to treat it. She had looked through countless textbooks, potion journals and literature, and was amazed to find that there wasn’t much that could be done aside from applying a few topical creams to ease the pain (none of which she had right now) or healing specific individual physical injuries that had resulted from the torture. So aside from taking a calming draught or swallowing a fuck ton of dreamless sleep potion and waiting it out, there was nothing she could do at this moment. And that option was off the table until whatever Narcissa gave her wore off. Mixing unknown potions was a juvenile mistake that could kill you faster than you could swallow a bezoar.
So her injuries could wait.
Without stopping to second guess her own analysis, she pushed off from the ground at the same moment Harry did. She knew he would draw the same conclusion. She knew he would trust her to survive. But his arms never left her body. He pulled her from the ground and carried her the ten feet forward across the uneven sand before placing her back on the ground next to him as he kneeled beside Dobby’s fallen form. Her diagnostic bubble trailed diligently along behind them, refusing to be left out. It closed the distance quickly and hovered above her head once more – showing the spike in her heart rate as she got a better look at the elf’s wound.
“Dobby,” Harry said as he grabbed the small elf’s hand gently, his other hand lingering over the knife momentarily as he gave Hermione a questioning look.
He was well studied on human biology and medical care to the point that his skills rivalled Hermione’s – but she knew that he had never researched house-elf biology. She had. It had been part of her S.P.E.W. efforts back at Hogwarts. She shook her head ‘no’ – house-elf magic was different, and pulling out the blade would be a death sentence. She saw him grimace, but he moved his hand away and instead summoned over her purse and the potions from the ground where they had been sitting before as he cast a diagnostic bubble on Dobby.
“Such a beautiful place,” Dobby murmured, his eyes were latched to Harry’s as he spoke. “So beautiful to be with friends.”
Hermione winced as she saw the little glowing bubble appear above the elf. It wasn’t good. The knife had pierced through the bottom half of his heart and a portion of his lung and stomach. The only hope they had of saving him was to pour the dittany over the wound at the exact moment they pulled out the blade – but based on what she could see, it was a lost cause.
She knew this, and she knew that Harry saw it too.
“Yes, Dobby – it is,” Harry said, his voice was laced with barely controlled emotion as he grabbed a bottle of dittany and uncorked it deftly. “You’ve saved us all Dobby, you were incredible – and now we’re going to save you and get you fixed up, okay? Everything is going to be okay.”
“Dobby is happy to be with his friend, Harry Potter.” Dobby’s words were a faint whisper. His eyes were glazing over as a small smile curled on his lips. In her peripherals, Hermione could see the four figures from the cottage growing closer on their right. They were well within earshot now.
“Dobby – no, don’t die – hang on!” Harry began pouring the dittany.
Hermione groaned loudly in pain as she raised her vibrating right arm toward the knife. She was keenly aware that the deathly sound she made stopped all but one of the approaching figures. Her fingers flinched as they curled around the cold metal surface, and she felt her stomach turn. Touching it made her want to vomit. It made her skin crawl, it made her body ache more, but she bit it down. She saw Harry’s eyes flick to hers, and she nodded at the knife – knowing that her vocal cords would fail her if she tried to explain, but she knew he understood. His hand closed around hers tightly as he poured the dittany, and they both pulled the silver dagger from Dobby’s chest.
A cloud of green billowed around them as the knife was pulled from his small body. Hermione started to shake. Pain rippled down her spine from her crouched position. Her breath was coming in pants. She was asking her body for too much, but she didn’t care as she looked at the elf before her, and she felt the agony on Harry’s face.
It was too much.
It was too large, too violent, and too evil for such a small and good creature. She could feel fresh tears pouring down her cheeks as her eyes watched the blipping line in the diagnostic bubble above them slow. Then the line flickered out.
She didn’t stop.
She refused to stop – so did Harry. His hand moved with hers, and he continued to pour the potion even though they both knew it was over. Finally, the knife came free, and Harry tossed it to the sand at their side. The skin across Dobby’s chest had closed, but he remained motionless. As motionless as the flat line across his diagnostic bubble.
“Dobby?” Harry’s voice was low. His trembling hand had returned to the elf as Hermione’s hands dropped to the sand, and she slumped against him. She could hear the shake of his voice as he placed two gentle fingers at the elf’s neck to manually check for a pulse. “Dobby?”
The little elf remained still on the beach as the sound of waves filled the silence around them. A flock of seagulls cawed as they flew over above, and Hermione’s body curled inwards. The devastating ball in her stomach was like cold ice in her heart, and her whole frame shook. Her own diagnostic bubble began to blip – a small red light warning that her stress levels were dangerously high, and she glared up at it.
He didn’t deserve this.
She felt Harry go still beside her. His silence and lack of outburst was worse than any anguished cry he could have made. She felt her heart breaking as she raised her head and looked toward him.
He looked blank.
His hand was clasping the small elf’s as his eyes stared at the blood stain on Dobby’s shirt. His other hand had come to rest tightly on hers. She could see the anger there. She could see the storm within him, and she could feel the tense rigidity in his body as he sat next to her, unmoving.
Gentle footsteps closed the distance toward them from the right, and Hermione’s eyes darted up, widening as they took in Luna’s frail form. Why was Luna here? Had she been at the Manor? Had Harry saved her too? Her mind raced as she stared at the gentle girl. Luna paused in front of them only for a moment before she carefully knelt to the ground.
The girl looked like hell. A deep bruise covered her cheek, and the typical spark in her eye, while still present, seemed dull and worn like her hair. Hermione felt her face crumple into a pained expression as the girl gave her a small smile. She felt no fear or suspicion like she had when Ron showed up unexpectantly – perhaps it was just Luna’s nature. The girl was so gentle, so obviously kind and caring, and Harry’s calm acknowledgment of her presence with a quick sweep of his eyes and gentle squeeze on Hermione’s wrist made her racing heart calm.
“We should close his eyes,” Luna said softly, raising her boney hand forward to gently slide the elf’s eyelids shut. Hermione felt Harry’s hand twitch against hers. “There, now he could be sleeping.”
“Thank you, Luna,” Harry said. He sounded pained, yet he gave Luna a small grimace of gratitude.
It was clear that Harry trusted her, and Hermione did too. It was such an instinctual emotion toward the girl. Hermione nodded once to Luna in thanks but groaned loudly in pain as a fresh round of tremors shot down her spine, and she curled forward. Harry’s eyes flicked up to her bubble anxiously and then to her shaking form. His hand dropped Dobby’s and circled around her.
“Harry,” Luna said softly, her eyes knowingly watching their interaction and then glancing back down to the elf. “Go care for Hermione – I can stay with him.”
“Thank you.” Harry nodded at her and stood, pulling Hermione up with him and holding her firmly to his chest. “I want to bury him – properly, without magic.”
“I think I saw a shovel in by the side garden.” Luna nodded in understanding. She stood slowly from the ground. “I will go get the shovel and remove the blood from his shirt. There are some flowers in the windowsill garden box – I don’t think Fleur will mind if we pick some – when you’re ready, we can dig the hole, okay?”
Harry nodded once more as he hoisted Hermione firmly to his side and then began all but carrying her away from the cottage to a large rock.
“Luna!” He called over his shoulder as he sat Hermione down and leaned her against the rough surface. The blonde girl stopped and turned back around. “See if Fleur has any honey and ginger.”
Hermione leaned against the hard surface of the rock with a silent sigh, her trembling legs extending before her as Harry knelt to the ground at her side. She could see Luna nod quickly in response to Harry’s request and make her way back to the cottage toward the three tall figures that stood nervously awaiting her. A small figure was slowly wandering toward the cottage on its own. It wasn’t until that moment that Hermione realized who everyone was – up until now, she hadn’t cared who was standing fearfully away from them, obviously unsure of what to do. Now, she realized it was Dean, Fleur, and Ron – and the retreating figure was the goblin.
Fleur was standing nearest to them. She looked positively desperate with her hand clutched at the front of her pale blue dress. She was clearly urgent to help but had no idea what to do. Her mouth was open as her eyes flicked between Luna, the motionless elf, and Hermione’s battered form.
Dean looked just as terrible as Luna. He was skinny, too skinny, dirty, worn – nothing like the strapping young man he used to be. His expression looked pained and wary, and he was holding Ron tightly by the shoulder. Which Hermione thought was odd, and she noted that his expression was fixated on Ron as if he was watching him carefully.
Ron, the redheaded idiot, was staring at her fixatedly. Not at her face, but at her body. His face was bruised, and his expression was unreadable. It seemed to change every second, fluctuating between rage, nausea, fear, disgust, hurt, shame, and something else – she couldn’t keep up with it, and it just made her heart race quicker with anger.
She didn’t want to see him. She didn’t want to look at him – she never wanted to see his face again. In fact, she wanted to get up and go destroy it with her dirty and bloodied fingers. She wanted to claw the skin off of him and make him feel some tiny piece of the pain he had condemned her to when he opened his stupid fucking mouth. She clenched her jaw in pain, but she refused to look away. She wouldn’t be weak – she wouldn’t grant him the mercy of hiding her agony. She wanted him to see it. She wanted him to know that it was his fault. She was broken because of him, because he couldn’t listen, because he couldn’t fucking think. Because she hadn’t done what she knew she should have done and she had mistakenly left brought him along.
Their eyes met.
I should have fucking hexed you. I should have obliviated you – I should have killed you! She seethed inwardly as her nails bit into the palm of her hand, and her first curled tightly despite the pain. We were almost caught because of YOU! YOU ALMOST RUINED EVERYTHING!
She narrowed her eyes at him, burning hatred that had been forgotten through rounds of agonizing torture reignited in her chest, and she glared at him like death. She held her chin high as her jaw clenched tighter. She heard Harry rapidly setting up the tent beside them, but she didn’t look away. Instead, she stared daggers at him as she watched him visibly flinch; his eyes widened in fear at the expression on her face. She didn’t relent until he finally looked away and focused his gaze on the ground before him.
Luna had stopped to talk to Fleur and Dean, then they all turned back to the cottage, Luna and Fleur running while Dean all but pushed Ron along before him with a tight and unrelenting grip. Hermione finally allowed her eyes to slide away from them and back to Harry, who was at her side once more.
“I’m going to heal your ankle and your broken cheekbone first – then we’ll go inside, okay?”
Hermione nodded and flinched as she felt her ankle twinge with pain. It must have been broken, not just sprained. Her cheek was worse, healing it felt like having it broken all over again, and she bit her lip so hard it bled. Then Harry helped her into the tent, and she laid across the cot that Harry had created from the small couch.
“Here, drink this – it’s dittany, so it’s going to taste like shit, but it should give you back your voice. Though, it’s still going to hurt to talk,” Harry said as his eyes danced across her dedicated diagnostic bubble, which had followed them inside and now floated happily by her head. “I’ll have Luna or Fleur make you some hot tea when they get here – it will help with the lingering pain.”
Hermione nodded and drank the dittany. Her entire body seized. She shot up from the bed like a bullet – it was worse than Polyjuice potion. It was worse than the pain that already riddled her body. She almost gagged and spat it out, but Harry quickly clamped his hand over her mouth and urged her to swallow. She shook her head, and tears pooled in her eyes. It burned worse than she could have imagined, but she forced it down when he brought his lips to her temple and begged her to do it.
“Fuuu – ucckkk!!!” Her voice broke as it came back to life, and she coughed violently against his damp jacket. Green smoke surged from her mouth like a dragon. “Fucking hell – fuck it burns, Harry – it burns!”
The words sobbed from her mouth as she clung to his chest, and he kissed across her forehead, holding her trembling form.
“I know – I know – I’m so sorry, Hermione. I’m so sorry; it’s over now, though. The rest is nothing compared to this.” He was lying, and she knew it, but she nodded into his chest anyway.
Gently he laid her back down on the cot and then proceeded to heal her injuries.
The process was slow and agonizing. A part of her wished that he had delayed giving her the dittany to swallow because now he could hear her pained cries.
The shoulder was the worst. The wound was deep, angry, and agitated from dark magic. It has sliced through her tendons and muscles, severing them completely, which was why she couldn’t move the entire limb. Harry worked carefully, his hands steady as he picked out the fabric from the cut before he cleaned it and dowsed it in dittany. He held her to the cot as she rocked and writhed in pain beneath his hold. Each mark from the knife turned into a sharp, dark, angry red line. They weren’t mangled like the werewolf wounds had been because each cut had been clean – but they were permanent and always would be.
Harry did his best to distract her from the pain by telling her what had happened. As hot tears poured from her eyes and she clutched his sleeve desperately, she learned that Narcissa had brought him and Ron to the Malfoy Manor dungeon, which was just below the drawing-room. There, Harry had come to find four other prisoners: Mr. Ollivander, a goblin named Griphook, Luna, and Dean. The room was warded to prevent any magic, which oddly was something that Narcissa had told him, so Harry was unable to escape.
At one point, Draco had shown up to collect the goblin for questioning. Hermione remembered him being sent down there by Bellatrix, and Harry said that when Draco came to the gate, Ron had screamed at him to let them out. Harry had lost his temper and decked him in the face again, knocking him out cold. He then told Dean to keep the boy away from him before he killed him – which explained the watchful eye and firm hold that Dean had on Ron outside only a moment ago, and it explained the bruises on Ron’s face. Apparently, Harry’s outburst had terrified Draco. The boy had refused to look at him or come anywhere near the gate – he instead summoned Griphook through the bars magically, an ability which Harry suspected was only possible because he was a Malfoy.
Dobby had appeared moments later, claiming he had been sent by a man named Aberforth to help. Harry had recognized the name from Rita’s book. It was Dumbledore’s brother, but how Aberforth had known to send him was a mystery that they would now never be able to solve. Harry had planned to ask Dobby for more information when they got to safety – but now that was impossible.
Harry had asked Dobby to apparate the others to Shell Cottage first and promise to return. The elf had disapparated with the group just seconds before Wormtail came down the stairs to get Harry for questioning. To which Harry gladly complied, going through the gate uncaring that Wormtail held him at wand point. Harry waited for the moment when the eerie tingle of the Malfoy wards finished washing over his skin, and then he wordless lopped off the man’s head and took his wand.
The rest had been rather straightforward, Harry said. He cast a shield charm on himself as Dobby reappeared, and they both charged up the stairs to rescue her. Dobby waited in the hallway, then apparated into the room to grab Harry and bring them all to Shell Cottage once he gave the signal.
Disarming the room had been relatively easy since no one was expecting him. Fenrir’s wand had been holstered, and the Malfoys didn’t even counterattack. He’d had the advantage, and he had his shield. The second he burst through the doors, he sent the shield toward Hermione, using the moment of shocked inaction to wordlessly summoned a spare pair of his glasses from the purse. But when Bellatrix threw the knife, it must have gotten caught in the apparition – and Dobby, being the dedicated and loyal elf that he was, had still managed to complete the apparition and bring them to safety.
As Harry spoke, she noticed that his voice tensed when he got to the wounds on her left arm. She didn’t look down at it, she would see it later, and instead, she chose to close her eyes and focused on his voice. The tremble of his hands against her skin and his barely contained anger was enough to tell her that it was bad. Really bad. He had just finished checking the healing of the skin when Fleur cautiously entered the tent, and Hermione’s eyes flew back open.
“I ‘ave ze ‘oney and ginger ‘Arry,” Fleur said softly.
She looked sick to her stomach, and Hermione realized that without their normal wards around the tent, her screams had no doubt carried over to the cottage. It was clear that Fleur was also extremely nervous of them.
“Thanks,” he said without looking up from his work on Hermione’s arm. “Can you make some hot tea with it – her throat is in pretty rough shape.”
To Fleur’s credit, she did not stare like a gaping fish at Hermione’s body, and she didn’t shy away from it like a coward either. Regardless of her very apparent unease, she held herself poised and rigid, her eyes firm despite the small shake of her hands as she nodded and quickly moved to the kitchen to get a mug. Hermione could hear her clattering around as Harry exhaled deeply then turned to look at her.
“All done,” he said, bringing his left hand up to push a few strands of hair away from her face as his eyes searched hers.
As much as Hermione knew she would appreciate the tea that Fleur was making, she really wished that they were alone. It always felt like their conversations were clipped and shortened in the presence of others.
“How bad is it,” she asked, and she winced at the sound. She sounded like she’d been smoking four packs a day for thirty years.
“It all healed,” Harry said quietly as he watched Fleur from the corner of his eye. She had finished with the tea and was nervously bringing it over.
“’ Ere you are, ‘Ermione,” she said with a small smile. Hermione could see her eyes quickly scan over her body and diagnostic bubble as she handed the mug to Harry and maintained a decent distance from them. “Is zere anything else?”
“Thank you,” Hermione said roughly as Harry accepted the mug for her.
“No, thank you – tell Luna I’ll be there shortly,” Harry said with a nod of his head to the tent door in Luna’s general direction.
“Okay.” Fleur nodded, turning the leave. Then she paused, and Hermione could see the hesitation in her form before the beautiful witch turned back to face her and Hermione was surprised to see tears in the woman’s eyes. “’ Ermione – you are ze bravest witch I know – if zere is anything else I can ever do, just say ze word.”
Then she turned quickly on her heel and left the tent without another word. Hermione watched the flap move for a moment before she groaned and pushed herself up into a sitting position with Harry’s help so she could sip the tea he held out to her. It was delicious, warm, sweet, tangy – it felt like cool water on a burn, calming her sore throat. Her eyes flicked down to her left arm. It was turned over so that her forearm was facing downward. She tried to roll it over but found that she couldn’t. Either the dittany may not have properly repaired the tendons because of the dark magic, or her body just needed more time to heal and reconnect the nerves. She would know as the days went by whether or not the damage was permanent.
Her eyes flicked back to Harry’s, and she sighed.
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” she said slowly.
She was starting to feel exhaustion set in across her body. The potion that had been keeping her heart hammering firmly in her chest had worn off halfway through her healing and now her pulse, while still steady, thrummed much more slowly in her chest. Her body felt like lead, and everything hurt. She suspected that it would for a long while, and she desperately wanted to rest, but she needed to know what was on her arm. She’d delayed it long enough. Whatever had happened to her was going to be there for the rest of her life, and she needed to know so she could try to deal with it.
“Harry, what did she carve into my arm?”
Harry looked at her for a long minute before slowly setting down her tea and carefully grabbing her left forearm. She was relieved to find that she could, at the very least, feel his contact against her skin now, and that meant that recovery was still on the table. She eyed it in anxious anticipation as Harry turned it over, and then she felt her heart stutter.
MUDBLOOD.
It was carved into her forearm from elbow to wrist in clean, thin, red lines, perfectly legible against her skin. She heard herself inhale sharply, and she felt Harry’s grip tighten. Then she felt her throat close up and her chest tighten.
-x-x-
Harry sighed.
He felt like he was a hundred years old. His body ached, his stomach was empty, and he needed to eat – though he doubted he would have the stomach for it right now. He had watched Hermione’s face turn even whiter than it already was as her expression went blank at the sight of the word engraved on her arm. But she didn’t react. She had just stared at it blankly.
It hurt him.
It physically hurt him to see her disconnect. Just like it had hurt him to watch her scream in pain under his hands as he healed her – just like it had hurt him the first time, long ago in the tall grass by the ocean. Somehow though, this time, it felt worse. After everything, all the training, all the preparation – he still had not been able to protect her. She had still been injured, again, and it was his fault.
He knew Ron was a risk.
He should have just obliviated everything from his moronic little mind. Hell, he should have just killed him. Dealing with the fallout from the Weasleys would have been better than dealing with the injuries that Hermione had sustained.
And it wasn’t just the physical ones he was worried about. It was the unseen mental trauma that scared him. Yes, her body was exhausted, her nerves were damaged, and her left arm still hung limply – but physically, she was fine. The left arm was the only extensive physical wound she had received. The rest of the damage was cellular or nerve-related. She would be fine. Given some sleep, some food, and some time she would be able to walk around again and become as strong if not even stronger than before. Even if her body always had a small tremble or even if her left arm never fully healed, she would be physically fine.
Mentally though, he wasn’t sure.
The cruciatus drove people insane. He’d seen what it had done to Neville’s parents, and Hermione had been tortured extensively. So far, she appeared okay. She’d told him that Narcissa gave her something that was like an adrenaline rush and a kick to the heart. It had cleared her head through the torture and kept her sane. Right now, she appeared to be completely capable of rational thought, her memory seemed intact, and she seemed like herself – mostly. Except that he knew she was closing in on herself and pushing the trauma down deep within. Her non-reaction to her dead arm was proof of that.
After starring at it blankly for several long moments, she had emotionlessly stated that she wanted to come help bury Dobby.
He knew that she needed to deal with what had happened, but he also knew that she also needed to do it in her own time. He couldn’t force her to think about it or acknowledge it. He could only love her and be there to pick up the pieces when and if she ever broke. He’d hold her in the night when she woke up screaming, and eventually, when she was ready, he would talk about it with her. For now, though, he had agreed to let her help provided that she sat while he dug the hole and left her diagnostic charm active so he could monitor it.
So it lingered above her like a permanent fixture – displaying her vitals for everyone to see, though he doubted anyone but them, and Fleur could read it. He bundled her in a warm thick sweater since her jacket was hacked to pieces, and he dried the rest of their clothes magically before heading back out.
They both still looked like shit and were covered in blood, but at least they were warm. They needed a shower, desperately, then food, then rest – but first, he needed to bury his friend.
That was the only thing keeping the torment of emotion inside him from exploding outwards. He knew he was a ticking time bomb. He wanted to stay calm for Hermione, and he wanted to do Dobby justice. Those were his top priorities, but once he buried the elf he needed to deal with his third concern.
Ron.
He didn’t trust that the redhead wouldn’t try to apparate away in shame, and it needed to be addressed immediately. The only thing stopping him from doing anything about the boy right now was that he knew Dean was keeping an eye on him, and he knew that Ron was clearly in shock.
Though, if Harry was being honest, he did not want to deal with Ron right now – he didn’t want to deal with him at all. He was exhausted and spent. He was angry and devastated. He wanted nothing more than to bury his friend and mourn the loss as he held Hermione to his chest in the safety of their tent.
Angry as he was, he wanted to be alone and shut out the world. He knew if he dealt with Ron now, it would be rageful, swift, and it would be an execution. He wondered if he would regret it later. He wasn’t sure. He sort of doubted it – but even still, somehow, the thought of making that decision right now didn’t sit well with him. He already reeked of death, it was tangled in his hair, and it hung off his clothes. He’d already slaughtered almost half a dozen people today, he was tired, and he didn’t want to add another number to his death count.
He just wanted a second to breathe and to be with Hermione.
He stepped through the tent entrance with her plastered firmly to his side. He spotted Luna on the small grassy hill to the left where she had moved Dobby to – clearly, this was the gravesite she had selected. He could make out Ron sitting on a rock closer to the cottage with his head held in his hands. Dean was still gripping his shoulder, but now Bill stood nearby whispering quickly with Fleur. Seeing the younger redhead made his blood boil, so he ignored them all and turned away, walking Hermione toward Luna.
The blonde had gathered a shovel and flowers as she promised. She had even weaved together a little crown that she’d placed on Dobby’s head. As they grew closer, Harry saw that she had vanished the blood from the elf’s shirt and sewn the rip shut – by hand.
His heart ached in his chest as he set Hermione down gently on the sand and then turned to pick up the shovel. Luna was so understanding that sometimes it hurt.
The late afternoon sun beat down on his neck as he struck the shovel into the dirt, and with each hit, he released a small amount of his anger and tossed the soil to the side. He dug in silence, Luna kneeling next to Hermione quietly as her body continued to tremble. It took half an hour for him to dig the hole, place Dobby’s body, and shovel the dirt back on top. Luna, bless her kind and beautiful soul, had gathered a large flat rock to use as a tombstone, and Harry engraved it before setting it in the ground.
Here lies Dobby, a Free Elf.
Harry felt a hand on his sleeve as he stood staring blankly at the grave, and he turned to see Hermione. She had pushed herself from the ground on her own accord and was now leaning on him for balance, but amazingly, she was standing on her own.
“Harry, I’m so sorry,” Hermione whispered. Her voice had improved a fraction, but it still sounded painful and riddled with exhaustion.
She needed to sleep.
He wound his arms around her and held her tightly to his side, resting his chin on the top of her head. “So am I.”
He wanted to cry.
He wanted her to cry.
He wanted her to let out the emotion that he knew she was bottling up. He wanted them to be alone. He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to deal with any of this. Not now. Not when the person he cared most about in the world was broken in his arms.
He silently thanked Luna for being the only one there with them. He suspected that she had told the others to stay back, and it meant more to him than he could ever say. He would need to tell her someday, though he also suspected that she already knew how he felt.
“Should I say something?” Luna asked gently as she came to stand beside Hermione. “I would like to – I would like to thank him. Thank you, Dobby for rescuing me from that dungeon – it was unfair that you died – you were a brave elf who deserved so much more. Thank you, I hope that you can now truly be free.”
The words hung heavy in the air around them. There was nothing else to add. Harry wasn’t sure how long they stood there for, but eventually, he saw Bill approaching from the cottage as the others made their way inside, and he tensed.
He didn’t know Bill very well, but he seemed to remember that the eldest Weasley was far more reasonable than some of the others, more like Arthur. Harry hoped he was because he was about to test the theory. A thought had been lingering in his head from the moment he started to heal Hermione, one that would spare him and Hermione some time. He nodded to Luna, who had quietly said goodbye and placed a gentle hand on Hermione’s shoulder before leaving. She strolled past Bill with a polite greeting and continued on to the cottage.
“Harry, Hermione – are – are you two okay?” Bill stopped several feet away, giving them a wide berth as he looked cautiously between the two of them. They must look more foreboding and wrecked than Harry realized because even Bill seemed nervous to be around them. “Dean said that you rescued them from Malfoy Manor.”
“Yes,” Harry said as he eyed the Weasley carefully. “We were brought there for questioning – but we’re alright.”
“Okay,” Bill hesitated, his eyes continued to flick over them uneasily before he spoke much more softly, though he made no motion to move any closer. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you arrived to help, and I’m sorry about your friend – I was at work and couldn’t leave without it being suspicious. Fleur let me know the second you got here, though. She’s tended to Griphook and Mr. Ollivander – she said that you’ve taken care of yourselves but – do you need anything? You two are welcome to stay in the cottage. It’s small, but we have enough room for everyone.”
“Thank you, Bill – the offer is appreciated, but we’ll stay in the tent,” Harry said. There was no way they would be able to sleep or feel safe in a house full of people – and there was no way he was going anywhere near Ron right now.
“Maybe some more tea,” Hermione croaked up beside him, and he saw Bill’s face soften.
“We can make it ourselves if we could just borrow some more ginger and honey,” Harry offered to Bill.
“Of course – I’ll bring some out.”
Harry hesitated. Bill’s statement about him staying at work to avoid suspicion made him hopeful that his next words wouldn’t be met with anger or distrust. So far, Bill seemed very much like Arthur – not just in his logical approach but in his mannerisms too. Either way, it was worth a shot since Harry didn’t feel like stunning anyone right now or getting into a second fight – though he would if he needed to. He was just hopeful Bill might be able to grant him one small reprieve.
“Bill,” Harry said slowly, gauging the man’s response as he continued. “Do you control the wards here? Can you control who enters and who leaves?”
“Yes,” Bill replied as his brow furrowed in confusion. “When Fleur and I moved in here, the access rights became mine, and I’ve set them up based on what we decided with the Order. Why?”
“I need to ask you a favour – and I need you to trust me,” Harry said as he fixed Bill with a firm look, then spoke his next words slowly. “I’m going to ask this of you because I’m confident that the alternative would be – less than desirable for you and your family – and I need your help until I can come up with an alternative that’s a bit less… permanent.”
“Okay,” Bill said slowly, his eyes narrowing and his shoulders tensing.
“I need you to ward Ron in.”
“In?”
“Yes, in – he cannot apparate or leave the premise,” Harry said. “Not by foot or any other way. Can you do that?”
Bill looked at him for a long moment, and Harry felt his own shoulders tense with anticipation. Bill wasn’t an idiot. He had surely worked out what the less than desirable alternative was – or he at least was thinking about it. He didn’t know what Bill thought of him or if he would agree.
“I can do that,” Bill said finally, and Harry watched in surprise as he slowly pulled his wand from his sleeve and uttered several quick incantations that Harry didn’t recognize. The cautious use of his wand led Harry to believe that Bill had most definitely flagged him as a potential danger. that, or he thought they were shell-shocked from what happened to them. Either way, the wizard was careful to return his wand to his pocket with very clear and deliberate motions. “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me why I just confined my brother to a 500-meter radius of the cottage, are you?”
“Not today. Hermione needs rest,” Harry said, then he hesitated, eyeing Bill. Perhaps the man was as trustworthy as Arthur. “We can talk tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” Hermione murmured, looking up at Bill with a relief that was palpable.
The tall man nodded to her, still visibly confused but clearly aware that whatever this was – it was important.
Harry hesitated once more. “Bill, do you have any plans of Gringotts?”
Bill’s eyes narrowed again, and they shifted back to Harry, then flicked between them. Calculating. He seemed to debate pushing for more information but thought better of it. Each time his eyes fell on Hermione, his gaze would soften, and finally, he let out a long heavy sigh.
“Yes,” he said heavily. “I do.”
“Bring those too – tomorrow is Saturday, right? Come to the tent at noon, and we can talk then.”
“Alright.” Bill’s voice was tight, but he nodded as Harry started to turn away.
After three steps with Hermione, Harry stopped and turned back to Bill. The man was watching them curiously, and Harry caught his eye. A small part of him, the old part of Harry, hated himself for what he was about to say – Bill did not deserve his anger, rage, or mistrust and contempt. He didn’t know the man. The man had given him no reason to be suspicious, but a much larger part of Harry did not care. There were much larger things at stake than Bill’s feelings or his own.
“Bill, I need to know that I can trust you,” Harry said slowly, letting the words hang heavy in the air between them before he continued. He didn’t miss the shift in Bill’s demeanour as the seriousness of Harry’s voice hit him hard. He had already seemed unsure of them throughout the exchange, but now it was showing on his face. “This isn’t personal. It’s necessary, and it’s for the safety and future of everyone here. If you let Ron out, we will lose this war – all of us. So I think it goes without saying – that if it happens – it will be the last thing you ever do.”
Bill stared at him unblinkingly for a long moment as the ocean waves rang out between them. The threat weighed heavy in the air as the sun started to set over the water and the red glow began casting shadows across the low surrounding hills.
“My dad said to trust you,” Bill said slowly, his eyes never leaving Harry’s. “A few weeks ago, he told me – that if I ever ran into you, I was to do anything that you needed. That I was to help without question.”
Bill paused, and his eyes trailed over Harry’s face, his long tangled hair, down his dirty, violent frame, and back up to his vibrant green eyes.
“I trust my father, Harry,” he said quietly. His eyes almost looked sad for a moment as he shook his head. “He told me that you’d changed. He didn’t say how – but I don’t think I understood what he meant until now.”
Bill swallowed and took a deep breath.
“I swear to you, on my life – on Fleur’s life – Ronald Weasley will not leave this cottage until you deem it so. You have my word – so please, don’t use the alternative.”
-x-x-
Two sentence Summary
Hermione lands in the water and crawls to shore, where Harry finds her and tends to her injuries only to find that her left arm is unresponsive. Together with Luna, they bury Dobby on the beach, and Harry asks Bill to help them by warding Ron in at Shell Cottage.
After the conversation with Bill, Harry had carried Hermione to the tent. He warded it with their typical alarms before he brought her inside, and then they both immediately went to shower.
The process had been difficult as he had to hold her up for part of it – her legs were finally giving out beneath her, and she wasn’t able to stand straight anymore. He’d also had to help her wash her hair since she could not use her left arm. That was a task and a half, but they got it done. She had insisted on taking the shower despite her exhaustion, and Harry couldn’t blame her. She wanted to wash off what had happened, and cleaning spells just didn’t cut it – she needed it.
So, he would gladly do whatever she needed.
Then, once they were dry and re-dressed, he’d forced them both to eat the food that Fleur had left outside their tent. He’d made Hermione a second cup of tea before he finally carried her to bed and made her tip back a vile and a half of dreamless sleeping draught. She had rejected the notion at first; she’d never liked the idea of using sleeping aids as they could lead to bad habits, and they left you vulnerable and open to attack. But logic got the better of her. The better the rest she got, the quicker she would heal and the faster she could get back to normal. So, begrudgingly, she’d tipped back the potion and curled into Harry’s arms, trusting him to keep her safe throughout the night while she was all but unconscious.
That night was the first time in months that she slept like a rock. Harry couldn’t recall her moving an inch or making a peep throughout the whole night, and she hadn’t woken up until 10 am the next morning despite the fact that she passed out at 7 pm the day before.
After fifteen hours of deep uninterrupted sleep, the improvement in her heath was shocking.
She was still exhausted and sore. She said that her muscles felt pulled and strained, and she was tired beyond belief, but the colour had returned to her face, and she was able to pull herself up from bed and move around on her own without trouble. While her physical injuries from the blade had been excruciatingly painful to receive, aside from the shoulder wound, none of them were deep – so the muscle damage was actually quite minimal. The lingering pain she felt was from the cruciatus curse, and it would heal over time as the inflammation in her nerves and organs went down and her body healed on its own. It wasn’t something that dittany could repair. What she really needed now was time, good food, and more rest.
Her body still continuously quivered with tremors, but when she’d sat at the table for breakfast, she’d discovered that she was now able to move the fingers of her left hand – barely. She had smiled at Harry brightly in excitement and then burst into uncontrollable tears.
He’d scrambled out of his seat to reach her so quickly, the chair fell over, and he knocked the tea mugs off the table with a crash as he jumped over the surface to gather her in his arms. He’d held her to his chest while she cried and wretched up her breakfast on the floor. He’d stroked her hair and kissed her temple as she wept for her dead arm and told him that she had wanted to die at the Manor – that at one point, she thought she had died, and she’d been devastated when she realized that she was still alive. She’d sobbed and told him that she was ‘sorry’ – that she would never leave him, that she hadn’t meant it, that she loved him and would stay with him through everything.
His heart had burned in his chest, and he’d tasted bile at the back of his throat when he’d realized what she was truly agonizing over. She felt guilty.
She felt guilty that she’d had a moment of weakness and had wished for death instead of pushing through it for him.
It broke his heart and made him feel sick that she would so readily accept her fate for him and then blame herself for not being strong enough. He’d felt his eyes prickle with hot tears. He’d held her tighter than ever before, whispering in her ear that she’d done nothing wrong. He told her that she’d been so brave, that he loved her more than anything, that none of this was her fault, and that she was going to be okay. They were okay. She shouldn’t feel guilty. He would never leave her again, and he was always going to be there for her.
They’d sat there for an hour until she finally calmed down and then went to go shower. Harry cleaned up the mess while she was gone and made a second round of breakfast. He even repaired her favourite mug and made her another cup of tea using the kettle they’d borrowed from Fleur. This time, she’d been able to eat and keep it down, and Harry had felt some of the heaviness in his chest ease away.
He knew that she still had to deal with everything in her own time, that what happened wouldn’t just disappear overnight or after a single breakdown – but her outburst had been the first recognition she’d made to acknowledge what happened, and it was progress. He could see the lines of tension in her face ease as she ate the second round of eggs and drank her fresh tea. He’d felt his own heart heal as a strange feeling of calm filled the tent between them.
They finished eating just before Bill arrived with a collection of papers under his arms, and then they spent the afternoon reviewing through the data with him. He’d eyed them cautiously and answered their initial questions. He even accepted a coffee from Harry. They hadn’t revealed why Harry had requested the plans, and Bill, to his credit, hadn’t pushed for anything. It was clear that he was struggling to keep his own questions at bay. His tense jaw and shoulders were evidence of that fact, but he had seemed pleased when Harry asked him to return the next day at the same time to discuss things further.
Perhaps Bill was hoping that they would let him in with time or that they would at least trust him with some knowledge of their plans.
He was a patient man, a calm man. He was very much like a younger version of Arthur, and thus both Harry and Hermione had felt comfortable having him in the tent for the afternoon. They’d only unintentionally flinched at his movements twice, and Bill, the ever-keen observer, had noticed immediately and changed the way he moved to address it. He did his best to keep his hands in sight and flat on the table and avoided dropping any books onto the stack on the floor. He’d also placed his wand in the middle of the table upon arriving, then left it there throughout the meeting as if he hoped to show them he was no threat.
After Bill left, Harry and Hermione had taken stock of the wands that Harry had managed to collect from the Manor during their exit fight. They had Wormtail’s, Draco’s, and Bellatrix’s. They had both agreed to store Bellatrix’s wand in Hermione’s black box next to the werewolf bands and the cursed dagger that Harry had collected after Hermione had fallen asleep the night before. They’d decided that using Draco’s and Wormtail’s would be safest, but they planned to have Mr. Ollivander inspect the wands once the old man woke up just to be sure.
Apparently, the apparition had been hard on him, and he had blacked out unconscious on the beach because he was so weak. Bill said that he still had not woken up, but his vitals were ‘okay’. They also agreed that at some point, they would need to speak with the goblin about the bank, but not yet. They wanted to formalize a plan first, and Hermione didn’t want to see anyone else just yet – which suited Harry just fine. So, they stayed in the tent the remainder of the evening, Hermione curling in Harry’s arms quietly as both of them read.
They repeated the process the following day, and after a second night of sleeping for fifteen hours like a rock, Hermione was able to raise her left arm four inches from her side – but the tremors continued. She’d grimaced at them any time they inhibited her actions, but she bore through it relentlessly, refusing to allow Harry to pour her tea and groaning outwardly through gritted teeth as she fought to keep her hand steady while taking notes. Bill had watched her tenacious behaviour during their meeting with a quiet astonished look of awe for several minutes. Then he’d offered to contact Arthur about the tremors as it was possible that Shacklebolt might know something that would help. Given his experience as an Auror, Shacklebolt was well versed with dark magic and the lingering effects of the cruciatus.
Hermione had agreed to let Bill contact his dad, then waited until the eldest Weasley had left the tent to pen a note to Arthur herself with her shaky hand. She and Harry had debated informing Arthur and asking for his assistance the evening before, but had decided to wait another day or two to see how her injuries progressed. Since there was no major improvement it made sense to reach out for help. Especially since they both knew that Arthur was bound to pop by the cottage on Order-related business at some point, so there was no way that he wouldn’t find out about them being there or what had happened given enough time.
But Hermione had wanted to tell Arthur herself. She wanted to be the one to inform him on her terms, which Harry fully supported. So, despite her penmanship looking like that of a child’s, she determinedly wrote him her letter.
And the response had been almost immediate:
Hermione,
I’ve already contacted Shacklebolt regarding the lingering effects of the cruciatus, and I believe there is a good chance that we can help you. The second he gets back to me, I will inform you immediately. Until then – rest, eat, and calming draught should help minimize the side effects.
I think it goes without saying that I am beyond devastated to hear that you have had to endure such an abominable act. There are no words to express my sorrow over the agony you must be in, or how sorry I am and how deeply I wish there was a way to reverse what happened. In my heart, I know how strong you are, and I know that you would not want me fawning all over you. Or showering you with sympathy, so despite my natural instinct to do just that, I will force myself to trust in your strength. You will be okay.
I know you will.
With that said, you know that I respect your and Harry’s secrecy – but I must ask – do you need anything? Can I send anything to you? Do you require more potions or potions ingredients? Do you need any medical supplies? Is there anything that I can do, anything at all?
Fleur contacted me yesterday, letting me know that some prisoners from Malfoy Manor had arrived and that everyone was safe and accounted for, but she did not list the names as we can never be too careful with our communications. And most of our messages are sent in code which makes using unique names all the more difficult (I would like to thank you for that brilliant idea, it is courtesy of you that we now use book ciphers).
I never imagined that you and Harry might be in the group that arrived. I was planning to come by this week to Shell Cottage to check in. I dare say I would have been surprised to see you both there. I am still planning to come by, and if it is alright with you, I would love to see you both. Perhaps, if you are comfortable with it and feeling up to it, we could use this as an opportunity to discuss the plan of attack we have for the werewolf den, as I would like to pick your brain on the banding magic as part of our final preparations.
That said – your health and wellbeing are paramount, so please let me know what you think is best. I cannot stress this enough, Hermione; I am here for you and Harry with whatever you need. If you need help with your recovery, your mission, or you simply just need to talk to someone – or anything else, please let me know.
As always, I will not let Bill know that we have already spoken and I will act surprised when he contacts me.
Sending you my love,
Arthur
The response had left Hermione in silent tears, and her hand had begun to shake too violently to respond. After three failed attempts, she’d finally relented and given the pen to Harry, who thanked Arthur on her behalf below her scribbled mess. They’d agreed to coordinate a meeting to discuss the werewolf den, and then they’d both ate a quiet dinner.
Somehow over those first few days, they’d managed to avoid seeing anyone but Bill or Luna. Luna came by Sunday night after dinner with cookies and had had tea with them. Fleur seemed determined to fatten the girl back up and was constantly baking in the cottage – they’d noticed the smell of the goodies wafting down to the tent when the wind was just right.
Dean, or someone, was keeping Ron away from them, and for that, Harry was grateful. His anger toward the redhead had not ceased. It still burned like a raging inferno, but not seeing Ron’s face at least kept his rage at bay and gave Hermione time to heal in peace. Though Harry suspected it was only a matter of time until they came head to head once more. He just hoped that perhaps this time Ron would be able to act like an adult and not provoke his own demise.
As it turned out, Bill was off from work the following week, and he had agreed to spend his time helping them with their continued investigation into Gringotts. On Monday, he told them that he’d contact his father regarding the tremors and that the Order might have a solution. Bill had seemed rather happy about this and outwardly expressed his hope that they might be able to cure the constant shake that rattled Hermione’s body. He’d also told them that his father asked to hold a meeting with a select few members of the Order on Wednesday night. Bill didn’t know what it was regarding, but he indicated that his father had requested that they both attend. Hermione and Harry pretended the news was new and agreed to come to the cottage for the meeting at 7 pm sharp to meet with the Order.
Though, they had, of course, already know the plan.
Arthur had written Hermione back early Monday morning, letting them know that the Order was available to meet on Wednesday night. He’d also indicated that their new legilimens resource had ample experience with the cruciatus curse and that he might be able to help her with the tremors. While neither one of them was eager to trust a stranger, they resolved to give the mystery man a shot if Arthur said it was safe. So far, the tremors had ceased to fade, and Hermione was already beginning to feel desperate to try whatever she could.
When Tuesday morning rolled around, and Hermione was looking much more energetic and starting to get antsy, Harry had agreed to train with her. Aside from the gentle quiver that constantly ran through her body, she was fully functional. She was still a bit sore, and her stamina had certainly decreased, but as with the werewolf injury, the faster she forced her body into a normal routine, the quicker she would heal. Both mentally and physically, Harry knew that getting her back to her strong physical self was just as important as getting rest and eating healthily.
So, he tethered her left arm to her side at a ninety-degree bend, partially stunning it in place so that it wouldn’t get injured or swing around wildly while they trained. He made her promise not to overdo it, deferred their meeting with Bill until later in the afternoon, then set out in a slow jog around the perimeter of the cottage.
-x-x-
“Still doing okay?”
“Yes, Harry,” Hermione panted and shot him a look.
He had asked her that three times since they set off on their jog, and they’d only lapped the cottage twice. While she appreciated his concern, it was beginning to grate on her nerves. For some reason, this injury seemed to get to him on a deeper level than even the werewolf wounds had, and even though he would never admit it to her, she couldn’t help but feel like he was deeply disturbed by what had happened at the Manor. He wasn’t coddling her, but he was monitoring her very closely.
“You know I’m fine,” Hermione breathed. “You cast a diagnostic charm on me for fuck’s sake.”
Harry laughed and gave her a semi-apologetic look. “I’m sorry – I know. I promise I’ll stop asking.”
“Can you at least dispel the stupid thing – I feel like an idiot with it chasing along behind me.” She glanced over her shoulder at the diagnostic charm that was doing its best to keep up with their jog but was lagging several feet behind.
“No way.” Harry grinned at her. “It’s far too funny.”
She rolled her eyes and did the best that she could to ignore the charm that was chasing along behind them. It was embarrassing to have her medical stats floating on display. The charm was like an annoying younger sibling that desperately wanted to join in but couldn’t keep up – or like a coach jogging along behind her and shouting out any imperfection in her health through vibrant displays of colour. She would tolerate it only because she knew if she dispelled it on her own, Harry would force her back to the tent to rest.
Yet as much as she hated it, she knew he wasn’t wrong. She needed to get back to a normal routine, but she needed to do it carefully. She sighed as they rounded into their third lap.
“Uggh – running with my arm like this sucks!” She groaned loudly.
Hermione’s outward distaste and sarcasm regarding her arm had been increasing over the last few days regardless of the minor improvements that she’d seen in its functionality. She could twitch her fingers and move it a few inches, but she absolutely hated the thing. She knew her detached, and perverse commentary on her arm was a coping mechanism, and she knew that Harry knew that too. She often glared at it like it was a foreign object, and Harry had even caught her talking to it in frustration – she’d been criticizing it for not moving and threatening it to do as she asked. Right now, though, her agitation rested solely on the fact that the stiff limb was fixed to her side and ruining the natural flow of her body as she ran.
“Though I suppose this is better than it just flapping around like a dead flobberworm,” she spat with annoyance as she glared at her arm and cursed its existence.
“We should ask Nasir, this new legilimens guy, if he knows anything about deep tissue muscle damage from a cursed blade,” Harry said. She could feel his eyes on her. He was watching her reaction and glancing back to her diagnostic bubble to check her heart rate.
“I thought that too.” Hermione nodded as they finally slowed to a stop in front of the tent after their third lap.
Her body was already aching, and she had only run a fraction of the distance she normally would be able to. She knew that it would take time to fully recover, but understanding that did little to quell her annoyance with her own body. She hated this feeling. She hated that she was feeling it again. Once after the werewolf was enough and she felt itchy and anxious to get back to what she knew she was capable of.
“Did Arthur tell you anything else about him?”
“No,” Hermione muttered. She could remember waking up on Monday and reading the reply then calling out to Harry over the journal asking if he might know who Nasir was. He hadn’t, and Arthur had not told them anything else. She silently summoned her purse from the tent and pulled out a snack, tossing one to Harry.
“Well, I guess we find out tomorrow, huh?” Harry said with a frown as he took a seat on the sand in front of the tent. “It’s strange – Nasir showing up out of nowhere. I won’t lie – I don’t like it. We should talk to Arthur privately before we let Nasir do anything. I want to make sure that we can trust him.”
“I know,” Hermione scowled as she took a seat next to Harry. “I wonder where he came from? For him to just show up like this and be as skilled as Arthur has eluded to… what could he have been doing before?”
“No idea,” Harry sighed. “He must be extremely talented if he has Shacklebolt beat on the dark arts front.”
“No kidding,” Hermione said with a smirk as she ate her snack in vicious bites. Her appetite had come roaring back to life on the second day at Shell Cottage, and Harry had been far too pleased to stuff her with food. She paused and frowned again before giving Harry a thoughtful look. “Harry – is it awful that I almost don’t care where he came from or who he is as long as he knows how to heal tremors and deep tissue damage? I mean – I do care, of course I do on some level. We need to make sure that we can trust him, but – I guess I’ll just be a little more welcoming to him if he proves useful.”
“It’s not awful at all.” Harry shook his head and gave her a firm look. “I get the impression from Arthur’s notes that perhaps the man has a… questionable past. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t said anything else about him. Maybe Nasir’s not entirely aboveboard – but neither are we. It doesn’t matter, though. What matters is whether or not we can trust him and whether or not he can help.”
Hermione smiled at Harry softly and then dropped her eyes back to the sand as she chewed slowly. She felt the same way Harry did. Aside from general curiosity, she truly didn’t care who Nasir was or what he had done. She just wanted to know that he wouldn’t screw them over or be a danger to their mission or the werewolf den infiltration efforts. She wanted to make sure that Arthur and Shacklebolt were safe working with him, and she wanted to be healed. None of the other details mattered to her anymore. They would have a long time ago – but she was a different person back then.
“It’s going to be weird, isn’t it? Being in a room with so many people. I’m going to have to tether my hands to my pants, so I don’t accidentally dice one of them,” he sighed, then pushed his long hair back from his face. “Fuck, this is getting annoying. No matter how many times I wash it, it still feels like it’s laced with crap – can you cut this off after we practice? It’s putting my nerves on edge.”
Hermione grinned at him as she carefully lowered herself onto her back and began her modified workout. His point about being surrounded by Order members in a meeting was valid and one she would need to think more on later. She wasn’t really sure how she would handle it, and they didn’t know who all would be coming.
“I was wondering how long you would go before you lost your patience with it,” she smiled at him as she watched him tie his hair into a quick knot in frustration before continuing his set.
“It wasn’t so bad when it was colder,” Harry grunted as he pumped through his pushups. “But now that it’s getting warmer – it’s got to go.”
“You know my hand is shaky,” Hermione panted. “Do you want to ask Luna to do it?”
“No – I don’t care what it looks like, just lop it off.”
“Alright – after practice, I’ll grab the scissors. I don’t trust my hand with a diffindo by your face yet.”
“Okay – oh, and since we are going up to the cottage tomorrow anyways, we can talk to Mr. Ollivander – Bill said he’s finally awake.”
“Yeah,” Hermione grunted, her mind circling back to the Deathly Hallows and the Elder Wand.
She and Harry had both agreed they needed to discuss its existence with the old man, and they had been patiently waiting for him to wake up. They hadn’t spent a lot of time talking about what Xenophilius had told them yet, given what had happened, but in the next few days, now that she was functional again, she knew that they would get back to task and examine the Hallows along with everything else.
After a much shorter version of their usual workout, they completed target practice for an hour before they drew two circles in the sand and began their stationary duelling. It was a good opportunity to get familiar with Wormtail’s wand, and Harry practiced with Draco’s. It was approaching lunchtime when Hermione thought she noticed a face in the cottage window, but she wasn’t able to get a good look at the person without putting herself at risk of getting hit. So she ignored it and concentrated on the duel. She barely managed over an hour of practice before she needed to stop. They dropped onto the cool sand and drank water from the bottle Hermione had as she tugged at the collar of her loose-fitting sweater. Sweat poured down her back, and her muscles were exhausted from the exercise.
“This should not be that hard,” Hermione groaned.
“You’re doing great.”
“No, I’m doing pathetic – I’m missing my target at least half the time because of this stupid fucking tremor!” She held her hand out before him, and it vibrated in the air. She groaned loudly and flopped onto her back, her left hand jutting into the air awkwardly as it was still fastened to her side. “And then this stupid thing!”
She sat back up angrily and gestured at her left arm exasperation. The diagnostic charm, which was still loyally floating by her head, flashed a silent red light as her heart rate increased with rage.
“I look like one of those old barbie dolls! It’s completely useless – either hanging their dead or stuck in a permanent handshake – fuck! I swear to Merlin – if it doesn’t get better or if Nasir can’t fix it, I want it CUT OFF!” She was panting with fury and scowling angrily at her arm. “Harry, promise me – promise me that if it never gets better, you will cut it off. You know that wizard healers refuse to amputate unless the limb will cause you death – you know they will refuse.”
Harry stared at her, and his expression looked saddened. “It will heal, Hermione.”
She sighed heavily as she stared at him. “I’m saying if it doesn’t heal.”
“If it doesn’t heal – you want me to cut off your left arm?”
“Yes,” she said firmly, holding his gaze through narrowed eyes. “Because St. Mungo’s won’t do it. They’ll expect me to just live out my life with it hanging there.”
He sighed and dropped his head into his hand, his elbow resting on his knee. “Hermione, I–“
“Harry,” she cut him off and tightened her eyes.
He let out a deep heavy sigh. “Fine – but only if we are absolutely sure it cannot be healed or improved. You can’t grow it back once it’s gone, you know.”
“I know – thank you.”
“Don’t thank me for agreeing to dismember you,” Harry murmured into his hand before he tilted his head to look at her. His brow was creased, but his eyes looked soft. “I love you. Even with your dangly flobberworm arm.”
Hermione bit her lip, trying to stop the small smile that tugged at the corner of her mouth. “I know. I love you too Harry.”
A slow smile spread over his lips as they sat there watching each other for a long quiet moment. “Will you cut my hair?”
“You don’t want to do a full duel?”
“No – I know your legs are dead. You were slouching towards the end of circle practice – we’ll duel tomorrow morning. Let’s spend the afternoon going through our notes and getting ready for tomorrow. We meet with Bill in a few hours anyway,” Harry said as he cancelled the diagnostic charm that was floating diligently above her head.
“Alright.” Hermione nodded.
Harry was right.
He knew her better than anyone, and despite her efforts to hide it, her legs were dead. She’d been struggling to keep up in the circle practice near the end, and of course, he had seen it. Anyone else wouldn’t have, but he was perfectly attuned to her body in every way – every way.
That thought brought a small blush to her face as she summoned the scissors and a small stool from her open purse. Despite being alone in the tent again, nothing had happened between them. Things had been too devasting, too raw, and she’d been in bad shape.
Today was the first day that she’d thought about it, probably because today was the first day that actually felt normal. Mostly. Sure, she was horribly out of shape and hadn’t been able to do half of what she usually would because her body was still injured, but getting back to routine made the weight on her shoulders feel a bit less heavy.
She scooted across the ground and placed the stool behind Harry, sitting on it with a small groan and looking at his hair.
“Harry, this will look really terrible if I cut it with one shaky hand. Are you sure you don’t want me to get Luna?”
“No, I want you to do it. If it turns out that bad, which I doubt, it will probably just grow back overnight anyways.”
“Alright,” Hermione smiled again and ran her only functioning hand through Harry’s hair. “I can’t believe how thick it is.”
He laughed and leaned into her touch, his eyes fluttering shut as she carefully began snipping at his hair.
She started by cutting straight across it at the base of his neck. Chunks several inches long fell onto the sand around him until his hair was only as long as his shoulders. Then she carefully snipped it shorter in small pieces. Her hand trembled consistently as she worked, but she found the entire process calming. Maybe it was the fine concentration, or maybe it was the sound of the scissors or the steady crashing waves in the background; she wasn’t sure, but she felt her shoulders relax, and her hand’s vibration dulled to a low hum.
When she finally finished with the scissors, she summoned her mini-clippers from her purse. She’d bought them to shave a patch on Crookshanks when he’d gotten an infection in fourth year, but the second she’d pulled them out, he’d run away and hid, so she’d never used them on anything.
She gently pushed Harry’s head forward and had him hold the longer bits of hair out of the way, then she flicked on the clippers and cleaned up the hair low on his neck. Twice her hand twitched so bad the clippers skipped across his hair and cut some places shorter. She swore under her breath, but Harry never once moved an inch. He remained seated, still as a statue in front of her, until she brushed away the last few strands of hair and declared herself done.
“How does it look?” Harry asked. He had turned around on his knees to face her and was resting both hands on her thighs as he kneeled between them.
“A little funny,” she grinned, then laughed, sending the clippers back to her bag. Smiling this much felt weird; it made the muscles in her face hurt because they hadn’t been used so much in a long while.
Her eyes skimmed over his hair.
He actually looked pretty good. It had turned into some sort of long textured tapered french crop, but she hadn’t buzzed the hair down to the skin – except in the two awkward spots where her hand had shaken so violently the clippers skipped. Though frankly, the thin straight lines just made him look more dangerous. Overall it was less wild, but somehow the short hair made him seem even more serious and threatening than before. It complimented his good bone structure better than the crazed mop that had been sitting there only moments ago. She ran her shaking hand through it as she looked at his face and smiled at the way he leaned into her touch.
“Honestly – it’s not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I like it,” she said, dropping her hand back down to rest on top of his. “You look sort of rugged and battle-worn. Serious. And maybe even a little viking-esque.”
“I am rugged and battle-worn,” he smirked up at her and ran his right hand through his hair before he returned it to her thigh and gave a gentle squeeze. “You left it a bit longer on the top, huh?”
“Yeah – just a bit,” she murmured, and she found her heart feeling lighter than it had in weeks. Cutting his hair had been so calming, so domestic, and so normal. It felt good in a way that she couldn’t describe, and him insisting that she do it, despite her tremors, made her soul ache. Harry was everything to her – she wanted him. Always. In every meaning of the word and knowing that he accepted and loved her tremors and all meant more to her than she would ever be able to express. “I thought it would give me something to grab onto.”
Harry grinned and leaned up to kiss her. His lips slid easily over hers, and Hermione felt a warmth in her chest as she breathed out against him. Everything in this moment felt perfect. His tongue slowly traced along her lips, and she shuddered as she opened her mouth to him. He was gripping her thigh securely beneath her hand, and he’d brought his opposite hand up to cup her face. As his thumb gently swept over her cheekbone, she slid her tongue over his and revelled in the feel.
She’d missed this.
His love was so encompassing, unconditional, and pure that it made all her anguish and scars fade away.
Maybe things will be okay. Maybe I can get by without this arm. Maybe we can still win this.
“Are you fucking kidding me?!”
Hermione leaned back from Harry to see Ron standing twenty feet away, and behind him, Dean was running out of the cottage with Luna close on his heels.
Warnings:
This chapter contains: explicit language, face punches, and the final breaking of the Golden Trio.
******************************************
“I came out here to see if you guys are okay – and you’re fucking snogging?! You’re just snogging like everything is fine?! What the fuck?! How long have you two been fucking?”
Harry had turned to face the redhead the second he heard his voice just as Hermione had, and he felt the rage in his chest crack through its chains. The wards on the tent were only set to a twenty-foot radius to avoid them being set off constantly by Luna when she took her daily walks or by Fleur – anything more would have been an annoyance and was unnecessary since the entire cottage property was already warded. He had inspected them himself the day before and had added his own wards at the perimeter to ensure their safety, so he hadn’t heard the redhead approach. He was regretting that decision now. He should have just dealt with Luna’s daily chiming.
Harry slowly stood to his feet as his eyes darted to the cottage, noting the figures that were speeding from it behind Ron. From the velocity at which Dean and Luna were running toward them, it seemed that Ron had slipped past them.
They really had been actively keeping him away from us, Harry thought as his eyes shifted back to Ron’s angry form. Nothing about him was threatening; everything about his offensive stance was wrong.
“Since about three months after you left, Ronald,” Hermione spat.
Her voice was still raspy – much lower and rougher than it used to be. Harry knew it was possible the change in tone may remain permanent, but he was surprised at how much it made her words sound even more dangerous and cutting. She sounded ruthless. She’d stood from her stool next to Harry and was glaring angrily at the boy.
“Not that it’s any of your fucking business,” she added.
“W-What?!” Ron stuttered. His red face faltered in confusion, but his wand remained pointed at Harry. Then his eyes widened in disbelief at her words. “You two – you’re – you actually fucked?! Harry, you piece of shit!”
To any wizard watching the exchange aside from Hermione, it would have appeared like magic had been forgotten between the two males. But Harry had blocked the two spells that Ron tried to throw at him wandlessly without moving a muscle or making a sound. The only reason why Harry hadn’t thrown anything back was because it would be Ron’s death sentence. And because he had indirectly promised Bill not to kill his younger brother so long as Bill kept him contained. Though right now, Harry was seriously wondering if he cared about that deal. It would be so easy and so satisfying to let his rage out and just kill the redhead – or obliviate everything from his stupid clueless mind.
Ron, unsure of the reason why his spells had been ineffective, angrily stormed the distance between them as Harry stepped forward – and then threw a punch at Harry’s face. Harry easily dodged it by side-stepping his fist, then grabbed Ron by the collar and shoved him back several feet.
“Don’t push it, Ron,” Harry whispered darkly, his eyes glinting as the rage that had been bottled up inside him from the last few days began to leak out in a steady stream. The energy on the beach had shifted, and despite the bright afternoon sunlight, it felt cold and dark. Harry could feel a similar energy pouring from Hermione as she stood behind him, overseeing the exchange.
Harry had known that this moment was coming. He had felt it brewing each day that passed since the Manor, but he had been hoping that it would be delayed longer. He was enjoying his quiet existence with Hermione, researching and occasional tea with Luna. He had even found his interactions with Bill to be surprisingly enjoyable. It had been peaceful. Calm. A nice way to try and integrate back into life with other people.
It had been exactly what they had needed to process what had happened, to repair the damage, to learn to be themselves again, and to move forward from the horrors of what had happened. His kiss with Hermione seconds ago had been bliss. That moment, their workout, and the exchange with his haircut had been their first solid step back toward normal since Ron showed up and nearly destroyed their lives. But now, that bubble, that false reality of a pleasant and quiet life, had been shattered by none other than the idiotic redhead that had been the one to bring the horrors upon them in the first place.
“You’re sleeping with her?” Ron’s voice and face seemed desperate as he looked between the two of them.
“Deal with it, Ronald,” Hermione said darkly as she took a step forward. “Our relationship isn’t your concern – go back to the cottage before I rearrange your face.”
Ron’s entire face went red, and he growled in anger. Harry dodged his second punch and pushed him away again, harder. Ron stumbled this time and nearly fell over. Harry could feel his shoulders tensing – he’d had enough. He didn’t have it in him to tolerate any more of Ron’s insane and unjustified jealously, and he doubted that Hermione did either. Dean and Luna had closed most of the distance, and he could hear them yelling at Ron to stop. Dean looked terrified, and Luna’s eyes were wide.
“Last warning,” Harry said as he took another step toward Ron. “Don’t push me – or despite what I promised your brother, you won’t come out of this in one piece. Go back to the cottage with Luna and Dean.”
It appeared that the mention of Bill was the final straw, the flame that lit the fuse, and Harry watched as Ron’s face twisted into an angry mess. The explosion they knew was coming had finally arrived. The redhead was beyond thinking reasonably now. His ears went red, his eyes were livid, and his mouth opened with a snarl before a bitter outburst of words poured from his lips.
“OH RIGHT, I forgot that you two talk to Bill now! BILL! Of course you would – I mean, why not? You’re fucking friends with him now, right? I see him go to your tent each day. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! You’ll talk to him but not to me – we’ve been friends for fucking YEARS, and you two want nothing to do me! Yet you have no issues with Bill?! You never even spoke to him before this! It doesn’t make any fucking sense! You’re a right fucking bastard; you know that, Harry?! After what I told you? You knew how I felt, and you still fucked her?! Is one not enough? You can’t just have my sister – you had to have her too?! Tell me – were you with her while you were with Ginny?” Ron screamed as his face grew even redder. He was rambling with blind rage now; his hands were flying before him, wand completely forgotten. Instead, his anger poured out in waves of broad accusations as he threw anything and everything that his furious brain could conjure at Harry. “You piece of shit! And then after everything she went through, you’re out here dragging her around for what? Exercise?! EXERCISE?!? After what happened? You’re fucking sick, Harry! I heard her screaming in that tent the other day! What the hell was even going on in there?! What sort of twisted shit is going on between you two?!”
Harry felt himself snap. It happened so quickly that he didn’t even realize that he had closed the space between them and grabbed Ron by the jacket, practically lifting him from the ground and pulling his face only inches from his own.
“What the fuck did you just say?” Harry whispered, his dangerously low voice echoing in the tense air around them.
Luna was frozen on spot next to Dean. They both stood several feet back while Hermione radiated death from behind him. Her face had twisted into a look of disgust and hatred. Harry could feel her fury. Had she had use of her left arm, she would have been strangling him herself right now – in fact, she might just do it with one hand.
“After ‘everything’ that’s happened to her,” Harry spat, his eyes burning with rage. “You mean EVERYTHING that happened because of what you did?! Because you couldn’t follow directions! Because you can’t keep your fucking mouth shut! WE WERE CAUGHT BECAUSE OF YOU!”
Harry punched Ron square in the face for the third time that week. The sound was sickening. His nose shattered, and blood exploded from his face as a strangled cry erupted from his mouth. The sound of the impact rattled out through the air as Ron landed hard on his back against the sand, eyes wide with terror. But this time, Harry didn’t stop. There was no pillar nearby for him to punch. There was no other task that needed his attention, no emergency that needed to be addressed. So instead, he stood straddling the boy, grabbing his jacket again and pulling his head from the ground. He leered down at Ron as his hands trembled with rage, and his words poured as a dark whisper from his mouth, oozing with hatred as they rumbled against Ron’s ear.
“Those screams you heard – that’s what it sounds like when you pour dittany over cursed wounds, you fucking idiot. It burns! It was agony, and it was entirely your fault! If you had stayed on lookout, we wouldn’t have been captured, and Hermione wouldn’t have been carved up like a pumpkin!” Harry’s fingers tightened on Ron’s collar, and the redhead could only grip at his hands in panic as he realized that no one around them was going to save him. No one was stopping it. “We knew that you were too arrogant and selfish to see the bigger picture – that’s why we don’t trust you! When are you going to open your eyes, Ron?! When are you going to realize what’s going on around you?! This isn’t about you! WE ARE IN A FUCKING WAR!! People are DYING! Dobby is dead, Ron. HE’S DEAD! And it’s entirely on you!”
Harry punched him again, and Ron collided with the ground once more. His eyes rolled as he tried to scramble away, but Harry stomped on his thigh with his foot to stop him. Ron cried out in pain as Harry stood there shaking above him. His full body vibrated as he reached down and grabbed Ron by the collar, hauling his face from the ground once more. He could see Dean twitching from the corner of his eye, but his mind tuned it out, and his eyes bored into Ron’s as Ron stared at him in horror.
“We left you as a lookout for a reason, Ron, because you’re a risk! Because you’re a danger to our safety and our mission!” Harry bellowed, each word cutting like a dagger. “The only reason we didn’t stun you and bring you back home to Arthur was that we KNEW you wouldn’t stay! We knew that you were too ignorant and stupid to understand, and we fucking knew that you would have run off somewhere the first chance you got – and then you’d have gotten caught, and you would have exposed everything! EVERYTHING!! DO YOU EVEN UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU COULD HAVE DONE?! YOU COULD HAVE SINGLE-HANDEDLY COST US THE WAR!! The only reason we didn’t obliviate you or kill you when Fenrir had you was that we didn’t have a clean shot!”
Harry drew in a heavy breath and laughed. He felt like he was going crazy with anger. The sound was hollow and merciless, and his face showed no hint of humour. He knew his eyes were as empty as the sound he’d made, and he gripped Ron so tightly the boy choked.
“Fuck, if I could go back in time, I would fucking kill you the second you showed up in order to stop what happened at that Manor. I would have split you in half like a log and left your body in the snow. I wouldn’t hesitate, not for a moment. I wouldn’t lose one second of sleep over it – Not. One.”
Harry threw Ron’s body down to the ground like a rag doll, and he forced himself to stagger backwards. His hand shook as he pulled Draco’s wand from his pocket. He saw Ron’s eyes widen in fear before the redhead started sputtering blood from his mouth as he begged him not to kill him. Luna was calling to him – crying for him to stop as Dean held her back, but Harry ignored her. He ignored all of them and quickly moved his wand. Everyone but Hermione, who had her own wand drawn, flinched and closed their eyes. Ron raised a hand out before him, pleas for mercy pouring from his lips as he curled into a ball and clenched his eyes shut.
But there was no flash of green, no spewing blood. Nothing happened.
Silence rang out around them as Ron trembled on the ground, blood pouring from his nose and down his jacket until slowly, he opened his eyes and looked up at Harry in confusion.
“You – are never leaving this cottage,” Harry whispered, his wand still pointed at Ron’s chest. “Wards or not – you will never leave this place in one piece.”
Ron shifted and then glanced down at his chest as if he could feel something invisible to the eye. “W-What did you–“
“Get the fuck away from me before I change my mind and kill you with my bare hands,” Harry whispered as he lowered his wand. “I don’t need another life on my conscious – especially not one as worthless and selfish as yours.”
Dean rushed forward and grabbed Ron from the ground, dragging him up and pulling him away as Luna helped him. They all but carried him as they ran back toward the cottage, neither one of them stopping to look behind them as they dragged Ron away.
“How many tethers did you add?” Hermione asked, her voice cold and detached as she came to stand next to him. He could see her arm twitching as she held her wand – but he knew this time it wasn’t from the tremors. He knew she was still contemplating cursing Ron herself.
“Nine,” he said quietly.
“That’s a good number,” Hermione nodded.
They watched Ron’s stumbling form as he tried to brush Luna and Dean away from him on the way to the cottage. For some reason, and perhaps it was a testament to just how deeply the war had settled into their bones, the idea of Ron attempting to apparate while permanently tethered to the cottage and splitting himself into nine different pieces was calming. It brought comfort to his heart that they had a secondary protective option should Bill betray them, but mostly they just found it appealing.
-x-x-
Ron stormed into the cottage, the door banging loudly against the wall as he barged through the kitchen past his brother and up the stairs to his temporary room. His legs shook as he walked. Tears of terror had caused the blood from his smashed nose to leak even further down his jacket, and he angrily wiped his sleeve over his face only to groan in immense pain. His nose and cheekbone were certainly destroyed. He bit his lip as a fresh round of tears started and grabbed his backpack from the floor, then began stuffing random items into it.
His mind was racing.
His thoughts were scattered.
He couldn’t focus through the pain. He couldn’t breathe – he couldn’t believe it. His friend, his best friend, had fucked the girl he loved. He had told Harry how he felt, he had told him. And yet there they were snogging openly on the beach after she had cut his hair. The interaction up until they kissed was something that Ron could only describe as being loving, and it had made his stomach curl with jealousy and rage.
He’d known from the moment he first arrived at their tent that something was going on between them, but he pretended it wasn’t true. He knew from the moment he saw them appear on the beach the relationship was intimate. It was obvious from the way that Harry had run to her and held her, from the way that he looked at her that that ‘something’ was serious.
He knew it, but he denied it because he couldn’t handle it.
He hadn’t meant half of the things that he’d just screamed. He’d only said them because he was upset, because he was hurt. When he saw them kissing – so naturally, so intimately – his rational brain had switched off, and he’d lost it. He could no longer pretend that his worst fear wasn’t true – he’d seen it, and he’d been forced to acknowledge it. He had snapped and completely lost his temper, spewing nothing but hatred and anger. In the back of his mind, he knew that not all of it was directed at them. Some of it, he knew, was directed at himself over what had happened - yet he’d thrown it in Harry’s face just the same.
His stomach churned with sickness as he thought about what had happened.
He’d made one mistake.
One.
He’d had a single lapse in judgement, and it was like everyone around him held it over his head and continuously punished him for it. They wouldn’t let him live it down. He’d gone back to the woods looking for them the second he got away from the snatchers. He’d spent a week out there on his own searching around, but he hadn’t been able to find them. Unsure of what else to do, he had gone to Bill and asked him for help – he had asked Bill to let him stay there secretly because he knew that his family would berate him.
Of course it hadn’t stayed secret long.
His mum had found out, and all hell broke loose. She’d called him a ‘failure’, called him a ‘shameful friend’, and an ‘embarrassment’ – she’d told him that she was ashamed of him. Even his dad had yelled at him, and his dad never yelled. He’d told him that he was ‘disappointed’, and Ron had cried and thrown up after they left the cottage that night.
Shortly after that, he’d stopped eating. He cried. He went out looking for Harry and Hermione every other day for the first month after he left. He was desperate to find them and make amends – but he couldn’t. He’d looked everywhere and hadn’t been able to find a single trace. Once November started to approach, he’d resigned himself to sit at Shell Cottage and mope in his room.
In truth, he was disgusted with himself. He was angry. He was hurt – he was exhausted from apparating all over England and coming up with nothing.
After a few days of it, Bill had forced him to come down from his room and help Fleur with some minor potion making, which had only resulted in him being scolded and lectured more. It had shattered the little remains of his confidence and made him feel completely useless. He had never been good at potions – only Hermione was, and Harry. So he chopped only the simplest ingredients because that was all Fleur would allow, and he’d spent the remainder of the time sitting in his bedroom depressed.
Christmas had been… well, it had been the absolute worst moment of his entire life.
It was the moment he realized that his entire family hated him. They all thought he was useless. They all thought he was a coward, and they tore into him like hungry lions. When he’d found out that Ginny was apparently gay and that she and Harry had broken up, he’d become so angry. He didn’t actually care if Ginny was interested in women; he just panicked. Knowing that Harry was out there with the girl he loved and was allegedly single made him worry.
He had always been jealous of Harry and Hermione’s friendship.
They had always seemed to get along so well. Things between them had always been natural, whereas his relationship with Hermione had always held some tension. He’d thought it was sexual tension, because they both liked each other. After all, opposites attract, and he figured their tension was worse because they were afraid to admit their feelings.
It had taken him three weeks after Christmas to even leave his bedroom after what happened. He had been so depressed he’d lost fifteen pounds and stopped talking altogether. Then Bill, in typical Bill fashion, had finally stormed upstairs and hauled him down from his room – forcing him to speak and start chopping more ingredients for Fleur.
Each day that passed, he thought about them. He would wonder where they were or what they might be doing. He wondered if they’d found any new Horcruxes or if they’d located the sword. He’d stopped apparating around looking for them, though – since his dad and Bill had said that things were getting pretty dangerous out there and that it was risky to go anywhere alone or to show up in new areas. It wasn’t until his dad popped by the cottage a few weeks ago to talk to Bill that Ron decided he needed to find them again.
Ron had been sitting quietly on the stairwell to his bedroom when he’d caught part of the conversation – his dad had told Bill that Harry and Hermione had recently gotten into some trouble and that things were really bad. His father had explicitly told Bill that should he ever come across them, he was to help them with anything they asked for. While his dad gave little information as to what was going on or why he knew about it, the tone of his voice resonated with Ron and drew him down into the kitchen.
“Dad, what happened?”
“Oh – Ron, I didn’t know you were awake,” his father said. It was a fair assumption; he’d been sleeping most afternoons. “No need to worry. They’re alright.”
“But you said they got into trouble – was Hermione injured? Are they okay?”
“Yes, yes, they’re okay don’t you worry – it’s just – things are getting really tough out there, Ron. They’re outnumbered, and we are out-resourced, so it makes every action we take even more critical. It makes every person we have on our side even more valuable. If we don’t help each other where we can, when we can, despite the danger – then I’m afraid, son, that we don’t stand a chance in this.”
It was after this that Ron had decided to venture back out in search of them despite the danger and despite the fact that he had no idea where he was going. So when he heard their voices and the glowing orb had shown up, he had taken it as a sign.
They needed his help – because everyone needed to work together if they were going to win the war. So he’d readily grabbed his bag and apparated. When he arrived, though, he felt like he had stumbled into a lion’s den.
They were wild, vicious, and skittish. They looked at him like he’d shown up with three heads – or no head. It had caught him off guard, and he didn’t know how to react. They’d treated him like an outsider, either not talking to him at all or speaking to him in an impersonal and cold way. It had grated on his nerves. It ate away at him and made him feel uncomfortable and unwanted. He couldn’t wrap his head around it – his dad had made it seem like they needed all the help they could get, and yet they made him feel like he wasn’t needed. Like he was an inconvenience to them. They didn’t behave anything like the people he knew, and it unsettled him.
He tried to ignore it the best he could. He tried to pretend like his friends of six years weren’t treating him like a complete stranger or a threat, and he’d tried to be nice.
But after he’d woke in the middle of the night to a blinding glare of light and heard Hermione speaking to Harry – undoubtably in his bed, he couldn’t keep it in anymore. It was like the puzzle suddenly fit together, and their bizarre behaviour made sense.
They were hiding something from him. The coldness, the awkwardness, their distance from him and yet close proximity to each other – it was because something had happened between them. They were ‘together’. He knew it. And they were hiding it from him and feeding him bullshit tasks like being a lookout in order to keep him away from them – then they would hold hands the second he was out of sight. He’d tried to force them to admit it during breakfast, but Hermione had cut him off like a knife and all but told him to shut up.
It made his skin crawl to think that his two best friends were sneaking around behind his back and trying to make him out to be an idiot instead of just telling him something was going on. He couldn’t believe that she had slept with Harry – in his bunk, together – while he was there.
Who the fuck does that and then tries to brush it off like it either didn’t happen or wasn’t a big deal? How stupid did they think he was?
He’d been sitting at the edge of Lovegood’s property, thinking it over in his head when he came to the realization – finally understanding what was going on between his two friends and why they’d been treating him like they had. He was angry that they had excluded him from the mission simply so that they could be alone. So, he decided ‘fuck them’ and trudged across the swamp to join them.
After all, it was absolute bullshit that they would cut him out of the mission and treat him like an incompetent idiot just so that they could be alone together. They hadn’t even told him why they wanted to go to the Lovegood’s. They were being unfair, and he suspected they would try to deny it when he confronted them about it. So when he opened the door and spotted them holding hands, again, and he’d lost it.
It wasn’t until they got captured and were brought to the Manor that he started to wonder if he might have been wrong in his assessment of them. The man behind Hermione had exploded into pieces outside the Lovegood’s, but he hadn’t realized what was going on until they reached the Manor and Scabior stated that ‘they’ had obliterated his men. Then Ron had begun to wonder who had done it: Harry or Hermione? Yet he still struggled to accept it, and he wondered if it were possible at all. He couldn’t make himself believe that his friends would be capable of such a violent act; it didn’t make any sense. Hermione was always adamantly against violence, and Harry, despite his temper, would never kill someone.
As the events of the Manor unfolded, his temper and panic got the best of him. When Bellatrix had touched Hermione, he’d panicked and called out to try and help her. He hadn’t thought that it would result in her being tortured – he had been trying to help, and he was livid that Harry, who had been sneaking around with her, just stood there blankly.
He hadn’t even looked like he cared about her.
But what did Ron get for trying to help? He got punched in the fucking face, that’s what.
Harry had looked like he was going to kill him, and for the very first time in six years, Ron had felt genuinely afraid of his friend. He had never seen Harry go berserk like that – the guy had punched a wall for Merlin’s sake! It had momentarily made Ron think that maybe he was wrong – that maybe Harry did care about Hermione, that maybe Harry was capable of splitting a man in half. But then he had sat there and watched as Harry calmly let Luna trace her fingers over his face. He’d watched as Harry spoke to her like they were best friends, and Ron’s anger had surged yet again. Clearly, Harry was just being a dick to him because of Hermione. He’d even been nice to Dean – and Harry and Dean had been on rough terms because of Ginny – so Ron was confident that it was just him who was getting the short stick.
Harry had a problem with him, and it was because of his sneaky relationship with Hermione.
He didn’t remember anything after screaming at Draco. He’d woken up at Shell Cottage with Dean watching him like a hawk. He had wanted to go to them the second they landed. He’d seen them fall from the sky from inside the cottage and made to run out there, but Dean had held him back. When he’d finally managed to get out there with everyone, he’d thought he was going to be sick. Hermione was covered in dried blood and vomit, and she looked an inch from death. He had vomited later that evening when he was alone in his room – replaying the images of her battered form in his brain again and again. Unable to unsee it. Just like how he couldn’t get the image of Harry running to her and holding her out of his mind – or the way Harry carried her and how she leaned into him with a comfort that could only be gained by close intimacy.
Worse than that, though, was the cold glare of death she had given him as she sat leaned up against a rock while Harry set up the tent. Ron had felt it in his bones. She hated him. She hated him, and she wanted him to know that. Between that look and her choosing to stay in the tent with Harry instead of Shell Cottage with the others, it was clear that his suspicions were true.
She was with Harry.
The sounds of her screams and images of her angry, hateful face had echoed through his mind that night, so badly that he hadn’t slept – instead, he’d sobbed in his bed.
Still, even after all that, Ron wanted to go see them. He wanted to go apologize. He had wanted to go see if Hermione was okay – but both Bill and Dean had stopped him. Two days went by, and only Luna was allowed to go visit them, or Fleur to bring food, or Bill to go do whatever it was that he was doing with those papers.
But not him.
Nope.
Ron wasn’t allowed to go, and it had made him angrier than anything else.
He knew that Harry and Hermione were upset with him. He knew that their friendship had been damaged, but he deserved the chance to apologize to them. He deserved the chance to talk to them and make things right again. They had been friends for years – they were his best friends. As terrifying as Harry’s explosion in the dungeon had been, Ron didn’t seriously believe that Harry would kill him. It was too insane of a thought. He rationalized that Harry’s reaction had been overdramatic because of their situation, and now that everyone was okay, things would be different. He genuinely thought that he could repair the damage and they could get back to normal.
At least that was what Ron thought until Harry was towering over him with a dark and supernatural rage, punching him repeatedly in the face while he uttered cutting words that rivalled the ones his mother had thrown at him. He felt like he’d been flayed alive. Each sentence had cut deeper and deeper until he’d literally felt his heart aching in his chest more painfully than his smashed face.
It had been in that moment that a deep-seated fear he had never known crept over his body. It was the fear you feel when you know you’re about to die, and no one is coming to save you. Dean had been terrified of Harry and Luna – well, Ron could only assume that Luna knew she couldn’t do anything to stop it, so she had elected to maintain a safe distance. And for the first time since he left them in September, Ron felt like he saw Harry.
Truly saw him, and it petrified him.
This was not the Harry that he knew. This was someone else, something else. Death radiated off of him in waves. His eyes were cold and calculating, his movements were precise like a weapon, and he wore an expression of comfort and indifference to violence and killing that could only be gained by someone who’d done it before. Ron’s eyes had widened with the realization that he’d been wrong, completely wrong – Harry would kill him. Unquestionably. His eyes had flicked to Hermione in desperation, hoping that she might step in and stop the monster that Harry had become.
But that had only been worse.
Her wand was drawn and resting at her side. She was watching him with a disgusted, angry expression, but it was her eyes that made a chill run down his spine.
They were dead.
Disconnected.
Uncaring.
Radiating the exact same indifference that Harry’s had, and it scared him. He’d felt his heart break as the realization collided against his chest like a branch from the Whomping Willlow. This was not the Hermione that he had known either. It was not the Hermione he had fallen in love with. This was a woman torn apart and put back together by sheer force of will and with ragged, uneven stitching because she refused to give up. One who would and had sliced apart people behind her in battle, not batting an eye as their blood coated her back. He’d seen it. He just hadn’t seen it.
So when Harry drew his wand, he knew it was the end, and despite himself, he’d grovelled like the coward that he was. He’d begged for his life and pleaded with the devil.
Yet, for some reason he could not comprehend, Harry had spared him. He felt something strange pull against his body when he moved – it was a sensation he had never experienced. Harry had done something to him, but he didn’t know what. Dean had dragged him away the second that Harry told him to go, and he’d had to fight to get away from the guy and Luna. He didn’t want to be near them. He didn’t want to be near anyone.
He couldn’t breathe here. He felt like his world was caving in on him as he realized that he’d not only lost Hermione to Harry but that he’d lost Hermione and Harry in their entirety – they didn’t exist anymore. His friends were gone. The people in that tent were not his friends, they were strangers, and he didn’t know them.
The recognition had made him sick to his stomach with anger and devastation, but it was easier to be angry. It was easier to be angry at them and hate them and blame them rather than to deal with and acknowledge the truth. It was easier to leave – easier to run. He couldn’t deal with the panic and sickness that was swirling within him. He had to get away. He had to leave – he couldn’t stay here anymore.
Harry’s words about him never leaving echoed in his head like a warning, but he didn’t care – he would leave. He would find a way because he couldn’t stay here another second.
He wiped the blood from under his nose again as he shoved a second sweater in his bag and then headed downstairs.
-x-x-
“Ron?” Bill called, the sound of the front door crashing open immediately pulling his attention away from the papers he had laid out on the kitchen table. His brother blew by in a blur and stormed upstairs. “Ron, what’s going on?”
No answer was given, but he heard Ron rummaging around upstairs, throwing open the closet door angrily and shuffling things around.
“Oh for fuck’s sake, not again,” Bill groaned as he pushed himself up from the table at the sound of Ron’s clunking feet coming back down the stairs. He hadn’t seen his brother leave the house – he’d been in his office collecting more layout drawings while he thought Ron was napping, though now he realized that Dean and Luna were missing as well.
“I zink zat I will take some water to ‘Arry and ‘Ermione,” Fleur said gently, touching Bill’s arm supportively as she passed and headed outside with two empty glasses.
“Good idea,” Bill muttered as Ron stormed into view.
He had yet to tell Ron that he couldn’t apparate away or leave the property – he figured that the conversation wouldn’t go over well, so he had been delaying it. Even if Ron tried it, nothing would happen. The wards would prevent the apparition from even starting to take place, so he would only find himself standing in the same spot unmoved. If he tried to walk out, it would be pretty much the equivalent of him walking into an invisible wall. Though now it looked like the conversation might be required as Ron appeared ready to run away – again.
He watched as Ron stormed into the room, his face was smashed, and blood trickled down his chin. Two matching black eyes were forming. His backpack was slung over his shoulder, and Bill let out an audible groan. The boy was so predictable that it physically pained him.
“Ron, what’s going on – where are you going?”
“I’m leaving.”
“Yeah, well, I can see that.” Bill stepped in front of Ron and grabbed the strap of his backpack, swiftly pulling it from the boy’s shoulder. “What happened?”
“Give that back!” Ron snapped. His voice was tight with anger, but the distress was unmistakable, just like the tear streaks that stained his cheeks. He made a swipe at the bag, but Bill stepped back again, pulling it from his reach and letting it hang from his fingers at his side.
“Let’s just calm down, okay? What happened – why do you want to leave?”
“Because they don’t fucking need me!” Ron yelled, his face growing red with anger as he grabbed for the bag again, but Bill pulled it away. “Because Harry and Hermione are a fucking couple! And I don’t even know them anymore – they’re completely different people! I thought we were supposed to be together. I thought that – well, it doesn’t matter now because bloody hell was I wrong! They’ve probably been hooking up behind my back for even longer!! And all I seem to do is get in the way because apparently, I can’t do anything right! Because apparently, they’ve turned into these soulless killers who want nothing to do with me!”
For a brief moment, Bill contemplated asking which person it was that Ron was supposed to be together with since he hadn’t specified, but he thought better of it. Ron was on the verge of having an aneurism, and being a smartass wasn’t going to defuse the situation.
“Ron, you left them for over seven months,” Bill said, his voice dropping softer. “They were alone, fighting the war together with only each other to rely on – facing terror after terror while you were here with us.”
“OH FUCKING GREAT!” Ron bellowed as he looked at Bill with a hateful and pained expression. “So we’re back on THAT topic again?! About how I failed?! So now that you’re suddenly their friend, you’re going to take their side and make me feel like shit for leaving again, right? Never mind that my best friend fucking stole the girl I loved – and now I’ve lost them both!”
“No,” Bill said firmly, taking a small step towards Ron. “What I’m saying is – they were forced to move on. They had to in order to survive. You said yourself that when you found them, they behaved like wild, rabid dogs. They couldn’t afford to sit around being sad or mourning your loss because they were being chased at every turn, Ron. They processed the situation, they dealt with it, and then they moved on with their lives while you sat here anguishing over it, analyzing it, and guilt-tripping yourself for months. It’s still fresh for you. It’s all you’ve been thinking about since you showed up here in September – but for them, it probably feels like a lifetime ago.”
Ron frowned but was silent. He was breathing heavily. His eyes glanced to the bag that Bill held in his hand before his face turned into a sneer.
“Yeah, well, it doesn’t matter now anyway, does it? Because perfect stupid fucking Harry Potter gets the girl and has made it perfectly clear that I’m not good enough to even be around them. Who am I kidding – I’ve never been good enough. They’ve probably just kept me along in the group for a laugh; probably been together for ages!”
“Fuck, Ron!” Bill scoffed, the harsh tone catching Ron off guard and causing his face to falter. “Is that what this is about? You’re upset that you’re not special enough? That you’re not talented enough to be their friend?”
Ron stood silently before Bill, watching as his older brother laughed savagely and ran his hand through his hair. Then Bill fixed Ron with a harsh stare.
“You’re still on about being one of seven, aren’t you?” Bill pressed. “You’ve carried this baggage around with you since you were a little boy – constantly feeling overshadowed by the family or like you’re not good enough.”
“Because it’s fucking true!” Ron bellowed.
“YOU’RE WRONG!!” Bill bellowed back and stepped toward his little brother as the boy stumbled backward.
Ron’s eyes had gone wide with fear. Bill never yelled, not like this. He never laughed so coldly or took such an aggressive stance – and Ron’s uncomfortable and terrified expression made it clear just how much of an impact it had.
“You’re whatever you make yourself out to be, Ron! You don’t seriously believe that Hermione, a girl who grew up outside of the magical community, had a better shot at becoming great than you did? You went to school with hundreds of fucking kids, Ron – hundreds of them! What the hell does you being one of seven have to do with anything?! You had just as much opportunity as any of them to learn, to grow, to prove yourself. How is it possible for any of those other kids to just automatically be better than you because they didn’t happen to have six siblings? Do you understand how utterly ridiculous it is to think that way? Harry may have been born famous, but he kept his fame because of what he did, because of how much he accomplished. There were plenty of assholes out there ready to take him down. They were actively trying to, and they were willing to soil his name the second he slipped up or embarrassed himself. So you cannot seriously tell me that you believe he had a better shot at becoming exceptional or that he somehow inherently had a better chance than you? For Merlin’s sake, he grew up in the muggle world and didn’t use magic until he was eleven!”
Bill took a breath, shaking his head angrily before he threw Ron’s backpack hard into the boy’s chest. Ron stumbled back another step as he caught it and looked up at Bill with confusion.
“You have had and continue to have every chance to make yourself who you want to be, Ron – all you have to do is take it. Stop carrying around this ridiculous notion that you’re not good enough just because you come from a large family, while somehow everyone else in the world is just naturally better than you. I can’t do this anymore, Ron,” Bill said in exasperation. “I get that you’re upset about them behaving differently. I understand you’re mad that they’re together, but try to look at it from their perspective – try to understand what they’ve been through and how those experiences have shaped them. Have you even bothered asking what happened to them while you were gone? What hells they’ve been through? What sacrifices they may have made? Did you stop to consider that their relationship may have changed out of necessity, that it has nothing to do with you, and that it probably started after you left because they were alone with no one else to rely on?
“Or have you been too focused on wanting things to just go back to how they were while you moped over your own bad misfortune of having too many siblings that ruin your life?” Bill stepped back, allowing the space to grow between them as silence rang through the air. He looked angry, defeated, and disappointed. “I’m not mum or dad. I can’t keep parenting you or protecting you every time you can’t handle your own emotions. And I cannot fix your issues, Ron – you need to deal with that shit.”
Ron stood before Bill; his backpack clutched tightly to his chest. The pink that had tinted his face was now a dark shade of red while his jaw trembled slightly. For a moment, Bill thought he was about to explode, unleashing a slew of curses before running from the house, but instead, a single tear dropped from the corner of his little brother’s eye, and Bill realized that his jaw hadn’t been trembling from rage.
Ron was heartbroken – he was lost and insecure.
“What should I do, Bill?” Ron whispered, his voice broken and quiet. He sounded like the boy Bill remembered from years ago, and it felt like a nail in his heart.
His brother, his stupid, idiot, over-emotional little brother, was a mess – an absolute right mess of a human who had spent his life unable to process his own emotions all while feeling like he was worthless. Like he couldn’t compete with his siblings or peers. He had even been jealous of Ginny once she started to show her own unique skill despite her being younger. But through his brashness and inability to analyze himself objectively, he failed to realize the one true thing that was holding him back – himself.
“If you want to be someone, if you want to be something that you’re proud of – invest the time. You are the only thing standing in your way. Put in the effort. Learn. Grow. Earn it, Ron,” Bill paused, taking a breath before he jerked his head toward the still open front door. The sound of gentle waves crashing against the shore echoed into the small cottage. “They have. I saw them training this morning just like you did. That sort of skill doesn’t come from just talent, Ron. It comes from months and months of relentless and ruthless training – which I have no doubt started right after you left. Imagine what it must have looked like when they were in top shape before what happened at the Manor. Imagine how hard they must have worked to become that – try to understand what they must have gone through, Ron. Something happened to them, something that flicked a switch in their heads and lit a fire under their asses. Something that made them realize the one single truth of this world.”
“What truth?” Ron was hardly breathing; his knuckles had turned white against the backpack he clutched like a lifeline.
“That they will die, Ron, just like the rest of us if they don’t keep up – if they don’t grow up and become more than what they were,” Bill said. He stepped aside from the doorway and made his way back to the kitchen table, gathering his papers and averting his eyes from his brother. “If you want to run away, find another place to hide – fine. I’ll get you a small safe house where you can be alone and hide from the world and all your problems. I don’t have the time or the energy to stop you this time, Ron. Not when people – innocent muggles, witches, and wizards are dying every day in this war. In case you haven’t noticed, Ron, our world is burning – with or without you here. Sticking your head in the sand won’t change that. So either step up and make something of yourself, become what you’ve always wanted to be – or go cower somewhere else out of my way. I can’t keep doing this. It’s hard enough to keep our Order members alive. I don’t need them leaving anytime they get upset or when things get uncomfortable and hard to deal with.”
Bill tucked the rolled papers under his arm and made his way outside, leaving Ron in the cottage alone, standing silently with his bag clutched in his arms.
“NOOO!!” Hermione screamed. She tried to scramble away, desperately shoving her arm and clawing at the surface beneath her. She felt strong hands grab her wrists and try to hold her steady. “NO!!”
“Hermione! It’s okay it – umpf! “The voice was cut off as Hermione felt her hand collide hard with something solid.
“LET GO! NO! LET ME GO!”
She was cold, her body was drenched in sweat, and her mind was swimming. It was dark, so dark she couldn’t see. Her left arm wasn’t working – why wasn’t her left arm working?! Terror coursed through her body, and her blood ran cold. She didn’t understand what was going on, but she could feel the burn of the knife against her skin, and she fought to getaway. She needed to get to Harry – she had to find him.
“Hermione! It’s me! You’re safe – you’re safe, relax – it’s okay.”
“H-Harry?!” She stilled. Her voice was rough and broken. She was trembling violently and panting for air. She could feel tears on her cheeks, and she squinted as a dim light started to fill the room around her.
“Yes, Hermione – it’s me – you’re safe. It’s okay,” Harry murmured, his voice by her ear as she felt his warm arms wrap around her. She blinked, finding his face in the darkness – his lip was split.
“Oh my god – Harry! I’m so sorry, I – I didn’t mean to, I–“
“Shhh,” Harry hushed her and pulled her head to his, leaning their foreheads together. “It’s okay, I know – it was just a dream. Just a dream, just breathe.”
Hermione gulped for air and closed her eyes tight. The tremors in her body felt worse than the day before, almost as bad as the first day that they had shown up at Shell Cottage. Every muscle in her body was aching, and she felt like she’d just been beaten with a stick. She should have listened to Harry; she shouldn’t have pushed it. He’d wanted her to use dreamless sleep draught one more night, but she’d insisted on skipping it. They were running low on stock, and she didn’t want to become addicted to it.
Given how well the training had gone the day before and how exhausted she’d been from the physical activity, she had thought that she would have passed out easily and slept soundly through the night. She was wrong. She’d slept terribly and had been lost in the events of Malfoy Manor, screaming in agony and unable to get to Harry. She let out a low, shaky breath and collapsed fully into Harry’s arms.
“Harry, I’m so sorry,” she whispered as her voice trembled almost as bad as her body. She grabbed his arm with her shaking hand and held onto him tightly. She closed her eyes once more and focused on the heat from his bare chest against her back. “I should have listened to you. Harry, I could have killed you.”
“Impossible.” Harry kissed her temple. She felt him lift her left arm and lay it over her abdomen since she was unable to move it on her own. “You definitely should have used the dreamless sleep draught again – but you wouldn’t have killed me, Hermione. I cast a shield charm on myself the second you started to thrash.”
“It felt so real, Harry. I was there, at the Manor, and I – I couldn’t–” Hermione’s voice faltered, and she shook her head. “What are we going to do, Harry? I can’t take that stuff forever, but without it, one of these days something could happen.”
The thought of injuring Harry because she was in the middle of a night terror made her feel sick. She clutched him tighter and tried to swallow down the fear that gripped her heart.
“I know,” Harry breathed a low sigh. “I actually wanted to talk to you about that. I think we should ask Nasir – there must be something we can do with occlumency. Maybe there is a way to contain the memories or compartmentalize them for when we’re sleeping. It’s not healthy to bury them. They’ll just manifest themselves in another way, but – surely there is something we can do to sleep.”
“Maybe.” Hermione nodded and shivered against him. She felt so weak and vulnerable, and she hated it. She wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand and took a deep breath. “Let’s ask him tonight – it’s worth it. There has to be something we can do, and if not, I’ll start looking into modifications on the dreamless sleep draught. See if I can make it less addicting.”
Harry nodded against the side of her cheek and continued to hold her firmly to his chest.
“Episkey,” she whispered, and she felt Harry smile.
“Thank you.” He wordlessly summoned a cloth from her purse and wiped the blood from his lip, then turned to kiss her temple once more.
Hermione sighed and leaned into his touch. She never wanted to let go of him again. She felt like she couldn’t get close enough to him to settle the ache in her heart and the unease that riddled her body. If there was a way that she could meld into him, she would. She needed him. She needed him closer. She needed to know that he was there with her so she could chase the terror from her mind. She turned her head to catch his lips and kissed him slowly, sliding her lips against his familiar ones. She loved the feel of him, of the calm that he brought to her heart, the familiarity, the safety.
“Harry,” she whispered as she nuzzled her nose against his. “Stay with me.”
“Always,” Harry whispered softly against her lips before he captured them.
She could feel his hand slide up her arm and slip around her neck. He threaded his fingers into her hair. The pain in her heart only began to ache more as images from her dream and memories of the Manor flooded her head.
Never again – I’m never letting go again.
She tightened her grip on his forearm and pushed herself into him. She wanted him. It wasn’t lustful or angry, not heated or sensual. It was desperate. It was agony. She felt forlorn; she needed to know that he was there with her and that she hadn’t lost him like she’d thought she had only minutes ago while she’d been tortured on the parlour floor once more.
Her dreams had shaken her to her core, and she needed to know that he was real. She slid her tongue over his bottom lip and opened her mouth, inviting him in. She breathed against him as he mirrored her movements and immediately slipped his tongue into her mouth. Desperate heat began to tear at her heart, and she gripped at his shoulder, pulling him closer.
He laid her back against the bed, rolling fluidly with her as her left arm slipped from her abdomen to rest at her side. He moved carefully above her as she slid her one good arm around his neck and tried to pull him even closer. She did her best to ignore the fact that her left arm could not participate, that it was just laying limp at her side like some awkward third wheel to their actions. She’d come to terms with her scarred skin, her rougher sounding voice, and she’d even been slowly accepting the gentle tremor that encased her body. But the arm was another story.
She struggled with it.
It was such a huge physical reminder of what had happened, and it limited her. It affected everything, even Harry. He had to help her with some things now, and a small part of her had worried that maybe he would grow weary of her crippled body. She knew that she was projecting her own insecurities. Harry had been nothing but loving, supportive, and kind. Yet it was still difficult to swallow down her anxiety. Their moment on the beach after she’d cut his hair had helped immensely. It had settled her heart and forced her brain to focus on the truth: that he loved her, and he didn’t care her arm was ruined.
When he dropped his hips against hers, she felt his hard length through his pajama bottoms and groaned. Any doubts she may have had about him still finding her attractive were washed away. She could feel his desire, his want – she could see it in his eyes when he looked at her and in the way that he held her. The arm was her problem, not his. Just like the marks on her chest, she needed to deal with them. She wouldn’t allow her own self-doubt to poison their bond. So she forced the thoughts down and traced her shaking fingers along his bare spine to the waistband of his pajama pants. He pressed into her in response, and she groaned once more, her head tilting back as a wave of pleasure rolled through her. Her eyes fluttered open, and she caught his gaze above her.
“Hermione,” he whispered; his face was just inches from hers. He was tracing the pad of his thumb gently over her cheekbone. “I love you – I’m never leaving you again.”
“Never again,” she whispered back, feeling a single hot tear pour from the corner of her eye. Her heart thrummed heavy in her chest. “I love you, Harry.”
He quickly captured her lips again, and she dissolved beneath him. She pulled him closer. She pushed at his pants. His hands moved gently over her body, and he slipped her pajama pants and shirt off. She could feel him everywhere, every inch of his body against hers as they desperately tried to become closer. Their kiss deepened, and she lifted her hips into him. She moaned as his fingers brushed against her center and pressed against the bundle of nerves between her legs. She gripped his shoulders tighter and tried to remember to breathe.
He pushed into her easily, groaning deeply and holding her tight. Hermione panted against him, she’d yet to catch her breath from the nightmare, and now she clung to him as he rolled his hips. It was everything – everything that she needed and everything that she wanted. Their moment outside on the beach had been cut short. Their afternoon had been ruined by the tension of their exchange with Ron. Then they were busied by their meeting with Bill. That small moment of normalcy had been stolen from them, but she could feel it coming back now. She could feel Harry’s familiar body above hers, and the way he thrust in and out of her wet center with practiced precision made her heart soar.
Her body welcomed him, heat stirred within her, and she lost herself in it. Her mind was clouded with the warmth from his body, his weight, his scent – she shivered under his touch and felt the familiar coil in her core tighten.
“Harry,” she panted against his ear as she pulled him even tighter, closer.
His chest was against hers now, his head resting on the pillow beside hers as his one hand braced her neck and the other was wrapped tightly under her back. There wasn’t a hair of space between them. He was moving with her and against her in slow deep motions. Each thrust was deliberate. She pushed up to meet his pace and revelled in the feel of his stiff length. She wasn’t going to last long, she felt suffocated by him, and his slow thrusts were hitting that spot deep within her that made her toes curl in pleasure.
“Hermione,” he grunted next to her ear as he carefully rolled his hips once more. The motion brushed both her clit and her g-spot, and she trembled against him. “I want you to come with me – I’m not going to last like this.”
She tilted her hips up to him and moaned as he ground into her once more. “Harry, I’m going to – right there, just like that–“
He thrust into her deeply several more times, and she felt her body tense.
“Harry – fuck, Harry–” she moaned deeply as a wave of pleasure rushed through her. She fell apart in his arms, clinging to him desperately as he moved twice more and then came apart. His low deep groan echoed throughout the tent and rumbled against her ear.
He collapsed on top of her, gathering her limp body in his arms and devouring her lips with his. He kissed her until she couldn’t breathe and then trailed his lips over her jaw and down her neck. His hands caressed her skin, slipping over her body and along her face as her hazy eyes followed his gaze. He looked like he couldn’t get enough of her – like he was afraid to stop touching her or she might disappear.
Exhaustion settled deep within her bones, and her eyelids grew heavy. She fought against it. She didn’t want to look away from him either; she didn’t want to take her eyes off of him for a second. She gripped him tightly and traced his skin with her fingers, struggling to keep herself awake as they lay together.
Finally, when her eyes were starting to close against her will, he moved back to kiss her lips softly and shifted his weight to her side. She could feel him softening within her and slipping out.
“What time is it,” she asked sleepily, unable to open her eyes. Her arm was still clutching him tightly, and her head was now nestled into his neck. Her body was giving out on her, after the exercise the day before, her terrible sleep, and their most recent activities, she had nothing left to give.
Her body was exhausted, and it was shutting her down.
“4 am,” Harry said gently. She heard something come from her purse, and she knew that he had summoned a bottle of dreamless sleep draught. “Hermione, will you take just a quarter? Just for tonight, we need to be rested for the meeting tomorrow.”
The fire inside her that had fought against it earlier was gone. He’d put it out with his thorough loving. She had nothing left to give, and so she nodded.
“Fine,” she whispered.
She felt the bottle against her lips, and she forced herself to tilt her head and drink it. She didn’t care that she was naked and sweaty. She didn’t care that Harry’s come was leaking out from her slick channel. All she cared about was that she was with him, and so she let the dark empty night take her as the potion took effect.
-x-x-
“Hermione?” Harry had been watching her eat breakfast, though really it was lunch given that she had slept past noon. She needed the rest, though, so he wasn’t complaining. It was good to see that she seemed much more relaxed than yesterday afternoon. However, her body was trembling harder.
“Yes?” Her eyes darted to him immediately upon hearing his voice, and she held a piece of toast a few inches from her mouth.
“You said that the bonding magic was balanced, right? And that it could be modified?” Harry asked, watching her face for a reaction.
After they had arrived at Shell Cottage and Hermione had passed out under the effects of the dreamless sleep draught the first night, Harry had laid awake next to her for hours, staring at her and memorizing her every feature. The only time he had left her side was to go collect the cursed dagger from the beach, but otherwise, he’d traced his hand over the skin of her knuckles as he held her hand and watched her sleep. His heart had burned in his chest so badly he’d felt sick. He could not stomach the idea of ever losing her or of anything like this ever happening to her again. While he had been in the dungeon of Malfoy Manor, it had killed him that he could not communicate with her. Not only had he not been able to help her, but he wasn’t even able to tell her that she would be okay. That he was there – that he was coming for her.
So, as he watched her sleep, a thought had started to form in his head. It was an idea, a concept really, one that he was not sure was even possible. But it was something that would not only give them an advantage but would also help put them both at ease. He’d been waiting for the right time to bring it up. He had wanted to make sure that she was healed and able to function normally before even addressing it. But after last night, after holding her in his arms and feeling every inch of her body against his skin, he had to ask.
He needed to bring it up.
He would not lose her.
He couldn’t.
“Yes,” she answered, fixing him with a curious look. They were seated across from one another, and her legs were intertwined with his under the table. Since waking, she had maintained almost constant contact with him. “It is balanced – without realizing it, Arlo made the bond safe. It has no lingering negative effect. Depending on the runes you use and the ‘intent’ of the intent bond you cast – you could hypothetically create a number of different bonds. What are you thinking, Harry?”
“Could you create a mutually balanced bond built on Ansuz, Gibo and Eihwaz?” Harry asked as he held his coffee mug steady in his hands. He watched the understanding quickly cross her face. His heart swelled when a slow smile formed at the corner of her lips.
“Definitely.”
-x-x-
“Are you ready?”
“Almost,” Hermione called. She was gathering up the remaining items that littered her workspace and stuffing them into her purse. She had spent the entire afternoon working through the arithmancy calculations for the bond that Harry had asked about. It was brilliant, and she’d showed Harry the different approaches they could use for it, and she was extremely excited. But as the afternoon grew late and the meeting approached, some tension had started to settle into her body. She was not looking forward to going to Shell Cottage, and she was more tired than she’d been the last two days because of her fitful sleep.
She should have just listened to Harry in the first place and take the stupid potion before going to bed last night. It was insane how much of a difference it made; she was far worse off today without her fifteen hours of uninterrupted sleep than she ever could have anticipated. The night terror had really done a number on her body and set her back, but at least she’d managed to get a solid eight hours of sleep between 4 am and noon after making love to Harry.
As much as she hated the potion, it did work. She’d slept like a rock, unmoving and waking next to Harry, who was reading at her side. He’d cast a cleaning charm on her the night before and wrapped her in a collection of thick blankets. Even still, her muscles ached, and her body trembled harder than usual. She couldn’t even imagine how she would feel if she had tried to sleep without the potion for a second time.
After her discussion with Harry at the table that morning, she’d set to work on her new project. They did not meet with Bill or complete any training. They did not leave the tent at all and simply spent the day orbiting each other like the earth and moon. Things between them felt normal again, comfortable. Solid. Strong. Not that things between them had changed or grown weaker – just their middle-of-the-night desperate love making had calmed her soul, comforted her heart and squashed out the doubts that had been creeping into her mind about her injuries and how they might affect their relationship.
She had no fears anymore.
She and Harry were a unit. They were strong, and together they were unstoppable. Arm or no arm, regardless of whatever else happened, they would be fine.
After an early dinner, they showered and washed their hair – both of them wanted to at least attempt to look decent for the meeting and not appear too wild. The reality was that neither one of them cared what the Order members thought of them, but they did, at minimum, want to appear strong and functional and avoid any unnecessary doubts or questions. And the easiest way to do that was to appear visibly put together and sane.
So, Hermione had fixed her hair and dressed in a pair of clean dark jeans, a long-sleeved dark purple shirt and a new black spring jacket that Fleur had dropped off the day before after their meeting with Bill.
Fleur had seen her wounds; she knew that Hermione’s old jacket was beyond saving, and she’d actually gone out to a nearby store specifically to get her a new one. It was far more fashionable than anything Hermione owned – but the gesture was so kind and sincere that Hermione had thanked her and even allowed the girl to give her a quick small embrace. The contact had felt a bit weird and made her tense with anxiety, but she couldn’t help herself but allow it. Fleur had been putting a huge effort into caring for them in any way that she could while purposefully acting normal around them. She was a far more caring and kind woman than many people gave her credit for.
The jacket had fit well, so Hermione had accepted it and added a few inner pockets to make it more practical. When she’d looked in the mirror after dressing to ensure the high neck of her shirt hid all her scars, she’d realized that the black, almost leather-looking material made her appear rather dark and dangerous. Harry had settled on a similar look – dark jeans and a dark grey long-sleeve shirt underneath his black jacket – which only added to the intensity of their combined appearance.
She had never been one for fashion, but it was nice to feel put together for once after all the chaos in their life.
As she closed up her purse, she did her best to bite down the anxiety that was building within her chest. She was not comfortable with the idea of being in the Cottage let alone being in there surrounded by other people. She knew that they would notice her arm and her tremors. The lingering injuries would be impossible to hide, and frankly, it pissed her off that she’d even considered hiding them at all. She didn’t care if her appearance made them uncomfortable. Fuck them and fuck anyone else who dared stare at her in pity.
But she knew that they would, and she hated that it bothered her. She wished that it didn’t, and she wished she was stronger and capable of not caring.
They would stare. They would ask questions she didn’t want to answer. They would look at them strangely, their eyes filled with concern when they took in Harry’s flat, emotionless, cold eyes and her icy demeanour. She knew they couldn’t help it. She knew it would be out of concern and love, but she just didn’t want to have to see it. It hurt having the people that you cared about look at you that way.
And she did still care; she was just uncomfortable with the idea of being around so many of them. Depending on who was in the room, the conversation would be a complete nightmare, possibly an explosion. They would want answers. They would want to know what she and Harry had been up to, and there was no way she was going to tell them.
She frowned as she picked up her purse and walked toward Harry, who was waiting by the exit. Not only could she not tell them about their mission, but she also didn’t want to. She didn’t want to talk to people about anything that had happened – it was none of their business. It had nothing to do with them. Despite this, she knew that she had to talk to at least some of them if she wanted any chance at healing her lingering injuries.
She let out a quiet sigh. She hated this. She just wanted to be alone. The only person she was looking forward to seeing was Arthur, and even then, she was incredibly nervous. What would he think of them when he saw them? What would he say?
Surely he knew what they were capable of – what they had become. They’d dropped off a dismembered werewolf corpse to him for Merlin’s sake. He had to know they killed it.
But knowing and seeing are two different things, Hermione reminded herself as she followed Harry out of the tent.
She forced her brain to recite the countless notes that Arthur had written them, focusing on his kind words and unconditional love. His words had not stopped or changed in the slightest after they’d dropped off the dead beast, so maybe there was a chance that he would truly accept them without the look of nervous discomfort that they got from everyone else.
It wasn’t that she didn’t understand people’s hesitation. She wasn’t stupid; she knew what she and Harry looked like, and she knew they gave off a tense unwelcoming vibe. She knew that they both flinched at loud noises, spoke differently, and came across as completely different people than before – because they were. And while she didn’t care what people thought, it still stung to watch people that you used to know look at you like you were a stranger. Like they were terrified of you – and she could not stomach the idea of seeing that look on Arthur’s face. She clung to the hope that Arthur would be like Bill and Fleur – perhaps a bit nervous at first but still accepting, cautiously warming to them and willing to continue interacting with them.
Unlike Dean, who was terrified of them and wanted nothing to do with them. Luna was her own case study, and Hermione knew that she could not expect unwavering acceptance from people in the way that Luna dished it out.
At the end of the day, though, she could and would deal with whatever happened – because the thing that mattered most to her was Harry, and Harry accepted her and what they were just like she did. She just hoped no one was stupid enough to try and coddle her over her arm and shaking body. She hoped that Arthur had warned the others to leave her alone and back off with the questions.
She waited quietly on the sand in the warm spring sun as Harry removed the tent pegs and packed their home into her purse. It was the only way that they would feel safe going to the meeting – arrive late with their belongings packed so that they could leave if things went wrong. It may seem paranoid, but it was just how they functioned now. It was what they did. It was how they lived their lives. They’d already agreed on an apparition location in case they needed to bail, and they even cast a shield charm on themselves before they began making their way across the sand. They trusted Arthur, Bill, and Fleur – but they did not know Nasir, and they would not allow themselves to be ambushed.
“Are you ready?” Harry asked her quietly as he fell into step beside her.
“No,” Hermione said after a brief pause. “Are you?”
“Fuck no,” Harry snorted, and she couldn’t help but smile. They continued a few more steps silently before he spoke again. “What do you want to say when they ask?”
“Nothing,” she said through a sigh. She knew that he was talking about their worn appearance and her uncontrollable tremors. “I’d like to say nothing because it is none of their business – but I doubt that they will let it go depending on who’s there. I just hope Mrs. Weasley isn’t here – she will freak out, and I won’t be able to handle it, Harry. I don’t want to get angry with anyone there or accidentally hurt someone.”
“I know,” Harry said quietly, his gaze flicking to hers as they walked along the water. “Just keep reminding yourself that they mean well and that more minds are better than one – but don’t say anything you’re not comfortable with. You don’t owe anyone anything. If it is too much, and you get too anxious, we’ll leave.”
“I know,” Hermione breathed, trying to ease the nervousness from her body. Harry wasn’t wrong. In a lot of ways, telling the Order what happened might open the door to better solutions for her arm. She just really didn’t want to talk about it with them or relive the experience. The thought of having the meeting turn into some kind of impromptu caring group therapy session where everyone had feelings made her nauseous. “I’ll just get it done and over with quick – I’m not going to sit through a pity party or go into details about almost dying multiple times.”
“I know,” Harry said softly, catching her right hand and giving it a squeeze. “I wouldn’t have expected anything less.”
She could feel Harry’s hold tighten as they moved slowly across the sand toward the warm and welcoming-looking cottage. Though, nothing about it felt welcoming to her. She would take their dark worn-out old tent any day over setting foot in that cottage. Yet, she and Harry had not been willing to have anyone else come inside the tent, it was too risky, and it was their home. Only Bill, Luna, and occasionally Fleur were allowed to set foot inside. So, they had both agreed that meeting up at the cottage would be better. That way, they could come with the tent and all their belongings packed.
She had no idea what to expect when they got inside. She suspected that Arthur would be there with Nasir – and that was already more people than what she was comfortable with. She hadn’t even allowed herself to think about what would happen if she ran into Ron. She hoped for his sake that Luna and Bill were smart enough to lock him up somewhere, or this time she would not hesitate to pummel the boy in front of his family if he did something stupid. Neither Bill nor Fleur had said anything to them about Ron’s bloody return to the cottage the day before – but the couple wasn’t stupid. They knew. They knew exactly how he had been injured. She suspected that Bill was just thankful his brother wasn’t dead.
She swallowed hard as the cottage grew closer. The windows were charmed so that no one could see in, but the light from inside still glowed softly against the fading red sun. Its warm spring rays beat down against her back as her shadow grew longer across the sand before her, and her anxiety grew.
It’s just another mission, she thought, repeating the words that she’d said to herself while she showered. Just another task. Just another thing that has to be done. Just ignore everyone and focus on the mission. Focus on the task. Keep your hand at your side and stay calm. These people are your friends. You know them. You love them. Relax. Harry is with me.
They’d reached the cottage, and she felt her pulse quicken as she watched Harry reach forward and turn the handle.
Bill had told them to just come directly in, but it felt weird. They did not belong here. This cottage was beautiful, untainted, calm, peaceful, and pure. She and Harry were warped, damaged, broken, dark, and violent. It made her stomach twist over as he opened the door, and they slowly stepped inside.
She was immediately met with the rich smell of coffee, cakes, and freshly picked flowers. At the back of her mind, she apologized to Bill for serving him their own stale coffee at the tent when clearly, he had much fresher and delicious coffee in his home. Though it made her growing trust and appreciation for him tingle with warmth when she thought about how he had graciously accepted every time and drank the entire mug without complaint.
Her eyes darted around rapidly, she had never been in the cottage before, and she quickly took in the small living room to her left, the small doorway at the back of it, the hallway and staircase before her, and the kitchen and dining room table to her right. There were several figures sitting around the table, and all of them turned their attention to the door as the cold spring air blew in around them. Only a second had passed, but she had taken them all in.
Fleur was standing in the kitchen and pouring mugs of steaming coffee. Bill, who was seated near the head of the table next to Lupin, gave them a smile in greeting. Across from Lupin sat Shacklebolt, and next to him was a tall man that she’d never seen before in her life. She assumed that it must be Nasir. To her relief, the only other red hair in the room belonged to Arthur, who was standing near Lupin because he had gotten out of his seat the second the door opened, and she knew he was staring at them.
The others were upstairs. She could feel it, just like how she could feel the silencing wards that surrounded the main floor and encompassed them the second they entered the cottage. None of the other guests would be privy to the meeting details; someone had made sure of that.
Her eyes locked to Arthur’s, and her chest tightened.
Blue.
Bright blue and filled with love.
He looked so genuinely happy to see them that it made an ache she had not been expecting tug roughly across her heart. She felt Harry’s grip on her hand tighten before he let go, and she knew that he had felt it too.
There he was, in the flesh. The man who had helped them, accepted them, guided them, offered to give them anything, cared for them, and had written her countless kind words and given them unconditional love and support over the last few weeks. She swallowed hard as he took two very slow and cautious steps forward. She could feel everyone’s eyes on them, and her discomfort grew. She felt like a zoo animal, and she hated it. She had never liked being the center of attention, but this was worse than ever before. So she forced herself to only look at Arthur and ignore everyone else.
“Hermione, Harry,” Arthur said slowly. He took another few steps towards them, and Hermione noted that he seemed very careful about keeping his motions controlled and smooth. He looked like he wanted to rush over and pull them into a hug but was obviously restraining. “I’m glad you came.”
“Arthur,” she heard his name leave her mouth at the same moment it left Harry’s. “It’s really nice to finally see you again.”
Hermione did not miss the curious look that crossed Bill’s face when both she and Harry called his father by his first name.
Arthur’s jaw clenched, and his eyes welled at her words. He nodded, then closed the distance between them. Neither Hermione nor Harry flinched as he stopped only inches before them. He hesitated visibly for a second and then carefully placed one hand on each of their outer shoulders.
“I have thought about you two every day since you left,” he said quietly, leaning in closer toward them. His hold on them was brief, and he stepped back after a few quick seconds to give them space. “I am so incredibly thankful that you two are okay. I brought you a care package and some potion supplies – so don’t let me forget to give it to you before I leave.”
Hermione nodded, unable to say anything as her throat burned and her emotions churned violently. If she opened her mouth, she would fall apart, and she couldn’t allow it to happen in front of all these people. She heard Harry thank him from her side, and some of the tension slid from her body. His physical contact had not made her uncomfortable or made her flinch. She supposed that it was a testament to how fundamentally she trusted this man. It was reminiscent of Luna, but it also filled her heart with a spark of hope that maybe one day all this nervous anxiety would lessen and she wouldn’t be so uncomfortable around groups of people.
Arthur smiled at them, his gaze so emotional it was painful. “Let’s take a seat, shall we? I saved the end by the door for you both.”
“Thank you,” Hermione smiled at him, the first honest smile she had given anyone but Harry since September. His consideration seemed to know no bounds, and even here, he was doing what little he could to keep them comfortable and safe by giving them the exit seats.
She and Harry followed him carefully to the table to take their chairs. Arthur’s kindness and familiar welcoming nature had done a lot to calm her nerves, but she still felt skittish and weary as she moved – for she knew that everyone’s eyes – except Bill’s and Fleur’s, were on her.
Not Harry.
Her.
They were watching her shaking form and dangling arm. They watched with worried and wide expressions as she moved it to lay across her lap with her right hand once she took her seat. But before anyone at the table could open their mouths, Fleur bustled over and placed a plate of cookies on the table with a warm smile.
“’Arry, ‘Ermione – would you like some coffee?” She asked as she held up the pot and summoned two mugs.
“Please,” Harry answered, and Hermione nodded in agreement.
The entire table, aside from Nasir, seemed to sit on the edge of their seats in silence, watching as Fleur poured them two cups of coffee as if they were waiting for the exchange to finish so that they could unleash their questions. It looked like they were almost bursting at the seams. When Fleur had finally finished nosily fixing them their drinks, and Hermione suspected that she’d purposely taken her time doing so, Lupin spoke first.
“Hermione,” he said softly, watching her with concern. His eyes darted between her and Arthur, and it was clear he had not been told about her injuries. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Hermione said firmly, hoping he would just accept the response as she reached for her coffee with a shaking hand. She gave him a tight smile that did not meet her eyes, though she supposed it was better than the glare that she had considered giving him. She knew he was asking out of concern, and she did not want to snap at the kind man, but she was exhausted and frustrated, and she really did not want to play twenty questions. “Had an unfortunate little run-in, but I’m alright.”
Please don’t look at me like that, she thought as she took a sip of her coffee and did her best to lower the mug without spilling any.
It was hard.
She was so stupid; she should have used the dreamless sleep draught. If she had, her tremors wouldn’t have been so bad. Now everyone but Bill, Fleur, and Nasir were looking at her like she was wounded.
“A run-in – I – Hermione,” Lupin looked like he was struggling to process what he saw. He was staring at her desperately, his eyes flicking to her arm and back to her completely indifferent face. “How did this – what happened to your arm? Is there anything I can do? Arthur! Why didn’t you say something – I could have brought supplies! Why didn’t you bring a healer with us?”
He had turned to glare at Arthur as if the man had known the extent of Hermione’s injuries and done nothing, which wasn’t the case at all. Arthur knew about her tremors but not about her arm. Hermione felt her eyes harden, and she glared at the greying man before her. She liked Lupin. She genuinely did. She understood his concern and even understood his reaction, but she would not tolerate him assuming that Arthur had not helped. Not after everything that Arthur had done for them.
“My arm doesn’t work because Bellatrix jammed a cursed dagger into my shoulder before we escaped the Manor,” Hermione said, ripping the band-aid off all at once.
The air in the cottage instantly grew tight as she glared around the table in irritation. She felt like she and Harry had sucked the warmth and life right out of the room, and the death that haunted them filled the space like a thick poisonous gas. She could feel her annoyance growing like a balloon, and her anxiety was starting to spike. So far, this was going exactly how she had not wanted it to go. The purpose of the meeting had already been forgotten, and all eyes were on her. She was getting the exact looks that she had not wanted to get, and the only way she could have felt more uncomfortable was if Mrs. Weasley had been here.
She clenched her jaw and forced herself to breathe.
She did not want to spend any portion of this meeting discussing herself or being pitied. She would not tolerate it. She knew that she was reacting more angrily than warranted, but her lack of sleep had left her short-tempered. It was time to stamp this out now and get it over and done with so that they could all move on and focus on more important things. They needed to discuss the werewolf den, and she was not about to relive her trauma for the benefit of everyone in this room just so they could satisfy their own curiosity or feel like they had helped her by showing their concern.
“Which is not something that a healer could have addressed. There is no cure for cruciatus tremors, Lupin – otherwise, I would have already fixed this,” she said matter-of-factly as she glared around the table once more. “I have already asked Arthur for help, and I specifically told him not to tell anyone else about what had happened, so don’t get mad at him. Now, it is my understanding that Nasir is here tonight because he might be able to help, but I was under the impression that the point of tonight’s meeting was to discuss the werewolf banding magic – not to sit around and gape at my arm! Or have I been misinformed? Because I’m perfectly well aware that I’m shaking, I know that my arm doesn’t work, and I did not come to this meeting to satisfy everyone’s curiosity about what happened at Malfoy Manor. So unless anyone else here knows anything about curing the lingering effects of the cruciatus or cursed deep tissue damage – I’d appreciate it if you could all stop staring at me like I’m a wounded animal.”
Her words left the room ringing with silence. Lupin looked hurt, Arthur looked tense, Nasir seemed indifferent yet was watching her carefully, and Shacklebolt was speechless. Fleur, oddly, gave her a supportive nod. She knew it was harsh, but her body was aching. She did not want to be here. She did not want to be a specimen for them to fawn over. She just wanted to be treated like anyone else and get through the content of the meeting before she passed out in exhaustion.
“I’m sorry, Remus,” Arthur said in a strained voice as he turned to look at Lupin. “I did not know about Hermione’s arm, and she asked me not to disclose any of the details about her injuries.”
“Wait – she asked you directly?” It was Bill who spoke, and he was looking at his father curiously.
“We’ve been in contact,” Harry said rather offhandedly, and Bill’s eyebrow arched. “But that’s beside the point. We’re not going to rehash what happened at the Manor – we came here to discuss the werewolf den so we can put a stop to it and to meet with Nasir.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry, Hermione,” Lupin said with a pained expression. He looked genuinely crushed as his eyes flicked between the two of them. “I didn’t know – I didn’t mean to pry, I just – you just – I was caught off guard. You know that I respect your privacy. I only want to help if I can – and I am so sorry for what you have been through.”
“Yes, well – shit happens,” Hermione said dryly, dropping her eyes to the papers on the table as discomfort inched down her spine. “May we start the meeting, please?”
Arthur cleared his throat and awkwardly nodded his head. “Kingsley, if you would like to make the introductions?”
“Of course.” Shacklebolt nodded. Her anger and words had surprised him, and he glanced at them as if something had clicked into place in his head. As if he’d figured something out that Hermione was unaware of. “As you’ve already noted, Nasir is here – so I’d like to introduce you to him. He is a member of the Order and was helping with the war efforts in Bulgaria. However, I requested his return to England to assist with this operation. Nasir has agreed to do whatever he can to help you out.”
Nasir nodded to them but made no motion of reaching out to shake hands, for this Hermione was grateful, and she and Harry both nodded back in his direction before Shacklebolt continued in a lower tone.
“I want to thank you both for doing what you did – for getting everyone out, but I will not ask you to discuss it any further. Arthur, would you like to go through the plans that you and Bill have drafted?”
“Of course,” Arthur smiled, but it felt forced. Then he launched into an explanation of everything they had been working on so far while Bill took notes.
The details were… concerning, to say the least.
As it turned out, the den was multiple layers underground and housed not only the banded werewolves, but also the captives awaiting transformation. The entire facility was heavily warded and guarded by rotating watch pairs. There were four main sewer lines that crossed beneath the den then divided up into small lines that threaded throughout the city. In order to attack the den, they needed to close off each of the four lines and then push their way into the den toward the center. Once at the center, they could destroy the facility using a complicated modified muggle explosion that Arthur had spent the last few weeks developing. The blast would ignite the main gas line to the building and cause a large enough explosion to obliterate the den and wipe out the werewolves and bonded pairs.
Nasir had apparently mapped out the entire base and collected enough data on their movements that he could predict within 97.8% certainty exactly where each member of the den would be and when. Which meant that they knew their attack window was limited to certain days and certain times and that the window was only seven and a half minutes long.
During those seven and a half minutes, they needed to seal the sewer connections, cut the main gas line feed, ward it to prevent the explosion from igniting the entire city, take out the guards, breach the wards undetected, re-ward the building to contain the explosion, and place the bomb inside the den on the lowest level in the lab room to guarantee maximum destruction. The plan was incredibly complicated and dangerous, and it remained incomplete because they were divided on whether or not it was the proper solution. Seven and a half minutes did not give them enough time to rescue anyone. It was barely enough time to blow the den up and destroy the research. Arthur and Lupin were both hesitant to execute the attack. They wanted to find a way to pull the muggles from the den.
So, Arthur insisted on knowing more about the banding magic before they made their move. In the meantime, he had been working with Shacklebolt and Fleur to create a safe place for any rescued victims to be contained. Fleur had been brewing wolfsbane and healing potions for the last few weeks to prepare, and Bill had been assisting with the attack plan. Lupin had been providing input on the plan and expert advice on handling the werewolves, and Nasir had been adding in his expertise where needed and collecting the information.
During the explanation, Hermione noticed that Nasir had remained silent. She had yet to hear him speak at all, but she wasn’t fooled by his quiet disposition. The man was watching everyone closely, especially her, his eyes captured every movement and expression, and he was consuming the information like a hungry shark. At one point, when Arthur was discussing a possible scenario for gaining an additional minute that could be used strictly for rescue, her eyes caught Nasir’s dark gaze for a split second, and she felt a hollow emptiness pass between them.
She knew the look in his eyes – it was the same one that she and Harry now carried. It was the cool indifference of someone who had seen death, accepted death, and granted it. She knew without a doubt in her mind that Nasir knew exactly what they were capable of and exactly the sorts of things they’d been through. But instead of finding it unnerving as she suspected many of the other Order members would have, she found it oddly comforting. This was precisely the type of man who might be able to help her. He’d seen things, done things. He would know things that others could never know.
She was glad that Arthur had brought him.
“Hermione – with the bonds, if the bands are removed, will the muggles return to a traditional werewolf cycle?” Arthur asked when the presentation of their plans and information had finally finished.
Hermione exhaled deeply. She knew where this was going, and it would not be an easy conversation.
“Yes, the band contains the stasis charm, so once it is removed, if the subject is still alive, they will no longer be forced to remain in werewolf form. Hypothetically, if you were to attack outside of the full moon and remove their bands, they would all revert back to human form. Though band removal while the subject is alive is complicated,” Hermione said, meeting his gaze and knowing that he would not like what she told him. “But Arthur – the lingering effects from the banding will remain permanently.”
“What do you mean?” Shacklebolt’s brow creased in confusion.
“The stasis charm they created is unbalanced – it’s killing them. It’s why they die so quickly,” Hermione stated plainly. “Once you remove the bands, no additional damage will occur, but the genetic abnormalities caused by wearing it for the duration that they had it on are irreversible. Even if you free them, it is unlikely that any of them will live much longer than a year – possibly four at the most, and that doesn’t factor in the damage that will occur after each future transformation they make. That damage has been minimized thus far as most of them have only transformed once, but going forward, they will be a normal werewolf and change once a month.”
“So – are you suggesting that we leave them to die?” Lupin looked at her incredulously.
Hermione felt her heart harden. It was like she was disappointing him. He hadn’t seemed to be surprised that she was the one who had uncovered the truth about the banding magic. He wasn’t surprised that she was the one who had discovered the stasis charm or the way they were created. But he seemed immensely unnerved by her demeanour and her attitude towards it.
She knew that he and many of the others here might struggle to come to accept her new harsh outlook on life. She knew Lupin found her reaction or lack thereof unnerving. After all, she and Harry had just sat through a rather disturbing account of the werewolf facility operations and had not blinked. They’d been completely void of any reaction. In contrast, Fleur had looked like she was going to be sick at a few moments, and Bill had visibly frowned. Arthur looked deeply haunted by the information, and Lupin was exhausted and weary while Shacklebolt was tense. The only other member of the room who seemed indifferent aside from Harry was Nasir – and Hermione got the distinct impression that Nasir was not liked by most of the group.
He was tolerated.
“I’m not suggesting anything,” Hermione said flatly, trying to keep her underlying agitation and unease at bay. “I’m simply telling you the facts. If you have the means to rescue them – by all means, go ahead. But be prepared to deal with the consequences. These people will die slow, painful deaths very similar to how a muggle would die from traditional cancer.”
“There is no way to repair the damage?” Arthur asked.
“Not that I am aware of,” she said, and she could see Arthur’s faint look of hope fizzle out. “Given enough time and research, you might be able to find something to ease their pain, but I don’t think that you could truly repair the damage or give them a full life.”
“Your best bet is to focus your attention on saving those who have not yet been transformed, or those who have been recently transformed – as they stand the best chance of survival,” Harry added as he took a sip of his coffee.
The room felt immensely tense as the table digested the information. She had anticipated this. She knew that discussing the harsh reality of the banding magic would be difficult and that the truth would not be received well. In some ways, she felt bad for them, for the Order, because they still allowed themselves to feel so much so easily. In other ways, she almost envied them.
After what happened at the Manor, she had become even more detached in situations that made her uncomfortable, and right now, she was very uncomfortable. Therefore, she felt even less than usual. She knew it was an unhealthy coping mechanism, but that was something that she would need to address later.
“How do we remove the bands?” Arthur asked quietly after the table had been silent for a long while. He sounded a bit defeated, but Hermione admired the fact that he still refused to give up.
She knew that he wanted to save them all. He was a good man and had a brave heart. He just wanted to help, and he was willing to risk his life to do whatever he could. He was one of the most giving and selfless humans she had ever had the pleasure of knowing. Which was why she knew her next words would shatter him even more, and so she found herself hesitating.
It hurt.
It physically hurt her to do this to him, but she and Harry had already discussed it and agreed. She sighed outwardly and grabbed her coffee mug.
Time to let the past officially die, she thought, knowing that her next remark would shatter any lingering image they had of her old optimistic, happy, naive self.
“I won’t tell you,” Hermione said it slowly as her eyes flicked between them, and she lifted the white porcelain mug to her lips and took a sip.
The liquid in the cup sloshed as she held it and observed the wide-eyed expressions around her. They were without words. They had not been expecting that, but they were wrong in their assumption.
She wanted to help. She wasn’t denying them the information because she disagreed with a rescue attempt. She was not so cold as to condemn hundreds of innocent muggles to death – far from it. She and Harry had risked their lives to save Rose, and she would do it all again, over and over, no questions asked. However, she would not condemn innocent muggles to live out a miserable life where they died slowly, in agony, in a world that they did not understand away from family and friends. Not after what they’d been through – not after they’d been forced to kill other humans, forced to eat the sick and wounded, or after they had been raped, abused, and beaten.
No, she thought firmly as she looked at them all with her jaw set tight. She would not tell them how to save them unless they agreed to her terms.
“Not unless you agree that you will kill the ones who ask for death after you’ve rescued them,” she said evenly.
“What?” Arthur’s voice was a surprised whisper.
“We will help you save as many as you can. We will help you rehabilitate them, heal them – whatever they need. But some of them will want to die – some of them will not be able to accept what happened to them. They won’t be able to deal with it,” Harry said quietly at her side.
“I’m sorry, Arthur,” Hermione grimaced as she set down her cup and spilled some of the coffee. She was aware that the room had gone silent. “But you’ve seen the notes. You know how bad it is. I’ve seen them in person – it’s even worse. Some of them will ask you for mercy. They will want death over living alone in a world that they do not understand while they die painfully and transform into a werewolf once a month. Muggles don’t heal as we do in between transformations, so each time, it becomes increasingly painful. You must be prepared to grant them that mercy if they want it, or I will not help you. After everything these people have been through, I will not sentence them to another year or more of torment just so that we can feel better about ourselves and think that we’ve helped.”
“Hermione –“Arthur faltered. He looked like he’d made some realization that had broken his heart, but Lupin cut him off.
“And how do you propose we do that? Poison them in their sleep?” The greying man looked upset, but Hermione knew he understood it was the truth. He was just reacting.
Hermione looked at him plainly. “A quick and painless death would be preferable.”
“Hermione,” Arthur said sadly, meeting her gaze almost desperately. “I’m not sure we can even agree to do that. It would be illegal and considered a crime against muggles. It would be treated as the murder of innocents.”
“Most things that happen in war are illegal,” Hermione said, and she gave him a pained look. “But it is the right thing to do, Arthur.”
“Hermione, we understand where you’re coming from, truly we do, but it’s not that simple. Legalities aside, that is a huge ask to make of anyone,” Shacklebolt said as he shook his head. Then he turned to look at Harry in question. “Harry, surely you understand that asking someone to kill–”
“I’m in agreement with Hermione,” Harry stated firmly, cutting Shacklebolt off before he could even attempt a plea in his direction. “We’ve already discussed this at length – I will not help you free people just so you can keep them contained somewhere else while they die a little slower. I understand where you’re coming from, Shacklebolt. It’s a hard situation, but that’s the reality of war.”
“Are you saying that you would kill them if they asked you to?” Lupin asked, his voice so low it was nearly a whisper as he watched her carefully.
“Grant them a peaceful death rather than watch them suffer or take their own lives in agony?” Hermione said, meeting his eyes with an even stare. “It would be the least that I could do after what they have been through. Yes, Lupin. I would.”
The room went quiet again, and Hermione could practically hear everyone’s hearts thumping. She looked to Arthur, hoping that he would understand, and then she saw it – he wasn’t angry, he wasn’t upset – he just looked at her steadily with a heartbroken expression for her. And she knew.
He knows that I killed Rose. The thought echoed in her head as she continued to meet his eyes. He didn’t say a word, but she could feel his heart breaking on her behalf. He was devastated that she had taken that burden, but yet he showed no judgement.
Then a voice she didn’t recognize spoke up, and her eyes flashed to Nasir.
“I will do it,” Nasir said calmly, his voice level and indifferent. “Shacklebolt, you know just as well as everyone else at this table the many questionable things that have been done as part of this war. If the problem is simply finding someone to do it, then consider that problem resolved.”
“Fine,” Shacklebolt said after a long paused, and he rubbed his eyes wearily.
Nasir had been right. None of them disagreed with her. They didn’t necessarily reject the idea either; they were just unwilling to do it. They didn’t want to be responsible for taking an innocent life and carrying the weight of that death or their shoulder, and they didn’t want to ask anyone else to bear the burden for them.
“You have my word, Hermione,” Shacklebolt said as he met his gaze. “How do we remove the bands?”
“Kingsley, we’re not talking about killing Death Eaters we’re talking about killing innocent muggles,” Arthur said quietly as he looked at Shacklebolt with a tight expression. “Surely once we have them, we can find a way to help them.”
“We’re not talking about slaughtering them, Arthur – we’re talking about assisted dying,” Shacklebolt sighed and gave him a tired look. “No one will die unless they ask for it, and even then, it will be a conversation to make sure that it is what they truly want.”
Arthur exhaled deeply and pinched the bridge of his nose. It was ultimately Shacklebolt’s call, so even though he struggled with it, he would relent. “How do we remove the bands?”
Hermione spent the next forty-five minutes explaining how to remove the bands while the werewolves were still bonded to their owners. She pulled the ones that she kept in her black box out from her purse to use as an example and ignored the looks on the other Order member’s faces as she plunked four sets onto the table. She’d long since established that they posed no threat once dismantled, so they were safe to handle.
Even Arthur raised a brow at the display. He had known about the one werewolf, but not the other. She carefully avoided explaining how the banding process itself worked. No one else needed to know that information. It was too dangerous. And instead, she only told them how to remove the bands without killing the muggles. She suggested that for the ones they could save, they be immediately stunned and bound as they would likely panic once they were free. Harry further suggested that the werewolves be stunned prior to removing the bands if at all possible so that they could transform back to human form in the safety of the protective location Arthur and Shacklebolt had arranged.
This resulted in Harry and Hermione explaining how to set up a tether. The odds of successfully stunning a werewolf was practically 0% hence the reason why she and Harry simply shredded them, but a tether would work to keep them pinned momentarily so that the bands could be safely removed. It was something that would never work on a wizard werewolf but would on a muggle one.
By the time the conversation was over, Hermione had finished her second cup of coffee, and Lupin looked a little more relaxed. Arthur looked happy that he could now free the victims and held a firm determination in his eyes. Hermione knew that he would not allow any of them to die or ask for death until he had at least tried to help them. For their sake, she hoped he was able to. Those people deserved another chance at life if they wanted it. She was also pleased to see that Arthur and Lupin appeared to hold no resentment towards them after their disagreement on mercy killings. However, Lupin did still look at her with a concerned expression that made her uncomfortable.
They agreed to meet again on Friday night so that Harry could show them how to create a shield charm as it might save their lives when they entered the den. They discussed Hermione and Harry’s involvement in the infiltration, but Arthur seemed hesitant to let them come along. So, they agreed to reassess it on Friday after Hermione had reviewed her injuries with Nasir.
“Thank you, Hermione,” Arthur said quietly after taking a long sip from his fresh cup of coffee. “We would not have been able to figure this out without you – any of this. You’re going to save countless lives.”
“It was no trouble,” Hermione said as she placed the bands back in her black box. “Thank you for taking over the planning and putting in all of this effort. Harry and I would not have been able to abolish the den on our own.
“How did you come across four sets of bands?” Lupin asked casually. He kept his face neutral, but Hermione knew he was fishing. He was still curious about their activities.
“We had a few encounters with them,” she said nonchalantly, not giving him any details. Sometimes the less information shared, the better. “I took the bands so that I could research them.”
“I see,” Lupin said slowly, and he swallowed. “I assume that was no easy feat.”
“No, it wasn’t,” she said, then she held his gaze and gave him a grim look. “But they’re a lot easier to remove when they’re dead. Arthur, did you have any other questions on the banding?”
“I think we have everything,” Arthur said as Shacklebolt started to pile up the papers on the table. “Perhaps you and Nasir can discuss your tremors while the rest of us go through the notes you took, Bill?”
“Yes, of course,” Bill said as he resorted the pages before him.
“’ Ermione – you may use ze room just off ze living room. I ‘ave warded it as well.” Fleur nodded her head in the direction of the living room.
“Alright – thank you, Fleur,” Hermione said. She carefully removed herself from the table, and Harry stood with her since there was no way she would allow herself to be alone with the tall, mysterious stranger.
Nasir followed their lead, standing from his seat as well.
His movements were swift and soundless, and had she not known that he was there, she wouldn’t have been able to detect his presence as he followed them toward the door at the end of the living room. She could feel Arthur’s eyes watching them as they moved, and she could tell he was apprehensive. It was clear Arthur did not trust Nasir, which wasn’t reassuring - but he allowed them to go without protest, so she took that as a good sign. She felt her skin prickle as she opened the door at the end of the living room and crossed the new wards into the small main floor bedroom.
Once the door was shut, Harry cast three of his own wards, and she turned to face Nasir.
Arthur watched as Nasir followed Harry into the small main floor bedroom of the cottage, and he felt his jaw tighten. He did not like the idea of leaving the two of them alone with that man, but he didn’t have a choice. Regardless of whether or not he trusted him, Nasir was the only person who might be able to help Hermione. Besides, it was clear that both Hermione and Harry would be fine. Based on how the conversation this evening had gone, it was now plainly obvious that they had changed.
They were not the two young little adults that had left his house back in the summer. Instead, they were hardened warriors, seriously detached, and calculatingly dangerous. He had already known that, or at least, he thought that he had known it after he had caught a glimpse of them on the snow-covered hill. But now, he felt like that knowledge had been beaten into him, much like being hit by a bludger multiple times, which left him exhausted. The truth was inescapable, and now everyone else knew it too.
Hermione and Harry had changed.
Arguably, the two of them would have a better shot at handling Nasir, should he betray them, than he himself or any of the other Order members at the table would. Aside from Shacklebolt, of course. Yet, that thought did not comfort him. It only made his heart ache deeper as a hollow sadness crept across his chest. He had suspected that Hermione and Harry had killed the werewolf they delivered to him. But he could have never anticipated that they had killed two werewolves – not to mention the two corresponding bonded wizards that were paired with the beasts.
The way that she had dumped the bands on the table had rattled him. She had laid them out calmly as if they were commonly found items. As if she had just picked them up from the store that morning. What really broke his heart, though, was knowing that they had killed Rose – that she had killed Rose. He could see it in her empty eyes. He could feel it in his chest when he listened to her speak. Hermione didn’t have to express anything on her face to give it away. In fact, it was the empty indifference and lack of expression she had when speaking about death and killing that had made him realize it.
She had cast an unforgivable.
Hermione Granger, the brightest witch of her age and the kindest, most caring young girl he had met, had cast the killing curse to grant that woman a peaceful death.
It had to have been the killing curse. He was certain, for the body of the woman that Thomas had retrieved was undamaged aside from the werewolf injuries. That alone was evidence enough, but it was the way in which she spoke about granting mercy that had turned the cog in his brain, and suddenly all the pieces fell together.
It’s too much, he thought as he forced himself to turn back toward his eldest son. They shouldn’t have had to deal with this. They shouldn’t have been forced to make that decision.
They were too young. They were supposed to be at school worrying about grades, Quidditch matches, who was dating whom, and what they wanted to be when they grew up – not running around the countryside escaping death at every corner. Not being tortured by a deranged madwoman and not voluntarily taking the burden of killing an innocent just so they didn’t have to suffer a slow death.
Not this.
Not any of this.
How would they ever come back to the world when this was all over? Assuming there was a world to fit into, they would never belong. He felt sick to his stomach as he swallowed and spread some pages out before him. Their lives were forever changed. They had deserved better.
And it was their fault.
It was the fault of the Order and every other adult witch or wizard who did not support You Know Who.
They had not prepared enough. They hadn’t listened or taken it as seriously as they should have. Everyone was exhausted and frightened from the last war and didn’t want to acknowledge that it might be happening again. They had buried their heads in the sand and tried to ignore the signs, and now, two kids, barely legal, were cleaning up their messes – acting with more courage, responsibility, honour, and dignity than anyone else he had met. The two of them were so realistic, logical, and determined it put many to shame.
He himself could not even begin to imagine it, to wrap his head around what they had been through. Sure, this was his second war, but he had never experienced the types of things that these two had – and he got the distinct feeling that he didn’t even know the half of it. He knew that they had been through even more than they let on, but they were choosing not to speak of it. He knew it was carved into their hearts in the same way that it had been written into Alastor and Sirius and Severus.
You could see it in their eyes.
They were damaged. Yet they remained relentless and strong, and it left him pondering a question he had never asked himself.
What would he have done if someone had asked him for death? If someone had asked him for mercy?
His stomach rolled at the thought. He wasn’t sure that he would have been able to do it. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand it; he knew why a person might request something like that. He just didn’t know if he had it in his heart to draw his wand and do it. He didn’t know if he could live with it. The conversation at the table had highlighted one of his fundamental flaws: his inability to lose hope or accept loss and defeat. He was determined to believe that he could save the ones that they rescued, and if he couldn’t, then he didn’t know what he would do.
One thing he knew for certain, though, and it burned deep in his core like an eternal flame, was that regardless of his own issues with mercy killings – he would not give up on Hermione or Harry.
He would not judge them, and he would not leave them alone in the world when the war came to its inevitable end. He would stick by them, always, and support them no matter what. He would help them. He would shelter them. He would talk to them about what happened, and reengage their humanity to rehabilitate them back into the world. He would never abandon them. He would fight by their side until the very end, and then, he would be there to pick up the pieces – because it was the least that he could do. Because they deserved better, and the world owed them that much.
He took a deep breath and gave Lupin a sympathetic smile. The poor man looked distraught. Arthur should have given him a better idea of what he was walking into, but then again, how would he have even begun to explain it? He made a mental promise to have Lupin come by for tea afterwards so he could apologize and give some context to the situation. Then he asked Bill to go over the map of the den that Nasir had supplied to them once more as his eyes glanced to the closed bedroom door. He tried to ignore the anxious worry that was washing over his body as he thought back to his conversation with Nasir in the Northern Order safe house:
March 13, 1998
“They have how many werewolves?!” Arthur asked Nasir as he flipped through the pages before him in disbelief.
“Two hundred as of tonight,” Nasir said again, his rich voice still calm and seemingly unfazed by the number. “That does not include the four muggles currently being held who have yet to be transformed. Given the number of ill werewolves in the pits, and based on the research notes I was able to skim through this week, it seems that their army is growing steadily at approximately ten werewolves per week. This factors in the death rate of the older werewolves.”
Arthur stared at Nasir incredulously. The man was unbelievable. He spoke about the numbers, the condition of the werewolves, and the way that the muggles were being held as if he was telling someone about a pleasant day he had spent gardening. There was no emotion in his voice as he confirmed his count at two hundred and once again. He seemed unaffected, and it was disconcerting, to say the least – and Arthur was starting to hate it. It wasn’t like he wanted the Order to panic, but he thought it was appropriate to feel something about the topic.
“Two hundred,” Arthur said in a flat, monotonous voice.
“Yes, that’s correct,” Nasir answered him evenly.
Arthur stared at the man across from him and clenched his jaw.
Remus had yet to arrive. He had sent a note saying that he would be late, and Shacklebolt had dropped off Nasir, since Arthur refused to give Nasir apparition rights to the safe house, and then he had run to an emergency meeting at the office. He would be back within the next half an hour. So here Arthur sat alone with the mysterious man, feeling irritated and unsettled.
His hand twitched against the table as he stared at the man’s dark gaze. Shacklebolt had told him not to pester Nasir. Shacklebolt had told him not to ask questions because Nasir would not answer them. He had said to remain focused on the mission, which Arthur was, but every morning he’d met with the man over the last week and a half, the hair on the back of his skull stood up, and he couldn’t help but wonder who the hell the guy was.
Today was the first time they had ever been alone together, and he knew he might never get another opportunity to speak to the man frankly.
“How long were you an Unspeakable?” The question came from Arthur’s mouth easier than any of the other words he’d ever spoken to Nasir up until this point, as now, he was speaking from the heart and asking the things that he really wanted to know. “What did you do when you worked with them?”
Nasir remained motionless before him, eyeing him carefully. Quiet stretched between them, and Arthur assumed that Nasir was not only not going to answer the question, but that he also wasn’t going to speak at all and would instead wait until Shacklebolt returned. So, he almost flinched when Nasir opened his mouth, and the low baritone response rolled out.
“I see that you still distrust me,” Nasir said smoothly, his dark eyes never leaving Arthur’s face. “Though I must ask you, Arthur, why would you think that having me disclose my past would improve that? I suspect that sharing that information would only make you even more skeptical.”
Arthur frowned, but continued to meet Nasir’s eyes. It wasn’t an answer, but at least the man was talking.
“We are preparing to embark on a very dangerous mission, Nasir,” Arthur said slowly, watching the indifferent man closely for any sign or signal, regardless of how small. “It will put people’s lives at risk. The Order cannot handle another loss after losing Albus and Severus. I know that Kingsley trusts you – so I apologize if my lack of trust is insulting or if my curiosity seems foolish to you. But I do not trust people who I do not know, and we cannot afford to have you sabotage this mission or our members. I’m asking you because I want to know who you are and because I want to be able to trust you. I want to know why you’re here.”
“That’s reasonable,” Nasir said calmly. “I am not insulted by your remark. In fact, I am somewhat surprised that it took you this long to bring it up.”
“Kingsley told me not to address it,” Arthur said stiffly.
“I see.” Nasir eyed him knowingly, a strange glint forming in his eyes. “Did it occur to you that he may have said that because I can’t tell you? That even if I did feel so inclined to tell you my life’s stories, that I am not able to?”
“What do you mean by can’t?” Arthur asked as his eyes narrowed.
He had heard rumours of the Unspeakables being bound or restrained from speaking, but they were only rumours. Many people argued that Unspeakables chose not to speak about their lives because that’s how dark they were. It had never been confirmed or denied by an actual Unspeakable whether or not they were literally incapable of talking.
Nasir watched him for a long moment, and then, to Arthur’s disbelief, he slowly reached up to the collar of his crisp white shirt and unbuttoned the top two buttons. His fingers moved deftly, and once he had split his collar open to reveal more tanned skin, he tilted his head back to the ceiling, craning and exposing his neck. Then, he placed a long slender finger at the tip of the underside of his chin. Arthur felt his breath catch in his lungs as he watched the scene unfold before him, unsure of what was about to happen as Nasir slowly traced his finger down the length of his neck to the base of his throat.
And Arthur’s eyes widened.
There were runes marking his neck. A series of three that repeated themselves from the underside of his jaw all the way down to the junction of his neck and collarbone. Arthur didn’t recognize them. He had never studied the subject at Hogwarts nor done any reading on the topic, but they were dark black against his skin. They almost looked like tattoos except that Arthur knew in his gut that the markings had been cut into the man’s flesh.
It was a rune carving. Ancient and dark magic that had been discontinued over a hundred years ago. It was illegal, though these had undoubtedly been carved to prevent him from speaking about certain things. He had never seen anything like it.
Had this been done by the Ministry?
Nasir lowered his head back down, meeting Arthur’s gaze and taking in his shocked expression with no reaction.
“Regardless of my personal opinion on the matter, Arthur,” Nasir said slowly, the runes moving with his skin as he spoke. “I would not be able to tell you what you want to know even if I desired it. What I can tell you – is that I was an Unspeakable for a long time and that I did many things.”
Arthur stared at him silently, unsure of what to say. He hadn’t truly been expecting Nasir to respond to his request, let alone show him the binding magic that was placed on an Unspeakable. The candid response completely caught him off guard, and he could feel a distinct sense of unease sliding through his body as he watched the man before him and stared at the dark runes.
They looked almost demonic.
Each stroke of each rune was aggressive and yet disciplined. Then his discomfort intensified as Nasir’s expression shifted. He couldn’t explain what had changed, but the air in the room suddenly felt cold and tight. And Arthur felt even more uncomfortable.
“If I told you that I’d killed people – tortured them – massacred them. That I’ve seen things that no one should have to see. That I’ve done things that no one should have to do – would that make you feel better? Would you trust me more?” A low darkness had crept into Nasir’s eyes. It made Arthur’s blood run cold, and he found himself wishing the man would look anywhere else but at him. “If your question is whether or not I am a ‘good’ person, that I can answer. Let me assure you, Arthur – I am not. If your question is whether or not you can trust me, I can’t help you. I have already told you why I am here. I have already offered my services to this mission and will continue to do so until it is done. Whether you trust me or not is not my concern, nor do I care. That is up to you to decide.”
Arthur flinched as a loud pop rang out behind Nasir and his eyes darted to Shacklebolt, who had returned from his meeting and was approaching the table and calling out a greeting. When his eyes darted back to Nasir, the man’s runes were hidden, his collar was rebuttoned, his face was void of emotion, and the darkness that had crept into his eyes was gone.
Arthur swallowed.
He didn’t trust him.
Not at all.
Not as a colleague or a friend. Not as a reliable Order member or even as a decent human being. Yet, he wasn’t sure he needed to trust him to complete this mission. Without a shadow of doubt in his mind, Arthur knew that this man could obliterate them if he wanted to, but he hadn’t yet. So, either he was lying in wait and planning something big, or he wasn’t a threat – at least not to this mission.
-x-x-
Hermione turned to face Nasir.
The man was tall – taller than Harry and even than Shacklebolt. His hair was dark like his eyes, his skin was tanned, and she had been unable to determine the accent to his voice. It sounded mixed, but it was indistinguishable, and she wondered if that was on purpose. The man looked highly intelligent, keenly aware of his surroundings – perhaps he did not want anyone to know where he had originated from?
That thought sparked a concern in her mind, and she hesitated. Her eyes flicked to Harry, who stood two steps to her right before she carefully reached for Wormtail’s wand, ensuring that her movements were slow so as not to appear aggressive.
Nasir watched her hand move, though he made no attempt to stop her as she drew the wand from her pocket. She suspected his indifference had a lot to do with the fact that he would have no issues defending himself if there was an altercation. He looked capable, and he had been far too unbothered during the previous Order discussion to be anything but. Though he did not appear to be arrogant or cocky – just expressionless. Calm, like the world could be burning before him, and he wouldn’t react.
She wasn’t exactly sure what to make of him.
“Nasir,” she said carefully, watching his face intently. “I appreciate your offer to assist me – truly – so I hope you will not be offended. But given the last few encounters we’ve had, I would like to cast a simple diagnostic spell on you to confirm that you are not using Polyjuice potion.”
“Of course,” Nasir said in a low even voice as he kept his eyes on her face. Though he showed no real expression, something in his eyes hinted that he was more interested in the two of them than the meeting in the kitchen.
She hadn’t needed to cast the spell on any of the other Order members in the kitchen because Bill had explained to her and Harry how the wards on the cottage worked. They were tied to the magical signatures and the genetic makeup of a person. So it would be impossible for anyone other than the approved Order members to appear. But Nasir wasn’t an approved Order member; he had come side along with Shacklebolt, so he could be anyone.
Hermione bit down her nerves and nodded, then cast the simple diagnostic charm. It appeared above his right shoulder, and she saw Harry glance at it as well. It was completely normal. So normal that it was actually remarkable. The man was not under the effects of any potion whatsoever. His resting heart rate was insanely low, as were his stress levels, and based on the information available, she would not be able to even attempt a guess at his age. There were no telltale signs indicating anything. He was in perfect health and in complete control of his body.
“Thank you.” Hermione flicked her finger, and the diagnostic bubble vanished. Then she repocketed the wand.
“One can never be too careful,” Nasir said calmly, his rich voice filling the small, warded room. “So, I understand that you have been suffering from cruciatus tremors – Arthur never mentioned anything about your shoulder, however.”
“I never mentioned it to him,” Hermione answered, swallowing uncomfortably as the man’s eyes flicked down to her hanging left arm. At least they were getting right down to it and cutting the crap. She had no interest in dancing around the reason they were here or having Nasir pretend that he cared or felt bad for her – it appeared that Nasir felt the same.
She liked that.
“I see.” Nasir gave no opinion on the response and seemed to accept it. His eyes darted to Harry, looking him over before speaking once more. “You are uninjured.”
“Correct,” Harry said slowly, eyeing the man before them as he kept his hand firmly on Draco’s wand at his side. His other hand was holding Hermione’s purse. “I was lucky.”
“You were,” Nasir agreed, then his eyes flicked back to Hermione. “It is remarkable that you endured torture at the hands of Ms. Lestrange. If you would like to take a seat on the chair – I would ask that you grant me the same courtesy and allow me to cast a diagnostic spell on you.”
“Alright.” Hermione swallowed and moved to the left, where Fleur had left a chair near a small table. She needed to remember to thank the woman for being so thoughtful – a chair was much more comfortable than sitting on the bed.
“Are the tremors better or worse today compared to the day that it happened?” Nasir asked as he followed her to the chair.
“Better,” Hermione said after she had taken a seat and draped her left arm across her lap. Harry had followed their movements and come to stand just behind her chair, out of the way but still able to monitor everything. “They are worse today than yesterday, though.”
“What did you do yesterday?”
“We trained.”
Nasir’s eyes flicked to her left arm, and he raised a brow. “Despite your arm?”
“I tethered it to her side,” Harry supplied, watching as Nasir drew his own wand and stood before Hermione.
“Good.” Nasir’s eyes flicked to him briefly before returning to Hermione. “You will need to do that for the next week to avoid causing any further damage.”
“So you can fix my arm?” Hermione asked, and she hated the fact that her voice sounded hopeful. At least her face remained emotionless.
“Maybe.” Nasir gave her a long quiet look, then raised his wand and cast a wordless spell.
The charm that appeared above her was one she had never seen before. There was one large bubble floating and two smaller ones circling it. They displayed an immense number of colours and signals, and Hermione didn’t know how to read them at all. She would need to ask him if he would be willing to teach it to her on Friday – right now, she did not want to interrupt his treatment process.
“How many times?” Nasir asked as his eyes skimmed over the data.
“I don’t know,” Hermione responded. She knew that he was talking about the cruciatus curse, but she honestly couldn’t answer it. They all blended together.
“Six,” Harry said quietly from behind her, and she could hear the hollowness to his voice. “Six times, then it went quiet and started again.”
“It was the dagger after that,” Hermione said, keeping her chin up and her eyes on Nasir’s empty expression. He was still reading the charm above her head.
“You should be dead,” he said simply, his eyes leaving the charm to return to her face. Though now he was looking at her carefully. “Your heart would have failed you.”
“It almost did,” Hermione said truthfully. “But Narcissa gave me something.”
“What?”
“A potion – it tasted almost like pepperup, but it wasn’t.”
“What were the effects to the potion?”
“It felt like I was kicked in the chest,” Hermione said as she thought back to the intense feelings of the potion. “It kept me awake. It made my heart beat steady and hard. It cleared my head – it forced my body to work even though I knew it shouldn’t be. It was like a shot of adrenaline, but worse, I felt like I – like someone had drugged me.”
“I see.”
“What was it? You know what it was, don’t you?” Hermione said as she watched him. She could tell. The tone of his voice had shifted a hair when he had spoken.
“It doesn’t have a name, but it is rare and expensive,” Nasir replied. “It forced your body to continue functioning and bought you time while the pain subsided. It has minor healing properties, and it kept you alive – without a doubt, it is the only reason you are here today.”
Hermione frowned at his words. “Why would she have given it to me then?”
“Perhaps to keep you alive so they could torture you further,” Nasir said evenly, seemingly unbothered by the idea. “It is not uncommon to do such a thing.”
“So what can you do about the tremors?” Harry asked.
“The tremors are a result of lingering nerve damage that occurs on a cellular level,” Nasir answered as he pulled three glass vials from the inside of his robes. They were all black, and the potion inside looked extremely fluid. “Dittany, which I assume you used to treat the physical wounds, does nothing to resolve cellular nerve damage. These, however, should repair the damage.”
“What are they?” Hermione asked as she eyed the potion. “I’ve never read anything about a nerve repairing potion.”
“Unsurprising, since there is only one man alive who can brew it,” Nasir stated indifferently. He handed two vials to Harry and then uncorked the third and handed it to Hermione. “Drink this, then drink the second two days from now and the third two days from the second.”
“Who brewed this?” Hermione asked, taking the vial from him and resting it on her leg to avoid spilling any from her tremors. “And what’s in it? Why is this not documented anywhere? Why doesn’t St. Mungo’s have this in their possession?”
Nasir looked at her for a long quiet moment before responding.
“Because this is experimental, in a sense, though I assure you that it works. It was created within the last decade, and as I have no doubt you are aware, Hermione, textbook revisions and potion approvals take decades to accomplish.”
This was true, and Hermione knew it.
Sadly, it was unlikely that a potion this valuable had been shared with anyone – but even if it had, it would not be released to the public for many years. There was a reason why the potions textbook that Harry had borrowed from the school in sixth year, despite being old and battered, was still the same one that she had purchased that summer. They released new editions every few years just so that students could buy new copies and spend more money, but the content was the same because the text had not changed in the last thirty years.
She clenched her jaw and grimaced, dropping her eyes to the vial of black liquid she held in her shaky hand.
She wanted to take it. She wanted to believe this man. She wanted it to work. Yet drinking an unknown potion was dangerous. It was reckless, and she did not want to make a life-threatening critical error because she was desperate to be healed.
“Who brewed this?” Hermione asked again, her eyes darting back to Nasir.
“Does that matter?” He asked her, arching a brow. “I assure you the individual is extremely gifted in the field.”
“Why did you agree to help?” Hermione asked quietly, her eyes narrowing into slits as she looked at him. “Why should I trust you?”
Nasir watched her carefully, his eyes circling her face. Then slowly, his gaze never leaving hers as he moved, he stepped towards her and bent at the waist, leaning down just a foot away from her face.
“You shouldn’t,” he said in a low voice, his eyes locked on her intently. “You have no reason to, and I encourage you to continue to be skeptical of everyone until the very end.”
Hermione couldn’t help but tense.
His eyes were like black pools of death, and in the back of her mind, she knew she should be afraid of him. She should be very afraid. This man was no hero. She doubted that he was a good man in any shape of the meaning. He wasn’t here to save the day and make her feel better. He exuded hollow, empty death, and he moved and watched like a predator. He was something that any sane witch or wizard should be terrified of, and yet, she couldn’t help but trust him. He was dark, mysterious, and dangerous, yes – but if he had wanted her dead, they would already be duelling. He may not be a hero, but he was indeed choosing to help her in this moment. That much she was sure of.
Even still, caution never hurt anyone.
“Harry, get the bezoar from the bag,” Hermione murmured, not taking her eyes off Nasir. “If something happens – kill him first, then stuff it down my throat.”
“Got it,” Harry said after he had wordless summoned the stone from the bag. He didn’t raise his wand – he wouldn’t need it if he was going to attack.
“Good choice,” Nasir said as he slowly returned to his full height. Hermione thought she saw a glint of amusement in his eyes as his lips twitched a fraction.
Apparently, he can emote – when he wants to, she thought as she raised the vial to her lips with her shaking hand. Though it seemed strange that he was allowing them to see it after being so void in the kitchen.
She downed the contents in one swallow and fought back the urge to hiss in pain. It was ice cold. She could feel it travel down her throat into the pit of her stomach and radiate out from her core. She focused her eyes on his face, waiting to see if she would die.
Nothing happened.
A cold numbness lingered over her body, but otherwise, she felt fine. Normal. Alive. Still shaky.
“How long does it take to work?” Harry asked behind her. He had waited to put the bezoar back in the bag until he was sure she wasn’t poisoned, and she saw him place the two remaining vials in their medical kit.
“Twenty-four hours,” Nasir replied, looking to Harry as he spoke. “I gave you enough to treat the tremors based on the stats today – tomorrow around this time, you will notice that they have subsided. Two days after the final dosage, your tremors should be gone, and the nerves will be repaired to within ten percent of their original condition. So pending on how well your body responds, it is possible that you will still experience minor tremors when you are exhausted or gravely injured. I warn you – this is no miracle cure. There are only so many times that you can repair the damage of the cruciatus curse, and eventually, nerve repair will be impossible. So, if you can manage it, avoid being on the receiving end again as your damage was already rather extensive.”
“I plan to,” Hermione said as she handed the empty vial back to him. “So, what do you know about cursed deep tissue damage?”
“Enough,” Nasir said without further explanation as he pocketed the empty vial. “Do you have the dagger?”
“Yes, I’ll get it,” Harry said, summoning her black box from the bag and opening it for Nasir.
She sat quietly on the chair, leaning against the back as she watched Nasir examine the dagger. The man prodded it with his wand and cast several wordless spells on it. As he worked, Harry came to stand directly beside her, and she leaned against him. She was exhausted. It had been an incredibly long day already, and her terrible sleep the night before was making her fade faster than usual, but she wouldn’t stop yet. Not when Nasir was here and could help them.
Finally, Nasir placed the dagger back in the black box on the bed and turned toward them.
“So?” Hermione said as she straightened in her seat. “Can you do anything?”
“Possibly,” Nasir said slowly, moving to stand before her once again. “The dagger was cursed to imitate the effects of the cruciatus curse – causing extreme pain upon use and resulting in similar lasting damage to nerves and tissues. Some of this damage will be healed by the potion you just took. However, I suspect that the reason why you cannot move your arm is a bit different. May I see the wound?”
Hermione hesitated.
She didn’t exactly feel like removing her shirt in front of a stranger, but it was a bit difficult to do anything else given the placement of the injury. Standing carefully from her chair, she removed her new black jacket, sliding it down her limp arm and taking Wormtail’s wand from the pocket to hand it to Harry. He took it and placed it on the bed next to the black box and purse, then turned back to meet her gaze with a supportive nod. She pointed her finger at her shirt and transfigured it into a thin-strapped tank top, then she sat back down and looked at Nasir.
She could see his eyes flick across her sternum to her neck, then to her shoulder and down her arm, taking in the sight of her multiple scars with no reaction whatsoever. He made no comment and simply moved a step forward. Then he vanished the left strap of her bra and tank top and conjured a chair at her side.
“May I touch your arm and shoulder?” Nasir asked, maintaining his distance from her and waiting for her response.
“Yes,” she answered. Her voice sounded hoarser than it had a moment ago, but she couldn’t tell if it was because her body was beginning to fail her once more from exhaustion or if she was just anxious about what was to come.
Without hesitating, Nasir sat down in his conjured chair, reached forward, and picked up her left arm. He inspected the word that was engraved along her forearm with no emotion, then moved himself closer to touch the skin of the scar on her shoulder. She was a bit surprised that his hands were so warm. They were also soft, and they traced along her skin delicately, which she had not been expecting.
She eyed him from the corner of her gaze, unable to look away from his blank face as he examined her. She wasn’t used to anyone but Harry touching her unless they were hurting her, so she had to fight her instincts to pull away. She reminded herself that she was okay – that Harry was there and that he would never allow anything to happen to her. Maybe Nasir could sense her discomfort, or maybe this was just who he was; Hermione didn’t know, but regardless of the reason, he handled her very carefully.
It felt weird, and she couldn’t suppress the large tremor that shot down her spine. She heard Nasir murmur a spell, but she couldn’t make out what it was. He slid his fingers over her shoulder to her collarbone, poking gently as he went until he draped her limp left arm across her lap once more. Then he placed his left thumb on her shoulder wound, his fingers stretching out across her sternum as he placed his right hand on the back of her shoulder in a similar fashion. He murmured another spell, and Hermione felt a warm heat deep within the center of her shoulder.
“Can you feel that?” Nasir asked as he kept a steady pressure against her skin and his eyes moved back to her face.
“Yes.” Hermione nodded.
“What does it feel like?”
“A warm heat.”
“Good – let me know if it fades.” Nasir slid his hands along her shoulder, one on the back and one of the front, working them toward her arm.
The heat continued to radiate from inside her body between his two hands as he worked his way across her shoulder and then began tracing them down her arm. He drew her arm away from her body again as he worked and rested it across his knee so it would not fall from his grasp. When he reached her palm, he moved his hands along each one of her fingers – but the heat never faded. Hermione felt the tiny warmth the entire time as she watched his movements.
She could feel Harry watching as intently as she was, and she knew that he was probably feeling just as confused. She had no idea what it meant, but Nasir had said ‘good’, so she assumed that the heat must be a good thing.
It had to be.
When he finished tracing her pinky finger, he stopped and moved his eyes back to hers. “Did it not fade?”
“No.” Hermione swallowed. She needed to stifle the hope that was building in her chest. “It felt warm the whole time – between your hands.”
“Was it more or less warm in any spots?”
Hermione thought carefully before she answered. It was critical that she give the best information possible.
“It got warmer as you moved down my arm,” Hermione said slowly. “It was the least warm in my shoulder, particularly over the scar.”
“I see.” Nasir moved her arm back to her lap, straightened and then stood from his chair.
“What does that mean?” Hermione asked, watching in confusion as Nasir stepped away toward the bed and removed his outer robes.
He laid them across the beautiful quilt next to her jacket. He was wearing a crisp white dress shirt underneath, and he started to roll up the sleeves. He worked them up over his elbows, revealing tanned forearms covered with thin silver scars. Hermione felt the anger and desperate panic that she harboured toward her arm start to burst from the deep hole she had tried to bury it in. She could hear it leeching into her voice as she spoke her next words, and she felt Harry place a warm hand on her right shoulder.
“Is heat a good thing?” she asked. “What does it mean – can you do anything?”
“I can.” Nasir still had not looked back to her. He had fastened both sleeves above his elbows and had started to pull several things from the pockets of his robes. She watched him fish out another vial of potion, a piece of paper, a strange-looking pen – and her heart faltered in her chest when he pulled out a small silver knife with a black handle.
“What are you doing?” The words came from her mouth before she could stop herself; her eyes had latched onto the dagger when he drew it out, and she felt fear race through her heart.
“Nothing that you don’t want me to,” Nasir said evenly, finally turning back to look at her. He left the items on the bed on top of his robes and turned to face them fully. “The heat was good – it means that fundamentally the nerves and tendons in your arm are still alive and working. Yet they do not work because they have been severed from your brain and sealed. The dittany that you used did heal the tissue – but it didn’t reconnect anything severed in the shoulder because of the curse on the dagger. Think of it like cutting a vein. The curse causes the dittany to cauterize each end of the cut tissue, so your nerves and several tendons are still fragmented even though they are realigned as if they had been rejoined.
“I won’t lie to you, Hermione, as I see no point in trying to downplay the severity of this injury – it is astounding that they are still salvageable,” Nasir said, and Hermione felt her mouth go dry. “Normally, they would have died by now from the curse. I suspect the potion that you were given has something to do with their extended longevity despite them being completely severed. But if you ever want to regain any usage of your arm, you need to make that decision now. The tissue is already starting to die, beginning in the most injured areas. That’s why the warmth was less in your shoulder. The damage has already started. So, I will ask you this once and only once – do you want me to repair your arm or not?”
Hermione stared at him, her heart was thundering in her chest, and her head was swimming as she tried to process the information.
“How long until it fully dies?” she asked, the words a hoarse whisper.
“I would give it less than twenty-four hours at this point.”
Hermione nodded robotically, her logical brain taking full charge of her body. “And what do you need to do to repair it?”
“Trim the ends of each piece of severed tissue, reconnect them, then heal them. It will be painful, and in order to do this, you will need to accept a rune contained to your shoulder and left arm so that I can counter the curse to make the repairs permanent. Otherwise, the same thing will happen again.”
Hermione swallowed.
She had read about rune carving. It was obviously never covered in class, but she had found it mentioned in an old book she’d grabbed from the used bookstore in Diagon Alley. Then she had gotten a pass from her professor so she could research it in the Restricted Section. It was old magic. Ancient. Dangerous. The recipient had to be fully willing to accept the rune and its consequences, or it would cause irreparable damage to their body.
Witches and wizards had stopped the practice well over a hundred years ago because it was seen as barbaric, cruel, and dark. It was said to leave a scar on your soul – like a tarnish that could never be removed because, as with anything else in life, nothing came for free. It was a balanced trade, just like the bonding magic in the bands, just like arithmancy, potions, and transfiguration laws. Magic may be magic, but in its own twisted way, it made sense. You used the runes to accomplish a task, to regain something lost, or to aid you in some way, and as a result, you marred your soul and paid the price.
Some books had said that accepting a rune would damn you entirely, though much like her thoughts on the killing curse, she suspected that was overblown. Obviously, the rune did something to you, but ancient witches and wizards had used them and continued living for many years, so it couldn’t have been that bad. Though, then again, she had no idea what happened after you died. Perhaps payment was not due until later. Perhaps she would not know the full consequences of this decision until it was too late to understand it.
Her eyes flicked to her limp left arm, and she felt her stomach knot.
She could just cut it off. Nasir had just confirmed that the limb would lose its functionality in its entirety within a day. It would never heal on its own, and it would never be repairable in the future. The cell death had already begun, so if she did not accept his help now, she may as well get rid of the thing and start learning to live without it. She closed her eyes and let out a breath. She could still feel Harry’s hand on her shoulder, but he had gone completely still.
Harry.
How could she help Harry with one arm?
Well, she could, and she would, but it would never be to the same capacity or effectiveness that she had been able to do in the past. She and Harry had spoken the other day about trying to learn how to channel magic through their opposite hand, a rare feat that only two documented wizards had ever completed. They had wanted to learn how to cast multiple attacks at the same time. They had wanted to continue to push the boundaries and grow. And if anything ever happened to her right arm – well, then she was fresh out of upper limbs. They still had an incredibly difficult journey ahead of them, one where she had no idea what was to come, and she needed to be prepared. She needed to be as functional and strong as humanly possible.
She needed that arm. She could not risk another injury that left her fully magically incapacitated.
Hermione pinched her eyes tighter as a well of anger, hatred, determination, and fear washed through her.
It wasn’t a choice. It had never been a choice because she had made her decision months ago. She had sworn that she would do anything to help Harry. Anything to save him. Anything to win this war and protect people like Rose; to protect the innocent. She had sworn that she would give up every inch of herself to do what was necessary and that she would deal with the consequences later. So, despite the empty sickness she had felt in her gut when Nasir’s words registered in her brain, she had already known what her decision was.
“Alright,” she whispered, opening her eyes and returning them to Nasir.
“Alright, what?” Nasir arched a brow at her, clearly looking for a response that could not be misinterpreted.
“Alright, let’s do this,” Hermione said more firmly, holding his gaze and feeling the fire burning within her. “Fix my arm.”
“What happens if you accept a rune?” Harry asked from beside her.
She knew he hadn’t gotten this far in his research on the topic, and she could feel his grip on her good shoulder tighten with concern. But Nasir did not respond. He simply cocked his head a fraction in her direction and waited for her to answer.
“It’s a trade, Harry,” Hermione said quietly, keeping her eyes on Nasir. She wouldn’t lie to Harry, not after everything they had been through. She refused to damage their trust, but she also would not allow him to make this decision for her. “You need to be fully willing to accept the rune and the consequences, or it will cause irreparable damage.”
“What are the consequences?” Harry asked, his voice dropping low. She could feel his eyes on her temple.
“That has been argued for centuries,” Hermione said, taking a breath and finally turning to look at Harry. “Regardless, though, I’ve made up my mind.”
“What are the consequences, Hermione.” Harry was looking at her intently, and she could see something simmering behind his eyes.
“They say that it scars your soul – though what that means has been heavily debated throughout history. Some say you condemn yourself after death. Others say it is little more than a tarnish that just wears heavy on your heart and makes you lose a small piece of your humanity,” she said calmly, watching Harry’s face as she spoke. “I’m much more inclined to believe the latter – given what they said about the killing curse. I fail to see how this is much different.”
“Hermione–”
“It’s my decision, Harry, and I’ve made it.”
Harry looked at her with a pained and tight expression. “Do not do this for me. We can manage without your arm – I’m not going to lose you because of a fucking arm.”
His words made a pain ache across her chest.
“I’m doing it because it is necessary,” Hermione said, refusing to back down from her decision. “What would happen if I was injured and lost this arm too? Harry – the war has hardly even started yet. Think of everything we still need to do. We need every advantage we can get – I’m not changing my mind on this. This isn’t about you or me; it’s about everyone else. It’s about securing a win, and I will do whatever I need to to make that happen.”
Harry frowned, and she could see him clench his jaw. Then he turned to Nasir. “Have you seen the effects of rune carvings?”
“Yes,” Nasir said quietly after eyeing him for a second.
“What happened?” Harry asked, staring at the man so hard he was almost glaring.
“Well, that depends,” Nasir said slowly.
“On what?” Harry asked, and Hermione could hear the tightness growing in his voice. He was angry. Not at her, not even at Nasir, just at the situation that they’d found themselves in, and he had no patience for riddled responses.
“On whether or not they were willing,” Nasir replied as he remained impossibly still. “Those who were not, did not make it. Those who were, continued on with life until they were either killed by some other means or met their ends naturally.”
“Does it tarnish your soul, or are you condemned?” Harry pressed, not satisfied with the response.
“Harry, it doesn’t matter. I’ve already decided,” Hermione said as her anger started to flare.
She was growing irritated. She didn’t want to witness a pissing contest between Nasir, a stranger who seemed indifferent to everything, and Harry, who was growing angry because he wanted answers that likely no one could give him. She wanted her arm fixed. She wanted it done, now, so that she could close this chapter on her life and move on.
“It would be impossible to comment on eternal damnation – given that one needs to die to confirm it,” Nasir said flatly, and Harry’s eye twitched.
His grip on Draco’s wand tightened, and Hermione tensed as the air in the room became impossibly tight.
Harry looked like he was about ready to murder the guy. Nasir was watching Harry closely, his back stiff, seemingly prepared for attack – though his eyes remained fixated unblinkingly on Harry’s face. It looked like Nasir was searching him, like he was trying to understand something, and was calculating and putting the pieces together. Then, just when Hermione could not take the tension anymore, Nasir let out a long low breath, and his shoulders relaxed. The motion caught both her and Harry off guard, and her eyes creased in confusion as she watched the man before them calmly cross his arms over his chest before he spoke once more.
“The tarnish description is much more accurate based on what I know,” Nasir said quietly, his eyes flicking between the two of them. “It’s something you can feel in the back of your mind. Something that weighs heavy within you, and you will be required to carry that around for the rest of your life. It is a burden – but contrary to popular belief and folklore, receiving a single rune does not make one an evil being. It just adds a sliver of emptiness to your heart – so they affect everyone differently depending on the person.
“If you hardly have any humanity left, then yes, a rune would be an extraordinarily heavy burden to bear and could theoretically result in you losing your ability to be compassionate,” Nasir said. “But I would personally argue that it only taints you as much as you allow it to, that it is deeply dependent on intent and acceptance of the recipient, and that it is indeed very similar to the killing curse. The greatest risk to a rune carving is not what happens after – it’s that you must truly accept the rune as it is carved. If you are not sincere when I carve it, I cannot tell you what will happen.”
Silence rang through the room, and Hermione saw Harry’s shoulders relax.
“Thank you,” Harry said before he turned to face Hermione. He crouched down beside her and took her hand. He was looking at her with the same pained expression on his face as before, though now, he looked a little less angry. “Are you sure, Hermione? Because if you have even a shred of doubt in your mind – I will cut the arm off for you right now, and we will train without it and figure this out. I don’t want to risk losing you because of your arm. It’s not worth it.”
He paused and gritted his teeth.
“I know this is your decision, and I know that I wouldn’t be able to stop you even if I wanted to – but we can manage without your arm, Hermione,” Harry said gently. “We can make this work.”
“Harry,” Hermione said softly. She leaned her head down, dropping her forehead against his as she whispered. “If I thought even for a second that I wasn’t sure about it, I would not do this. I’m not leaving you. Ever. We’re in this together, always, until the very end. I’m positive, Harry – trust me – I need you with me on this.”
“I do trust you,” Harry murmured back, his grip on her hand tightening. “I do.”
“Okay,” Hermione breathed out against him and closed her eyes, pressing her forehead into him harder before she leaned back and looked up to Nasir. He was watching them with his usual blank expression, but Hermione did not miss the way that his eyes flicked curiously between them. “Let’s do this.”
“Alright. I will let the others know that they may as well start another round of coffee – as I expect this will take some time,” Nasir said as he moved to the door. “Harry, do you mind removing your wards?”
“Sure.” Harry didn’t move or take his eyes off Hermione, but she felt the wards lower, and Nasir stepped out of the room, leaving them alone in the quiet. “Hermione – you don’t have to do this.”
“I know,” Hermione swallowed and leaned down, pressing her lips against his and breathing him in. “I want to – it will work, Harry. I can’t explain it – I just know it will.”
This was it.
This was her shot. Her one chance at getting back to normal and giving an official ‘fuck you’ to Bellatrix. She could beat it. She could beat that bitch’s blade and all of the torture that she had endured. If she could endure just a little bit more, she could be free of everything that riddled her body. She could become something more.
She kissed Harry deeply and wound her hand through his. She could hear her heart thumping in her ears as the voices from the kitchen trickled in the room. Her pulse started to race. Suddenly she felt like time was slipping through her fingers. Her arm was dying – if she did not do something now, she would lose it forever. She would never have this chance again. Harry’s hand on hers tightened, and his opposite came to cup the side of her face. She pressed into him further as the pain in her chest ached harder.
She could hear Nasir approaching the room.
She knew Harry was scared; she knew he was dreading the worst. She knew that he did not want her to take this risk. That he would rather accept her as she was, gimpy arm and all, rather than risk losing her. He would never be able to fully support this decision because it wasn’t worth it to him. It wasn’t even on the table for him. Yet despite knowing how he felt about it, she knew that she needed to do this. She needed her arm for the war, and regardless of her fear, she needed to conquer what had happened. She wanted to destroy any last remnants of Malfoy Manor from her body, and something deep inside her was pushing her towards it.
Like her own soul was begging her to do it – begging her to tarnish herself so she could be free of it.
She heard the door to the room open, and she pulled away from Harry. Nasir had closed the door behind him, and Hermione felt a collection of unfamiliar wards surround them. When he turned back to them, he was holding a cup of coffee and a bottle of firewhisky. Her pulse quickened once more as Nasir handed the coffee to Harry once he’d stood up. Harry accepted it tentatively, then Nasir opened the bottle of firewhisky in his hands and passed it to her.
“Are the others okay to wait?” Harry asked, his voice sounding to her right as she stared at the bottle.
“Shacklebolt may need to leave, but Arthur and Remus will stick around.”
“What’s this for?” She heard the words leave her mouth as her eyes darted back to the tall strange man.
“I can’t give you any potions for the pain,” Nasir said as he picked up the paper and pen. “It will interfere with the rune carving – but the liquor will help.”
“Oh,” Hermione murmured, eyeing the bottle. She had never had anything to drink besides butterbeer, and she was fairly sure that didn’t count. She had no idea how much to drink, so she started to calculate the alcohol percentage based on her body weight.
Nasir must have seen her hesitate because his voice rang out once more. “Two large gulps should suffice. It burns, so the quicker, the better.”
Nasir had placed the paper on the small table and was writing out a series of runes on it. Hermione recognized them, but she did not know what he was doing it for. She brought the bottle to her mouth and took two very large gulps.
Merlin’s fucking balls!
She coughed as her eyes watered. The heat traced down her throat and into the pit of her stomach. She could feel it radiating out through her body, and it made her shudder.
Then once again, time felt like it was speeding up, and everything was starting to happen all at once.
Nasir had picked up his dagger. He was wrapping the rune-covered paper around it. Then he sandwiched it between both hands and held it before him a foot away from his chest. Hermione heard him utter something that sounded like an ancient dialect, and then the paper between his hands caught fire.
“Harry – transfigure that chair so that you can sit behind Hermione,” Nasir ordered. “You will need to hold her still.”
Harry’s face tightened into a thin, grim line, but he nodded, downing the coffee in one gulp before he did as instructed. Hermione stood from the chair so he could adjust it. The liquor was burning through her, and it made her sway slightly on her feet. She felt like she was out of body and watching herself move. Harry changed the chair and took a seat – guiding her to sit between his legs. Her body moved on its own, and suddenly, his arms were wrapped firmly around her. Her eyes slowly slid back to Nasir, watching as he moved his conjured chair before her once more and sat down, his dagger glowing bright red in his hands.
“Place your feet on hers as well,” Nasir commented as he moved closer to them. “If she kicks, it could go poorly.”
Her head was growing fuzzier – the alcohol was hitting her harder because she was already exhausted and shaky. Her blood ran hot, and she felt sweat begin to form across her body. It was a mildly pleasant feeling, though it made her uneasy. She wasn’t in control – she could tell, and if not for Harry being pasted behind her body, she wouldn’t have been able to do this.
“This will be the worst part,” Nasir said. He had pulled his chair so close he was only a foot away from her body. He had moved her left arm to rest over Harry’s leg. He had leaned forward and was looking directly into her eyes as he spoke, ensuring that he had her attention. “It will burn and ache – but you must not fight it. That’s a form of rejection. There isn’t an easy way to explain this, but you need to allow it to hurt and accept it. Let it happen. Let your body do what it needs to, and Harry will keep you in place until it passes.”
“How long until it passes?” Harry asked as she nodded.
The heat was growing warmer. Her eyes were hazy, and her mind felt heavy.
“One minute,” Nasir answered. “You need to keep her as still as you can, place your arm across her forehead and hold her tightly.”
Hermione felt Harry’s hand grip her forehead, and she allowed him to tip her head back against his chest.
“Clear your head,” Nasir continued, speaking only to her once more and meeting her gaze. “Know that you want this – I’ll count back from five.”
He brought his wand to her shoulder and murmured more words she didn’t understand. Her eyes flicked down to her arm, and she saw a trail of symbols wrapping themselves over her shoulder and under the motionless arm in a misshapen circle – it encompassed the shoulder wound and created what she assumed was a barrier to the rest of her body. She took a deep breath and forced the panic out of her mind while smothering the fear she felt towards Nasir’s burning red dagger.
She wanted this.
She needed this.
She knew that she did.
She would take it – she would take anything if it meant having a solid chance at protecting Harry. She would accept it wholeheartedly.
“Five.”
She felt Harry’s grip on her tighten.
“Four.”
Nasir leaned in, placing his left-hand flat against her sternum and pressing her even harder into Harry’s chest.
“Three.”
Hermione breathed in and focused her mind on Harry’s warmth. She loved him – more than anything.
“Two.”
Nasir adjusted his hold on the dagger in his right hand and brought it towards her. She breathed out and closed her eyes, allowing her body to go limp as she relaxed in Harry’s hold.
“One.”
Hermione smiled; this was what she wanted after all.
Her screams cut through the air like a knife, and her body thrashed violently. Though it was nothing in comparison to what he had heard before – nothing compared to the sounds he’d made people make in the past. It was easy to ignore. It quickly became a dull ringing in the back of his mind as he focused his attention on the task before him. Yet he knew the rest of the inhabitants within the cottage would be feeling uneasy.
It was impossible to ward against the sounds produced from a rune carving. The magic was too old, too dark, too complicated – it resonated from your soul. It could not be contained. It could be dampened, which he had done by placing wards on the room – but some of the screams would echo throughout the small cottage.
After asking Fleur for the firewhisky, he had told Arthur not to allow anyone inside the room regardless of what they heard – not like they would be able to enter even if they tried. He’d made sure that was impossible.
The girl’s back arched violently, and he pressed his hand harder against her chest. It was a good thing that Harry was strong; otherwise, this would have been very difficult to do. He’d done rune carvings in the past without assistance, and most of them had not gone well. Though, then again, at those times, it had not mattered. He hadn’t intended to help those individuals. For this situation, though, the additional hands were ideal, and he had already finished carving one line.
It wouldn’t take long now.
The rune was simple, and the placement was easy. He continued to ignore the sounds that poured from her mouth and sliced his burning red dagger through her skin a second time, cutting a deep straight line through her flesh to the left of her wound, closer to the center of her chest and inside the barrier marking he’d made. Blood spilled from the cut flesh and dripped down her chest as the dagger slid easily through her tissue.
It felt very similar to slicing into butter with a hot knife, and the ease of it was partly what made rune carving so difficult. It was required to be precise. Each line must be perfect, each angle exact, each cut specific in length to ensure that the rune was correct. Otherwise, the rune would not work. It was easy to cut too deep, too long, too angry – it was easy to do wrong because it was so easy to make the cuts.
He finished his second line and prepared for the third and final laceration. The second his blade touched her skin, her legs vibrated against the seat of the chair so hard the entire thing shook. The muscles in her neck bulged, and her right arm clawed as she fought to break it away from Harry’s hold. Sweat poured from her body as tears rolled uncontrollably from the corner of her eyes.
She was doing well.
She wasn’t resisting the pain. He could tell – it was in the scream.
If it came from the throat, the entire ritual was doomed to fail, and he might as well have killed her then and there to spare her from a slow and painful death. But if it came from deep within, from the receiver’s soul, it meant it was working. It meant they had accepted it – and that was where her scream came from.
He could feel it.
So could the boy. It was the unnatural sound of it. It had made Harry’s eyes widen with fear while sweat began to pour from his brow. It unsettled people. It unsettled Harry. It wasn’t often that you got to hear someone’s soul scream audibly in agony. It was a different sort of pain that most humans did not understand.
He finished the final line then sent the dagger to the desk as he continued to hold her firmly against Harry, palm flat against her sternum. He set a mental timer for one minute, knowing that until then, her fractured screams and jerking movements would only get worse as the lines on her chest grew dark and burned themselves into her skin.
Blood continued to pour from the cuts, and it seeped over his fingers as she thrashed.
No matter.
Her leg jerked so violently it broke free of Harry’s hold, and he had to grab it to stop her from breaking free. He gripped her thigh tightly, not taking his eyes off the lines as they started to hiss, and the blood that poured from her began to turn black. Harry struggled to hold her as her back arched. He stood from his chair and pressed her chest harder into the boy, leaning his full weight against her sternum and her thigh as the lines became darker and the hissing grew with her screams.
Fifteen seconds.
She broke two of Harry’s fingers.
Thirteen seconds.
She scratched lines down his forearms before Harry was able to regain control of her arm.
Ten seconds.
Her head broke Harry’s nose.
Six seconds.
He had to stomp on her opposite foot, breaking four of her toes to keep it in place when she’d managed to break it free from Harry’s leg.
Three seconds.
Her chest was covered in black and red, and the lines glowed impossibly dark.
Zero.
Her body went completely still and unmoving.
“Hermione?!”
It was Harry who spoke, and the boy was staring at the girl in terror.
A low, slow, ragged inhale filled the room, and he removed his boot from the girl’s foot, carefully removing his hands from her body and lowering himself back into a seated position.
“Let go of her head,” he told Harry, reaching forward to grab her face and gently turn it towards him. “Hermione – can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
The word sounded like it’d come from the dead.
“Open your eyes,” he instructed, watching her face intently as her eyes slowly opened. They were bleary and red, but they were in focus.
“Is it over?” she asked him quietly, her voice hoarse as her eyes latched to his.
She looked more vulnerable now. She almost looked like she trusted him.
Which would be foolish – at least for now.
“The rune carving is over, yes – but I still need to heal your shoulder. Though that will hardly be anything in comparison,” he told her honestly. If she could manage this, then the healing would be nothing.
“I didn’t die.” She smiled. It wasn’t a question. It seemed like a statement. Then she called for the boy behind her. “Harry?”
“Hermione.” Harry’s voice sounded broken, and he immediately changed his grip on the girl to an embrace as he buried his face into her neck and held her. “Fuck, I’m so glad – fucking Merlin. Are you okay? Can you move? Are you alright?”
“I’m alright.” Her voice was like broken glass, but the relief on her face was evident.
He sat there silently and watched their exchange.
It was evident that they loved each other very much – he did not need to be a skilled legilimens to know that. It was written all over their faces and detailed across their bodies in the way that they interacted and reacted. They orbited each other like planets. They were purely devoted in a way he had never seen before - physically and emotionally, they were tied together so tightly, it would be impossible for anything to tear them apart. That much was clear.
He understood the concept theoretically, but he would never be able to truly grasp it.
Still, he watched them interact with curiosity. They must have known each other for a long time to have become this close. They were abnormally skilled given their age – both of them - yet it was not just from talent. The marks that covered the girl’s body and the heavy weight that sat on the boy’s shoulders were a testament to that. These two had fought. Harder than most. Yet their determination seemed unshaken, which was irregular, given their cold-hearted detachment. As if they were fragmented pieces of whatever they were before.
He was right.
They were fascinating.
More fascinating than he had let on.
It was the only reason why he had agreed to consider helping. Shacklebolt had asked him to come assess two members of the Order, he had agreed, but at the time, he'd had no intention of actually doing anything after the assessment.
It would have been simple to say that he could do nothing to help. No one would have even questioned it. No one would know any different. The know-how for healing this sort of injury was lost generations ago.
Yet the request he made had been alluring – it had been desperate and urgent. Though, the description he’d given of these two had not done them justice. They’re remarkable, and it would be both terrifying and fascinating for the world to watch what would happen to them – to see just how far they could push things and how much they could grow. Their potential was incredible, and that was what made them interesting.
It wasn’t until he’d entered this room and spoken to them that he’d made up his mind and decided to help them.
“Did it take?”
Harry was looking at him and asking a question.
“Yes,” he answered calmly, picking his wand up from the floor where it had fallen during the struggle.
He charmed his hands clean of her blood, then pointed his wand unnecessarily at the girl’s chest and vanished the red and black streaks – leaving only the single black rune against her skin. The barrier had faded into her flesh once the rune carving was completed, and it would leave no visible mark.
Hagalaz.
It would remain permanent. It could not be covered by simple glamours. He could teach her how to hide it – perhaps. He hadn’t decided on that yet.
“Are you sure?”
It was the boy who spoke again. It was a stupid question, but Harry did not know that.
“Her arm has neither turned black nor has she died – yes, I’m sure,” he replied indifferently as he leaned forward once more. It was time to finish the work. He had other things that he wanted to do tonight, and he suspected that Arthur and Remus might be clawing on the other side of the door. He returned his eyes to the girl. “That was the worst part – now I need to make a few small incisions to heal the severed nerves and tendons. These cuts will not be laced with magic like the ones I made with the blade, so it will only hurt as bad as what the injury itself is. Hermione, are you ready?”
Hermione nodded firmly and leaned back into her partner, closing her eyes with a shuddered breath. Harry held her tightly once more and whispered gently in her ear.
He summoned the bright orange potion from the bed, uncorked it, placed it on the table to his right next to the now silver dagger. He summoned a bottle of dittany from his robes next, opening it and leaving it on the desk, then raised his wand and cast his diagnostic charm so it floated above her left shoulder. Using a precise diffindo, he made several carefully placed incisions along her shoulder scar. He guided the orange potion from the bottle into the wound with his wand. Then healed each cut with dittany.
The process was slow.
He needed to be careful and ensure that he cut and reattached the correct things. The charm aided him there, and he doubled-checked every connection before he finalized it. He continued to hold her steady against the boy with his left hand against her sternum, though impressively, she did not fight against him – nor did she scream. Her body tensed each time he cut, sweat poured from her skin, her heart raced, and her jaw clenched – but she did not cry out.
Indeed, fascinating.
It took several minutes for the potion to work and heal the tissue before he could continue to the next cut, slowly undoing the damage done by the cursed blade. After half an hour had passed, she had become oddly calm. Her heartbeat had lowered, and her eyes were closed lightly as if she had fallen into some kind of meditative state. He noticed that the boy was murmuring in her ear and holding her right hand, tracing his thumb along her skin. When he finally finished the shoulder, he broke her from her quiet.
“Your shoulder is done,” he said, keeping his voice low. He watched her face closely, making sure that he had her full attention before he continued. “I will not make any repairs to the remainder of your arm as I do not believe it will add any value. I cannot remove the scarring caused by the dagger Ms. Lestrange used; I can only repair the severed tissues beneath the dermis. The marks made on your arm only cut the skin and surface nerves; it did not sever any valuable tissue or muscle, so the damage is minimal. You just won’t be able to feel very much along your forearm over the letters. Though, this will not impact the use of your arm.”
He gently picked up her limp left arm and traced the pads of his fingers over her skin and across the angry red letters.
“Do you feel that?”
“Not really.” Her voice was hoarse and broken, her eyes half-lidded with exhaustion and liquor, but she met his gaze with full awareness. “I can only feel it on certain spots.”
“That is how it will remain – are you okay with that?”
“That’s fine.” She blinked heavily. The alcohol was still coursing through her, and her words slurred a little. “I don’t care about that – will my arm work?”
“It will – though, it will always be a little stiff, and you will always have less feeling in it, particularly in the shoulder. Do not use it at all for the next three days. Harry, you will need to tether it to her side the entire three days and tether her to the bed so she doesn’t roll onto it.”
The boy nodded.
“After the three days, you can start to use it – limitedly. You need to ensure that the connections have finalized and that you don’t tear apart the repairs. If you want to train, tether it in place. After a week, you can start to use it like normal – though I warn you it will be weak, and you will need to work on it.”
He replaced her limp arm across her lap, vanished the fresh blood from her body, and then cleaned his own hands. He made to move away from her body, but she caught his wrist with her right hand. His eyes darted down to the contact and then back to her eyes.
“Thank you.” She smiled at him.
A genuine smile after that? Yes – they really are quite fascinating.
Perhaps he would do more to help them.
Maybe.
-x-x-
Hermione held his warm wrist tightly, her eyes locked to his face in wait. He was staring at her strangely, though maybe that was just the blur from her tipsy and pain-addled mind. She could not be sure. Then finally, after an extended quiet moment, he spoke.
“You’re welcome,” he said flatly. She released her hold on his arm, and he returned his hands to his thighs. She watched them move and noticed the red blood that covered his forearm and the stained rolled-up sleeves of his white shirt.
“You’re bleeding.” Her bleary eyes darted back to his face, and then she turned to look at Harry for the first time, biting back a groan of pain as she twisted. “You’re both bleeding – did – did I do that?”
“It’s typical for rune carvings,” Nasir said evenly. “If you would like, Harry – I can fix your nose and fingers.”
“Thank you,” Harry said. He sounded exhausted behind her, and Hermione felt herself grimace.
“I’m sorry,” she slurred again, her eyes darting between the two of them. She could feel the exhaustion spreading over her body like a heavy wave, and she suddenly felt like someone had placed a large rock on her shoulders.
“Hermione – no – don’t be sorry, please,” Harry sounded in pain as he spoke. “It’s okay. It’s hardly anything. Here, sit here, and we’ll clean everything up okay, then you can sleep.”
She nodded and shifted so Harry could untangle himself from behind her to stand. She leaned back against the chair and watched as Nasir easily healed Harry’s fingers and nose and vanished the blood from his lip. She must have broken her toes at some point – because Nasir gently slipped off her boot and sock, then she felt her toes snap sharply back into place before he redressed her foot.
Her eyes flicked between the two men as they moved in an odd quiet comfort around each other: Harry packing up their stuff and transfiguring her shirt back into a sweater, while Nasir packed up his stuff, then healed the claws marks on his arms with his dittany before rolling the sleeves of his shirt back down.
I wonder if that’s where the other marks came from. The thought echoed loosely in her head as she continued to stare at the man’s arms.
How many rune carvings had he done? How many people had he saved? Or how many had he condemned? She’d seen the thin silver marks, and after seeing the fresh ones she’d left, it was impossible to ignore their similarities. Claw marks. All of them. People scratching against him in agony – though whether just from runes or something else was impossible to say.
Hermione felt her entire body slouch as she listened to the instructions Harry got from Nasir on how much sleep she needed. It sounded like Nasir had asked Fleur to prepare more dreamless sleeping draught, and the woman had some ready for them in the kitchen for the night. It also sounded like much of her next 24 hours would be spent unconscious – which, if she was being honest, she was very okay with. Her body felt heavy, her muscles were in agony, and a deep pain radiated from her shoulder. She could feel a weight on her chest, and she began to wonder if this was what Nasir had been talking about. Maybe this was what she would need to carry around with her for the rest of her life.
Her eyes shifted down to her limp left arm, and slowly, she raised her shaking right hand to the collar of her blood-stained shirt and pulled it down. Harry had transfigured her shirt before she’d gotten a look at the handiwork, but she could see it now, even from the upside-down angle.
Hagalaz.
Black as night across her skin next to the bundle of thin red lines and the large red mark that made up her shoulder scar. She could feel two sets of eyes on her, but she ignored them. She knew Harry was probably concerned, and Nasir was probably just watching like he always seemed to. But she was fine. It looked fine. She felt fine. Heavy. Tired. In pain. She snorted and smiled – knowing that the two men were staring at her even more closely now.
When is that not the case? She thought amusedly as she looked at the mark on her chest.
It was far more attractive looking than her other scars, and frankly, it seemed like a small price to pay for regaining the use of her arm. All of it had felt like a small price to pay. Sure, it had been agony – it’d been worse than the bloody cursed dagger Bellatrix had used. She’d felt it carved into her in a way that she could not explain. Yet as Nasir had said – she did not feel evil, she did not suddenly have no compassion. It was just a weight, another brick in her bag to lug around. She could see how having too many of them would become unbearable – but as of right now, this single one felt okay.
In fact, oddly, it felt right like a warm, heavy weight over her heart.
She removed her fingers from her collar and let her blood-stained sweater spring back into place, rolling her head back against the chair to look at the two men before her. They were watching her quietly as she’d expected, and Harry did indeed look concerned. She smiled at them both with bleary eyes, snorted again in amusement, and her smile split wider.
“It looks cool,” she slurred in her rough voice as a small laugh came from her lips. She felt in a daze. She didn’t even know how long they’d been in this room. “Fuck, I’m tired.”
Harry’s eye creased, and he almost looked like he might cry as he held her jacket tightly in his hands. He shook his head and ran a hand through his hair.
“It does look cool – very cool – fuck, Hermione.” He closed the distance between them and kissed her, pulling away to rest his forehead against hers. “Let’s get you to bed, okay?”
“Okay,” she whispered softly, still grinning at him.
-x-x-
She knew she was tired, and she had suspected that she might be a bit tipsy from the liquor when she was sitting in the chair. But when Harry helped her stand and tethered her arm to her side, she realized that she might very well be drunk. She had no basis of course, but she was keenly aware of the fact that her legs were not just shaking from the pain. They were wobbly and unsteady, and the heated numbness continued to course through her limbs. Or maybe this was the aftereffects of the rune carving?
She had no clue. All she knew was that for the first time since the dreaded incident at Malfoy Manor, despite the pain, she felt optimistic, and she was so excited to go to sleep. Dreamless sleeping draught or not, she did not care. She’d drink it all – she’d take whatever Harry gave her if it meant going to bed curled up next to his side, and snuggled into his warmth.
He’d cast a warming charm on her in place of her jacket and wrapped his arm around her waist to support her as he asked Nasir about occlumency. Yet shockingly, despite the wobble, she fared well on her feet and was able to walk mostly on her own. She only half paid attention to the conversation as they moved toward the door and made their way out into the living room.
The second the door opened, she heard voices come to a halt and her hazy eyes lifted to see Bill, Arthur, and Lupin standing in the kitchen with tight expressions on their faces. They looked like they’d frozen mid-pace, and their eyes had immediately locked on to her, then darted to Nasir, who stood at her left.
“Hermione?” Arthur said, his face anguished as he stepped forward and looked at her desperately.
“Hey Arthur.” She smiled at him, watching as an expression very similar to the one Harry had given her washed over the man’s face. She saw Bill’s shoulders relax and relief flood his eyes, though Lupin still seemed tense and was gripping a paper tightly in his hands.
“Merlin – I thought – we thought – I didn’t-” Arthur didn’t seem to be able to form a coherent sentence, and he had threaded his hand tightly through his thinning hair.
“I’m okay, Arthur,” Hermione said softly. She removed her hand from Harry’s waist to stand on her own as if to prove a point.
She knew their eyes were darting between the blood on her sweater and the blood on Nasir’s white shirt. However, none of them seemed to know what to do with themselves. They’d obviously heard her – or heard part of it. They’d obviously been concerned and itching to know what had happened. Some of them probably even wanted to kill Nasir – though now that the door was open and the three of them had emerged together while Harry had been calmly talking to Nasir, it had completely thrown them.
She was standing less than a foot away from the mysterious man and was very clearly not upset. Exhausted, ragged, probably looking as bad as the day she’d first arrived – but she’d given them a tipsy smile, and they didn’t know how to react to her. She almost felt bad for them.
Arthur looked at her for a long moment and then closed the distance between them, cutting across the living room, wrapping his arms around her firmly, and pulling her to his chest.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered near her ear as he held her. She felt Harry drop his hold on her waist as Arthur held her, and she all but flopped into his arms. “I’m so sorry – for everything. You shouldn’t have had to – I know that you – I’m sorry you’ve had to go through all of this alone. But you two are not alone. I promise you that – you two are never alone – never again. We’re here for you. I’m here for you – anything you need. You both deserved more than this.”
She awkwardly patted his back with her right hand, thankful for the liquor that seemed to dull her reactive nerves a bit. Today was the most she’d been touched by people other than Harry, and it still made her heart race with nervousness.
“It’s okay, Arthur,” she murmured in her thick and rough voice. “I promise, I’m okay.”
Arthur pulled away from her and nodded. He was biting his lip and looked like he wanted to explode with a million words, but he was fighting to keep them all in. Then he turned to look at Nasir, his eyes cautious and wary.
“Did you – were you able to help?” Arthur asked, flicking his eyes between the three of them.
“Potentially,” Nasir said at the same moment that Harry and Hermione both said ‘Yes’. “We’ll know more in a few days.”
“Thank you.” Arthur nodded to the man before he carefully stepped away from Hermione.
“Hermione needs to rest,” Harry said gently, stepping toward the eldest redhead. “Would you be able to get Fleur for the dreamless sleeping draught?”
“Oh – yes, right.” Arthur made his way back to the kitchen to get the bottle that Bill had grabbed from the table. “I also have that care package for you, Harry, and some useful things I’ve put together.”
“Where is Fleur?” Hermione asked, after assuring Harry that she was fine standing on her own and that he should go speak to Arthur about the care package.
She knew Harry was hesitant to move much more than a foot away from her. She knew he just wanted to bring her back to their tent to sleep – but she wanted him to get the stuff from Arthur. With the way life was, they never knew what could change overnight, and god forbid her only remaining father figure died before they saw him again. Arthur was here now so Harry could speak to him now – she could sleep later. She’d be sleeping for twenty hours from the snippets of conversation that she’d heard between Harry and Nasir, so she failed to see how waiting another five minutes would matter.
“She’s with the others,” Bill said, giving her a small smile.
“Ahh, I see.” She nodded, knowing that what he really meant was Fleur was likely upstairs containing Ron and Luna in their rooms and not allowing them to leave. She fought to ignore the tiredness that was growing heavy in her limbs. “Please thank her for me – for the chair and everything else I might not remember tomorrow.”
“I will.” Bill nodded, returning his eyes to the table and clearing up the papers that had been abandoned when her screams filled the small cottage.
Harry stood several feet in front of her and spoke quickly with Arthur. He was telling Harry what was inside the care kit and identifying all the potions so they knew what was there – it sounded like he’d brought a lot of stuff for them. She felt her lip twitch. Arthur was such a good man.
She let out a quiet sigh, swaying slightly on her feet as she watched the two men before her. Her eyes felt heavy. She was so tired, but this was important, so she needed to push through it. Her chest was growing heavier. However, the dull ache in her shoulder had started to subside some.
She blinked.
Her eyes opened slowly, and she felt something warm against her side. Her head was leaning on someone, but it wasn’t Harry. Her eyes shifted, slowly moving to her left and then she saw Nasir’s tall frame come into view. She could feel his hand resting gently on the center of her back. He was propping her up on her feet.
“You fell asleep,” he said low enough for only her to hear.
Harry was still talking to Arthur before her, Bill was preoccupied with the table, and only Lupin seemed to be aware that she was leaning on the strange man. Her ex-professor's face was laced with an immensely concerned expression, but strangely, she didn’t feel concerned at all.
She blinked again, realizing that she must have fallen asleep when her eyes closed and would have fallen over if not for Nasir stepping to her side. Based on the conversation between Harry and Arthur, only a few seconds had passed. She forced her eyes wider and traced them down the tall man’s frame to his now covered forearms.
“Are all of those marks from conducting rune carvings?” Hermione whispered quietly, aware that Lupin was still watching them.
“Not all of them,” Nasir’s low voice replied. She was surprised that he’d answered at all, let alone so quickly.
“You have runes,” she said it like a statement though he seemed to sense that she was seeking confirmation.
She didn’t truly care, at least not from the perspective of judgement. It didn’t matter to her who he was or if he was covered in them. She was asking because she was curious – and maybe that was why he answered her.
“Yes.”
“More than one?”
“Yes.”
“Do they grow heavier?”
“Only if you let them.”
She remained silent at his side for a moment, then asked the one thing that she truly did want to know. “Can you come early on Friday – and teach us?”
He was silent for several seconds before his low voice responded. “What do you want to learn?”
“Anything you’re willing to teach me,” she whispered, tilting her head up to look at his expressionless face.
He was staring down at her quietly, his eyes roving over her features before they locked on to her eyes.
She stared unblinkingly into the black inky pools. Unafraid and completely calm. She should have been. She knew this. Yet she wasn’t, and she could not explain why.
“I’ll be here at noon,” his low rich voice rumbled.
-x-x-
Hermione did not remember much of what happened Wednesday night after Nasir agreed to come early on Friday to teach her and Harry. She recalled Harry carrying her outside, transfiguring her clothes into something comfortable, choking down dreamless sleeping draught and then there was nothing but black and warmth. She had absolutely no memory of Thursday whatsoever. In fact, she got the distinct impression that she’d slept through it entirely and did not wake up until 3 am Friday morning. At which time, Harry made her eat, she showered, then she drank another small gulp of potion and passed back out until 9 am.
When she woke, she’d been confused. She hadn’t been able to move at all since Harry had tethered her to the bed, and it had taken her a moment to come to her senses. When she did and finally pulled herself from their small bunk, she froze, then raised her right hand before her and felt her breath hitch.
It wasn’t shaking.
She could feel the dull tremor in her body. She knew it was still there underneath – but it was hardly visible at all. She’d hugged Harry tightly and felt tears slip from her eyes as she showed him. Even if the remaining potions did nothing – this was already a significant improvement over anything she could have ever anticipated. This was functional.
This she could live with.
With this dull tremble, she would be able to hit her target nine out of ten times. She beamed at Harry and kissed him heatedly, curling her fingers into his hair and letting him lay her back on the bed, carefully, ensuring she was on her back and no pressure was on her arm. She felt alive as she cast a ward over the tent and ran her tongue over Harry’s teeth, and pulled him close to her.
His mouth moved over her skin as if he was trying to consume her and was releasing all the pent-up tension he’d undoubtably been carrying since he’d held her thrashing body on Wednesday night. She hadn’t been able to talk to him yet about what had happened since she’d been unconscious for the last two nights, but they could do that later. Right now, she let herself get lost under his touch as she kissed his jaw and traced her lips down his neck, reaching for his jeans and undoing the button.
She didn’t even care that her left arm didn’t work. She didn’t care that it was pinned so tightly to her side it made the entire left top quarter of her body immobile. She kissed Harry deeply and pulled him against her.
He carefully slipped off her pajama bottoms and eased himself into her. Her head flopped back against the pillow as she groaned and rocked her hips against his, revelling in the feel of his hard member sliding in and out of her slick channel. It felt right. It was where she belonged – in Harry’s arms, at his side, with him.
Together.
“Fuck Hermione,” he groaned as he pushed into her deeper. His lips traced down her neck, and he panted against her. “I love you. I love you so much.”
“I love you, Harry,” she whispered in his ear as her breath came in shorter, quicker pants.
He moved with her motions carefully, being wary of her arm and keeping his weight off her body. His motions still quickened, and soon he was grunting above her as he came, and she was curling her fingernails into his shoulder as she fell apart beneath him. It had been quick and careful, yet it had been exactly what she needed. The weight on her chest somehow felt a bit lighter as she laid there on her back and ran her fingers through his hair – kissing him lazily.
Nasir had been right – it only got worse if you let it.
“Nasir arranged with Arthur to come at noon today,” Harry said as he stroked the side of her cheek. “I assume you must have asked him to come?”
“Yeah – I’m surprised he agreed.” Hermione kissed him again, tracing her fingers over his bare skin.
“Arthur was shocked,” Harry laughed lightly and gave her a grin. His eyes were tracing over her face like it was the first time he’d seen her in years. She imagined it must have something to do with the fact that he’d been left alone for the entire previous day, probably watching over her silent and unmoving figure with worry. “I’m glad you asked him – I’d talked to him about occlumency for sleeping, and he said it was possible. Maybe he can show us today.”
“I hope so – I hate taking that dreamless sleeping draught.” Hermione crinkled her nose at the thought.
“I know, but you’re still stuck with it for the next few days,” Harry said, brushing his lips over her temple. “I’m sorry I left you standing there – I shouldn’t have been talking to Arthur like that I–“
“Harry,” Hermione cut him off and looked at him firmly. “I told you to. With how life has been going – for all we know, we might not get the chance to see him again. You needed to talk with him. I was fine.”
“Hermione, you fell asleep standing up,” Harry said, arching a brow at her.
“Yeah, and I was fine,” Hermione countered, arching her own brow. “I was just tired after everything – but I was okay.”
Harry snorted. “I think you rightly startled everyone in that room by falling asleep on Nasir – I think they’re all terrified of him.”
“Mmhmm,” Hermione laughed. So she had completely passed out standing up. “Are you?”
“No,” Harry said after a pause. “Though I feel like I should be. There’s something about him that’s–“
“Unnatural,” Hermione supplied when Harry had struggled to find the word.
“Exactly.”
“I know.” Hermione nodded. “I can’t even describe what it is. He just –something is off, almost like he feels less human.”
“I know what you mean,” Harry said, staring at her thoughtfully. “It’s like he completely lacks the ability to feel – but I’m not sure if it’s by choice or if it’s just how he is. I don’t know – either way, though, for now we’ll learn what we can from him.”
Hermione nodded in agreement.
“Want to shower and grab some food? He’ll be here in two hours,” Harry asked her as he traced her cheekbone with his thumb.
“Yes – I’m starving.”
-x-x-
They showered, dressed, and ate – Hermione scarfing down three times as much food as she normally would have before she finally felt full, all while assuring Harry that the weight on her soul was not unbearable. It was the truth. It was there, sitting on her chest like a stone, but it was not as heavy as she would have thought it would be.
Unsure of what it was exactly what Nasir would be teaching them today, she had decided to layer – wearing a black tank top with a looser sweater over top and picking out her flexible worn blue jeans. Harry had found a way to split her clothes and refasten them so he didn’t have to untether her arm, and she’d found it quite impressive when he’d showed it to her. Harry had gone for a similar approach with his own outfit and donned a black T-shirt, grey sweater and jeans.
They left the tent at 11:50 am, following their standard: ‘be safe, not sorry approach’ and packing up their tent. They headed up toward the cottage, wands in hand just before noon, and then waited a few feet from the door.
“‘Ermione!” Fleur’s voice cut through the air as she burst from the cottage, forcing herself to slow as she approached them. “I am so ‘appy to see zat you are okay! You look so well rested – Arthur said zat he would be here in a moment. ‘Ow are you feeling?”
“I’m well, Fleur,” Hermione gave the girl and small smile. “Thank you for everything you did the other night – for warding the room, the chair, the firewhisky – all of it. Thank you.”
“It was my pleasure ‘Ermione,” Fleur smiled at her. “’ Arry – I told Mr. Ollivander and Griphook zat you wish to speak with zem zis weekend as you asked – zey said zat zey would be more zan ‘appy to ‘elp.”
“Thanks, Fleur.” Harry nodded to her.
A small crack echoed across the beach as Arthur and Nasir appeared on the sand to their left. Hermione turned to face them and watched as the tall, mysterious man walked towards them.
“Harry, Hermione!” Arthur smiled at them though it was clear he seemed uneasy about bringing Nasir back to meet them. She had no idea what Harry or Nasir had said to him, so she didn’t know if he had any idea what was going on. “How are you feeling, Hermione?”
“Great,” Hermione answered honestly. “I’ve only been awake for three hours, but so far I feel really good.”
“That’s great,” Arthur grinned at them, his eyes flicking between the two of them. Nasir stood by his side and said nothing, only giving them both a small nod which she and Harry returned. “The others will be here at 7 pm again to finish the planning – Fleur, you said you needed some help with potions?”
“Yes, zat would be wonderful,” she smiled again before turning back to the cottage. “’ Ermione – ‘Arry, if you need anything, just come in and ask, yes?”
“We will. Thanks, Fleur,” Harry said as she headed inside.
Arthur seemed to hesitate to leave them with Nasir once more. Hermione knew that he had taken the day off and would likely be spying on them from the cottage windows – but she didn’t mind. It was sort of sweet in a way. She understood his cautious hesitation, and if anything, she thought he was reacting to the dark-haired man far more appropriately than she and Harry were.
“Right,” Arthur said awkwardly, looking between the three of them. “I’ll leave you to it.”
He followed Fleur inside through the open door.
“Did you not wake until 9 am this morning?” Nasir asked Hermione once Arthur had disappeared inside.
“No, I woke at – what time was it, Harry?”
“Three.”
“I woke at three this morning, ate, showered, drank a bunch of water, and had a small dose of dreamless sleeping draught, then went back to bed until 9 am,” Hermione said, watching Nasir’s face for any expression.
“Good.” Nasir nodded to Harry, knowing that he was the one to care for her the last two days. “Have the tremors lessened?”
“Yes.” Hermione held her right hand out, and only the slightest of vibrations was visible.
“Good,” Nasir said after eyeing it for a moment. “Any pain?”
“There is a dull ache deep inside my shoulder, but it is hardly noticeable,” Hermione answered.
“And the weight?”
“Bearable – it’s not that heavy.”
“Excellent,” Nasir said evenly, his eyes flicking down to where the rune was hidden under her sweater. “Has the colour or the shape of the rune changed?”
“No – it’s still black, still the same.”
“Good.” Nasir nodded once. “Then all that is left to do is wait and see what happens.”
Hermione couldn’t stop the nervous smile that tugged at her lips at his words. She was okay – the process had gone well. Nasir had confirmed that nothing bad had happened, and now it was just a matter of time to see if she could move her arm on Sunday morning. It made her heart flutter to think that she might be whole again soon. She might be fully functional. She might beat this.
“So, what’s first?” Hermione asked, swallowing down her excitement and trying not to allow her hopes to get too carried away.
“The diagnostic charm that you seemed so fascinated by,” Nasir’s rich voice rumbled as he turned and began moving away from the cottage.
Hermione and Harry followed obediently behind him, cutting across two small sandhills so that they were a few hundred feet away from the cottage. It would keep their voices from being audible though they were still visible. She suspected that this was intentional as Arthur would likely bust out of the cottage if they disappeared from view. It was clear that Nasir was completely aware of the distrust that surrounded him. Yet he’d oddly agreed to come anyway. She and Harry had not been able to wrap their heads around that one, but for now, they would ignore it and absorb the information he was willing to share with them.
They spent the next hour learning how to cast and read the diagnostic charm.
Nasir was a good teacher. He was quiet, reserved, his voice never rising above a steady volume, and he answered all their questions. Never commenting if he thought they were stupid. He was both completely impartial and passive and yet willing to tell them precisely what they had done wrong and how to fix it – though it was always spoken indifferently. It was never insulting or rude – it was strictly factual.
It turned out that the large diagnostic bubble showed health stats just like the charm that she and Harry already knew. The only difference was that it showed about ten times as much information, including blood sugar levels, iron levels, blood count levels, allergies, heart diagnostics, and digestion stats. The first small bubble showed a complete history of the health of the cells in your body – so for skin cells, it could show up to the last 30 days of data depending on how old the cells were. Red blood cells up to the last 120 days of data, and it even showed cardiomyocytes.
Which was how Nasir knew she should have been dead after her torture.
The second small bubble showed the lingering effects of potions on the body. How long those would show up was potion dependent, but regardless – this charm was highly complicated, and Hermione had ended up taking notes partway through to ensure that she would remember how to read it.
Next, Nasir showed them how to use occlumency to section off pieces of their minds so that they could sleep without night terrors. It involved a small Latin spell that was murmured precisely at the moment when you’d gained full control of your mind and sorted your memories into two piles. The first pile was memories you wanted to be able to recall; the second pile was the ones that you didn’t want access to.
Once cast, the block of memories would be warded and inaccessible – thus impossible to access during REM. The caster would know that they had bad memories locked away, but they wouldn’t know what they were. However, Nasir noted that this was only to be done before sleeping and was to be immediately dispelled upon waking. There was a reason why the spell was considered dark and was not taught – it did no damage directly, but if left in place, it would fracture your mind, and you would go insane.
Many witches and wizards in the past had been tempted to leave the block in place as it allowed them to live happily without their worst memories or terrors – it had gone incredibly poorly.
“I encourage you to only lock away the memories which you cannot bear, the ones that would make you kill someone in your sleep. The others, regardless of how terrible, are to be left in place,” Nasir said evenly after explaining the concept. “Bad dreams and deadly night terrors are not the same things. Respect your mind and allow it to experience your life.”
Practice had involved a lot of sitting quietly, eyes closed, while they regulated their breathing and cleared their minds. Then they worked to extract only the more unbearable memories and placed them in a neat pile. Then they attempted to cast the spell. This grew complicated as some memories were embedded in others and popped up in multiple places. For example, Hermione’s memory of being tortured showed up in many places. There was the original memory, the night terror, then all the times she’d thought about it since.
Harry managed to implement the ward successfully by 3 pm. Hermione did not manage it until 4 pm – and even then, she’d missed a memory of her memory.
Sweat had been pouring down her neck and back as she sat on the sandhill, her eyes closed tightly in concentration as the sun beat down on her neck. When she’d finally done it, she’d felt like she was a hundred degrees, and she’d split her sweater and thrown it to the ground in triumph – letting out a loud groan and dropping back into the cool sand.
“Did you get them all?” Nasir asked her. He’d stood there practically motionless the entire time that she and Harry had sat in the sand before him, concentrating. He’d only spoken when they asked him something, but otherwise, he’d only observed their efforts indifferently.
“No,” she breathed out hard and pushed her sweaty hair from her face. “But I got most of them, and I did it – so I know what I need to do now, and I’ll keep practicing until I get it. More than anything, though – it just made me realize that I need to accept the memory and stop thinking about it. The more I think about it, the more out of control it gets in my head and the harder it is to escape from it. It’s like thinking about it or reliving it is like feeding it – it’s like I’m allowing it to take on a life of its own in my head.”
She hauled herself from the sand to a seated position and looked up to Nasir. He was watching her carefully. His eyes almost glinted. She saw his lip twitch a fraction like it had the other day in the cottage. Was he amused with her?
“Exactly,” he said quietly, his eyes moving between the two of them. “Your mind needs freedom to experience your life – but never forget that you are the masters of it.”
Harry nodded beside her, wiping the back of his hand across his brow as Hermione continued to watch the tall man before them. She felt like she was on the verge of a realization, the gears in her head were slowly turning as she watched him, and he stared right back – watching her intently as if he was waiting to see if she’d say something. Like he was testing her to see if she’d understand something he already knew.
Then it clicked.
“Eventually, we won’t need this,” she said slowly, her eyes watching his face carefully as she spoke, forming her conclusion as each word left her mouth. “That was the whole point of this spell – wasn’t it? It’s an exercise, a practice – it was never intended to be permanent in any way. It’s supposed to teach you control over your own mind, both awake and asleep, so you can still experience your memories or trauma but not let them consume you. To gain control, to understand that the more you focus on them, the more they consume you. It’s to learn to acknowledge them and then let go. So that eventually, they’re not night terrors because they’re yours – you own them – you control all of your memories in full at any time.”
She felt a shiver run down her spine as something in his eyes shifted. She could not explain what it was, but the intensity had changed. It was like a darkness had come over them, and he was staring at her with genuinely expressed interest. She couldn’t look away from it, but it made her pulse quicken as the hairs on the back of her skull stood up.
“Clever girl,” his dark voice echoed across the sand. His eyes lingered on hers before they shifted to Harry with equal interest. “Keep practicing, and you’ll be able to master both occlumency and legilimens. You’ll even be able to alter people’s memory without detection.”
His eyes had moved back to Hermione now, and he took a step forward.
“You did a fairly good job on it last time, but you’d missed closing the time gap. Never forget that just because you’ve removed the memories doesn’t mean that the time duration is gone. It shows up as a blank section on a reel of film, and it’s visible to those who know to look for it. Though the memory removal was thorough,” Nasir paused, he was standing less than two feet away from her now, and he was still watching her carefully. “Makes one wonder what it was that you wanted to hide.”
Hermione swallowed, and she felt Harry tense beside her.
She didn’t know how to respond; she didn’t know if she should. The man was unreadable. Even now, while he was showing a small sliver of interest on his face, she still had no idea what his motivations were or what he wanted. She hadn’t cared before – so long as he was no threat and helped them, she didn’t give a shit who he was or what his motivations were. However, now a small part of her was beginning to wonder if that was the right approach. The man was clearly dangerous, and he could easily cause irreparable damage to their efforts. Yet, he had been risking his life to gather information for the Order.
It didn’t make any sense.
He didn’t make any sense. It was like he operated outside of clear logic, and his actions and involvement were completely chaotic and indifferent.
He’s a fucking dice roll, she thought as she eyed him.
He’d made no further movements and was still only watching her carefully, his eyes alight with the strange flicker of interest that made her stomach knot. She would not share anything with him that would make them vulnerable, but she knew that he already knew what she’d done. The minute their eyes met in the kitchen of the cottage, they shared that hollow, empty exchange, and he knew she’d killed people. So it wouldn’t hurt anyone to admit it now, and maybe giving him something would help her wrap her head around why he was here. Maybe it would make his motivations clearer, especially since he seemed interested in the two of them most over anyone else.
“I didn’t want them to know that we’d killed them,” she said slowly, her heart thumping loudly in her chest as she watched him carefully. “The people in the alley that night.”
“How?” he asked it immediately, his voice low and even.
“I gutted him, hip to sternum with sectumsempra – Harry decapitated the werewolf and then I,” Hermione swallowed and held the man’s gaze. “Then I killed Rose with the killing curse.”
It felt strange hearing the admission out loud, and it rang hard in her ears. However, she felt no guilt over it. She stood by her decision, and she knew that Harry did, too.
“That was a kind and selfless act,” Nasir said slowly, his eyes moving between the two of them once more. They lingered briefly on Harry, then he took another step closer. “One that not many would be willing to grant. Tell me – what other deadly spells have you two mastered?”
“Why?” Harry asked from beside her. She could hear the tension in his voice as much as she felt it in her bones.
Was this man spying? Was this man trying to size them up or figure out how much they knew? Was he trying to decide if they should come for the werewolf den infiltration?
Her mind raced with a million possible reasons, but she did not anticipate the one that he gave as a slow, dark, predatory smile cut across his lips.
“So, I can decide which ones I should teach you.”
-x-x-
Fleur brought them all dinner at 6:30 pm, knowing that Harry and Hermione would likely not want to come inside to eat. The three of them sat in the sand and ate in silence, Hermione’s mind lost in thought over everything she’d learned in the last two hours. She watched Nasir calmly eat his food. The darkness from his eyes was gone, and he’d returned to his completely indifferent and unnatural state – sitting in the sand with the two of them in his black pants and white dress shirt eating the pasta from the bowl that rested in his left hand.
The man was lethal.
More lethal than she could have ever anticipated.
There was no way that Shacklebolt knew what this man was capable of – no fucking way. Or did he? Shacklebolt was a smart man; he had to know. So if he knew, did he not care?
She had so many questions. Yet despite this, she was now almost certain – except not really at all –that he was not planning to kill her or Harry. She didn’t know what he was planning. She wasn’t even sure whose side he was on or if he even had a side, for that matter. But she was somewhat confident that he would not have taught them what he just did if he’d been planning to duel them.
Then again. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe he was hoping to make them stronger so he would have a challenge when he fought them?
She didn’t know.
She’d never felt more confused about a single human being in her entire life, and she knew Harry was just as lost. She knew they would talk about it the moment they were alone. But for now, both of them just sat there, covered in sweat, their clothing singed, eating in stunned silence.
Shacklebolt and Lupin arrived for the meeting just as the three of them had finished eating and stood from the sand. Hermione saw Lupin look in their direction and freeze briefly before heading inside the cottage with Shacklebolt, who seemed unbothered by the idea of them working together.
Brushing the sand from her jeans, Hermione tossed her hair into a sweaty bun on the top of her head – getting Harry to wrap the elastic around it. Then she grabbed her split sweater from the hill and fell into step beside Harry, Nasir taking his place on her left. As she neared the cottage, she replaced her sweater using the spells Harry had shown her and ignored the way it made her body feel like it was overheating. Then she ignored the strange looks they received as the three of them made their way into the kitchen and took the empty seats nearest to the door – Harry on her right and Nasir on her left.
Fleur welcomed them with a smile as she always did. She brought them coffee and sent their used dishes to the sink to self-wash. Arthur, who would not have been able to see the spells they’d been learning to the last two hours because of the charms that Nasir had cast, seemed pleased that their training had appeared uneventful and tame. Then he quickly kicked off the meeting.
Within an hour, they finalized the details of the infiltration plan.
The attack would take place on Monday, the 13th of April. Mrs. Weasley would take a polyjuice potion of Arthur and go to work on her husband’s behalf. Fleur would do the same for Bill, and they would immediately swap places once the attack had been completed using illegal portkeys that Shacklebolt had arranged. The infiltration team would meet at 7 am on the west side of the den outside the wards in a small dense section of the forest Nasir had selected. By this time, all of the bonded pairs would have returned to the den, they would be sleeping, and Arlo would be in his lab working.
Their seven-and-a-half-minute window would begin at 7:42 am. At which point they would follow the plan laid out by Arthur on Wednesday – the four main sewer lines would be sealed, the patrol guards would be incapacitated, the protective wards would be set, the main gas line would be cut, and the bomb would be carried into the den. Any muggles rescued would be ported to the safe zone that Arthur and Shacklebolt had created using two other portkeys – one carried by Lupin and the other by Arthur.
Much to Arthur’s displeasure, Hermione and Harry agreed to help. The Order didn’t have enough people to argue otherwise, and by the 13th – arm or not, Hermione would be fully functional. However, Arthur insisted that Hermione and Harry’s involvement be limited to cutting the gas main and sealing the northernmost sewer. Nasir was to infiltrate the wards as he’d already been doing for the last while and take out the guards. Shacklebolt would dismantle and reset the wards. Arthur, Lupin, and Bill would tackle the remaining three sewers, then Arthur and Lupin would make their way into the den with Nasir to set the bomb and pull out as many muggles as they could. Hermione, Harry, Bill, and Shacklebolt would keep watch on the outside and provide assistance as needed.
They reviewed the map and the sequencing of the operation several times and agreed to meet a final time the following Saturday to address any last-minute concerns. When 9 pm chimed on the kitchen clock, Hermione and Harry stood from their chairs and led the group into the open living room, where they then began teaching them the basic shielding charm. They stressed the importance of never casting it on anyone but themselves, and they warned about how the shield could also be turned into a bubble of death.
It took a while to go over the wand motions with everyone and the proper pronunciation. Hermione made them repeat it well over fifty times before she even allowed them to hold their wands in their hands. The whole setup reminded her of Dumbledore’s Army from fifth year. A collection of people looking to Harry for direction and guidance – except this time, it was a group of adults. Yet all of them seemed to take their direction very seriously, and none of them joked around. Any time she or Harry spoke, the entire room listened carefully, giving them their full attention.
It was an odd feeling.
They then demonstrated and each cast their shield charms. Hermione noticed that Nasir continued to watch them both carefully throughout the lessons though he did not participate. Either he had no use for the charm, or he already knew it. Either way, neither she nor Harry pressed him to learn nor commented on it. After working with him for six and a half hours today, they knew he was more than capable – so he stood quietly off to the side of the room, leaning lightly against the wall as he watched.
Lupin was the first to cast the spell successfully. The purple jet shot from his wand and encased his body easily, lasting for a full minute before Hermione’s leg locker jinx finally hit him. When he’d been successful at casting, she’d moved him to the other side of the living room and casually flung jinxes at him as she lazily moved her wand. When he fell to the floor, she moved toward him, offered him her hand and cast the counterspell.
“Thank you, Hermione,” Lupin said as he grabbed her right hand and pulled himself off the ground.
She knew that he did not need her help to stand. She’d done it as a peace offering. She liked Lupin, and she wanted him to know that despite her harsh words the last time they’d met, and despite her cold, distant nature, they were still on the same side. She was about to join him and the other Order members on a dangerous mission – as it was, they already didn’t trust Nasir. She did not want them to be nervous around her and Harry as well. She knew they needed to be able to work together if they were going to be successful.
She and Harry may be different people from what they remembered. They may have changed, she may no longer be the friendly, bubbly person she once was, and she might be closed off – but she did still care. She just didn’t know how to be around them the same anymore. But she didn’t ever want to give up, and she wanted to try and improve that.
“No problem, Lupin,” she said, giving him what she hoped was a smile, though she knew it felt a little tight. Touching his hand made her heart panic the same way it had when Nasir and Arthur had touched her. She knew it would be a continued problem for her, and she forced herself to bite down her anxious nerves.
“Please – call me Remus,” Remus smiled at her, and she nodded. He hesitated a moment before he spoke again. “You – you don’t need your wand for that, do you?”
“I don’t.” Hermione’s eyes narrowed in curiosity. “What gave it away?”
“The limp wrist,” Remus said, his eyes flicking down to her hand. “I thought maybe it was because you’re using a different wand – but the movements were lazier than how you used to cast. I thought it was odd and wondered if maybe you were tired – then I realized it was just because it was unnecessary.”
“You’re very observant, Remus,” Hermione said, giving him a genuine small smile.
“How much can you cast without a wand?” Remus asked her curiously.
Hermione eyed him for a long moment, debating what to say as Harry continued to help the others behind them. It was unlikely that the information was damming, yet she’d learned the hard way never to assume anything.
“Enough,” she said slowly, trying to give him an amused look so he knew that she did not intend to be rude.
It took a little bit of extra effort to respond like a normal person to other people because she was so uncomfortable. Often it seemed the words would leave her mouth flatly, and then she’d remind herself to add facial expression afterwards, so her reactions this evening were all delayed. But Remus smiled at her and nodded. He understood – at least he seemed like he did because he asked to try again, and she nodded, waiting for him to cast his shield and then pelting him with lazily cast jinxes once more.
By 10:30 pm, they gave up. Everyone had managed to at least shoot purple sparks, but Remus was the only one with a solid shield. Fleur was a close second, and her spell had actually encased her body though it did not last longer than a second. They all said they would practice until the following weekend, and they’d test it again. Then they packed up for the night.
Hermione followed last out of the cottage. She felt weary and tired once more from the shield charm, and she needed to take her second nerve regeneration potion then sleep for another mandated 15 hours. She lingered back from Harry as he said goodbyes to everyone, and she leaned against the wall of the cottage – waving politely in return to Remus before he apparated away.
She was glad that they had made amends; it helped to make her feel more comfortable overall.
Shacklebolt left next. She nodded to him politely, and then she turned her eyes to Arthur. Nasir was standing quietly just off to the right while Arthur asked Harry some more questions on the shield charm. She let out a long breath and closed her eyes, leaning her head back against the wall of the cottage as her shoulders dropped in exhaustion.
“Hermione.” The closeness of the low, rich voice made her jump.
Her eyes shot wide. They jerked to her left to see Nasir leaning against the cottage only inches away from her. His head was angled towards hers, and he was staring at her face. It made her heart race in panic – had she fallen asleep standing up again? She couldn’t have. She’d been listening to Harry talk, and she was certain the conversation had flown consistently.
“You didn’t fall asleep,” he said quietly, reading the panicked expression on her face. He paused, his eyes watching her for a second longer before he finally spoke again. “I believe this is yours.”
She felt him take her right hand and gently press something into it. Her eyes scrunched in confusion, and she dropped her gaze to look at her hand. It was a piece of black fabric – but there was something hard wrapped within it.
Had she left something in the bedroom? Had she dropped something during training? Why was he standing so close to her? Why was he speaking so quietly? Why didn’t Arthur or Harry notice he was gone from their side? Had he used those charms as he had for training, so no one knew he was standing there with her?
She tried to move the fabric to get to what was inside, but it was difficult to unwrap with one hand. Without hesitating, she raised the fabric to her mouth and grabbed it tightly between her teeth, pulling open the knot so she could unravel it by twisting her wrist and flicking it in a circle. Her heart pounded in her chest as the fabric pooled towards the ground. Then her breath caught, and her eyes widened. Her fingers closed around the hard object as a familiar rush of warmth washed through her body – followed immediately by a string of bizarre information.
My wand.
Her head shot back up, and she looked at Nasir in shock. He was looking at her – directly at her – with the same dark, curious expression she’d seen earlier. It was beginning to feel almost familiar.
“Where did you get this?” The words came from her mouth as a tight, sharp rasp, and she felt a hard tug across her chest as her brain failed to compute what was happening.
It doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t make any fucking sense!
A dark smile curled across his lips once more, making him look more dangerous. “Does it matter?”
He pushed himself off the wall, moving effortlessly from his place at her side towards Harry and Arthur, who both seemed completely unaware of the fact that he’d left at all. She stood dumbfounded, unable to speak or move as she watched him return to his place and turn around to face her just as Harry said goodbye and Arthur turned to grab him for the apparition.
“Don’t forget your second potion, Hermione,” Nasir said in his calm, even voice. He turned and nodded to Harry in goodbye, then Arthur grabbed hold of him and apparated him away.
This chapter, along with all future Snape POV chapters, is dedicated to FluffyPandaShip. <3
-x-x-
Warnings:
Aani (as requested), don’t read this in public or you will make faces at your phone. I <3 you
-x-x-
February 1998
Hogwarts
Snape sat quietly at his desk, his eyes staring blankly at the papers before him. His hand was wrapped tightly around his wand, and the silence from the room echoed in his ears. January had been quiet, not just for Potter and Granger, who had done nothing but train and brew it seemed – but for him as well.
He had been quiet.
After discovering that Dumbledore had been aware of the Horcruxes, that he’d been raising Potter like a pig for slaughter and was willing to risk the fate of the wizarding world on three (now two) children’s capacity to destroy the remaining four Horcruxes – not to mention that one of those Horcruxes was the boy himself and Snape now had the joyous task of informing him about it – he found that he simply had nothing left to say.
He felt stupid.
He felt betrayed.
Not that he had ever truly trusted Dumbledore to begin with, the man had always been moving according to his secret grand master plan. Yet still, Snape felt like his entire life since Lily died was a lie. He had been protecting that idiot boy as payment for his failures, while unbeknownst to him all along, he had really just been tossing slop in the boy’s pen – making him fatter so that Dumbledore could drop the axe at the ‘right’ moment. He understood why Potter had to die. If he was indeed a Horcrux as Dumbledore claimed he was, then there was no other way around it.
Though that knowledge did little to settle his mind.
Inevitably he had become the monster that everyone thought he was. He should have known that trying to escape his fate was a fool’s errand. He was a failure, and he had never been anything but. He should have known there was no sufficient payment that could be made to compensate for destroying a family and killing Lily – just more pain. One last final reminder of his despicable and shameful history. It was poetic justice, he supposed. He had always known his war effort was a one-way ticket to death. It just hurt to know that he’d been riding a different train this entire time and that his journey was not at all the one he’d thought he was taking.
He was the executioner that’d killed Dumbledore, he was the con-artist that’d fooled the Order and the Dark Lord, and now he was the butcher who had been leading a child to death since he was eleven years old.
It made him feel a bit sick.
So, he avoided speaking to Dumbledore as much as possible. He spent the majority of his time either in his quarters or roaming the castle and dismantling the traps that Weasley and her gang had laid for him. He ordered Phineas to continue spying and only came into the office when required. Tonight, as it so happened, was one of those nights. Phineas had caught wind of Potter and Granger’s plan to go to Ottery St. Catchpole to gather potion ingredients and establish contact with Arthur Weasley. They wanted the antivenom recipe, which even he could not deny was worth the risk of going to the small wizarding village – getting anywhere near that snake was a death wish, and their close proximity to it was inevitable. He just hoped that Granger would be smart enough to get them in and out of the village quickly and that they went to the smaller southern apothecary and avoided Peter’s.
He sat at his desk, rigid as a board, waiting while Phineas spied, waiting to hear if anything went wrong.
Clutching his wand tightly, the muscles in his shoulders strained in anticipation. He hated not knowing what was coming, and he might need to apparate away in a moment’s notice to haul them out of trouble. So far, though, Phineas had only popped back into the frame to notify him that the magazine Granger had charmed was successfully placed at the post office.
But he hadn’t been back for a long while, and Snape was starting to get anxious. If they’d gone to Peter’s, they would be fucked, and he wasn’t sure there was anything he could do to help them. Peter’s alarms were very elaborate, the village was crawling with snatchers, and they would swarm the place like flies on shit the second they sounded. He wasn’t above dispatching witnesses if necessary, but he was hoping to be as discrete as possible.
Several more quiet long minutes passed, and he could feel Dumbledore staring at him. He ignored it and kept his eyes locked to the papers before him, hoping that the old man would not choose tonight to try and reestablish their communication. He was too tired. He didn’t want to deal with him or his pathetic justifications for his actions – it changed nothing.
Just when Dumbledore cleared his throat to disrupt the quiet, Phineas stumbled into his frame and vomited aggressively.
“Merlin’s fucking balls, I–“ Phineas’s voice broke, and he threw up once more, heaving for air as he clenched his hands over his ears.
“Fuck.” Snape let out a low deep sigh and pulled himself from his desk.
“Phineas!” Dumbledore’s voice rang out, startled by his sudden and nauseous appearance. “What happened – are you okay?”
“NO, I’M NOT OKAY!” Phineas snarled as he leaned against the edge of his frame and gripped his stomach tightly. “They went to some bloody apothecary that had alarms, and Hermione set them off on her last ingredient!”
“Deep breaths, Phineas,” Snape said as he quickly donned his frockcoat and cast a disillusionment spell on himself.
“Severus?! Where are you going?” Dumbledore was moving anxiously in his frame, his eyes watching Snape closely despite the fact he wasn’t visible.
“To delay your pig roast,” Snape replied coolly, disapparating from the office.
He landed across the street from Peter’s apothecary and gritted his teeth at the noise. He could not even begin to imagine what it might feel like to be inside the house. Even from here, his head felt like it was being hit with a hammer while his stomach knotted.
No wonder Phineas threw up, Snape thought as he moved swiftly into the middle of the street and cast a thick ward around the house.
There was no way to stop the alarms in their entirety. Only Peter would be able to turn them off. However, he could at least dampen the sounds to prevent them from carrying through the frigid night air and waking the entire small village. It might buy Potter and Granger some much-needed time to get out of the building.
His eyes darted around the street and the house before him as he looked for any signs of movement or any signs of the duo – but there was nothing. Aside from the god-awful sounds that had been echoing throughout the cold night air, they had completely covered their tracks. There wasn’t a single sign of anyone having come or gone since the snow had fallen.
Impressive, he thought snidely as he eyed both ends of the street for approaching snatchers.
It was irritating to acknowledge that Granger and Potter had done something well, but he could not deny it. Phineas had said they’d only tripped the alarms when Granger acquired the final ingredient. That meant that they’d successfully gotten inside and managed to take supplies, which wasn’t an easy feat.
He crinkled his nose in irritation.
Just how much training had they done?
The freezing air bit at his exposed neck, but he resisted the urge to shiver. The wards kept the alarms at a dull hum; it would be possible for them to get away yet. Though so far, he’d not seen any movement. Just as Snape had taken another few steps forward in anxious anticipation, his eyes were drawn to the second-floor window on the right, and his body tensed when he saw the unmistakable shape of two bodies all but jump from the opening. The dark figures plummeted two floors down, landing in the snow with a loud thud only to disappear from view almost instantaneously after sitting up. It was so dark he had barely been able to make out their movements at all, but he could tell they were gone.
No, he thought as he moved forward more, squinting in the darkness and eyeing the snow where they had fallen. There was nothing there. Not even a dent in the snow. Did they apparate?
His jaw clenched as he looked back up to the window to see Peter peering out, looking down at the empty snow. If they’d apparated away after being in those alarms, they would surely splinch themselves. Granger wasn’t stupid enough to take that risk. His eyes shifted back to the spot where they had fallen, and he squinted harder, barely noticing that the alarms had been turned off. He strained his eyes, forcing them to focus, then he saw it, a single footstep before it was quickly vanished from sight.
Fucking cloak, Snape rolled his eyes but pinched the bridge of his nose in relief.
They were fine. They’d covered themselves in Potter’s blasted cloak to give themselves more time. He felt the tension in his shoulders lessen as he stepped back away from the house. He no longer saw any tracks being made in the snow, but he suspected that they were moving towards the tree cover along the fence.
Snape’s head snapped to his left when he heard the noise of two approaching voices from the street, and he quickly removed his wards. He silently moved back across the street, keeping closer to the side that Potter and Granger were hiding and watching as three figures approached Peter’s front door. Two were snatchers; the third was a large werewolf that walked at the largest snatcher’s heel. It was a bit disturbing to see the beast under such control – it was completely against their nature and unlike anything Snape had ever seen.
Peter’s voice rang out across the air as he tried to brush off the sounded alarms and dispatch the snatchers though it was clear that they would not be leaving. Snape watched in silence as Peter did his best to slow them down and only relented to bring them around the side of the house when wands had been drawn. He waited cautiously; wand gripped tightly in his hand as Peter slowly left his house and made a show of removing his wards to let the snatchers and their dog on the property – there were no wards, Peter was lying. Only the inside of his house was warded, yet he risked the lie to delay them regardless.
Snape’s shoulders tensed at the realization.
Did the man know who had broken into his house, or was he simply trying to avoid the Dark Lord’s minions from meddling in his affairs? It was impossible to know. He watched as they finally made their way into the side yard, and he did not leave until he heard the faint echo of a small apparition pop sounding through the night air – until he was sure that Potter and Granger had escaped safely. Snape’s arm twitched as a heavy sigh left his body. Then he finally turned on his heel and apparated away.
He had not wanted to attack two snatchers, Peter, and a werewolf tonight – but he would have if he had to.
-x-x-
Snape moved silently through the corridor toward his office. It was late, far too late. His head was pounding, and his leg felt like it was on fire – which was appropriate given that it had literally been on fire four hours ago and it had yet to be treated.
Given the situation in the castle, he plainly refused to go see Madam Pomfrey for fear of being poisoned. Not by the lady herself. She would never do it. She was under oath to serve the Headmaster, and she did not have a violent bone in her body. It wasn’t in her heart or nature. She was a healer to her core, and she would help him if he went to her.
But she wasn’t what he was worried about – it was everyone else. There was nothing stopping the others from swapping her potions or even putting her under an imperius. And after everything he had done so far, he’d be damned if he died because some dolt of a Professor thought they were helping the cause by poisoning his dittany.
He healed himself.
Always.
Every time.
He just hadn’t managed to get back to his office until now. He’d gotten delayed after dinner by Professor Flitwick. Then he’d spent several hours removing a swamp from the hallway outside of the Slytherin dormitory. Back aching, feet sore, and anger flaring, he had attempted to make his way back to his office just before midnight.
He’d been walking down a quiet hallway only to pass through an archway and get hit with an exploding ball of flames cast by one of the idiot Carrows. They’d been trying to fend off an animated suit of armour that was attacking them. He’d had to go get Professor McGonagall from her quarters to stop the menace as it clanged down the hallway and swung its axe at the two Death Eaters – cutting deep gashes into the nearby tapestries and breaking several windows.
When the woman rounded the corner and saw it, Snape didn’t miss the look of amusement on her face and the wonder in her eyes. Nor did he miss how she took longer to stop the armour than what he suspected was necessary. Even he could not deny that the level of skill required to create such a charm was impressive, so impressive that he had originally doubted that Weasley or any member of her gang would have been able to implement it. Yet McGonagall’s surprise suggested that, unbelievably, she’d had nothing to do with it. Given that the charm had to be transfiguration-based since the armour had been expanded, he’d found this shocking. It meant that one of the students must have figured it out. Who – Snape had no idea.
After the armour had finally been stopped and brought back to its original place along the wall, Snape had sent the Carrows away and then cast a heavy silencing charm around himself and the older woman. He’d glared at her as rage poured off of him in waves. Dumbledore was the only one he ever yelled at. Dumbledore was the only one he ever lost his temper with. With everyone else, he remained calm, cold, calculating, distant, quiet, detached – completely void of any emotion.
But not tonight.
His leg was burning in agony. His shoulders felt heavy as he struggled to balance his mission with his desire to avoid unnecessary casualties. His heart was still wounded from the reality of his legacy, and now this witch and her students were going to get themselves killed because they just could not fucking stop.
He’d yelled at her, tearing into her and berating her for her lack of control of her house. She’d gone from looking shocked at his angry outburst to growing livid herself and exploding. She vehemently denied having anything to do with the suit of armour but argued that no student would have the skill necessary to do it. They’d stood there for over half an hour yelling at one another as Snape felt himself breaking. His cold exterior was gone, and he was losing control.
He needed her to control her house.
He needed her to control the redhead, or eventually, someone would end up dead.
Yet he couldn’t even tell her that. He couldn’t explain himself. He couldn’t ask her nicely. He couldn’t let her know what was really going on, or he would risk everything. So, he’d unleashed his anger as an interrogation and string of insults – and she’d given it right back, letting out months of pent-up anger and frustration with him as if she’d forgotten who he was and what sort of danger she could be putting herself in.
When they’d finally reached a solid impasse, Snape’s voice was hoarse, and his nails had sunken so deep into his palms he could no longer feel anything in his hands. He closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose and told the woman to get control of her house before the Carrows killed someone.
Then he’d made a mistake.
“I cannot control them forever.”
He’d said through gritted teeth, and McGonagall’s eyes had widened at his words as she stared at him in confusion. It had been too much. He shouldn’t have said it. Even those few small words revealed too much and risked everything – so he’d halfheartedly slapped on ‘eventually I will take care of things myself – permanently’ and turned on his heel and left the hall in a swirl of robes.
Now climbing the stairs to his office, he limped and bit down the urge to hiss in pain. He knew the damage wasn’t that bad. It only hurt because it had been neglected for several hours, and fireball had burned most of the skin from his calf. There would undoubtedly be a sticky mess to clean up. He would need to disinfect it, pick the cloth from the wound, and then heal it with dittany.
He sighed as he pushed open the door and walked into his office – the night was far from over.
His shoulders slumped as he closed the door behind him with both hands, dropping his head against the hard wood and closing his eyes. He felt like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, and he was so tired he could feel it in his bones. They weren’t even close to being done – Potter and Granger still had so far to go, and yet he felt like he was running on fumes. He’d need to start dabbling with his potions again soon. He could not afford to fuck up again as he had with McGonagall, or he would jeopardize everything.
Taking a breath, he pushed himself from the door, warded it, and moved across the office toward his chambers. He hoped to Merlin that nothing had happened with Potter and Granger.
His eyes flicked to Phineas as he walked, and he paused mid-stride. The man was awake, sitting in his frame, head held in his hands and looking like he was in a daze. His expression was blank, yet something heavy was radiating out from his core.
“Phineas?” Snape said more gently than he normally would have. He wasn’t a caring person by nature, but something about Phineas’s posture stilled his normally burning rage. This office had become the place where he usually let his rage out – yet tonight, he felt it fizzle in his chest.
Phineas’s head jerked up, his eyes looking blankly before him for a moment before they focused on Snape.
“Oh, Severus – I didn’t hear you come in.”
Snape’s eyes narrowed as he stepped closer to the portrait, ignoring the throbbing of his leg. “Phineas – what happened?”
He was keenly aware that Dumbledore’s eyes had opened at his words and that the elderly wizard was now listening intently to the exchange. Phineas looked at him, meeting his eyes directly, and Snape felt his heart still. It hurt. The man looked anguished, heartbroken – he’d never seen Phineas Black express such emotion.
“Hermione and Potter went back to Birmingham to harvest snakeweed,” Phineas said slowly, swallowing hard before he continued. “They managed to get it but – while they were along the canal, they heard a scream. It was a muggle woman.”
Phineas went quiet, and Snape felt his body growing tense.
“What happened, Phineas?” Snape kept his voice level and calm. “Were they attacked?”
“No,” Phineas said, his eyes dropping to stare blankly at the wall behind Snape. “They’re safe.”
“Okay,” Snape said, feeling an uneasiness creeping through his body. “They’re safe, and they have the snakeweed – they can complete the antivenom potion now. What happened to the muggle woman?”
“They went to her,” Phineas said quietly, still unwilling to look at him directly.
“They went to her?” Snape felt his voice growing tight.
“Yes,” Phineas let out a long heavy sigh, forcefully dragging his eyes away from the wall to meet Snape’s gaze. “Two snatchers and a werewolf had attacked her. Hermione killed the one snatcher – Potter killed the beast. They took the second one with them for questioning, and they tried to save the woman. Hermione’s purse was open as they worked – I – I could hear them. They tried everything, Severus – but the wounds wouldn’t close. Her body was rejecting the magic.”
Snape had gone perfectly still. He held Phineas’s gaze firmly, understanding exactly why this had unsettled him so. This was now the second time the duo had killed. And it was the first time that Granger would have tried something and failed. Regardless of how prepared they were, they had no control over a muggle’s ability to process or handle dark magic. Accepting the death of someone you could not save was hard. It weighed heavy on your heart, and he knew it would hit her harder than Potter – Potter had seen death, up close more than once. Granger had not.
Not like that.
Not while kneeling next to the person, holding their hand as they bled out before her eyes. If these two didn’t deal with the situation well, it could potentially derail the entire plan that Dumbledore had laid out. From the corner of his eye, he could see Dumbledore’s expression tighten, and he knew they’d already strayed heavily from the path he’d laid for them. He had intended for them to die – but he’d never intended for them to become killers.
Ironic really.
It seemed to be an odd double standard that Dumbledore often applied to his helpers.
“Did they stay with her while she bled out?” Snape asked, his voice coming out low and soft.
“No,” Phineas said, his voice breaking as his eyes wavered. “The woman asked for mercy – and Hermione granted it.”
“How?” His word was a hoarse whisper.
“Avada Kedavra,” Phineas said quietly. “She used the killing curse, Severus.”
Snape felt the room around them go silent. He could see the shocked expression on Dumbledore’s face – the elderly man did not know what to do with this information. This had not been his plan.
Snape felt like another weight had just settled on his shoulders as he stared at Phineas. Not many witches or wizards cast Unforgivables in their lifetime – and the majority of the ones that did were not decent people. They were twisted individuals who cared little about the consequences. Phineas was one such wizard who would never be able to understand the weight that came with granting death.
Snape did.
He felt it, heavy like a stone in his chest for each time he’d claimed a life, and knowing that Granger would now carry that same weight with her made his stomach churn. Annoying as the little know-it-all was, she deserved a better life. They deserved better than this – and yet he would go on doing everything he could to force them to keep going. He would push them from the sidelines to finish this war. Then he would ask Potter to die. It was the harsh reality of life, and it wasn’t fair.
“How are they?” Snape asked quietly.
“They seem – okay,” Phineas said slowly. “They questioned the snatcher then dropped him to Arthur Weasley for additional questioning along with the werewolf corpse. It seemed like they were able to cover up any involvement.”
“Good.” Snape nodded.
“Severus,” Phineas said nervously. “The Order has a new legilimens that they are going to use for questioning.”
Snape frowned. There were no other legilimens as far as he knew. “Who?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“As soon as you find out, tell me,” Snape said, his mind beginning to spin. “Tomorrow, I will place a charm on your portrait so you can alert me regardless of where I am – the alarm in my quarters won’t be enough going forward.”
Phineas nodded.
“And go back over there for tonight,” Snape said tightly. “Granger is likely to have nightmares – it’s hard to say how she will handle everything. Keep an eye on them both. Let me know if their behaviour starts to change or if their patterns shift.”
“Of course.” Phineas nodded once more and pulled himself up to his feet before moving out of the frame.
Snape stood still on his spot as he forced his mind to process the information. Granger and Potter’s kill count was growing. Granger had cast an Unforgivable. They interrogated a snatcher. Their actions were becoming calculated, cold, and detached – they were doing what was necessary instead of clinging to false fantasies for how they wanted things to go.
At first he assumed that they’d only killed those snatchers and the wolf on the hill because they’d had no other choice. He’d assumed that it had been strictly self-defence. And yet tonight, they had freely sought out a muggle in need and taken out her attackers – by choice. Either they were immensely stupid and irresponsible – which was plausible. Or they’d become much more skilled and dangerous than he’d given them credit for – which begrudgingly, he supposed was also plausible.
He would need to watch them more closely and keep an eye on their personalities. To top it all off, now the Order allegedly had a new legilimens, and that was concerning.
There was only one other decent legilimens out there not under the Dark Lord’s control that he knew of, but he doubted they would be desperate enough to seek him out, and he much less doubted that the man would agree to help – so who could it be?
“Severus.” Dumbledore’s voice tore him from his thoughts. Snape’s eyes shifted over to him slowly. The man looked upset. “This was never supposed to happen. You will need to keep a close eye on them to make sure that they stay focused on the task and do not get lost in despair. It can be easy to fall into agony over one’s past actions – especially ones that cannot be undone.”
“Yes,” Snape said as his eyes narrowed at the man, and he clenched his jaw tight. “I know.”
-x-x-
March 1998
Hogwarts
“Good morning,” Phineas said with a yawn as Snape entered the office early to finish the work he had not been able to complete the evening before after being summoned to the Manor.
He paused, looking toward Phineas with an arched eyebrow. It was neither a good morning nor a morning to be good on. It was just another damn day that would yet again ask too much from him. Though why Phineas was up at the crack of dawn was beyond him. Typically, portraits loved to sleep in and would complain if he disturbed them between the hours of 11 pm to 10 am since they seemed to think they ran the office hours per their schedule.
“What has you up so early?” Snape asked, ignoring the pleasantries and taking a seat at this desk with a scowl.
“I have been getting up early every morning for the last few months,” Phineas said with a stretch of his arms. “You just don’t notice because you’re either still out from the night before or already gone.”
“Alright.” Snape glanced up at him and glared. There was a shimmer of amusement in Phineas’s eyes, so he reworded his question and spat it out as foully as he could. “Why have you been getting up early the last few months.”
“Well – Hermione and Potter get up early. They tend to talk about their plans during breakfast, which should be soon. And, sometimes they leave the purse open, so I was just on my way to go check and see how they are.”
It made sense. Phineas had been relaying a lot more information since January – he must have realized that his typical sleeping patterns were not ideal for spying. Hence why they were aware of the extent of their training, their potion brewing, their plans – though it was interesting to see that Phineas had been willing to shift his personal life in order to fulfill his orders. Snape got the distinct impression that Phineas truly did care for the duo – particularly Granger, whom he often spoke of with high regard.
He’d been doubling his efforts to keep an even closer eye on them after the incident in Birmingham. Thankfully, at least from what they could tell, Granger had not imploded in on herself after killing the muggle woman they now knew was named Rose. She’d experienced night terrors – which was to be expected – but otherwise, she had been doing surprisingly well and had even managed to decode the banding magic used on the werewolves and the bonding process with the snatchers. It was more than he had been able to figure out as Bellatrix ensured he didn’t come anywhere near her project, and Narcissa had little information to share.
“Sounds wonderful,” Snape said sarcastically as he dipped his quill in ink. “Go do that then.”
“I will,” Phineas said brightly, clearly not allowing Snape’s unpleasant mood to dampen his spirits.
Snape had only just started to draft the second report when Phineas returned, stumbling into the frame, quickly righting himself and fixing his clothes. He looked flustered. His expression was a combination of shame and... embarrassment? There was a tint of pink to his cheeks that was irregular and caught Snape’s attention instantly.
“Back so soon?” Snape said, sitting back in his chair and arching a brow. It was now his turn to be amused with Phineas. “What happened? I thought you were going to listen for information – isn’t this your normal morning routine now?”
“Y-Yes – er, I was yes,” Phineas faltered as he spoke, which was also irregular. “But I think I’ll go back later.”
“Why?” Snape said dryly, his tired brain not making any of the connections that it normally would have quickly made.
“Oh – just that I think later would be a better time. They uh, just seemed – busy,” he said the last word with a slight inflection, and his face was completely pink now. He looked desperate to change the topic, and Snape’s amusement turned into a scowl.
Is this wizard an idiot? He thought as his annoyance flared and his sluggish mind grew weary with guesswork.
“If they’re busy wouldn’t that be the exact time that you would want to listen in? What were they do–“ his words cut off as his brain flashed the memory of the duo’s passionate kiss on the ice to the forefront of his mind, and he felt his eyes widen as understanding dawned on him.
He had buried that memory down deep and even contemplated removing it entirely from his head altogether. He had almost forgotten about it, but Phineas’s embarrassed and somewhat desperate expression had caused it to resurface. That had to be it. They had to be – he forced his thoughts to stop right there. He would never admit to anyone how long it took him to make the connection – but he blamed it on his extensive efforts to ignore and forget the details of Potter’s love life.
A heartbeat passed between him and Phineas, their eyes locked in a single moment of knowing and unspoken understanding before they both averted their eyes in embarrassment.
“Never mind!” Snape said quickly. He waved his hand as if to physically remove the idea from his head. He felt gross and disturbed to think of it, and he wanted it gone. He didn’t want to imagine them being intimate.
“What’s going on? What were they doing?” Dumbledore asked, his voice only adding to the awkwardness that had spread across the office, and Snape saw Phineas blush a deeper shade of red. Once again, Dumbledore had confirmed Snape’s suspicion: that he was never asleep and was always listening in and spying on them.
“Nothing,” Snape and Phineas said in unison, both of them now trying to look busy with whatever was in front of them. Snape ruffled through his papers, not looking for anything in particular as Phineas became absolutely enthralled by his cuff links.
“I don’t understand,” Dumbledore said slowly, genuinely curious as he looked between the two of them. “Phineas needs to get more information on their movements – we need to know what they’re doing.”
“Not that information,” Snape muttered under his breath. “Or those movements.”
“What was that?” Dumbledore said, squinting at him. He had been quiet enough for Dumbledore to miss his words.
“I said he’ll go back later!” Snape spat, quickly standing from his desk.
He needed to get out of his office. Take a walk outside – clear his head of the uncomfortable thoughts that were circling his mind. It was bad enough that he knew anything about Potter and Granger’s love life, and it was now ten times worse that he knew they were engaging in sexual exploits – exploits explicit enough to chase Phineas away and turn the normally calm and collected wizard’s face beet red. The only way this knowledge could be made worse was if he had to explain it to the dead Headmaster.
Absolutely fucking not, he thought as he grabbed his frockcoat and left the office before Dumbledore could press the issue further.
-x-x-
March was an odd month.
Potter and Granger kept quiet, keeping busy with their training, brewing the antivenom, and preparing to go see Xenophilius Lovegood, which was highly concerning. The strange man had long since been under the control of the Death Eaters, yet there was no way for Snape to tell the duo that. He couldn’t warn them. He couldn’t protect them if they went there – it was heavily warded and monitored. He wouldn’t be able to get anywhere near it without raising suspicion. All he could do was wait and watch on the sidelines as they trained while he discussed potential means of saving them with Dumbledore and Phineas.
In short – Dumbledore was adamant that he not get involved and that he trust Potter and Granger. Which only resulted in more argument between him and the dead wizard. It was astounding how much time he wasted on someone who wasn’t even alive.
What was most odd about March was that for the entire month, nothing happened around the castle. Weasley’s attacks had subsided, and things had become eerily quiet. Either his slip-up with Professor McGonagall had actually helped – or they were planning something big. He tended to think it was the latter. Either way, he kept his guard high as he walked the castle corridors and patrolled the grounds at night.
He even, out of the goodness of his black heart, decided to ignore catching Weasley and the Bones girl snogging in the library – instead, he’d cast a rapid disillusionment charm and beelined out of the room. No one else was there, so no one had seen him. Thus, no one would find it odd that he’d not reacted.
But if he was being honest, he didn’t want to react. He didn’t want to upset the odd calm that had encapsulated the school by dishing out unnecessary detentions. He didn’t care that they were snogging. Besides – it had seemed rather desperate, and it had made him massively uncomfortable. He didn’t want to be anywhere near it. Though, it did explain a lot, and he’d spent the rest of that day wondering why the fuck the universe seemed so intent on giving him so much unwanted information on his students’ sex lives.
It wasn’t until the end of the month that something finally happened.
“He’s back!” Phineas cut into the frame of his portrait; his face twisted into a scowl.
“Who’s back?” Snape asked, looking up from the collection of potions he was labelling.
“Weasley.” Phineas scowled deeper.
“That’s great news.” Dumbledore perked up in his portrait, and Snape saw his eyes twinkle. It was as if he thought his plan was finally coming together.
“Hardly,” Phineas sneered. “He showed up just a few minutes ago – Hermione is not happy about it. She just laid into him pretty good.”
“Phineas, my dear friend.” Dumbledore was shaking his head. “They were always stronger as a group. I won’t lie that I am a bit surprised it took him so long to return, but undoubtably it is a good thing. They will need each other in order to be successful.”
“Seriously?” Snape said dryly, his brow arching as he set down the bottle he would be delivering to Narcissa later that night. He’d been watching the bitter exchange between the two wizards and forcing himself not to roll his eyes. “The Weasley boy is an incompetent ape – I doubt he has done anything for the last few months but sulk in hiding. It is astounding that he was not captured during that time, let alone killed. He’s going to slow them down – Phineas keep a close eye on them. I have to go out tonight to drop off the potions requested by the Dark Lord but signal me if anything happens.”
“Of course.” Phineas nodded, giving Dumbledore a dirty look before leaving his frame once more.
“Severus – you’re too hard on the boy,” Dumbledore said, his irritation evident. “Harry and Hermione have become too distanced from the world. They’re closing themselves off – Ronald Weasley will help to balance them out and bring them back to us.”
“Or he will become solely responsible for their deaths,” Snape said snidely, picking up the bottle once more and finishing the label. “They are distanced. They are cold. You might not like it, but it’s what happens when you send children off into the woods to fend for themselves and fight a fucking war, Albus. Deny it all you want – it might be hard for you to digest, but they have killed people Albus. They’re not the same people they were when they left. Your plan is out of date, and it doesn’t factor in the new information or how they’ve changed. That idiotic redhead will never understand – he doesn’t know what they’ve been through.”
“Feeling a kinship with them, are we Severus?” Dumbledore asked, his low voice almost angry. “It is critical that you ensure they don’t stray too far down a dark path like you did – and Ronald Weasley will help with that.”
Snape snorted audibly. “I don’t feel anything for them, Albus – but tell me, which one is it? Do you want me to ensure that they are successful, or do you want me to save their souls? In case you’ve failed to notice – your original plan has gone to shit. Weasley didn’t return when you expected. Potter and Granger are practically connected at the hip – they would die for one another faster than anything else, and they’ve experienced more darkness in the last seven months than most witches or wizards do in their lifetime. And they’ve accepted it. It’s time you come to terms with the fact that you fucked up and stop pretending like you still somehow have things under control.”
Snape stood from his desk and gathered the collection of potions into a small bag.
“This war has escalated beyond what you anticipated, beyond what anyone had anticipated. There will be consequences for fighting in it, and Potter and Granger are going to suffer them because you assigned them to the task.” Snape turned and made his way to the door of his quarters. “You’re the one who feels something toward them – guilt perhaps? Desperation? Have you finally grown a conscious now that you’ve realized what you’ve asked of them?”
“Severus,” Dumbledore cut him off, his voice like ice. “That’s enough – don’t project your own guilt about your fail–”
“I’m not projecting anything,” Snape hissed, his eyes flashing in anger. “I accepted my role years ago – I know exactly where I’m going when this is all over. But it’s time that you start to accept the sentence you’ve handed down to Potter and Granger.”
-x-x-
A duel had broken out between a sixth-year Slytherin and a second-year Gryffindor after breakfast.
Duel was a misnomer. It had been a blindsided attack. The moron Figgins had hit the Gryffindor for no reason whatsoever. Which, inevitably, had caused an all-out battle to arise between the students in the hallways outside the Great Hall. Professor Slughorn had been hit in the crossfire. He collided with a statue and fell unconscious. McGonagall had yelled and fought to get control of her house. The Carrows had hit three young students with a wicked round of cruciatus, filling the corridor with ragged screams of pain and only fueling the hatred and fighting further. And Flitch, the fucking imbecile, had somehow gotten mixed up in the center of the brawl and ended up attached to the ceiling – unable to get down.
Snape had to freeze half of them in place with a wide-ranging freezing spell and whip up a protective barrier in between the sides to stop the commotion. As it happened, he could feel the ringing in his head. Phineas was calling to him. He didn’t have time to deal with this shitshow right now. Potter and Granger were going to the Lovegood residence today and bringing that idiot Weasley boy with them as a lookout. Something had obviously gone wrong based on the urgency of the ringing in his mind. He needed to get back to his office – but if he left now, there would be dead students in the hall.
He ordered the Carrows to take the Slytherins to their common room. He sentenced the entire Gryffindor house to detention and curfew for the next three weeks, and he locked them inside the Great Hall with Professor McGonagall. He had Madam Pomfrey tend to the wounded, and he left Flitch hanging from the ceiling, making his way in a billow of robes towards his office. When he barged into his office, he instantly heard Phineas screaming at him as he warded his door.
“Severus! Severus! They got captured at the Lovegood’s – Bellatrix was searching their bag and found the sword!” Phineas looked frantic as he strained himself between the two frames. His body was tense, and his hand hovered by his ear. He looked like he might be sick as he forced the words out. “They don’t know who they are, but she thinks they’ve been in her vault, and now she is torturing Hermione – Severus, I–“
The man flinched with pain in his frame, and his hands shot to his ears.
“Where are they?” Snape could feel his whole body tense. “Are they at the Manor?”
“Yes – I could hear Narcissa and Lucius – Severus – she’s going to die, Severus! “
Snape nodded, grabbing his frockcoat off his chair and pulling it on.
“Severus!” Dumbledore’s stern voice cut through the air. “You cannot go – you haven’t been summoned.”
“Thank you for that obvious piece of information – I’m perfectly well aware I haven’t been summoned,” Snape spat with irritation. He could feel his skin prickling as his stomach started to knot.
This was not good. He couldn’t simply show up, but he could not leave Potter and Granger at the Manor. They would die there. It was likely that the only reason the Dark Lord had yet to be summoned was because of what had happened two weeks ago. The snatchers had brought by three muggles – mistaking them as Potter, Granger, and Weasley. Bellatrix had summoned the Dark Lord in excitement before she had even looked at the lot. The results had been disastrous. He wasn’t sure that Lucius would ever fully recover from his injuries, and Bellatrix had gone several rounds screaming on the floor in agony before the Dark Lord finally calmed down.
The three muggles had died. Their bodies vanished from existence after their blood had leaked across the floor. He knew it had affected Narcissa more deeply than she would ever let on. They’d only been kids after all, possibly as young as thirteen. Even he could still see their dead faces burned into his mind.
He watched as Phineas crumpled in on himself, and tears began to shine in his eyes. Even though he could not hear it, he could feel it. He was well acquainted with Bellatrix’s affinity for the cruiciatus curse, and he’d been on the receiving end before. He knew perfectly well what was happening, and it made his heart race with panic.
“Severus,” Phineas whimpered. “You have to go to them – she’s going to kill her.”
“Severus, you must stay here,” Dumbledore said firmly, his eyes flashing with panic as he moved closer to them in his frame. “If you show up, it will expose everything.”
“Severus! Please!” Phineas appeared to be in physical pain as he looked up at Snape in agony. “You have to do something! Help them! She’s DYING!”
“Severus.” Dumbledore’s voice was tight with panic. “You have not been summoned. You cannot just show up – you don’t ‘know’ that they’re there!”
Snape groaned; his eyes flicked between the portraits before him as his hand clenched into a tight fist.
What the fuck was he supposed to do?
Bellatrix was insane. She was a rabid dog with no leash, and even the Dark Lord could not always control her. The odds of her killing the Granger girl during torture were not only high – they were most probable. It would only be a matter of time before Potter was next, or the Dark Lord himself was summoned. Then the war would be over. Everything he had worked for would be lost, and the wizarding world would be at the hands of a raging lunatic.
“SEVERUS!” Phineas practically screeched as what sounded like a sob burst from his mouth. It was like nothing Snape had ever heard before, and it turned his blood cold. “PLEASE! PLEAASE!”
“FUCK!” Snape rammed his fist into his desk, biting back the pain before yanking the desk drawer open so hard it came right out of the socket. He began shoving several bottles into his pockets, hoping to Merlin he wasn’t about to get tortured too far past repair for showing up uninvited.
“Severus! Where are you going?!” Dumbledore’s panicked voice rang out across the office as Snape stood up and made his way to the center to apparate.
“I’m going to make sure that your prized pig and his sidekick aren’t murdered before they’re fat enough – I thought you wanted to stick to the plan,” Snape sneered with hatred.
“But what is it that you’re going to do? You haven’t been summoned!”
“I’ll figure that out when I get there,” Snape snarled, turning quickly on his heel and leaving with a loud pop.
He landed hard before the Malfoy Manor gate. He hadn’t put any effort into slowing his movement or quieting the pop of his apparition – there was no point. Lucius and Narcissa would know that he was there the second he stepped past the wards. Right now, he needed to focus. He needed to remain calm and come up with a plan for what the hell he was going to do and how the fuck he was supposed to explain his presence.
He moved swiftly up the pathway to the Manor. He could see the lingering footprints in the mud from a large group of people that had walked the path before him. No doubt it was Potter and Granger.
When he reached the front door, he wrenched it open, planning to dart up the stairway as quickly as possible when a huge thudding sound echoed through the mansion on his right. He froze and then turned toward the front parlour. The sounds of multiple voices screaming met his ears. Pulling the doors open, his eyes grew wide, and time seemed to slow.
In the center of the room, there stood a tall, dirty, ragged, and intimidating man. Long black hair curled around his face, his features were twisted with rage, and he was focused intently on Bellatrix, who was standing with her back to the door just off to his left. The man was clutching a bloodied and small form protectively to his chest. His wand was raised, aimed at Bellatrix’s face as her angry scream echoed around the room. Greyback was in the fucking wall. His body crumpled forward as blood trickled from his head. A snatcher to the left of Bellatrix split into three pieces as the bloodied girl in the center of the room raised her hand, and his blood and innards spilled out across the floor with a sickening sound.
Then, for no reason that Snape could comprehend, non-other than Dobby – the house elf who was determined to starve him to death – stood before them both with his tiny hand outstretched as if to stop Bellatrix from harming those behind him. Behind the elf stood a small goblin, clutching onto him tightly.
Snape’s breath caught as time sped up, resuming back to normal speed, and everything happened in a flash. A small purse hurtled across the room, speeding toward the hand of the bloodied girl that the ragged dark-haired man held. Her form was slumped, her left side looked limp, yet her face was laced with rage. Bellatrix threw her knife at the group, the dark-haired man looked down, and they disappeared with an echoing crack.
Just before they had vanished, Snape caught a glimpse of the man’s eyes and his body tensed.
They were green.
Bright green.
He knew those eyes. They haunted him in his sleep. That man had been Potter – which meant that that bloodied and beaten-looking girl he was holding was Granger.
He knew it was.
What the fuck just happened?
He didn’t understand what he had just seen. How had that snatcher exploded? How were they capable of this? How was she standing after having been tortured by Bellatrix?
It didn’t make any sense. He could not rationalize what he’d seen with his own mental image of them in his head. He knew they had been training – but not like this. It didn’t fit, and he felt his mind spinning as he tried to comprehend what the fuck had just happened. He forced his brain to calm, biting down his confusion and making himself breathe – he would have to sort this out later. Right now, he needed to act.
The room around him seemed stunned into silence. No one was moving, no one was breathing, and he forced his brain to focus. Taking advantage of their stupor and the fact that no one had heard him enter, he pushed the doors the rest of the way open hard and pretended to burst into the room.
“Exactly what is going on here?” Snape drawled lazily, walking his way into the parlour to stop near Narcissa, who was standing in a pool of blood and guts. Her eyes widened at his voice, and she glanced over to him. He could see her calculating in the split second that it took for Bellatrix to turn and face him.
“What are you doing here!” She screeched, stomping toward him. A large welt was forming on the center of her forehead, but it was hardly anything compared to the fact that she was missing her left eye. Blood was trailing down her face, dripping down her neck and dropping across the floor as she raised her finger and pointed it in Snape’s face.
Apparently, she has also lost her wand, Snape thought as he turned to her and opened his mouth to respond.
“I summoned him.”
It was Narcissa that spoke, and he had to fight to stop his eyebrow from arching. He hadn’t been expecting anyone to provide a reasonable alibi for him. He had been fully intending to lie his way out of this.
“You what?” Bellatrix’s voice was a low hiss as she turned her only remaining eye on her sister. “I told you not to summon the traitor!”
“I’m aware,” Narcissa said, arching a brow, standing taller, and eyeing her sister evenly. “But I thought he might be able to help with the identification – he would have seen Potter more times than Draco while teaching at the school. I asked him to come as quickly as he could.”
“Though it would seem,” Snape said slowly, allowing his eyes to move over the room before looking back to Bellatrix with an empty expression. “That I was not quick enough – I would have thought that you would be capable of holding a boy and a few of his friends. Are you truly that incompetent? Or were you drawing things out and using them as toys again? It has been made abundantly clear that he is our top priority above everything else and that we are to turn him over to the Dark Lord when he is found.
“How you could not identify him when his face has been plastered across every city for the last year is beyond me – perhaps your memory was damaged after what happened the last time you had guests show up. So let me remind you, Bellatrix. It was the Dark Lord’s request that I am summoned for verification should you ever find yourself in another position where you are unsure. Or should I summon him now and ask him to reconfirm his orders?”
It was perfect. He hadn’t even needed to lie. The Dark Lord had not ordered that he be called, but he had suggested it in a dead and sarcastic tone while Bellatrix had laid panting in agony on the floor two weeks ago – which was essentially the same thing as it being an order. The Dark Lord would interpret his own words however best suited him at the time, and since Narcissa had claimed to summon him, no one would question his presence or her motives. Bellatrix would quickly forget any doubt she had as her mind latched to anger. He watched as her single remaining eye lit with rage and her body twitched. She made to move toward Snape, but Narcissa interjected and stepped toward her.
“Bellatrix, we need to tend to your eye,” Narcissa said softly, stepping between the two.
The only remaining question was why.
Had Narcissa lied for her own safety? Was she planning to claim that she had done the right thing in hopes of avoiding the inevitable recourse of losing captives? Or was there something else going on? He watched as the blonde forced the crazed one-eyed witch away, leading her across the room. It would be impossible to tell unless Narcissa decided to tell him as she was skilled in occlumency and could hide her thoughts. For now, he would say nothing, and he would allow the lie to slip easily between them.
His eyes darted to Draco, who was leaning against the wall by the door, looking like he might be sick. Very similarly to how his father looked leaning against the mantle of the fire. They’d never had strong stomachs. The both of them had joined the Dark Lord for the wrong reasons – they weren’t fighters at heart. Ignorant and prejudiced, yes, but they weren’t killers.
He flicked his wand and vanished the severed body of the snatcher from the ground before turning on his heel and making his way across the room, following several feet behind Narcissa.
“Next time,” he said as he passed Lucius. “Call me sooner.”
This chapter, along with all future Snape POV chapters, is dedicated to FluffyPandaShip. <3
-x-x-
Warnings:
Aani (as requested), don’t read this in public or you will make faces at your phone. I <3 you
-x-x-
March 1998
Cokeworth
“Narcissa,” Snape said evenly, not a trace of emotion lacing his voice as he opened the door to find Mrs. Malfoy standing on his porch in the rain. “I trust that you’ve brought the ingredients.”
“Yes,” she said, her voice steady and even. “And I have been instructed to pick up whatever potions you have completed.”
“Very well.” Snape held the door open to her and stood aside, allowing the witch into his home before closing the door behind her.
He followed her into his front sitting room, stopping in the large doorframe and watching as she made her way over to his mantle. She rested her hand on its surface before she turned back to look at him, her face was equally blank, but he knew that she was here for more than just their potions and ingredients exchange. She had, after all, sent him an owl that morning asking to move their meeting up by a week. She’d stated in her letter that it was due to the Dark Lord’s demands having caused her to run low on several key substances – he knew better. He knew exactly how much she had left in her stores, and it was more than enough. He knew this was about what had happened two days ago at the Manor. He’d been expecting this.
“Have the conditions changed since the last time we spoke?” She asked vaguely, her voice steady. She appeared to be strictly business, and her body language seemed poised and put together.
“No,” he said slowly. He knew that she was talking about the wards, his wards. She wanted to know if his house was still secure and if they were able to talk freely. They could. Maintaining the integrity of the wards on his home was something he’d invested a great deal of time on. “The conditions have not changed.”
At his response, her calm demeanour cracked. She raised both hands to her face, taking in a ragged breath before she pinched the bridge of her nose and let out a long, heavy exhale. Snape stood unmoving in the doorframe, watching her every move, taking in the stress lines that appeared around her eyes as she let her façade and glamours fall.
“I have something for you,” she said after she’d been quiet for a moment. Reaching into her robes, she pulled out a wand, one that wasn’t hers, and she held it out to him.
“A wand?” He questioned slowly, finally pushing off the doorframe and moving across the room to take it from her. “I thought you were to deliver powdered bicorn horn and shredded boomslang – the ingredients required to brew a fresh batch of veritaserum as per your owl. Please do tell me – what am I to do with a wand?”
“If you are what some say you are – you will know exactly what to do with it.”
Snape had been twisting the wand between his fingers, trying to determine if it looked familiar. It did – sort of – but he hadn’t been able to put his finger on it, though. His thought process and movements froze at Narcissa’s words. He raised his eyes from the wand, narrowing them as he fixed her with a serious stare. Her eyes were glassy, she looked almost ready to burst into tears, yet she stood tall and held her head proudly. The nervous tremble of her jaw was almost invisible. Almost.
“What,” he paused, his voice dropping to a deadly whisper as he closed the space between them. “Are you implying?”
“It’s her wand,” she said, refusing to step back from him. She met his eyes firmly as she searched his face.
He arched his brow at her in question, and she swallowed hard before taking another breath.
“It’s Hermione Granger’s wand.”
Snape could actually feel his heart stutter in his chest as he stared at the woman before him intensely. Why did she have Granger’s wand? Why hadn’t she turned it in? And more importantly, why the fuck was she giving it to him? Did she believe Bellatrix’s whisperings about him being a traitor? Did she know that he was a spy? Had she suspected that his loyalties lay elsewhere and he was in contact with the Order? And better yet – if she did – why the hell had she kept it quiet?
“And why do you have her wand – why was it not turned over to the Dark Lord?” He asked impassively, keeping his face emotionless as his brain continued to race.
“When Bellatrix found the Sword of Gryffindor, she disarmed everyone in the room and threw a fit. The girl’s wand landed near my feet, so I picked it up,” Narcissa said quietly. “Though with all the confusion and yelling, no one saw me take it. They’ve assumed that she must have retrieved it before leaving the Manor, so no one knows that it is unaccounted for.”
He stared at her, his back rigid like a board and his face indifferent. She knew it was Potter and Granger at the house, yet she’d lied. She’d said she wasn’t sure. Snape felt like the world was shifting under his feet, the situation was changing, the conditions were changing – Dumbledore’s plan was nothing but a collection of broken ideas. Things were growing out of control around him.
“So why – are you giving it – to me?” He took another step closer, intending to intimidate her into breaking if she was trying to set him up.
He eyed her carefully as she continued to hold her ground and watch him for any reaction. He wouldn’t give her one. He wouldn’t give her anything. Then Narcissa closed her eyes, and a single tear escaped from the corner of her lashes before she quickly wiped it away and pushed her chin high. Clearing her throat in determination and keeping her voice as calm as she possibly could, though it wavered slightly with the emotion she was trying to control, she spoke once more.
“She was tortured in the middle of my parlour for almost an hour, Severus. Until blood poured out her throat. Until it was dripping from her nose as Bellatrix beat her head into the floor and hit her with six rounds of the cruciatus – until my sister became so frustrated that she mutilated the girl’s body with her blade, and yet that girl still refused to give up any information. She nearly went insane. She was pushed so far that she started laughing, and she cursed our home without even realizing that she’d done it – her bloodstain permanently marks that floor. It cannot be removed,” Narcissa took a shuddered breath before she continued in a broken voice. “And now it lays next to the one made by my son. My son, Severus! Last night – the Dark Lord came to the Manor. He found out what had happened and demanded answers. I watched the Dark Lord torture my son in the same cursed spot on our parlour floor – all because Draco could not or would not recall if the boy was Potter. I can hear his screams every time I close my eyes – they’re tangled with hers now, and I can’t even tell them apart anymore. It will haunt me until the day I die, Severus – I’ve failed as a mother!
“You have long since known that my loyalties lay with my family – I do not care who wins this war. I do not care if you are a spy or a Death Eater, or just a man motivated purely by self-interest – I don’t care! I only want my son to be safe, and I trust you with that. It is the only thing that matters to me, and you have proven time and time again that you will do whatever it takes to protect him, so I trust you. I trust you to do whatever is necessary far more than I trust Lucius to make any rational or well-thought-out decision. He’s become a broken man, and he stands by and watches as our house and family are ripped to shreds.”
Narcissa took a deep breath, and Snape saw her eyes harden.
“I will not allow my son to be punished or to bear the burden of his choices! When I married him, I did not sign up to watch as children are starved in my basement as prisoners before being tortured and mutilated on my floor! I never asked for any of this!” She looked fierce as her back straightened, and she looked at him steadily. Her eyes traced over his face before she continued in a calm, cool voice. “So, even though I know it is unfair of me after what you did for my family last year – I ask you for one last favour. Please – take her wand and do whatever it is you know will be best. And if you need anything that I am capable of giving you – tell me, and you shall have it. But do not tell me what you do with it. I don’t want to know. I just want that demon out of my house so that my son will be safe once more.”
Snape’s mind was racing. The odds of Narcissa trying to set him up or frame him against the Dark Lord were so low they were next to impossible. Narcissa had never cared about the war. She had never cared about the Dark Lord, never wanted the ‘prestige’ that came from serving him, and she never fell victim to the offers he promised. She was and had always been loyal only to her son.
Ever since the Dark Lord had forced the dark mark on Draco as punishment for his father’s failings and then assigned him the impossible task of killing Albus Dumbledore, Narcissa had lost any small shred of allegiance she had to the Dark Lord and the pureblood ways. Every conversation, every piece of information she’d passed to him, every move she’d made quietly in the background suddenly seemed even more calculated and purposeful than he’d originally thought.
She’d allowed herself to take the role of a respected and powerful supporter in order to protect her son because her husband had failed at the task.
All the while, she had fed him information, key information that wasn’t always apparent to Severus in the hopes that he might know what to do with it – because, for whatever reason, she trusted him. She wanted the war over. She wanted it done. She wanted the Dark Lord out of her house, she wanted her son to be safe, and she was trusting Snape to pick the right side.
All things considered – she was really the one at risk in this conversation. He could take the wand and turn her over to the Dark Lord and announce her treason. He was an accomplished occlumens who could modify memories to present false ones while she could only shield hers. If she were ever questioned under veritaserum, she would be the one held at fault because she was the one who had announced her intentions. He had remained motionless and cold, taking in everything that she gave him and filing it away with no reaction. He would not appear at fault in any way so long as he gave no indication of his intentions. Besides – he was immune to veritaserum, and she knew this. She’d seen him lie in front of the Dark Lord after being forced to drink it in the past, but she had never commented on it.
She was truly putting herself out on a limb, trusting him fully – blindly. She was desperate. He did not doubt her words in the least: she did not care. She was done, and she wanted out.
Snape let out a long breath and pocketed Granger’s wand.
“I’ll get you the potions that are prepared.” He turned on his heel, making his way out of the sitting room toward the kitchen table where he had left the bag of prepared potions.
He collected the items and brought them back to the sitting room, then exchanged bags with the one Narcissa had pulled from her robes. As he took the small package that contained his new potion ingredients from her hands, he could not help but feel like the motion was symbolic. She was giving him her trust. She was, quite literally, placing her life and the life of her son in his hands. He watched her recast her glamours without a single movement, and as she headed back out into the rain, he felt a heaviness settle over his heart.
Why was it that he had so many lives depending on him?
He wasn’t a good person. He was hardly even trustworthy. He was just good at keeping secrets – but those weren’t the same fucking thing. And yet, it had happened again. He’d added another life to his pocket. Another desperate soul that was depending on him to somehow fix things. He sighed and dropped his head against the wall. Things had once again, somehow, grown more complicated than ever.
Unable to ignore the odd feel of Granger’s wand in his pocket, he pushed away from the dull paint and apparated to the Headmaster’s office.
“Phineas,” Severus asked as he walked toward his desk.
“Yes, Severus?”
“Where are they?”
“They are at someplace called Shell Cottage – it is, I believe, a safe house for the Order.”
Snape nodded. He leaned against the edge of the desk, deep in thought as he pinched the bridge of his nose. He knew that Dumbledore was likely to forbid him from going there and returning the wand – it was risky. It wasn’t like he could just walk up and return the wand or leave it nearby and hope that they found it. Using his Patronus again would also be risky – he didn’t trust that they would follow it so blindly this time or that he wouldn’t get discovered in the process.
Besides, he had no idea where the cottage was, and the place would be heavily warded. Dumbledore would never tell him the location. So he would have to find another way to locate it.
He sighed and opened his eyes, fixing Phineas with a blank expression.
“How is Granger?” He asked, his voice sounded almost as tired as he felt.
“Hermione is okay,” Phineas said slowly, his face tight. “I believe I heard someone mention that she was stiff and sore, but she seems to be moving around already. She’s trembling, though, suffering from continuous vibrations and her left arm – it is completely limp. She is unable to move it at all and – and I think it is getting to her.”
He let out a deep sigh.
Of course it was fucking getting to her. She’d been tortured and carved up by a madwoman – after hearing Narcissa’s words, it had made him realize how incredible it was that she wasn’t dead. Now she had to live with and endure the aftereffects of the cruciatus and a cursed fucking dagger.
She would lose the arm. She should have lost it already. Phineas had given him the gorier details regarding her healing the day before after listening in to the conversation that Potter had had with Fleur while Granger slept. He dropped his head into his hands and closed his eyes.
Everything was falling apart. Potter and Granger were in shambles. They’d made no progress on the Horcruxes, the Dark Lord was growing more powerful, the werewolf army was growing larger, and the only information he had on them was from what Phineas had managed to gather, and now Narcissa was giving him Granger’s wand and asking him to save her family.
“What a fucking nightmare,” he breathed into his hands and then turned his head to Dumbledore. “Was this part of your plan? Was this how Weasley was going to help them get back on track? Because so far, it seems that his greatest accomplishment has been getting Granger mutilated and nearly getting them all killed.”
Dumbledore stared at him harshly but said nothing.
“I’m going to bed,” Snape said quietly, feeling like his energy had been instantaneously drained from his body. It registered in the back of his mind that he had not eaten in two days, but he brushed off the thought as he stood and made his way to his quarters. “Phineas – keep me updated. I want to know how Granger progresses and if we hear anything else from the Order. We still don’t know who their legilimens is.”
“Of course, Severus.” Phineas nodded grimly, moving himself back into his opposite frame.
-x-x-
March 31, 1998
Hogwarts
A sharp pinging sound rang in his head, and Snape groaned. He’d skipped breakfast at the Great Hall in order to sleep in. After all, he’d been up more than half the night before brewing new batches of potions and trying to come up with a plan for returning Granger’s wand. Though a good deal of his time trying to come up with a plan had just been spent staring at the wand as it laid on his private potions workbench. He knew that the Order was meeting Wednesday night – tomorrow. He knew that Granger had requested assistance with her arm and the tremors, and he’d prepared potions that could help, yet he had no way of getting them to her.
He’d spent the majority of the night stirring mindlessly and groaning in frustration as he wracked his brain for an idea. The only one he had been able to come up with was Weasley – he would have to go get Weasley, drag her to his office, and somehow shove veritaserum down her throat. He would have to wipe her memories afterward, and even then, it was risky. But she was the only one he had access to that knew where Shell Cottage was.
There was no other option.
Though now, with Phineas calling him, he felt the ever-familiar dread of new news filling his heart. Every time the chime went off, he prepared himself for the worst. It was like every day something else went wrong, or someone else dumped a surprise in his lap. Today it was probably that Granger had lost her arm – it had probably turned black from the curse, and they’d all freaked out. Perhaps she’d finally broken and had a mental breakdown. Perhaps the safe house had been compromised. Perhaps one of them had died. Merlin only knew, but he’d come to expect the worst every time.
He hauled himself from bed, ignoring the fact that it was now past noon, and he was still exhausted. He stumbled over to his chair, grabbing the white dress shirt that hung off the back and sliding it on before he moved into his office. He’d passed out in his black trousers. Evidently, he’d been incapable of taking anything else off before sleep took him.
“What?” The word was raspy as he made his way through the door to his desk in sock feet, leaning against the edge of it as he started to button his white shirt.
“Potter nearly killed Weasley,” Phineas said quickly, his face looking incredibly tense.
“Hn.” Snape barely acknowledged it before replying sarcastically. “Please tell me you called me in here for something else besides idle gossip – or did Potter maim the boy so badly they’ve had to move locations and have single-handedly dismantled the Order?”
“No – he just beat the crap out of him,” Phineas said, ignoring the noise that came from Dumbledore at his words. “And then tethered the boy’s body to the cottage so he’ll split into nine pieces if he apparates away.”
Snape’s hands paused over his buttons, his sleepy eyes slowly moving up to meet Phineas’s. “That’s certainly creative.”
“It was kinder than the Weasley boy deserved,” Phineas sniffed. “But no – I called you in here for another reason.”
“What?” Snape had returned to his buttons.
“I found out who the legilimens is – the one helping the Order,” Phineas paused, his face growing nervous once more. “It’s Nasir.”
Snape’s motions froze once more. Though this time, his entire body grew tense. His hands lingered over his middle button as he felt his heart rate increase.
“You’re sure?” Snape asked quietly, still unmoving, his eyes fixed on Phineas.
“Positive,” Phineas practically whispered.
Snape slowly stood from his desk, his hand running through his hair as he began to pace before the portraits, his shirt still half-open.
Of course it was Nasir. How else could the Order have obtained the information that they did on the den? It all made sense – he had just not considered it as a legitimate option because he’d never thought the man would agree to help. And he’d never thought that Shacklebolt would be stupid enough to enlist the man.
He doubted that Shacklebolt knew what the man was, but still, it was impossible to ignore the unease that settled across the room whenever Nasir was present. The man made people nervous for a reason, and people naturally did not trust him because you could feel that something was off. Surely Shacklebolt didn’t trust the man, did he? How fucking desperate were they?
“He’s going to Shell Cottage tomorrow night to inspect Hermione’s injuries,” Phineas added when Snape had been quiet for several minutes, his feet still carrying him across the ground.
“What?!” Snape snapped, his feet bringing him back before the portrait. “Shacklebolt is allowing him to meet them?”
“He might be able to help Hermione,” Phineas said uneasily.
“Of course he might – it’s not a matter of skill, it’s a matter of what he decides to do when he gets there that’s the problem,” Snape bit out, leaning back against his desk once more and gripping the edges tightly.
Fuck, this is bad – this could end poorly.
He could feel his brain swimming as his mind tumbled through the endless possibilities and scenarios. He clenched his jaw. It was impossible to know what might happen – but knowing that Nasir was going to Shell Cottage did, at the very least, open up an opportunity for him to do something. He might be able to spin this in their favour. He might be able to get Granger the potions that she needed and her wand.
He felt his mind slow as he fit the pieces together and tried to remain calm. He could find Nasir. He didn’t know where the man was staying, but he did know that he would be staking out the werewolf den – and thanks to Granger, he knew exactly where that was.
He could meet him. He could ask him for help – Nasir could help; it was just a matter of whether or not he wanted to.
He felt his chest tighten.
Dumbledore must have seen his train of thought forming across his face, for his voice cut across the room tightly.
“Severus – absolutely not!”
“Albus,” Snape groaned, turning his head to meet the dead Headmaster. “He is meeting them tomorrow night anyway.”
“Yes – and so the appropriate next step would be to prevent that!” Dumbledore looked agitated as he pushed his half-moon spectacles up his nose. “Not to encourage it. You need to find a way to keep that man away from them.”
“And how do you suggest I do that, Albus?!” Snape said angrily, moving toward the old man. There was no winning in this situation. “Want me to just send an owl to Kingsley or Arthur and tell them to disengage – should I tell them what he is? Should I say I’m still on their side while I’m at it? They’ve already engaged him in their efforts to dismantle the werewolf den. He is already involved. I can’t undo what they have done, but I can try to make the most of it. I can try to get him to help!”
“Severus.” Dumbledore’s voice was sharp, and his eyes glinted harshly like daggers. “He is a Revenant – he will not help you!”
“I know exactly what he is,” Snape said tightly, clenching his fists to hide the fear that shook in his hands.
He was perfectly well aware of what a Revenant was and how they came into existence. While many of the faculties of the Unspeakables were still unknown to him, Snape knew more than the average person from his work as a spy. He knew that the Unspeakables were divided into smaller sub-sections of highly skilled people: some dealt with prophecies, some were responsible for curse breaking and managing deeply dark objects, some completed questionably ethical studies in healing, some tinkered with time, and some were assassins and spies who completed the dirty work in the background.
Then there were the Revenants, a group of hand-selected Unspeakables from different sub-sections. They were brought together and asked to partake in an experiment – an experiment so illegal, so dangerous, and so morally wrong that all records of it had been wiped clean from the Ministry. It was deemed a failure, and anyone involved in it wanted to wash their hands of it. There were only a handful of people left alive who knew what had happened. The result was the Revenants, and Nasir was the only remaining one.
He was the last of his kind.
“Then you know that we must not engage with him, Severus. He must not become interested in Harry or Hermione, or it could ruin everything!” Dumbledore looked like he wanted to crawl out of his portrait and shake the statement into him. “You must find a way to stop them from meeting – he cannot be trusted!”
“Why?” Snape sneered darkly, eyeing the elderly man with annoyance. He could feel his frustrations growing. Yes, he feared Nasir, but he feared Nasir because he respected what he was, not because he blindly hated what the man was, as it appeared Dumbledore did. “Because he didn’t listen to you? Because he didn’t become what you wanted? Because he saw through your lies and manipulation and refused to be a pawn in your master plan?”
Snape closed the distance to the portrait and glared at the old man.
“I am perfectly well aware that he cannot be trusted. I know what he is. I know what they did – but Revenants are not inherently evil, Albus! They are at best, by definition, neutral and at worst chaotically neutral – he’s not out to get us. Nasir doesn’t have a side!”
“Exactly!” Dumbledore bellowed. “He is impossible to predict; he will not assist the Order because it is the right thing to do! You cannot appeal to his humanity because he doesn’t have any! He has no capacity to feel or to distinguish the difference between good and evil – right or wrong – he simply acts according to his own free will or whatever other secret desires he has hidden away! He is barely human, Severus! He has no morality – no compassion – no capacity for love – and he cannot be controlled!”
Snape went rigid, and his eyes grew dark with hate.
“That’s all it’s ever been about with you – isn’t it? If you cannot control it, then it must be evil – it must be stamped out. When really, I’d hardly say Nasir is much different from you. Both of you have always followed the beat of your own drum regardless of the bodies that fell at your feet as you carved your way through the world. The only difference is that you feel righteous while you do it because in that old rattled brain of yours, you’ve convinced yourself that you’re doing it for the right reasons,” Snape said darkly, his voice a hoarse whisper as he clenched his fists tightly at his side. “Whether you trust him or not doesn’t matter. The Order has enlisted his help, and he is meeting Potter and the Granger girl tomorrow. He is the only person alive aside from myself who can save her arm, and I am the only one alive who can provide him with the potions to do so and the only one capable of healing cellular level nerve damage!”
Snape stepped away from the portrait and grabbed his frockcoat from his chair.
“If Granger remains a jittering gimp, Potter will die, Albus,” Snape said tightly. “I will find Nasir – I will give him those potions, and I will give him Granger’s wand. And if I have to – I will beg him to help me and offer him anything he wants!”
Snape turned on his heel and retreated to his quarters, moving directly to his secret potions cabinet behind the wall next to his bed and pulling out several vials of black liquid. Without being able to assess the girl himself, he had no idea how bad her tremors were or how much she would need. So he just grabbed five bottles and then picked up a large vial of bright orange liquid. His hands shook as he moved, carefully packing everything into the pockets of his frockcoat and ignoring the fear that was growing in the back of his mind.
He stood by everything that he had said to Dumbledore, but he was still afraid.
He didn’t know if Nasir would choose to help him, walk away indifferently, or simply kill him on spot for the hell of it. Nasir was the only other human on Earth that he feared besides the Dark Lord. If their encounter turned into an altercation, he did not have a zero percent chance of surviving – but he didn’t have a surefire high one either.
The man was dangerous. He had experimented with magic and things that should not be touched by any living creature, and he undoubtedly had an arsenal of unknown and deadly spells. The single time Snape had met the man, the hair on the back of his skull had stood up, and he’d been uncomfortable the entire time. Shacklebolt – the moronic idiot – seemed to trust the man implicitly because he’d saved his neck. Had Shacklebolt know what Nasir was, Snape doubted that the unshakable trust would have been so unshakable.
Regardless though, he had held his tongue and taught the man legilimency. It hadn’t taken long – as an accomplished occlumens, Nasir had understood the concept quickly and picked up the technique in a single evening. They never met again after that, and Nasir disappeared to Bulgaria.
Despite this, Snape knew all about Nasir, and he suspected that Nasir knew all about him, too.
He removed Granger’s wand from the secret cabinet and then closed and warded the door, sliding the unfamiliar tool into his pocket. He forced himself to stand and buttoned the rest of his shirt before pulling on his robes and dragonhide boots. He doubted that the Dark Lord would call him tonight after the events at the Manor this week, so he would leave now and get into position. Though he suspected that he would not run into Nasir until after dark, for that would be when the man would be lurking around the den, observing and collecting information. In hindsight, it felt so obvious now. Of course it had been Nasir who had gotten the information.
It could not have been anyone else.
He summoned several healing potions, wound cleaner, dittany, and his experimental potions. If he got caught in a battle, he wanted to be prepared. Then he made his way back out into his office and gave Phineas instructions to continue watching Potter and Granger. He ignored Dumbledore as the old man yelled at him to stop. Then he cast a heavy disillusionment charm on himself and disapparated to Birmingham, landing a safe distance away from the den.
It took him over an hour to make his way through the trees, moving slowly and sending out detection spells to ensure that he was alone. He didn’t stop until he’d found a small dense section of trees to the West of the den’s location, and then he settled in next to a large thick oak. He would wait until dusk and then cast a calling charm.
Nasir would seek him out – because as far as he knew, only two other people in the world knew about his Animagus form, and one of them was dead.
-x-x-
The man appeared twenty minutes after the charm had been set. Snape saw the unmistakable small black bat sweep from the trees more gracefully than a leaf on the wind, swooping down to the ground several feet before him before shifting into the tall, tanned, ominous figure. He was wearing all black, his dark hair was messy from his flight, and his piercing eyes were locked directly on Snape’s invisible form.
It was a good sign. He hadn’t attacked him outright, which meant that he was willing to talk, or was at least curious to know why he’d been called.
“Severus.” The rich, even baritone filled the darkening night air as he took three steps forward, stopping short of the large oak tree and watching as Snape removed his disillusionment charm to reveal himself. “It’s been a long time – I admit that I never anticipated you calling me, especially now.”
Everything about him looked so human, and yet he was so far from it. You could see it when you looked in his eyes; you could feel it in the way the air changed around him. It felt unnatural – because he was unnatural.
He’d been to the other side and returned, which was something that no human was meant to do. They’d used the Veil in the Department of Mysteries, they sent twenty-one people in, and only five had come back. They had done it because they wanted to know what was on the other side, to know what death was like.
The answer – was that it was otherworldly. It changed people.
The basis of the experiment was to find a way to detach people from worldly things and emotions so that they could use them to do unspeakable things without dealing with the consequences. It had worked, but the results had not been what they’d intended. The Revenants were living. They could think and reason and use logic just the same as anyone else – they could die. But their humanity was gone. They were much more akin to soulless shells than real people.
Dumbledore was not wrong in his description. Nasir did not feel. Nasir had no side. Nasir was unpredictable because he was truly impartial. He was void of the capacity to be compassionate. He appeared distant and indifferent because he was those things – he was utterly and entirely neutral, which made him difficult to predict or understand.
He operated according to his own desires and nothing else – and his desires were not established based on typical needs most people understood. He didn't crave things the way humans did. He didn't have friends or social interests. As far as Snape could wrap his head around it, Nasir seemed interested in things that were interesting. Hence why many of the five had dabbled into immensely dangerous and dark magic upon their return because the consequences no longer mattered to them, and they wanted to know what would happen.
It was almost like they hungered for knowledge or thirsted to see how far they could push themselves, simply for the sake of doing it.
Thus, it was impossible to control them because they just didn’t care about the Ministry’s priorities or what was best for the wizarding world. And that was why Nasir was the last one alive. The Ministry had ordered them dead decades ago after one of them had started experimenting on humans simply to see what would happen. She had done it because she’d wanted to, and while he knew the death toll was high, the Ministry had buried the numbers.
Knowing this, his only hope was to try and engage the man’s interest – but not too much interest – and then offer him anything that he wanted in exchange. That was how he operated.
“Nasir,” Snape said, keeping his tone even and his hands visible as he stepped away from the tree and stood just a few feet before the tall man. “You could say that I’m a bit surprised myself, though – it seems that I’ve found myself in a bit of a unique position.”
“And what position would that be?” Nasir asked, his eyes watching Snape’s face closely. His expression was blank and indifferent, and he seemed completely impartial to the conversation.
Snape swallowed – he would need to change that.
“It has come to my attention that you are meeting with the Order tomorrow night,” Snape said. “To assess some injuries.”
Nasir said nothing. He only stared at him, so Snape continued.
“I have some potions that will assist with that,” Snape said calmly. “And I need to request a favour.”
“A favour,” Nasir said slowly, taking another step forward. “What sort of favour could you possibly need me for – are you not well established within the Dark Lord’s ranks? Surely he would be able to grant you what you need.”
“I need you to heal the girl,” Snape said evenly, keeping his eyes fixed to Nasir’s. “I will give you the potions required to do it, and I need you to return her wand.”
“Why?” Nasir asked smoothly, taking another small step closer. Snape could see a small glint in his eyes, and he felt the skin at the base of his skull prickle. It seemed he had caught the man’s interest.
“Because she is suffering from cruciatus tremors and about to lose her left arm from cursed deep tissue damage. If she is not healed, then Potter will fail in his mission, and the Dark Lord will succeed,” Snape said , watching Nasir’s incredibly still frame.
“I gathered that,” Nasir said. He was eyeing him with interest now, and it only made Snape’s internal discomfort grow. “I meant, why do you want me to heal them. I thought you were working for the Dark Lord, Severus.”
“Things are not always how they appear,” Snape said calmly. He refused to let any of his fear or anxiety show on his face.
“Evidently.” Nasir’s rich voice had dropped a fraction. “Did you get cold feet?”
“I was never on the Dark Lord’s side,” Snape said, feeling his jaw tighten a fraction as he spoke. “I’ve simply been waiting for the right moment to play my cards.”
“I see.” Nasir nodded once before he cocked his head slightly to the side. “Then this was a plan by Albus all along, wasn’t it? And you are still firmly planted in his pocket. I never took you to be a lap dog, Severus – why are you changing out one master for another?”
Snape’s back stiffened, and he saw a darkness creep over Nasir’s eyes. He was interested, and he was baiting him.
“Albus is not my master,” Snape said slowly, his voice dark and stiff. “If he was – I would not be here, and you know that. Albus does not trust you.”
“Rightfully so.”
“Will you heal the girl and return her wand?”
“You still have not answered my question.” Nasir’s voice lowered, and he took another step forward. “Why do you want me to?”
Snape felt his muscles tighten.
It was a question that he wasn’t even sure how to answer. Why did he want the girl healed? The obvious answer was so Potter could succeed, but even then, why did he care so much? Was it because he wanted the Dark Lord to fail? Was it because he wanted to prove Albus wrong and show the old bastard that his plan had fallen apart? Or was it because deep down, he was hoping to save his own soul and right the damage he had caused in the past? Was he hoping for forgiveness so he could die with some ounce of peace?
The silence extended between them as Nasir waited for his response. He could hear the wind blowing the trees above them as the last light of evening began to fade away. Whatever his answer, he needed to cater it to the man before him, but he also needed to be somewhat honest – Nasir would know if he was lying.
Revenants could always tell.
“They deserve a chance to have a life outside of war,” Snape said slowly, watching Nasir’s face carefully as he spoke. “They are – fascinating. Despite the fact that I cannot stand either one of them, and it pains me to admit it, they do show potential. Given a chance, they could become something more. Possibly something great. The Dark Lord is an abomination who will do nothing but destroy the wizarding world and the knowledge within it, and while you may not care about such things – I do. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, Nasir; I don’t want to make another one. I would like to see the Dark Lord fail before I inevitably die at the end of this war – and in order to do that, I need Granger functional and healed so she can help Potter.”
Nasir stared at him intently, his eyes dark and shining in the night. Snape fought the urge to shiver under his piercing gaze as he waited; the man looked like he was calculating, like he was making a decision.
“I would need nerve regeneration potions,” Nasir said slowly, breaking the silence as his eyes flicked to Snape’s pocket.
“I’ve brought that.”
“I would also need dittany and the experimental healing potion you created for connective tissues.”
“I brought that as well.”
“I won’t know if it is possible to heal her until I assess the damage.”
“I know.”
Nasir went quiet once more, looking at him carefully.
“Why should I?” Nasir said quietly, his eyes moving slowly over Snape’s face, taking in every single detail. He was standing much too close for comfort, but Snape refused to move. “I have no stake in this blood feud. I told Albus that long ago. Surely he told you I have no interest in his schemes or the battles of men.”
“Because I think you will find them interesting,” Snape said quietly. “I think you will find that they are worth saving. They’ve been through more than most have in a lifetime. They’re not who they used to be – or who you would expect them to be. If you do this for me, Nasir, I will give you whatever you want – please.”
“I didn’t think that you had much left to give, Severus,” Nasir said evenly, though his eyes still shone with dark interest. “I will take the potions and her wand. And if they are as fascinating as you make them out to be – I will heal her.”
Nasir outstretched his hand between them.
“What do you want in return?” Snape asked as he carefully pulled out the bottles and wand and passed them over to Nasir.
“I haven’t decided yet,” he said, his eyes dark and empty as he took the items from his hand.
Cold fear ran through Snape’s body as he watched the man tuck the items into his robes. He felt like he’d just sold the last pieces of his soul to the devil himself.
“Bye,” Harry felt himself let out a sigh as Arthur and Nasir disapparated before him.
It had been a long day – hell, it had been a long year, but he didn’t think he’d felt the exhaustion in his bones quite as badly as he had over the last few days. Malfoy Manor, Ron, healing and dealing with Hermione’s injuries – it was taking a toll on his body and mind in a way that he wasn’t sure he could quantify. His heart weighed heavy in his chest. Holding Hermione still while Nasir had carved a blade into her flesh was something that he never wanted to do again. EVER. So despite the exhaustion that riddled his body he’d never felt more motivated in his life.
After everything that they’d been through, everything they’d learned, mastered – after all the growth it still wasn’t enough. Though now he realized what it was they’d been missing. They’d been missing a teacher. A real teacher. Someone who wasn’t afraid to show them what they needed, not some idealized version of an education that would only be applicable for an everyday life in a calm world. Hogwarts had not prepared them. It had not taught them how to live through a war – how to fight, how to protect themselves, or how to survive alone.
Remus had done the best that he could in third year to teach them, and Moody had done a pretty okay job, too. Though, technically, that had been an education from a fanatic and crazed Death Eater – which ironically, had proven to be more beneficial and educational than the typical curriculum provided by Hogwarts would have been. Fifth year with Umbridge had been a fucking disaster, a joke that had left students completely unprepared and at risk. And sixth year with Snape, while Harry was begrudging to admit it, had also been on the more helpful side compared to other years. Yet even still – there was a huge gap in their knowledge base when it came to real life. Hogwarts had done nothing to prepare them for the true horrors of war.
It wasn’t like he didn’t understand why the education was the way it was – of course no one wanted to teach kids how to blow someone up, and had there been no war ongoing then the education would have been perfectly adequate. But there was a war ongoing. Dumbledore had known that there was a war coming, and Harry couldn’t help but feel a tightness in his chest when he thought about it. It was similar to how he’d felt when he learned about Dumbledore’s past. It was shattering. It hurt.
What had the man been thinking? Had he thought things would be over by now? Had he misjudged just how bad things would get? How could Dumbledore have left them so fucking unprepared?
Harry wanted to trust Dumbledore and he still did in a lot of ways. He trusted that Dumbledore wanted them to be successful. He trusted that Dumbledore truly did want the war to end – that he truly did want to stop Voldemort. He trusted that Dumbledore had good intentions – it was just that as more and more time went on and Harry saw more and more things, he had started to severely doubt Dumbledore’s execution.
Surely the man himself could have told them about the Deathly Hallows. Surely Dumbledore could have taught them how to defend themselves. Surely he could have done something to point them in the right direction – he hadn’t needed to send them on a bloody wild goose chase. One that had nearly resulted in their death innumerable times, in them being attacked day and night – in one that left Hermione having to choose between scarring her soul or having her arm.
It left a bitter taste in his mouth that was hard to swallow.
The thought sent waves of anger through his body any time it entered his head. Hermione had suffered too much. It had all been too much – it wasn’t fair. He knew that life wasn’t fair, he’d grown up in a damn cupboard for Merlin’s sake. He was well aware that things were unfair, but this was getting to be absurd.
The Hallows talked about Death being alive, like it was a spirit, almost like it was a physical entity – well if life was the same and Harry ever got the chance to meet it he was going to punch it in the fucking face and make it beg for mercy. If he ever got the chance to speak to Dumbledore’s portrait again there would be questions and he would not leave until he had answers – and if he found out that Dumbledore had so much as an inkling of an understanding of what his ‘secret mission’ was going to put Hermione through, Merlin help him, Harry would burn his portrait off the fucking wall.
Yet at least now, despite everything, he finally – really – truly – honestly felt like they might stand a chance in this war. And it was because of Nasir.
Because of a man that everyone else seemed to fear. Because this strange, unnatural, calm, unnerving, and impassive man seemed willing to show them what they really needed to know. In a span of six hours he had single handedly proven to be the most effective teacher Harry had ever had. They knew a medical charm that could save their lives. They could clear their minds now, gain control and sleep without terror. He’d taught them where to jab a knife if they’d ever found themselves without a wand and unable to cast magic – and then he had given them knives.
Two.
One dagger each, to be kept on their persons at all times, disillusioned, and strapped to their legs.
They’d looked expensive to say the least – and old. Possibly ancient. They were silver with a black handle and the handle was carved with runes and odd markings. It felt strange to accept them. Harry suspected that they’d belonged to someone else at one point and they seemed to match with the one that he carried – the one that he had used to carve the rune into Hermione’s chest. Which made Harry wonder where Nasir had gotten them from in the first place or why he had three of them – though neither he nor Hermione asked the question. They were already confident that they knew the answer.
It was because Nasir had killed whoever owned them last.
Yet refusing seemed out of the question. Nasir was too impassive, too indifferent. He’d offered them, and he did not seem to comprehend their hesitation with accepting them – especially since he said the blade was multifunctional, as proven by the rune carving, and that they could learn to use it for many things. It was practical to accept, and thus, they’d accepted because it didn’t seem like Nasir would understand their rejection. Because he didn't really seem to understand any sort of emotion at all, but he easily remained one of the most effective teachers Harry had ever had.
Nasir had taught them specifically where to aim a diffindo to render someone useless – without killing them. And he’d started to teach them something dangerous, something that they were not to practice without him being there. Otherwise, they’d risk killing everyone within the wards and destroying one of the Order’s last remaining safe houses.
In six hours, Harry had never felt more sure in his life – and he’d also never felt more unsure.
He still had no idea why Nasir was helping them or why he was with the Order. Everything about the man, including the reactions of the other Order members, sent warning signals off in Harry’s brain telling him that something about Nasir wasn’t right. Yet despite this, Harry found that he couldn’t help but trust the man. Not explicitly – he actually wouldn’t even be surprised if Nasir did decide to kill them someday - but he trusted him inherently. Sort of because he felt he had to.
It was odd.
He found that he respected Nasir for whatever it was that the man was, and he feared him. What Harry trusted was that Nasir would teach them and help them so long as he wanted to. He couldn’t really explain it, he just knew that at this point in time – they were safe with him. After that time ran out... he wasn't so sure.
Harry ran a hand through his hair and turned back to face Hermione. She needed to drink her nerve regeneration potion and then go to sleep; she needed her rest. Yet as he saw her, his face faltered. She was standing next to the cottage staring wide-eyed and open mouthed at the place that Arthur and Nasir had just left. Her hand was shaking but it wasn’t from the tremors, it was only her hand and she was holding a – wand?
“Hermi–“ he started only to get cut off immediately as her eyes flashed to him and her voice rang out. She’d pushed herself off the wall of the cottage and was quickly closing the distance between them. He felt her silencing ward settle around them so thick he could hardly breath.
“Harry – the map.” Hermione’s voice was sharp and tight. “Get the map – The Marauder’s Map – Harry NOW!”
“What?” Harry’s face contorted in confusion, but he quickly opened her purse and summoned out the map. He shut the purse tightly, and then tried to open the folded paper as Hermione’s hand shot out toward it. “Hermione – is that your wand? Where did you get it?!”
She completely ignored him, her eyes searching the map urgently as her single functional hand grabbed the paper despite still holding her wand. Her movements were desperate and rough, and from the glint in her eyes and the look on her face Harry knew it was serious. She looked shocked, almost afraid – unsure. Her emotions were flicking faster than he could keep up.
“Hermione – what happened? Where did you get your wand?”
“He’s still alive,” she said in disbelief. Her hand was clutching the paper tightly and her eyes had locked to the black footprints that paced in a small line at the top right hand corner of the map.
“Snape?” Harry could hear the confusion in his voice as his brow furrowed. “Of course he’s still alive – Hermione what the hell is going on?”
Hermione was shaking her head. She seemed unable to process whatever had happened. She looked up to him slowly, her jaw clenching before she spoke.
“Harry, I need you to tell me exactly what happened the night that Professor Snape killed Dumbledore.”
“What?” Now he was incredibly confused. “Hermione, I already told you what happened we–“
“No, Harry – you don’t understand.” Hermione dropped her hold on the map and moved closer to him, her voice dropping unnecessarily lower as she began to speak rapidly. “Do you remember how I spent last summer before we came to get you from your Aunt and Uncle’s? I was at the Burrow – we were planning your extraction and I used to attend all the Order meetings. I spent a lot of time with Alastor Moody because the only thing that Ron had wanted to do was play Quidditch outside of the meetings.
“I’d seen Moody tinkering with some artifacts in the kitchen the one day, he was charming them for Arthur. That’s why he ended up giving me the box – because I’d spent time with him. I’d worked with him. But before he gave me the box he taught me about trace charms, Harry. That’s where I learned the one I placed on Ron before we went to Xenophilius’. Though, I didn’t learn to master the charms until later in the summer, so I had him put one on my wand – he told me it would be a good idea. He had one on his wand, too. It’s undetectable, Harry, and it records who touches my wand. Since last summer I have a full record of everyone who has handled my wand – Nasir just returned my wand to me while you were talking to Arthur.”
“You mean he went over to you? He was with you? I didn’t even–“ Harry’s eyes grew wider with understanding. “He cast a masking charm and I didn’t even know it; I didn’t know he’d stepped away – how long was he with you?”
“Not more than a minute, but Harry, that doesn’t even matter,” Hermione said tightly. “Harry – the last person to touch my wand before Nasir was Professor Snape.”
Harry felt his body grow stiff and he suddenly understood exactly why Hermione needed to see the map. She’d needed to know if Nasir had killed him.
“How did Professor Snape kill Dumbledore, Harry?” Hermione said quietly, her eyes locked to his face.
-x-x-
“Hermione, I’ve already told you – that’s all I remember.” Harry stifled a groan and dropped his head into his hands.
They’d been over it half a dozen times and Hermione had finally dropped Snape’s old title. Harry had started to relay the events of the Astronomy Tower to Hermione as they’d made their way from the cottage over the sand dunes to set up their tent. She’d drank her nerve regeneration potion quickly and they were now sitting across the table from one another, tea steaming from the mugs before them. It was getting late, Harry could see the exhaustion in Hermione’s body, her tremors had gotten worse and yet she outright refused to drink her Dreamless sleep potion and go to bed. He knew from what Nasir had told him while she’d been asleep and propped against the man’s side that he was going to have to up her dose and leave her sleeping even longer tonight to make up for the exhaustion.
“I know it’s just – it doesn’t make any fucking sense.” Hermione was leaning on her good arm and biting her lip as thoughts raced behind her eyes.
Harry had to agree with her. They both thought that it was incredibly odd to consider that Nasir would have taken the wand from Snape without killing him. It didn’t seem like something that Snape would give up without a fight and they didn’t doubt Nasir’s capacity to kill him – the man was clearly capable of it. It didn’t make any sense why he wouldn’t have done it.
“Maybe he stole it from him?” Harry said exhaustedly, picking up his tea and taking a long drink.
“Why? And better yet, how?” Hermione looked to him desperately. “How would Nasir have even known that he had it? How would he have known that it was mine. Harry, Nasir doesn’t know that we aren’t using our wands – we never told him that we’re using ones we’ve taken from other people. Strange as the man may be, there is no way he would have known that this was my wand.”
“What did he say when you asked him again?” Harry’s head was hurting from everything going on and he was beginning to find it difficult to concentrate. They needed to go to sleep.
“He said: ‘does it matter?’ and then he walked away,” Hermione repeated for the sixth time.
She didn’t even sound frustrated at him for asking again. They were both at such a loss that they just kept repeating the small amounts of information that they had while hoping to draw new conclusions from it.
“And I doubt – if we see him again – that he’ll tell me anything else. I get the distinct impression that Nasir only does what Nasir wants to do,” Hermione sighed as she continued. “I can try to push him, but he’s not going to say anything that he doesn’t want to. If he’s decided it doesn’t matter, then he won’t say anything, and Harry – I don’t want to find out what happens when you push him too far. I don't think that would end well. He answered all my questions after he fixed my arm and he answered our questions at training – so it’s not like he won’t answer our questions at all. He just only answers the ones that he wants to. Harry – maybe him and Snape are friends.”
Harry frowned at the thought.
She sounded like Hagrid – like she thought that a dragon or a three headed dog could have friends. The idea of Snape being friends with anyone was about as absurd an idea as they came, and it was a testament to just how outrageously tired they both were that they were even identifying it as an option.
“Hermione – no fucking way. Snape?” Harry shook his head at the idea. “The guy is a dick and he keeps to himself. He barely even spoke to or interacted with the other professors at the school. I can’t see him having friends.”
“Ugh, I know,” she groaned and dropped her head to the table before raising it once more and looking at him with tired bleary eyes. “But they did know each other. Arthur said that Shacklebolt said that Snape taught Nasir legilimency. Look, I know that you hate the man. I know that it’s hard for you to think of him as anything other than how you see him right now, but we need to consider the possibility that they are working together. How could Nasir have gotten the wand otherwise?”
“He could have taken it.”
“We’ve already been over that – Nasir wouldn’t have known it was my wand. Besides, how would he have gotten into the school? Why would he even go there? Why wouldn’t he kill Snape – you think he just broke into the school, robbed the place, and happened across my wand?”
“No,” Harry said tightly. He knew she was right, but her idea didn’t make much sense either. “So, you think that Snape knew that it was your wand? How the hell would he know it was yours, and better yet, why did Narcissa Malfoy give it to him? Or did he take it from her?”
That was the other piece of this puzzle that they didn’t know the answer to. The wand had transferred from them to the snatchers, then to Narcissa, then to Snape, then to Nasir. The chain didn’t make any sense – aside from Narcissa. At least she had been in the bloody room at the Manor so her touching it had a rational explanation behind it that could be understood.
“Besides,” Harry continued. “If Nasir was helping Snape, he would be helping You Know Who – so why would he have given you the wand or helped us? That doesn’t make any sense.”
Hermione stared at him for a long moment until her face started to twist into one of deep thought. “He wouldn’t be – Harry, I don’t think Nasir is working for You Know Who. I – I’m not entirely convinced that he even has a side in this war.”
“Then it makes even less sense that he’s working with Snape,” Harry said flatly.
“No,” Hermione said slowly as she pulled herself upright. “Harry – what if Snape doesn’t have a side either? What if they’re both just in it for themselves?”
“Hermione.” Harry’s voice had grown wary. “If that were the case, then I’d argue that we are even more fucked – but Snape killed Dumbledore. I was there, I saw it happen, and then he left with the Death Eaters. He’s one of them.”
“You said that Dumbledore said please.”
“Yes – he said: ‘Severus please’ and it sounded like he was begging for his life.”
“What did Snape’s face look like?”
“Angry – full of hatred.” Harry felt his shoulders dropping. They’d been down this road before too, but he answered her just the same.
“But Harry,” Hermione said slowly, her brow furrowing as a brand-new batch of thoughts came from her mouth. “You – you said that he ran past Neville and didn’t kill him. He left him there and then he didn’t kill you when you followed him out onto the lawn. You were there, completely defenseless; I don’t want to be insulting, Harry – but it would have been incredibly easy for him to take you then. He could have killed you. He could have captured you. Back then, we had no idea what we were doing. We were incredibly vulnerable – so why didn’t he?”
Harry clenched his jaw tight. If he had to be honest, and he hated being honest when it came to Snape, he had wondered that too when they’d retraced the events of that night. It didn’t make any sense.
Snape had parried all his attacks, not bothering to launch any of his own all while Harry had attempted to pelt him with an endless stream of mediocre hexes. Then, after Harry had called him a coward, the man had exploded with angry rage like nothing Harry had ever seen before. It had been completely out of character for him – it was wild and anguished and livid, nothing at all like his typical emotionless and cold demeanor.
Then, against all odds, Snape had left him there. At the time Harry had assumed that it was because Buckbeak had defended him and scared the wizard off. Now though, after learning the true power of sectumsempra – which was a spell that Snape had invented and thus was no doubt a master of – he realized how utterly absurd the idea was. Snape, had he wanted to, could have gutted the hippogriff with a flick of his finger. Yet he hadn’t.
So why?
It hurt him to think about it. It complicated their already complicated situation in ways that Harry wasn’t sure he was capable of dealing with. He fucking hated that man, more than anyone else, and he wasn’t sure how to rationalize even the possibility of Snape being anything other than what he’d thought he was for the last seven years of his life. The very thought made him nauseous and anxious.
“I don’t know,” Harry sighed, running his hand through his hair in frustration. “It doesn’t make any sense, Hermione.”
“Exactly.” Hermione’s expression softened and she reached across the table to his hand. Harry took her hand and gripped it firmly, the motion was instinctive like breathing and it calmed the mess of thoughts clouding his head. “Harry, I know that you hate that man – and I’m not saying that you shouldn’t. I’m not even saying that he might be helping us. I’m just saying that clearly there is more to this war. Something else is going on right now – and we don’t have all the information. We don’t know Nasir’s intentions and clearly, we don’t fully understand Snape’s either. Before we left the Manor – I saw someone come through those doors. I didn’t see their face and I don’t remember much of it now,– but whoever it was, was tall and dressed in all black. It could have been Snape, Harry, him being there would explain him having my wand.”
“Yes, but it doesn’t explain why Nasir had it – which I doubt we will ever get an answer to,” Harry said in frustration. He gripped Hermione’s hand tightly, clasping it between both of his and smoothing his thumb along the top of her hand. She was trembling too much. He needed to get her to bed. At the end of the day the reasons almost didn’t matter anymore, they just needed to know what to do going forward. Harry took a long silent breath and met her eyes. “Hermione, what do you want to do?”
“I want to go to bed.” Hermione gave him a weak smile as a soft puff of air came from her chest and he couldn’t help but grin tiredly at her. “I – I think we should try to keep an open mind. We need to be prepared – for anything, so I don’t want to rule anything out. If we ever run into Snape – we hold off on killing him and instead we question him and get answers. I know it’s hard for you to consider, Harry, but it’s possible that he’s not working for You Know Who. He could still be helping us. Think of all the times he saved your neck in school, albeit he was a complete asshole about it. But we also don’t know that for sure either – even if he isn’t working for You Know Who, that doesn’t necessarily make him our ally. He could be a threat all on his own. He could be working with Nasir and the two of them could be up to something. The truth, is we don’t know, and we won’t know unless we ask him given the chance. And at the end of this, I want answers. In the meantime – I still want to train with Nasir. Maybe it’s risky, I know it probably sounds stupid, but what he is teaching us is invaluable and I want him to come back and teach us more before the infiltration – before Gringotts.”
Harry took a deep breath and let out a sigh. “I agree.”
He’d been planning to kill Snape given the chance. He’d told Hermione and she had agreed. It hadn’t been a plan per se, but they’d both acknowledged that given the opportunity in battle they would take him out. Now the plan had changed – if given the chance they would capture Snape, much like they’d done with the snatcher from the alley, and they would get answers.
It physically pained him to consider the possibility of Snape being anything other than a cowardly dick, yet he couldn’t deny the flaws in the logic that surrounded that belief. Seven months ago, Harry would have told Hermione she was insane. He would have pitched a fit in anger and point blank refused to even consider the possibility that Snape could be anything other than a Death Eater, a traitor, a murderer, an evil horrible man who had tormented him throughout his childhood.
But Harry wasn’t the same person that he’d been seven months ago.
He was a murderer himself. He understood that the line was blurred, that life and magic and sides were complicated. That the idea of good vs evil was a childish and stupid concept. That you couldn’t make wide generalizations in the way that he’d made them so easily in the past.
Harry had killed people, and he planned to do it again – as many times as necessary in order to accomplish his task. Heck, he was willing to kill Ron if it meant succeeding despite the fact that he knew it would hurt the Weasley family and shatter their relationship. He’d held Hermione still, the person that he cared for more than anything else in the entire world, so her body could be mutilated – on purpose. Because her injuries needed to be healed.
He knew damn well what it felt like to toe the line between good and evil – to question if what he was doing was right but then choosing to do it anyways because it was required. He knew that life was not black and white in the slightest. So, they could not move forward based on old assumptions they’d made in the past.
And the truth was – everything they thought they knew was riddled in holes.
All of it.
As if having his confidence in Dumbledore shaken wasn’t enough, he’d had his confidence in the Order’s capability shaken, followed quickly by his understanding of the world. It had been shaken so badly it was warped, broken and then remolded into something dark and tainted. And now – it was happening again with Snape. The man he hated.
He sighed. When had he become so rational?
Sometimes he forgot how different he was. To him the changes had been gradual – he knew they’d happened, but he’d not really thought on them too much. He typically didn’t unless something earth-shattering like this happened that forced him to look at his old thoughts or opinions and realize how much they differed from the logic he used now. It gave him a better appreciation for the surprised way that the other Order members had looked at him and Hermione.
He knew exactly what Hermione was thinking. He understood exactly what she was getting at and why she still wanted to train with Nasir – despite the obvious risk.
“The odds of Snape and Nasir working together and working with You Know Who are almost zero,” Harry said slowly, running his thumb over the back of Hermione’s hand. “Otherwise Nasir would not have taught us what he did. It’s far more likely that Nasir either got the wand on his own or Snape gave it to him and they’re working together – though whether or not that means that they are fully allies or are allies with us, I don’t know. But – I can’t see that Nasir would have shown us what he did today if he was planning on killing us anytime soon. Despite how crazy it sounds, I agree with you. I think that not learning from him puts us at even more risk. We – we need to take what we can get at this point, and then just be prepared for the realistic situation where Nasir tries to kill us later.”
Hermione smiled at him, her lips laced with exhaustion and strain. “Let’s send Arthur a note, see if he can arrange for Nasir to come by this week again – as much as possible. I don’t want to wait until next Saturday to learn.”
-x-x-
After crawling through the limited details that they knew about Snape and Nasir, Hermione had finally agreed to drink her Dreamless sleep potion and pass out provided that Harry contacted Arthur. When she woken late Saturday afternoon she was surprised to hear that not only had Nasir agreed to teach them every afternoon starting Monday for the entire week leading up to the final Order meeting, but that some of the Order members would be popping by in the evenings after 7:00 pm if they could to practice the shield charm and get additional training from Harry. Harry had arranged it all that morning while she’d been sleeping by his side completely unaware of anything around her.
Arthur had agreed to drop Nasir off every day at noon, which would give them six hours each day before dinner and before the Order members came by to learn whatever it was he planned to teach them. They weren’t stupid though – despite how badly they wanted to threaten the man into telling them how and why he had her wand they knew if they pushed too hard he could disappear – taking their chance to learn right with him. So, she and Harry had agreed Saturday night to only bring the topic up with Nasir one more time and then they would let it drop if he refused to answer. They would then take anything that he would give them and prepare for the worst.
Sunday morning Harry had untethered her arm for the first time in three days and she’d been able to use it.
Not just lift it. Not wiggle it. Not make it flap around or twitch a finger.
Use it.
She had been able to move it fully, albeit stiffly, and she could even pick up a cup of tea and drink it or hold other small objects provided that they weren’t too heavy. It was exactly as Nasir had said. Her arm was functional – fully functional – but she dared not do anything aside from normal day to day tasks with it.
After breaking down into tears and crying in Harry’s arms for over an hour Sunday morning she’d babied it for the rest of the day – watching memorized as she’d lifted her hand before her face, moving her fingers and making a fist. She planned to continue to baby it for the remainder of the week. There was no way after everything she’d been through that she’d allow anything to happen to it. So, despite it not being required she planned to continue tethering her arm at night for the rest of the week.
She’d spent the rest of Sunday curled into Harry’s side on the bed researching the runes that Harry had asked her about. Which had proved to be a bit difficult considering that she couldn’t stop smiling at Harry. She kept touching him, kissing him, running her left hand through his hair – reveling at the touch and feel of him and tracing his skin with her fingers. She never wanted to stop touching him. She couldn’t wait until her arm was fully healed and she could truly put it to the test. Though somehow, despite the distraction, she’d made good progress and she had a pretty good idea of what she needed to do to implement it.
That night, after drinking her final nerve regeneration potion her body had stopped trembling in its entirety. She had the distinct impression from the feel that sat heavy in her muscles that the tremors would return if she allowed herself to grow too exhausted but otherwise the repair had been beyond anything she could have ever imagined. She would be down to sleeping only 10 hours a night with the Dreamless sleep potion starting Monday and for the first time in a very long time she felt good.
Really good.
When they woke Monday morning Harry had kissed her deeply, unlocking her arm from her side so she could run her hands through his hair once more and pull him closer. Then they’d excitedly dragged themselves from bed, showered, eaten and gone outside to start training per the routine they’d discussed Saturday night. She’d left the tent with her arm tethered firmly at her side – in her signature ninety-degree angle, fully expecting to see Luna and Fleur waiting by the cottage for them. Harry had told her during breakfast that Fleur had stopped by Sunday morning while she had still been sleeping to talk to him and drop off some food. The woman had expressed interest in joining them in their training routine and she’d asked Harry if it would be alright for her and Luna to follow along the next time they went out.
Harry had agreed and told her that they’d be starting fresh Monday morning per their typical routine – modified for Hermione’s arm but still just as intense as usual. Fleur had promised that they would stay out of the way and not interrupt – they planned to simply follow them in their routine as best as they could, but she’d been adamant about not receiving ‘training’ from them. Training would be reserved to evenings after 7pm so that she or the other Order members did not disrupt Hermione or Harry’s progress.
What Hermione had not been expecting to see Monday morning was Dean and Ronald standing somewhat nervously near the two girls. Hermione had frozen mid step and glared at the redhead, her body rigid with a combination of hatred and disgust. Evidently Harry had not been expecting it either because he’d come to stand next to her stiffly and eyed the group with equal disdain. What was odd, was Ron’s reaction. His jaw had clenched, he’d grown visibly stiff but yet he’d looked almost embarrassed. Then he’d averted his eyes but he didn’t move from his place next to Dean. Luna had been the one to run over to them in excitement, Fleur trailing closely behind the girl.
After speaking with them quietly for a moment they’d agreed to continue with the original plan provided that Ron did not come anywhere near them and kept his mouth shut. Fleur assured them it would not be an issue and then they’d set off. Hermione had run her laps with a newfound energy – keeping up with Harry and not giving a rat’s ass about the diagnostic charm that chased after her and displayed her vitals. She knew that Harry was just being careful, and she was simply too overjoyed with the return of her arm and the disappearance of her tremors to care. She even refused to let Ron ruin her day.
She was free.
Free of the curse that limited and crippled her body. Free from the pain and the tremors that coursed through her and made her incompetent. She was weaker than she’d been before the torture, but she felt strong. She would be strong. She would be more. She would push herself and push herself until she became so strong that nothing like what had happened ever happened again. So that she could stay with Harry and keep him safe.
So that they would succeed.
She and Harry were back on track. Tonight, after dinner they would speak to Griphook and Mr. Ollivander about the wands, the Hallows and breaking into Gringotts. They needed to know if Mr. Ollivander thought a wand like what Xenophilius had told them about existed. They needed to convince Griphook to help them. They would teach shielding to any Order members that showed up and then they’d continue to execute their extensive training plan. The following Monday they would dismantle the werewolf den with the Order and then they would return one hundred percent of their focus and efforts to breaking into Gringotts and the Horcruxes.
She felt calm.
She felt steady.
They had a plan and they had a teacher.
For the first time since they’d set out on this god awful journey she truly believed to her core that they could do this. They had a real chance – it wasn’t just hope. It wasn’t just a dream or a wish.
They could do it.
The others had not been able to keep up with their laps, they’d stopped after two and then started completing their own exercises while Harry and her finished their run. Once completed, they took the high dune next to Luna’s group and started the remainder of their physical exercises. Hermione watched from the corner of her eye as the others mimicked their routine – and although they struggled, they tried and they worked really hard. Luna was doing particularly well, especially considering that Harry told her Arthur had delivered the news Saturday morning that they’d still not been able to locate Xenophilius’ body. It was clear that the girl had yet to lose hope. She believed that her father was alive somewhere and she’d been relentlessly helping Fleur and practicing on her own. And now that she had joined the group and Hermione was healed she was pushing herself hard. She wanted to help them and she was willing to do whatever it took.
By 10 am everyone was covered in sweat and Dean had thrown up. He’d pushed himself too hard, he still wasn’t fully recovered from his stay at the Manor and so he sat the rest of the training out as Fleur monitored him with a diagnostic charm and made him drink water.
After a quick snack Hermione practiced her wordless spells with Harry in a circle drill and then they set up for target practice. If Ron noticed that they were still using his bright orange socks as pigeons he didn’t say anything and simply continued to stick close with Fleur and Luna as they completed the drill themselves with a white sock that Fleur had summoned from the cottage.
While dangling the sock for Harry she noted that Luna had the best aim, Fleur was a close second and Ron missed almost 60% of the time. When it was her turn to go, she was thrilled to find that her aim was back to perfection – she hit the orange sock every time. Her hand was steady as a rock as she hurled hex after hex at it with her own wand. It felt so bloody perfect that her soul felt lighter and she could feel her magic surging through her body with ease. She’d forgotten how it felt to have something perfectly attuned to her to channel her magic through and it made her heart ache for Harry and the loss of his wand.
At the soonest opportunity available to them she would ensure that he got a new one – one that was perfect for him.
She hadn’t noticed that while she’d been hexing the bejesus out of Ron’s sock that the others had stopped and were watching. When she finally set it alight and Harry dowsed it out, she noticed. She’d turned to Harry and given him a small smile only to catch sight of four pairs of eyes watching her. She glanced toward them uncomfortably, finding that Luna looked smitten with an aloofness that only she could master, Fleur looked like she was beaming with pride, Dean looked terrified and Ron – well Ron’s face was a combination of shock, horror and awe.
It made her uncomfortable to be watched and she wasn’t sure how she felt about people knowing their skills. Yet she also knew that their training was important to the war and the others needed to learn if they were going to be successful. So, she bit back her reservations. She knew that no one posed a risk currently given that they were not allowed to leave the cottage – besides they had nowhere else to go. It wasn’t safe anywhere else. And – if Shell Cottage fell to You Know Who then she and Harry had bigger things to worry about than Death Eaters finding out that they were competent fighters.
At 11:15 am they said goodbye to Fleur and Luna before returning to the tent for lunch. After eating they changed into old clothes and made their way back outside. After how the last practice with Nasir had gone, Hermione didn’t intent to wear anything that she actually liked to practice again. Then they packed up their tent and made their way across the sand dunes toward the cottage once more to wait for the tall mysterious man to arrive.
“Hermione, I see that you can move your arm now,” Nasir said impassively after his eyes had flicked to her arm. They returned to her face rather quickly and then a slow glint began to form in his eyes. “Though something tells me – that is not what you would like to discuss.”
Hermione stood before the tall mysterious man holding her wand tightly. The wind had picked up and it blew over the sand dune with a low whistle, keeping their voices lower by carrying away half the sound. She’d untethered her arm to allow her muscles to stretch and Harry was standing supportively by her side. Arthur had just begrudgingly left – he seemed massively uncomfortable with leaving the man there with them unattended, but he had to return to work, and Shacklebolt had given his okay on the agreed training regimen.
Hermione suspected that it made Shacklebolt feel like he was helping, like he was somehow now assisting with or was involved with their secret mission. So it was no surprise that he’d pushed Arthur to say yes to the agreement. Had Arthur not agreed to bring Nasir, Shacklebolt probably would have done it himself.
“You’re correct,” Hermione said slowly, watching the man’s face carefully. She and Harry had discussed their approach through lunch and they both agreed that she should take the lead since Nasir had responded positively to her initial questions the first night in the cottage. “Though, I suspect that you’re not going to tell me what I want to know anyway”
Nasir continued to stare at her and said nothing so she continued.
“Where did you get my wand.”
“I believe you already know the answer to that,” he said indifferently, though his eyes continued to glint.
They seemed to do that when he was interested in something, when he was engaged. It made her nervous, because she didn't know what his interest was, and it made him look even more dangerous than he already did. That said, maybe it gave them a better chance of staying on his good side.
Hermione swallowed as she thought over his words. Had he somehow detected the trace – even though it was undetectable? At this point she wouldn’t even be surprised. The more she learned about him, the more time she was exposed to him, the more she realized that he was full of unknowns and surprises.
“Why did you take it from him,” she said slowly, rephrasing her question. “How did you know it was mine?”
The glint in his eyes darkened, and he took a small step forward, speaking his next words carefully in a low voice. “What difference would that make, Hermione? You have your wand – and you are healed. It’s just a detail. The end result is the same either way.”
“Sometimes the details are what make all the difference.” Hermione looked up at him seriously, her eyes narrowing. “They can alter the understanding of the outcome.”
“True,” he said quietly.
A dark smile had cracked across his lips, and his eyes were watching her intently. Yet he stood there silently. Just a foot away from her, watching her face but saying nothing further.
“You’re not going to tell me,” Hermione whispered, as she watched him.
He remained silent, so she breathed out slowly, biting back her frustration as her hand tightened on her wand. His eyes flicked down to her hand and back up to her gaze in one swift motion. Almost like he knew what she was thinking. Almost like he had expected her to react with force. Expected her to push him for answers and refuse to drop it.
The realization hit her quickly and it felt reminiscent of when he’d taught them the occlumency spell and he’d been waiting for her to figure out its true meaning.
He expected her to get angry. He came here anticipating that she would push the topic and not let it go – and perhaps, this was a test in and of itself. Perhaps he planned to kill them if they pushed. Perhaps he merely planned to walk away if they badgered him and refused to give him the freedoms he so clearly desired. She didn’t know – but she was going to prove him wrong in his assumption. She and Harry had already agreed they would let it go and move forward if he refused to answer.
She smiled and shook her head, a small breath ghosting from her lips like a laugh. His head tilted at her reaction and the glint in his eyes grew.
“You don’t have a side – do you Nasir?” She held his gaze and kept the amused expression on her face.
Something shifted over his face and Hermione got the distinct impression that he was massively intrigued by her lack of action – possibly pleased.
He stepped toward her in a slow, fluid motion that made him look inhumane, leaving little more than an inch between them as he leaned down toward her. She could feel Harry stiffen at her side, but he refrained from moving. Harry trusted her, and he would let her do this - he knew she could handle it. He knew she wouldn't cave under any sort of intimidation tactic. Yet even still, Hermione felt the hairs on the back of her skull stand up as she held her place and didn’t move, keeping her head tilted up toward the man and her eyes locked to his burning ones.
If this was a show down of her courage – she was not going to lose.
Not now.
Not ever.
She’d come too far.
“Tell me, Hermione,” he said in a low dark whisper as he watched her face with such an intensity it almost made her skin crawl. “Is that a detail that matters to you?”
His breath was cold on her skin, and she had to fight not to shiver before him. It made no sense given the warmth she knew radiated from his hands, yet the words felt frigid like winter across her face. She stared at him, her heart was pounding painfully – she felt like if he’d wanted to, he could have reached his hand into her chest, through her body, and ripped out her soul.
He was a monster of a different making all together. Not human at all, and his allegiance was undefined.
It both terrified her, and naturally… enthralled her.
She couldn’t help it.
She was curious.
She was always curious.
She been curious since the day she was born and would be until the day that she died. Regardless of the risk, she didn’t care who he was or what his deal was, so long as he would help them. So long as he would teach them – both she and Harry were aligned on that front, but for her it ran even deeper. It was who she was deep in the very depths of her soul.
Perhaps that truth made her a monster in her own right – that she was willing to look past the obvious death that radiated from the man before her, to ignore the warning signals that radiated through her body in order to learn. It wouldn’t be the first time that she’d done something questionable or unethical to gain knowledge or do the right thing.
“No,” she said after a tense moment had passed between them. She felt her shoulders drop as she began to relax in his presence. The shift in her posture didn’t go unnoticed by him as his eyes slid to her shoulders, then back to her gaze. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t care that you don’t have a side in this war – I only want to learn from you.”
“And what else would you like to learn?” His smile had twitched slightly wider at her response and his voice was somehow more dangerous.
“It’s the same as I told you before,” she whispered, as she swallowed with determination. “I will take anything you give me. I want to learn anything that you’re willing to teach me.”
Nasir’s mouth opened into a full smile, and Hermione felt like her heart had frozen within her chest. It was simultaneously the most fascinating, the most disturbing, the most surreal, and the most memorizing thing she’d ever seen in her life. As if someone had designed it to be perfect, but it was being used by a wolf in sheep's clothing.
“Good answer.” His cold, dark voice rumbled. His eyes were moving over her like he was reading her again, and then he spoke slowly, the words almost inaudible against the wind. “You are fascinating indeed, Hermione.”
He immediately stepped back and began walking toward the dune that they’d practiced on before without so much as a second glance their way.
Hermione swallowed hard, feeling all of the air leave her lungs as her legs shook beneath her. She wasn’t entirely sure she understood all of what had just happened, but it felt significant.
It felt like she’d just escaped certain death.
Like Nasir had just made some sort of decision.
She drew a trembling breath and looked to Harry and saw that all the colour had drained from his face. His eyes were watching Nasir as he moved away, his hand was gripping Malfoy’s wand tightly at his side, and then, slowly, he looked to her. They both nodded shakily, taking each other’s hand and following after Nasir. It gave her comfort to feel the same trembles running through his body that she felt in her own.
Nasir was terrifying in a way that her brain could not rationally explain, and yet they obediently followed him to their dune to practice controlling an impossible force.
-x-x-
Hermione limped toward the cottage, Harry on her right and Nasir on her left.
Harry’s sweater was still smoking, and her pant leg was burned and trailing ash across the sand behind her. She’d pulled her quad diving out of the way when Harry had lost control momentarily before Nasir could put an end to things. She felt exhausted. Everything hurt and the weight on her heart had returned like a steady little reminder of what she’d done and what she continued to dabble in. Her dinner plate was clutched loosely in her hand – Fleur had brought them food outside again, raising an eyebrow at the black soot that smeared her cheek, the blackened grass and the smoke that was radiating from the area. Yet she didn’t say anything. She simply handed them each a plate and returned to the cottage.
When they entered the small cottage, they brought their plates to the sink and ignored the curious looks that they received from Remus who had arrived early to discuss the werewolf safe house with Fleur. They thanked Fleur and Nasir and then made their way upstairs to the bedroom that Mr. Ollivander was staying in. Nasir remained in the kitchen with Fleur listening to the conversation and providing input only when asked specific questions. They’d told Fleur of their plans when she’d delivered the plates for dinner so when they knocked on closed wooden door a reply came quickly.
“Mr. Ollivander,” Harry said quietly as they stepped into the room and closed and warded the door. The old man was laying on a small twin bed near the window. He looked emaciated, the bones of his face sticking out sharply against yellowish skin. His great silver eyes seemed vast in their sunken sockets and the hand that was resting on top of his blankets looked like it could have belonged to a skeleton.
“Mr. Potter.” A smile graced the man’s lips. “My dear boy – I never thought that I’d see you again. Much less that you would rescue me from that horrid dungeon. Thank you, my boy.”
“It was nothing,” Harry said giving the man a tight smile and taking a seat on the chair near his bed. “Do you remember Hermione?”
“Yes, yes – of course,” the man smiled again. “I remember everyone I’ve ever sold a wand to. Vine wood, ten and three-quarter inches with a dragon heartstring. Miss Granger, it is very lovely to see you again.”
“It’s nice to see you too sir,” Hermione said in the friendliest voice she could manage. She stood beside Harry, leaning against his side. It was probably a good thing that they’d trained today and practiced with Nasir before speaking to anyone. It had helped to blow off any steam or lingering frustrations – so she was far better prepared to be social than the last time they’d come to the cottage. Though being inside it still made her uncomfortable.
“Mr. Ollivander,” Harry said slowly, watching the man carefully. “I need your help.”
“Yes – anything, anything – what do you need?” Mr. Ollivander looked sincere in his words and had shifted in his upright position away from the headboard to lean toward them.
“Are you able to mend this?” Harry pulled out the shattered remains of his wand from her purse and gently laid them on the man’s lap. Hermione watched as a sad look came across the elder man’s face and she felt the small hope she’d had flutter out.
“Holly and phoenix feather, eleven inches, nice and supple – Mr. Potter – this was your wand,” he looked to Harry sadly.
“Yes,” Harry smiled tightly again. “Can you fix it?”
“No,” he whispered shaking his head as he bit his lip in despair. “I am sorry, very sorry but a wand that has suffered this degree of damage cannot be repaired by any means that I know of.”
“That’s okay sir,” Harry said kindly, quickly pulling the pieces from the devasted man’s lap. “Perhaps you can help me with something else. We found these wands and I was hoping that you would identify them – let us know if they are safe to use?”
“Yes of course,” Mr. Ollivander nodded, and his distress seemed to fade a little.
Harry pulled out Peter’s wand, Malfoy’s wand and Bellatrix’s wand – handing them over to the man to examine. He rolled them between his knobble-knuckle fingers, flexing them slightly before holding them up to his ear. Hermione had never understood wandlore but she’d seen him do it before, so she knew it was a technique of some kind and he wasn’t doing it because he was too rattled from his time spent in the dungeon.
“This one here,” he said holding up Bellatrix’s wand. “Walnut, dragon heartstring, twelve and three-quarter inches – unyielding. It belongs to Bellatrix Lestrange. I caution you against using it – as it will be unforgiving.”
He picked up Malfoy’s wand next.
“Hawthorn and unicorn hair – ten inches precisely. Reasonably springy. This was the wand of Draco Malfoy – though, then again. It might be yours,” he looked to Harry. “The manner in which you came across these matters – much also depends upon the wand itself but in general, if a wand has been won its allegiance may change.”
“So it’s safe for me to use it then?” Harry asked curiously.
“I think so, a conquered wand will usually bend its will to its new master – of course with some exceptions,” Mr. Ollivander answered and pointed to Bellatrix’s wand. “The wand chooses the wizard Mr. Potter – that much has always been clear to those of us who study wandlore. Of course you can always channel your magic through almost any instrument, just that you will always have the best results when there is a strong affinity between the wand and the wizard. These connections can be quite complex. An initial attraction and then a mutual quest for experience. The wand learning from the wizard and the wizard from the wand.”
He then picked up Peter’s wand and turned it over with a look of pain in his eyes.
“Chestnut and dragon heartstring. Nine and one-quarter inches. Brittle. I was forced to make this wand shortly after my kidnapping for Peter Pettigrew. This one – if it was won as well, may be used. It will likely bend to your will.”
“Thank you,” Harry took the wands back from the man and handed them to Hermione. “There was something else Mr. Ollivander – a story I wanted to ask you about.”
“A story?” Mr. Ollivander looked at him curiously.
“Yes,” Harry said turning to face him seriously. “A story about a powerful wand, one that’s ownership is transferred only when the previous owner is defeated. Its allegiance can only be won through death and it is passed from hand to hand by murder.”
Hermione watched as Mr. Ollivander’s face paled and he looked at them both warily.
“You know of the wand – don’t you,” Harry said quietly, his low voice calm but laced with intensity. “You know who was interested in this story as well – and what I need to know is – whether or not the story is true. If the wand is real. He held you captive because he wanted to know how to overcome the connection of our wands.”
“Yes,” Mr. Ollivander breathed his face growing tight. “Harry – you must understand, he tortured me I –“
“You told him about the twin cores didn’t you – you told him to borrow another wizard’s wand but that didn’t work either,” Mr. Ollivander nodded almost painfully at Harry’s words. “And then – he asked you about this story, he asked you about the wand that can only be won through murder – what did you tell him and is it true?”
“Yes,” Mr. Ollivander sighed, his hand trembling on the blanket. “He – he’d wanted to know about the Deathstick – the Wand of Destruction – the Elder Wand. It has had many names over the years but there has only ever been one. The Dark Lord no longer seeks it just for your destruction Harry – he is determined to possess it because he believes it will make him truly invulnerable.”
“And will it?” Harry asked.
“The owner of the Elder Wand must always fear attack, but the idea of the Dark Lord coming into possession of such a wand… is formidable I must admit.”
“So the wand truly exists?” Hermione found herself saying, a heavy stone sinking in the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t even bring herself to doubt it anymore. Not after everything they’d been through – not after the rune, not after Nasir.
“Oh yes,” Mr. Ollivander nodded solemnly. “It is possible to trace its possession back throughout the ages, though there are some gaps as it vanishes temporarily from time to time. But to those who study wandlore its characteristics are unmistakable and we recognize it. I cannot say whether or not it must pass by murder, but the wand does exist. Immensely powerful, dangerous in the wrong hands and an object of fascination to those of us that study wands.”
“Mr. Ollivander,” Harry said quietly but firmly. “You told you know who where to find it – didn’t you?”
“My boy you must understand – I was forced to – I was tortured with the cruiciatus you don’t understand how –“
“We understand,” Hermione said tightly, stepping forward and her jaw clenching in anger. “We know exactly what it’s like to be tortured but quite frankly Mr. Ollivander – I don’t care why you told him. We just need to know what you said.”
Mr. Ollivander swallowed hard and looked between them. “I told him Gregorovitch the wand maker had it – he was studying it of course. It was good for business you see but – but he didn’t have it, it had been–“
“Stolen,” Harry breathed. He turned to look at Hermione. She could see a realization dawning on his face. “It was stolen wasn’t it? By Grindelwald – the thief. That’s why he was so angry – the picture Hermione, you remember at Bathilda’s.”
“But Harry, Grindelwald was–“ Hermione stopped, her brain clicking in on the answer at the same moment that Harry’s had.
“Harry my boy – I am truly sor–“ Mr. Ollivander started but Harry ignored him and cut him off, standing abruptly from the chair.
“Rest Mr. Ollivander – thank you for your assistance with the wands,” Harry turned with Hermione and they quickly left the room.
Hermione followed Harry to the corner of the upstairs landing and cast a quick and heavy silencing charm around them. “Harry, Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald.”
“I know,” Harry said quickly, running a hand through his hair as thoughts raced behind his eyes.
“How are you sure that Grindelwald took it – anyone could have stolen it from Gregorovitch.”
“He called him a thief Hermione,” Harry said shaking his head. “After Bathilda’s when I was unconscious my head was flooded with his memories. I saw his thoughts on Grindelwald – I just didn’t know what they were about, I didn’t know about the wand or the Hallows. Everything was a jumbled mess but it makes sense now. He knows – he knows Hermione, I can’t explain it, but I know that he knows.”
“Have you been letting him in again?” Hermione said quietly. She moved towards him and grabbed his arm gently. “You haven’t mentioned anything lately so I wasn’t sure if you’d seen anything else.”
“No – no, of course not, at least I don’t think so. I don’t know how effective my occlumency is since we’ve never been able to test it, but I haven’t seen anything. At least nothing consistent – not like before – just the odd image or two in my dreams,” Harry was looking at her tensely. “Hermione – trust me, he knows. He knew that Grindelwald had taken the wand – that I saw – and he knows that Dumbledore defeated him. With Snape at the school he has access – he would have turned the place upside down or raided his grave to find it. We just need to assume that he already has it.”
“So what do we do?” she said tightly. “If he has the Elder Wand and it is as Mr. Ollivander described than what are we supposed to do about it Harry?”
“Nothing,” Harry said shaking his head as his brow furrowed. “There is nothing that we can do. We just need to destroy the Horcruxes and then face him last. We just have to hope that we can defeat him – Dumbledore managed to defeat Grindelwald when he had the wand. It has passed hands for years from the sounds of it – it has to be possible to win. We just stick to the plan and we train harder.”
Hermione felt her jaw tighten. ‘Doing nothing’ wasn’t exactly a plan, and it certainly did not settle her nerves or make the sinking feeling in her chest any lighter. Why was it that they couldn’t catch a fucking break? If finding the remaining Horcruxes wasn’t an impossible enough task on its own – they now had to be prepared to face Voldemort at the end when he was using an overpower Deathstick.
What the actual fuck had Dumbledore been thinking? If he’d had the wand, why the hell had he not said anything to Harry about it?
A heavy look passed between them and she closed her eyes and let out a deep sigh, knowing that Harry was thinking the exact same thing. She felt his forehead press against hers and she slid her hand up his arm to grab the front of his crispy sweater tightly.
“Well then I hope Griphook will agree to help us. We need to figure out how to get into Bellatrix’s vault as soon as possible,” Hermione breathed against him. “Harry – I’m not sure that he will.”
“I know,” Harry sighed and she felt him move away and press his lips to her temple.
They’d spoken about it previously over the last few days, but they hadn’t spent much time on it with everything else going on. Hermione’s arm had taken top priority and then they’d quickly gotten caught up in the planning for the werewolf den infiltration. Aside from their earlier meetings with Bill, pouring over the documents that he’d given them and their initial research they’d not come up with any real tangible plan to break-in to Gringotts. They were hoping that Griphook might be able to help them with that but both she and Harry knew Goblins were immensely self-motivated – they did not particularly like wizards or any other species and after he’d been held captive by Death Eaters it was highly unlikely Griphook would volunteer himself to the task.
Harry had had to fill Hermione in on what’d happened after they’d arrived on the beach. Her memories of that day, while intact and sound, were spliced and laced with pain that she didn’t want to revisit. She knew that Harry had grabbed Griphook before darting to her – he’d saved the goblin’s life so perhaps the creature would have some small sense of obligation to help them. Griphook had been able to hang onto the sword through the apparition – and Fleur had taken it from him upon his arrival and returned it to Harry shortly after she’d passed out. It had been stowed back in her purse along with their remaining belongings, though Harry’s broken shard of glass, their tea pot and several of her books and other possessions remained at Malfoy Manor.
Though in the days that had immediately following after landing on the beach it had hardly felt like it’d mattered. She’d been broken. They’d had no other Horcruxes to destroy and they were barely holding things together. Now that she was healed, and now that they’d begun training with Nasir – she’d felt her spark of determination grow and she just hoped that they might be able to convince Griphook to lend them a hand.
A warm tingle shot through her body as Harry’s hand traced down her back. She didn’t know how she could do this without him, any of it. Every time he touched her it just made her realize more and more how much she loved him – it was like some intangible force that seemed to grow infinitely.
“We just have to find a way to convince him,” he said quietly before she dispelled her silencing charm.
She opened her eyes and smiled at him. Kissing him once firmly before moving toward the goblin’s room.
-x-x-
“Griphook,” Harry nodded at the small goblin as he entered the room. “I’m not sure if you remember me, but you–”
“I showed you to your vault the first time you ever entered Gringotts. Mr. Potter, even amongst goblins you are very famous,” Griphook nodded to him before his eyes flicked to Hermione. A strange expression crossed over his face and then his eyes returned to Harry.
“This is Hermione Granger,” Harry said turning to Hermione briefly. He wasn’t sure if Griphook knew who she was – or if he cared, but he did his best to remain polite and remember his manners. He hated being inside this cottage and speaking to other people made him uncomfortable. He didn’t like being so enclosed, but it was something that he supposed he would have to start working on. They were planning on breaking into Gringotts after all and would be enclosed underground.
“Yes,” Griphook said slowly, his eyes flicking back to Hermione briefly before he shuffled a bit uncomfortably on the small bed. He looked toward the open window and then met their eyes once more. “You buried the elf.”
It wasn’t a question; it was a statement – but the goblin had looked at them curiously as he’d said it. Harry got the distinct impression that he was surprised by this fact. Which to Harry was odd, though he knew in the wizarding world it probably seemed like a strange thing to do.
“Yes,” Harry said, feeling his jaw tighten. He hadn’t allowed himself to think much on Dobby since burying him. “He was a friend of mine.”
“You are a very unusual wizard.”
“In what way?” Harry said flatly, moving to sit on the bed across from the goblin. Hermione followed him and sat by his side.
“You dug the grave – by hand.”
“So?” Harry arched a brow at him and Griphook only stared. After a moment of silence passed between them Harry continued. “Griphook I need to ask you–“
“You also rescued a goblin,” Griphook said more quietly, this time. His intense little eyes were glued to Harry’s face and flicking over it like he was some sort of foreign specimen he was examining at the bank.
“Yes,” Harry said slowly, unsure of where this was going. He was aware that he didn’t fit the typical norms in regards to wizarding behaviour but he wasn’t sure what Griphook was getting at. Perhaps the goblin was just surprised that Harry had thought of him at all, and that thought was pretty sad. It was just yet another reason why they needed to end this war and dissolve the blood prejudices that haunted the wizarding world. “And I’m glad to see that you’re healing up well – Fleur told us that your leg has almost mended.”
“Yes,” the goblin said slowly, his eyes flicking between them once more.
“Griphook, I need to ask you for your help – Hermione and I need to break into Gringotts and I would like you to help us plan it.”
“You want me to help you plan how to break-in to Gringotts,” Griphook’s voice had deadpanned and he was looking at them in disbelief.
“Yes,” Harry nodded. “You worked there. You know the bank better than anyone. I need to know if there is a way for us to get inside – there is a vault that we need to enter.”
“It is impossible to break into Gringotts.”
“That’s not true,” Harry shook his head. “There was a break-in when I was in my first year – the same day that I met you.”
Griphook’s eyes darkened and he seemed to be thinking over his next words. “What vault is it that you need to enter?”
“Bellatrix Lestrange’s,” Harry said calmly.
A sound almost like a strangled cough came from Griphook’s throat. “Impossible – that’s impossible, it cannot be done. If you seek beneath our floors, a treasure that was never yours–“
“I know the rhyme,” Harry cut him off and his shoulders stiffened. “I’m not stealing anything for myself Griphook – regardless of whether or not you believe me, that’s the truth. We are in the middle of a war, I’m not trying to rob the bank – I don’t need or want any treasures. There is something in her vault that I need in order to win this fight. It’s not a treasure that belongs to her and it’s not something that I plan to take for myself either.”
Griphook went silent again for a long moment before speaking. “If there was ever a wand-carrier to utter those words that I would believe – it would be you Mr. Potter.”
“Will you help us?” Harry asked him, his eyes watching the curious goblin closely.
“Maybe,” Griphook said tightly, his eyes flicking between them. “I don’t see what I have to gain from it.”
“You don’t see what you have to gain from it?” Hermione’s voice sounded darkly from his side. She was rigid in her seat and her eyes had become hard. “You don’t see how defeating you know who would benefit you? How it would benefit everyone? He and the people who follow him are the strongest supporters for creating division between species – they’re so demented and so ignorant in their understanding of magic and the world that they’ve even started to segregate witches and wizards into categories. I’m a mudblood – you saw exactly what they think of me and those like me, Griphook – you know exactly how bad this is going to get. If you know who wins this war then your kind is only going to face further oppression and strife. The gap will widen.”
“And what about after?” Griphook turned to her. “Assuming that you and Mr. Potter are successful then what comes next? How quickly will my kind be once again forgotten – it may not get worse, but it won’t get better either. Witches and wizards have long since denied us privileges that you enjoy.”
“After?” Hermione sat forward on the bed. “After this is over – I will fight for you. Harry will fight for you – people – will fight for you, especially after seeing what you’ve done. What better way to prove to the wizarding world that they are an ignorant and archaic fools by showing them how you helped to defeat one of the most terrifying wizards of all time. It is his weakness – it’s why you know who will fail. He underestimates those he thinks are lesser than him and it’s why we will win, but we need to work together. We need your help. If it is short term gains that you are looking for – fine, we’ll give you whatever payment you think your time is worth. But if you’re looking for the world to change, then we need to act – we need to help make that happen.”
Griphook stared at her for a long quiet moment. Harry could see the thoughts racing behind his eyes before he spoke again quietly. “You are not like the other wizards either.”
“There are many of us that are not like the others,” Harry said quietly. “We’re not all the same, we don’t all support what the wizards of the past have done. There are many who are eager for change, and I would like to get the chance to prove that to you – but in order to do that I need your help first.”
Silence rang throughout the room and Griphook’s eyes continued to stare at the two of them. As if he were sizing them up and weighing his options.
“Alright,” Griphook said slowly. “I’ll help you.”
-x-x-
Hermione followed Harry through the door and down the stairs to the kitchen, stopping dead in her tracks for the second time that day. The kitchen of the cottage was full – and everyone turned to look at them when they’d entered the space between the living room and table.
Remus, Fleur and Nasir were still there, but they were now joined by Shacklebolt, Arthur, Bill, Luna, Dean, Ron and – Mrs. Weasley. Hermione saw Arthur grab the woman’s forearm gently as she made to move forward and she knew it was to stop her from cutting immediately across the room toward them. The distinct look of agitation in the woman’s eyes was obvious as she glared at her husband. Harry stood stiffly at her side as they both took in the hoard of people before them. She could feel her discomfort grow and her jaw start to clench, yet oddly she didn’t feel as stressed as she thought she would have.
“Hermione – Harry,” Arthur said with a strained smile as he stepped toward them. He’d gently patted his wife’s arm and cautiously made his way to stand but a foot before them, dropping his voice so only they would hear. “I hope you don’t mind – but we had some more interest in learning the shielding spell. I know this is a big ask – honestly, I was not expecting that everyone would show up here tonight. I tried to convince Molly and a few others to wait but I’m afraid they’ve been rather insistent and refuse to leave. I will understand if you don’t want to teach so many people at once, but – we do need to learn. This – your help could make all the difference in the war going forward.”
Arthur looked at them both for a moment, a pained expression on his face. His eyes flicked over the black soot smudge on her cheek, the singed sweater Harry was wearing and the burnt pant leg of her jeans – but he said nothing. He simply bowed his head toward them and lowered his voice further.
“If you’re not okay with this – I will send them home. We can arrange alternating nights – we can work something out so there are less people.”
Hermione’s eyes flicked to Harry at the same moment his moved to hers – a single breath passing between them before they both looked back to Arthur. It was like she could read his mind already, though soon enough it would be more literal. It would make things so much easier, so much safer, so much more sure. Though tonight, it was simple enough to know that his thoughts were the same as her own.
No she wasn’t okay with this. No she didn’t want to teach a group this large. No she was not comfortable with this – but that didn’t matter. Like everything else in this war, it needed to be done. The more competent the Order was the more likely they were to be successful in the upcoming werewolf den infiltration. It would also make them better prepared for when the inevitable all-out war broke out. So far they’d been lucky and everything had been shadow work and secrecy – but the war was coming. Both she and Harry could feel it growing like the pressure before a storm and it would be here soon enough.
Everyone in this room aside from themselves and Nasir were at risk – and she doubted that Nasir would follow them into battle. Which meant that everything would rely heavily on her and Harry, but she and Harry had their own mission. They could not protect everyone else. They could not protect the students of Hogwarts if anything were to happen there – and if the innocents were slaughtered then they’d failed. As much as it was about defeating Voldemort it was also about sparing lives when and if they could. The Order needed to be trained and so they would do it.
“It’s fine Arthur,” Hermione grimaced a smile, her back feeling tight as her anxiety of being enclosed with so many people flared.
“We’ll train the same as last time,” Harry said stiffly at her side. “Though I would ask that we get to stand on the side by the door.”
“Thank you,” Arthur smiled at them, his eyes glowing with warmth. “I’ve told everyone to be on their best behavior and to leave you two alone and not pester you with questions.”
Hermione couldn’t help the smirk that curled the corner of her lips. She knew he was talking about his wife – possibly even Ron, as Remus seemed to accept their secrecy the last time they’d met.
“Alright,” Arthur said a bit more loudly as he turned back to the group. “Well let’s get started – if you want to set-up like last time.”
Harry moved across the room and Hermione followed him, turning to stand facing the room with their backs to the door. Hermione watched as Nasir moved first, making his way silently around the crowd of people to stand at her left and lean against the wall. A part of her wondered if anyone else even saw him moving. Then Remus moved second and everyone followed him. Mrs. Weasley was the only one who seemed to hesitate – she stood stiffy in the kitchen watching them with a tight and wary expression, like she was struggling to process what she was seeing.
“We’ll start by going over pronunciation again first,” Harry said, ignoring the look he was getting from Mrs. Weasley and allowing his eyes to flick over the group. “Leave your wands in your robes and keep your hands at your sides until either myself or Hermione tells you that you have the pronunciation correct.”
“This shield spell is just as dangerous as it is helpful,” Hermione picked up from Harry. “If you cast it incorrectly you will be encased in a bubble that will inflict damage on you until the shield’s duration runs out. There is nothing we can do to stop that if it occurs – as such – you are never to cast this on anyone but yourself. Self-preservation is inherent in a human’s biology so it is less likely you will fail – but protecting others is difficult, you have to mean it deeply, right down to your soul – otherwise you will trap them inside what can literally become a death bubble.”
“A death bubble?” Mrs. Weasley looked between them and Arthur with genuine concern. “Hermione – Arthur are you sure it is a good idea to learn this? Where did you even find such a spell?! Is it even worth the risk?”
“If you’re not interested in learning it then don’t,” Harry said, his eyes flicking towards her. “Everyone who was here last time already knows the risks and they accepted them – if you or anyone else here learning for the first time tonight thinks it’s too risky then that’s your decision. I will not waste my time convincing anyone to learn something that they don’t want to, but I assure you the shield is effective. When cast correctly this shield will protect you from a werewolf bite, it will shield you from any attack and – if you successfully learn this one we will teach you our modified version which protects you from physical blows entirely.”
“But you need to master this one first,” Hermione said taking a step forward and turning away from Mrs. Weasley. “Once you have the pronunciation down move to the end by the window and I’ll go over the wand movements with you.”
Mrs. Weasley frowned but she saw Arthur whisper something in her ear and pull her toward the group of people. Then they got down to business. They demonstrated the shields then they spent twenty minutes going through the pronunciation. Having the shield charm actively encasing her body helped to give her some peace of mind and made the prospect of being surrounded by so many people a little more bearable. Remus and Fleur immediately spoke the words correctly and moved down near the windows so they could review the wand movements with Hermione. As she went through the motions with them she hear Harry calling out ‘Plenus-Protego-corPus-LoComotor. You really have to hit that P and C’ and she fought back a smile. It was just like when she’d been helping him.
Arthur joined her group a few minutes later followed quickly by Bill and then Luna. After a little while longer Shacklebolt, then Dean, then Ron and Mrs. Weasley moved over. Harry began helping Remus and Fleur with their shields and testing the duration while Hermione took over instructing the rest of the group on the wand movements. Both she and Harry maintained distance from the group as much as they could all while trying to ease their tense movements into something more natural. Shacklebolt seemed pretty decent with the movements almost immediately but she had to correct Mrs. Weasley twice, Dean once and Ron several times. Each time she approached Ron she spoke to him in a cold indifferent tone, giving only instruction and walking away from him as quickly as possible. She knew that Mrs. Weasley was watching their exchanges but so far it seemed like whatever Arthur had said to the woman had been effective at keeping her quiet.
“Hermione?” Luna’s voice rang out. “Can you just show me the last part once more – then if you think I am ready I would like to try it.”
“Sure,” Hermione moved before her and completed the motions for the girl and watched her mimic them back. “It looks good Luna – go ahead.”
“Plenus-Protego-corPus-LoComotor,” Luna nailed the movements and a purple jet shot immediately from her wand, encasing her body and leaving the girl with a wide whimsical smile. “Hermione! I did it – can you hex me, I want to test it.”
“Alright,” Hermione couldn’t stop her grin and she sent a wordless leglocker at the girl with a quick flick of her wand. Nothing happened and Luna’s smile grew wider. “Go over to Harry – he’ll pelt you a bit more and well see how long it lasts.”
She circled the group some more and made minor corrections where necessary. It was impossible to ignore the way that Dean eyed her warily and tried to create even more distance between them. Ron’s jaw was clenched so tightly she thought it may be permanently shut and he eyed her cautiously as if nervous she might snap at him. It was an unnecessary concern – she wouldn’t snap at him. He wasn’t worth her time or the effort it would take her to breathe in the air required to yell at him. She hated him, she was angry with him, but overall – he was dead to her. If and when she ever decided to snap at him no words would be necessary.
“Hermione,” Mrs. Weasley had called to her and she saw Arthur look in their direction. “I would like to try it.”
“Alright,” Hermione moved toward the woman stiffly, the calm that Luna had brought to her body quickly faded. She’d always like Mrs. Weasley but the woman could be a bit much at times and she felt like she was toeing around a barrage of oncoming questions. “Go through the words once, then the motions and if it’s good you can try it.”
Mrs. Weasley demonstrated, and it looked alright so she took her attempt. A purple spark sprouted from her wand. It didn’t encase her body – but it was a good start.
“It’s a good start – just make sure you really mean it when you say it – I found envisaging a warm cacoon helped the first few times.”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Weasley smiled, then her face grew tighter and she took a step forward and dropped her voice. “Hermione dear – is everything okay?”
Hermione could see Arthur stiffen from the corner of her eye and she knew he was watching them closely. She decided to try and deflect the question. “Yes Mrs. Weasley – if you keep practicing just as you have it, I’m sure you will get it.”
“Oh – I,” she hesitated, clearly not meaning what she’d said in the way that Hermione had chosen to respond. Yet determination set across her face and she pushed, just like she always did. “Hermione – I meant is everything okay with you dear – and – and Harry. You two seem – well you just seem… different. And your pants dear – why are they burnt? You look like you caught fire.”
“I did,” Hermione said flatly her eyes hardening and skimming over Mrs. Weasley’s wide-eyed reaction.
“What?! You caught fire?” her voice had risen and a few other eyes were looking at them now.
“Only a little,” Hermione’s lips twisted into a tight line. “But it’s nothing to be concerned about, Nasir put it out in time.”
“You’re working with Nasir?” Mrs. Weasley’s voice had dropped low and she was looking at Hermione with a stern, disapproving and vastly concerned expression. She looked like she was about to pitch a classic Mrs. Weasley meltdown and Hermione wasn’t going to have any of it.
“And?” Hermione arched a brow, her voice becoming deadly low in challenge as she stared the woman down. Mrs. Weasley’s face shifted and she looked at her in disbelief. “Keep practicing, Mrs. Weasley.”
She stepped past the woman and moved toward Shacklebolt, ignoring the heat on her back and knowing that the woman was glaring after her in confused disbelief. She felt a second pair of familiar eyes on her and she flicked her gaze to Nasir. He was still standing against the wall, his expression impassive, his posture straight and unmoving, his eyes dark and piercing. They were locked on her, watching her every move as she made her way down the line and helped the others. He’d been watching her since the minute she’d come back into view – yet oddly, the hairs on the back of her neck no longer stood up. Not even with the glint in his eyes that had appeared after the exchange with Mrs. Weasley. Instead an odd feeling of calm had settled into her bones and she knew it stemmed from what had happened outside and the training session that had followed. She still feared Nasir in a respectful way, she knew how deadly he was and she respected that - but something had shifted.
She couldn’t describe it.
She’d never be able to explain why, but she had the distinct feeling that even if someone did try to harm her tonight – she wouldn’t have to lift a finger to defend herself. She didn’t understand why – but she could feel it in her bones, Nasir would move before she’d even blink an eye. She wanted to talk to Harry about it when they were alone. She needed to know if he'd felt the same shift, but for now they needed to get through training.
Practice continued for another hour until she heard a voice she’d not been expecting to hear.
“Hermione,” Ron’s voice was tight, and his discomfort was clear. “I’d like to try the spell.”
She turned to him, her eyes cold with an indifference she felt she was learning from Nasir. “Run through it once.”
He did.
The motions were fine, but he didn’t hit the C quite right. She corrected him and he ran through it once more. It was acceptable.
“Go ahead, just don’t miss the C,” she stood to the side watching him. He looked nervous but he raised his wand anyways.
“Plenus-Protego-corPus-LoComotor,” Ron spoke it clearly, each letter was fine and the wand movements were correct.
Yet despite this a red spark blasted from the end of his wand and encased his body. Hermione watched in surprise, as the redhead collapsed to the ground and began screaming in agony. Her brow arched as the entire room turned to face him, everyone’s eyes frantic as they moved toward him yet stayed back as they had no idea what to do. Harry made his way toward her, glancing to her quickly with a raised brow in question before stopping at her side. Ron’s screams turned into shrieks that split the air like a knife as his body shook and writhed on the ground. Then silence rang out and he started panting and clutching his chest. The whole experience had lasted less than 8 seconds but sweat covered his face and he rolled on to his back with a low groan.
“Oh my –! Ron! Ron!” Mrs. Weasley moved first and made her way toward him, helping him from the ground as ragged gasps left his body. “What the – what happened?! What happened!?”
She’d turned to look at Hermione angrily as Ron batted her away. He managed to get his arm free of her and shuffled away, gripping his side tightly. He glared at his mother then slowly turned to Hermione and Harry with a tight and pained expression.
“You said I had it right,” he grit out, as he visibly fought to control his anger through the pain.
“You did,” Hermione said flatly, her eyes skimming over his trembling body. She’d be lying if she said his reaction didn’t surprise her. She’d expected him to immediately explode but he seemed to be trying to contain it and as much as his eyes were glaring it seemed to be from pain more than anything else.
“Then what happened?!” Mrs. Weasley almost shrieked. “The spell is supposed to protect you if you cast it on yourself!”
“Perhaps you didn’t listen to what Hermione said,” Harry looked to her coolly, his expression strained. “It’s less likely to fail when casting on yourself, not guaranteed to be successful. Your intent must still be to protect.”
“So you’re saying my intent was wrong?” Ron said tightly. She could see his anger seeping through his body as the pain rippled through him. He was fighting against his typical behaviours. “You’re sure? There wasn’t anything wrong with what I said?”
“I’m sure,” Hermione confirmed, watching as his face tightened in pain.
“Or with the wand movements? There’s not even a chance that you wanted me to get a taste of pain?” Ron said tightly as he watched her face.
“Ron!” Bill’s voice sounded but Hermione ignored it.
Her eyes narrowed at the redhead as the room fell quiet – yet she didn’t attack him. She wasn’t even sure she was angry at his words because she’d watched his face as he’d said them. She’d heard the underlying tones and inflections of his voice. He was angry – but he didn’t seem to be angry at her. His voice had been tight but somehow it wasn’t accusatory. It was a genuine question.
As if he actually wanted to confirm that this had been his fault. He was clenching his jaw tightly and was buckled at the waist as he looked at her, waiting for her to respond as he tried to control his breathing.
“No,” Hermione said flatly, taking a step towards the redhead.
She saw him flinch as she moved. It was clear now that he had finally realized the chasmic difference between them – that he wasn’t even on the same field, they weren’t competing in the same league. He didn’t stand a fleeting chance against her and he’d not meant his words to antagonize her. A part of him genuinely feared her, he was looking for the truth.
“If I’d wanted you to experience pain – I would have done it myself,” she paused her eyes flicking over his face once more before her voice lowered to a deadly tone. “And you wouldn’t have lived through it.”
Ron swallowed, his body shaking as he stood slumped before her. His eyes were tight with agony, his gasps came in low sharp pulls and his hand shook against his side as he held her gaze despite the way he naturally leaned away from her. Then unbelievably – he nodded.
“Fleur,” Ron said stiffly as he turned and began shuffling his way towards the blond. “Would you be able to make sure nothing is permanently damaged?”
Fleur moved toward the redhead and cast a diagnostic charm, half the room watching while the other half stared at her with a wide range of emotions. Mrs. Weasley looked like she’d swallowed something sour and ghastly – her expression was beyond anything that Hermione had the words to describe but it was clear that she was shocked, disturbed and terrified. Arthur, while unsurprised, looked at his wife warily and moved quickly towards her, pulling her away from them and into the kitchen.
“I think it’s about time we packed it in for the night – yes,” Remus said with a tight smile to the room, making his way over to Hermione and Harry as he spoke. “It’s getting late after all – we will meet back here tomorrow at 7 pm to continue.”
Hermione turned to the greying man as he approached, seeing the others move around him as they made to pack up their belongings and head out or move upstairs.
“Thank you – both of you, for helping out tonight,” Remus said with a genuine smile. “I know that this could not have been easy for you, so I want you to know that it is appreciated.”
“It’s important,” Harry said, though Hermione knew he was still watching Ron closely from the corner of his gaze. “We need everyone to be ready.”
“Precisely,” Remus smiled at them again. “After the baby comes, I’d like for Tonks to learn this as well – but for now I think it’s best to avoid the risk. Alright – I won’t keep either of you – but Hermione – I am so glad to see how well you are doing.”
“Thank you, Remus,” Hermione smiled at him. She’d left her arm untethered at her side during training as she hardly used it for anything more than to scratch at her neck. Though the movement had caught the attention of everyone in the room and she’d not missed the bright and excited expressions from those who knew what had happened.
The room dispersed fairly quickly after that and Hermione made her way outside into the night with Harry. Nasir, Shacklebolt, and Remus followed close behind. She could hear the tight whispers between Mrs. Weasley and Arthur growing louder and louder until the door of the cottage shut and it went silent. Clearly, they would be staying and discussing things and she assumed that Shacklebolt would be returning Nasir to wherever he called home. She turned to the tall man before she and Harry set off to their dune.
“Thank you for this afternoon,” she said, looking up to him.
“It was my pleasure,” his deep baritone responded. He turned to looked at the both of them, his eyes glinting in the night as his gaze flicked between them. “Make sure that you both get your rest tonight – tomorrow I will teach you something new.”
Dear Fluffy - the Snape sections of this are as always, dedicated to you <3
Aani - warning, Snape a head... though I fear this time it is less light hearted.
-x-x-
“Harry?” Hermione said quietly as she followed him inside their tent. Her legs moved sluggishly and her back was stiff from the tension that had riddled her body while teaching inside the cottage. It was only just starting to leave her body now that they were alone in their tent, safe, with the area warded around them.
“Mhmm,” he was setting her purse down on the small table near their bed and pulling out their pajamas.
“After today,” she said slowly, watching him carefully as she approached closer and stopped to lean her back against the pole in the center of the tent. “Did you notice anything different with Nasir? Do you – do you feel anything different when he's around now?”
“You mean how he watches you obsessively?” Harry turned to look at her with his brow quirked, he didn’t seem angry about it. He’d simply stated it as a fact. “Or how somehow he radiates even more intense vibes around us now?”
Hermione snorted, a small smile forming on her lips. “Sort of.”
Harry smiled at her softly, dropping their pajamas to the bunk and making his way over to her. His hands moved to her waist as he stepped before her, his right thumb slipping under the bottom of her sweater and gliding over her skin in a gentle motion. Hermione sighed at his touch and felt her body relax further into the pole behind her.
“What did you mean specifically?” Harry said quietly, his eyes watching hers.
“Aside from the fact that he won’t stop staring at me now – what I meant was – it’s sort of hard to explain,” Hermione sighed and ran her hands over his forearms, tracing her thumbs over the singed fabric. “When we were in the cottage – I hated it. I was uncomfortable because it was too enclosed, too crowded. Yet I couldn’t shake this feeling in the back of my head that we were fine – that if anything did happen – that Nasir would do something about it. Harry, I’m not sure how to explain it – I still don’t think he has a side but it’s like–“
“Like he’s decided to be on your side.” Harry finished for her when she struggled to find a way to word it.
“Yeah.” Hermione furrowed her brow as she looked at him. “Almost like this afternoon there were two outcomes – he was either going to kill us or walk away, or he was going to help us. And I think he decided to help us. I think he would actually protect us.”
“Yeah, but I don’t think it has anything to do with me, Hermione,” Harry said quietly, his eyes traced over her face and he stepped closer toward her. “I know the feeling that you’re talking about but – it’s centered around you.”
Hermione swallowed, her head nodding slowly as she looked at him. She’d almost expected him to say that. It was a weird feeling, knowing that she was the centerpiece of this odd and unspoken agreement with Nasir. She wasn’t even sure what to define it as – she supposed the closest thing that came to mind was mentor. Knowing that for whatever reason, this indifferent and impartial man had made a choice, and while he may not follow them fully into war, he was still assisting them and therefore to some extent he was picking a side made it stranger still.
Even if it was just her side.
It left her feeling uneasy as it made her feel both safe to know that he was supporting her and thus Harry by association, but it also weighed heavy like a burden of responsibility. She wondered if this was how Harry felt about being the 'chosen one' every time people decided to follow him or support him, or when things depended on him. It was a strange sort of sad, heavy happiness that left her feeling uncomfortable.
“What if he changes his mind,” Hermione said slowly, her jaw tightening as she watched him.
“I don’t think he will,” Harry said quietly.
“What if he wants something in return for helping us?”
Harry looked at her thoughtfully for a moment.
“Then I guess we deal with that later – though, he sort of strikes me as the type who would have asked for that up front. As you said, he doesn’t do anything he doesn’t want to. So he’s here for a reason.” Harry closed the distance between them, his left hand running up the side of her sweater and coming to rest firmly on her ribs. “My bigger concern – is how far he will push this, and what you’ll take.”
“What do you mean?” She tilted her head back against the pole to look at him.
“You told him we would take anything from him – that we would learn whatever he was willing to teach us, and while that’s true,” Harry hesitated, his eyes searching her face before he swallowed and continued in a quiet low whisper. “We can’t forget why we are doing this. I know you Hermione – I know what you’re like with information and I think he’s figured that out too. I think that’s why he’s decided to help you and my only worry is how much you’re willing to give for it. We’re both willing to do whatever it takes to win this war – I’m with you on that decision, wholeheartedly. But knowledge for the sake of knowledge can be dangerous and I – I just don’t want you to forget why we’re doing what we’re doing. Why we’re toeing the line and even on occasion walking blatantly right over it. We’re doing it to win because it needs to be done – because there is no other way – not just for the sake of doing it.”
Hermione nodded again, swallowing hard as her grip on his forearms tightened. She closed her eyes and thumped her head gently against the wooden pole behind her. She felt a bit agitated by his words but they weren’t untrue.
“I know,” she breathed, opening her eyes to look at him once more. “I’m not going to sell my soul and write off my humanity for knowledge, Harry.”
“I know that,” Harry said, a small smile tugging on his lips. “But it doesn’t happen in one jump, Hermione – it happens slowly over time and Nasir would be just the type of person to coax you into it because he is so indifferent on the matter. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s what he has done to himself.”
Hermione grimaced at him. If truth be told, she wasn’t really sure what to say. Harry was probably right. She’d had a similar thought herself after he’d started to teach them. It was obvious the man had acquired a vast collection of skills that were gathered through questionable moral means. It was obvious he gave no regard to how it affected his humanity, and Harry was also right about her. It was a fair concern, one that weighed on her mind.
Knowledge was her weakness.
“I’m not going to lose you in this war – in any shape of the meaning,” Harry whispered, leaning his head down and resting his forehead against hers. “We’ll learn what we need, we’ll do what we need – but please don’t lose yourself to the temptation of more.”
“Okay,” Hermione sighed, closing her eyes again and pressing her forehead into his. A small airy laugh left her lips and she smiled. “You might have to help me with that and be my moral compass Harry – keep me from temptation.”
She could feel his chuckle as she opened her eyes to him. He was looking at her with concern, but there was a small smile on his lips as his thumb grazed over her hip bone and sent a shiver down her spine.
“I will, even if that means denying you some tantalizing knowledge – I’ll stop you,” he kissed her gently and she felt a second shiver roll down her spine.
“Maybe you’ll just have to distract me with something else that’s equally tantalizing,” Hermione murmured against his lips as her eyes fluttered closed.
Harry kissed her again, his tongue moving slowly over her lip as his grip on her tightened. She felt her pulse quicken as the coil in her centered sprung to life and sent a shudder of pleasure through her body.
“I can do that,” he whispered, his right hand sliding up her side against her bare skin and brushing his thumb over her bra. “Come take a shower with me.”
Hermione slid her hand up his arm to his chest, gripping his sweater tightly and pulling him closer as their kiss deepened before he pulled away. His eyes were dark with want and it made her stomach knot in anticipation as he looked at her heatedly. He grabbed her good arm and lead her to the bathroom as Hermione felt the coil in her center tighten further. They’d never done anything like this before – she had no idea what to expect but he had her full attention and he was already doing an incredible job at distracting her.
They stripped off their singed and burned clothes, dropping them to a pile on the floor of the bathroom, Harry wordlessly started the shower before his hands found her body once more. Steam had already filled the room as he walked her back into the small stall, pushing her back flush against the cold wall and pressing himself into her as his lips moved against hers. She groaned into his mouth, not complaining when she felt her left arm become fixed to her side and instead curling the fingers of her right one into his jagged and uneven hair. She could feel his hard length pressing into her abdomen and it only made the heat burning at her core grow more intense as his hands moved over her body and the hot water sprayed against them.
It was hot, heavy – she felt like she was fully encompassed by him within the small stall as the air grew thick with the heat and steam. His lips moved across her jaw to her neck and she arched into him, pressing herself harder against him. She wanted him – she always wanted him but right now it felt desperate. He’d ignited a fire within her and made her desperate for his touch. His hand weaved into her hair as his other slid down her wet chest and he rolled her nipple between his fingers.
“Fuck, Harry,” she breathed against his neck, pulling him closer and moving her lips across his shoulder. “I want you.”
He ground his hips into her, a low groan escaping his mouth near her ear. “I want to do something for you first.”
His mouth traced up her neck, tilting her head back before he captured her lips once more. Kissing her deeply and pressing her firmly into the wall. She panted against him, opening her mouth to him and allowing him to slip his tongue into her mouth before he broke away once more and began trailing hot open-mouthed kisses down her body as he lowered himself to his knees. Her eyes widened as she realized what he was doing, his hand coming to rest firmly on her hip as he pinned her to the wall.
“Harry,” she breathed, her hand sliding into the now wet hair on the top of his head. “You don’t have to–“
Her breath caught and her words faltered as she felt his hot tongue glide over the sensitive bundle of nerves between her legs. He’d pushed her legs apart and with the flick of a finger redirected the spray of water so that it hit the wall behind her and ran down her back and shoulders. Her fingers curled into his hair as her mouth fell open and she groaned.
Fuck it feels so good, her mind was consumed with the feel of him.
He was tracing his fingers up the inside of her leg toward her center and she shivered as he slid a single digit inside her. She bit her lip, her head rolling back against the hard wall behind her as he stroked the rough patch of nerves inside her, he’d lifted her leg over his shoulder to get better access and it made her body trembled. Each movement of his tongue against her clit was echoed by the two fingers that now moved inside her and it made the ball of tension at her core double. She clung to him with her single hand, gasping for air as her half-lidded hazy eyes blurred from the steam. She couldn’t handle it, she wouldn’t be able to last, it felt too good, his movements were too precise.
“Harry,” she panted, gripping his hair tighter. “Harry I – I’m going to come.”
He didn’t relent. Instead his hand on her hip tightened its grip and he moved his tongue quicker, twirling it around her bud as his fingers stroked within her. Her body started to quiver, her breath came in pants, her hand gripping his hair painfully tight as the coil in her center sprung loose and a deep moan poured from her lips.
Her body jerked as she came apart, her vision wavering before her eyes shut tight and she rolled her hips against him. Wave after wave of pleasure rolled through her body as Harry brought her down from her high and held her firmly in place. In her haze she felt her leg being lowered from his shoulder as he shifted to stand and then his lips pressed against hers – he tasted of her and he kissed her deeply, his hands roving over her body as she clung to him. She started to drop to her knees, but he stopped her, and she looked to him curiously through hazy eyes.
“You don’t want me to?”
“I have a different idea – if you’re up for it,” a smirk played on his lips as he kissed her again and pressed himself into her body.
She shuddered against him as his hard length dug into her hip. Of course she was up for it.
“What’s your idea?”
“Turn around,” he whispered, bringing his hands to her hips and twisting her in place.
She grinned and bit her lip as she twisted – she knew where this was going, and she was excited to try it. They’d never had sex in the shower before but the one time previous that he’d taken her from behind it had been exhilarating. She moved a foot away from the wall, bracing herself against it with her only free arm and pressing her cheek against the cool surface – it felt nice, soothing against the heat that ran rampant through her body. She widened her stance for him, shivering as he ran his hands down her sides and leaned forward to kiss the back of her neck. He always knew how to touch her. He always knew how to make her tremble, how to make her skin prickle with desire and her heart race. They learned this together after all and they’d been perfecting it like their training – Harry debatably knew her body better than she did.
She felt his cock at her entrance before he carefully pushed into her, drawing a moan from her lips as a deep groan escaped his own. He felt so perfect inside her. He fit her just right – tight and full and satisfied. She arched her back for him, pushing her hips out as his right hand gripped her hip, his left bracing her shoulder for her since she could not use her arm. Each thrust was slow and deep and soon her fingernails were biting into the tile as the hot water washed over her shoulders and moans poured from her mouth. She was still riding the bliss from her orgasm and each time he thrust into her it sent a pleasant wave through her body.
“Fuck Hermione,” Harry groaned and Hermione felt his lips on her back as his left hand curled across her chest to pull her upright so he could kiss her neck as he pushed himself into her again and again.
“Harry,” she panted, twisting her head to the side so she could kiss him as he groaned deeply and clutched her small body to his chest.
If she were any taller this angle would never have worked but their heights worked perfectly. She leaned back into him as he slipped his hand over her hip to her center so he could circle her clit with his fingers once more. She shuddered, it was so sensitive that she could hardly stand the touch and even though she could feel the coil building within her once more – she didn’t think she would come. Her body felt too tight, too strained and it was too sensitive. She wanted to, desperately, but she couldn’t even handle the sensations that were washing through her.
“Oh my god,” Hermione wriggled in his hold as it became almost unbearable. “Harry – I – I can’t – it feels too–“
Her mouth opened wide in a strangled cry as he thrust into her deep and his fingers pressed her small bundle of nerves harder. She fell apart in his arms, incomprehensible moans seeping from her lips as a second orgasm crashed through her body. She felt like she couldn’t breathe – she’d never experienced anything like this, it was raw and uncontrolled, and she felt her legs grow weak beneath her as her mind turned to mush. His movements had grown quicker, his thrusts faster and harder and she could hear his breath catching but it barely registered in her mind until she heard him groan loudly, his hand moving out before them to brace against the wall as he came. He held her to him with his left arm so she wouldn’t fall over and he pushed into her deeply, gasping for air as his body shuddered.
She fought to breathe, her body shaking in his hold as the heat between and around them consumed her. She felt him nuzzle his nose at the back of her now soaking wet hair as his hips slowed to a gentle roll against her, his ragged deep breaths sounding in her ear as he kissed the side of her face.
“I thought you said you couldn’t,” a laugh cut from his lips between his gasps for air.
Hermione grinned, taking deep panting breaths as she turned her head toward him. “I couldn’t – it was too much – I don’t know how that happened.”
He pulled her back flush against his body, kissing her slowly, his hand moving up to gently cup her neck as he held her. When he pulled away from her, she could see the haze in his eyes, the flush on his face, the adoration in his eyes.
“I love you,” his voice was low and quiet, and it made a shiver run through her body.
“I love you Harry,” she whispered back, her eyes tracing over his face before she kissed him once more.
They finished showering after he’d carefully pulled himself from her body. Both of them trembling on their legs but taking the time to wash their hair before finally leaving the small stall and pulling on their pajamas. Hermione pulled on her short green shorts and baggy white tank, and Harry his plaid pajama bottoms before they dried their hair and made their way to bed. It was late now and with her mandatory ten hours of sleep they’d be late to training tomorrow morning, but she didn’t care. She’d needed that – they’d both needed that. It was a perfect reminder of exactly what they were fighting for and what they both needed to get them through the upcoming week of hard training.
She laid next to him in bed, delaying taking the Dreamless sleep potion he’d set out for her and instead curling herself into his side and tracing her fingers over the scar that decorated his left arm. She could feel his eyes moving over her face as his thumb brushed over the skin at her waist. She felt calm, safe – and the weight on her heart felt lighter.
“Hermione,” his voice naturally drew her eyes to his. He was looking at her in the way she’d grown used to seeing when they were alone – in the way that made her heart flutter because she could see just how much he loved her.
“Mmm,” she hummed, her fingers still tracing along his arm.
“Move in with me – when this is over if we don’t both die – will you move into Grimmauld Place with me?” his voice was so soft and quiet as he spoke that her fingers stilled, and she felt her heart catch in her chest. “The place is a mess and Walburga is a bitch – but we could fix it up. Move her to the basement. Make it look not so dingy and awful.”
Hermione fought to get air back in her lungs. She knew that they would be together after the war – they’d already discussed it. They’d already said that they would stay together but somehow hearing him bluntly ask her to move in with him had made everything very tangible and it sent a wave of nerves through her stomach. The answer was simple, she’d just never considered where they would go afterwards – she’d never given herself a minute to give it any thought.
“Of course,” she breathed, swallowing hard before a grin split across her face. “Yes Harry – of course. We can stay there and figure out what we’re going to do next, we can fix up the library and even make the yard look less dead.”
He grinned at her. “Depending what happens – if we want to go back to finish school or not, maybe we can stay there and finish our studies – then we wouldn’t have to stay at the castle.”
Hermione moved forward and kissed him, her lips moving across his with a lazy, satisfied feel as his hand gripped her waist tighter. She felt like her chest was exploding and she wanted nothing more than to lay curled in his arms forever.
“Definitely,” she whispered against him. “We can take some time for us – figure out what we want to do, without all this other shit and just exist – just the two of us.”
He grinned, running his hand along the side of her face and tracing the pad of his thumb over her cheek. “Exactly.”
-x-x-
April 7, 1998
Hogwarts, 3:01 am
Snape groaned audibly; both hands coming to his face, the palms of his hands pressing against his temples as his fingers threaded into his tangled hair.
“Fuuucking hell,” he hissed through clenched teeth as the chime within his head rang with a vengeance.
He checked the time and groaned even louder, hauling himself from bed and nearly tripping over his dragon hide boots. “FUCK!”
He kicked them away, only to roll his eyes and summon them back to him, pulling them on and doing his best to refocus his mind. He’d been asleep for less than an hour, having not gotten back from Malfoy Manor until after 2 am and only managing to kick off his boots, and shrug off his robes before collapsing on the bed in exhaustion.
He was tired – but he was always tired, he was sore, disoriented and barely functional. Yet Phineas was calling him with determination and he knew it meant something had happened. Probably something bad. He just hoped that Potter and Granger hadn’t gotten captured yet again, that Shell Cottage hadn’t exploded, or that Nasir had not killed them. He’d not heard anything from the man directly since speaking to him in the woods near Birmingham. He only had the snippets of information that Phineas managed to gather from his spying and so far it seemed like Nasir had actually healed the girl and that he was possibly even training them now – though the details around that were a bit unclear. In a way he’d spent the last five days waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the news to come that Nasir had inevitably decided they were unworthy or a waste of his time – that he’d grown bored of them.
His heart sank in his chest.
From the intensity of the ringing Phineas was making he felt like it had finally happened. That he was going to walk into his office and get the news he’d been dreading from the moment he struck a deal with that man. Then he would have to deal with Dumbledore’s ‘I told you so’ anger, which was a thought that made him seriously consider just downing his experimental potion #113 to see what happened. There was a good chance that it would kill him before anyone could do anything to stop it.
He let a deep breath out of his lungs and ran a hand through his hair, pushing it back from his face and opening his eyes wider, forcing them to focus as he made his way to the door. Thankfully he was still dressed, even if his shirt was untucked and wrinkled, but that hardly mattered.
He ripped open the door and strolled into his office.
“What Phineas?” Snape said with exhausted bitterness. “This better be more important than alerting me that Granger was able to hold a teacup or I swear to–“
“Severus.”
Snape froze mid-stride, a cold shiver running down his back as his entire body tensed. He would recognize that deep rich baritone anywhere – though he had never expected to hear it within the confines of the school, particularly not in the Headmaster’s office. He turned slowly toward the desk on his right, the silence of the office echoing painfully loud in his ears until his eyes landed on the man he had never expected to see anywhere near here.
“Nasir,” Snape said quietly, hearing the tightness in his own voice. The man was sitting in his office chair. He’d turned it to face Dumbledore and Phineas’ portraits, his legs were crossed in an abnormally causal fashion and his eyes were glinting in the dim light of the office. Snape swallowed, forcing himself to keep his voice level. “I wasn’t expecting to see you – here.”
“Yes,” he said slowly, his eyes tracing over Snape’s frame. “Well one cannot be too careful with owls these days, what with the war and all. It seemed suiting given that I had no other means of contacting you.”
Snape had to suppress a shudder. His long assessing stare was uncomfortable, his gaze always felt so piercing. It always felt like being x-rayed or examined on a intimate level. Yet what was even more uncomfortable was the casually indifferent tone that the man had taken and the fact that he offered any explanation for his presence at all – uttering words under his own volition as if he was willing to ‘chat’.
“I see.” Snape nodded stiffly as he watched the man before him.
His mind had flooded with questions and he felt his hands twitch at his sides as he fought against clenching them. Had Nasir come to collect his payment? Had he come with news? Did he come here to kill him? Snape didn’t even bother wondering how the man got into the castle – like the Dark Lord Nasir was capable of undetected travel in questionable ways so it was no surprise that he’d been able to enter the school grounds.
He’d likely just flown right through the fucking window.
“Severus!” It was Dumbledore, and his voice was unsurprisingly tight with anger. “Put an end to this now! Nasir – you are not welcome here!”
“I apologize for the intrusion, Albus.” Nasir’s eyes flicked over to the dead Headmaster’s portrait with a slow indifference. His gaze trailed over the frame almost lazily before it moved back to Snape. “But my business is not with you.”
“Severus!” Dumbledore warned him, but Snape ignored him. He didn’t need to look at the old man to know that he was raging within his frame.
“Why are you here?” Snape asked the man before him, keeping his voice calm as Nasir continued to stare at him in his unnatural and unnerving manner.
“I came to discuss your offer,” Nasir said slowly. “And to tell you that you undersold Hermione and Harry. They really are – quite fascinating.”
“Offer?” Dumbledore’s voice had dropped to a deadly low tone that echoed with the drop in Snape’s heart at the mysterious man’s words. “Severus, what did you do?”
Snape refused to look at the dead Headmaster.
He’d not told Dumbledore the specifics of his arrangement with Nasir. The only information that the old man had was what he’d caught wind of from Phineas’ updates. He knew that Nasir had healed Granger, but he didn’t know why or how – Snape had even refused to tell the man what potions he’d given Nasir.
“I see,” Snape said quietly.
He straightened his stance and flicked his eyes to Phineas quickly, catching the strained look on the man’s face before he clenched his jaw and returned his gaze to Nasir. It seemed that his suspicion was correct. Nasir was indeed here to collect on his payment, the only question that remained was what the man was going to ask of him.
Nasir hadn’t been wrong in the woods. Snape did not have much left to give, but a deal was a deal, and he had meant what he’d said. He would give the man whatever he asked for – Nasir had more than held up his end of the agreement and he was even training the duo now. Snape bit back the discomfort that was growing in the pit of his stomach as he watched the unnerving man continue to sit still like a statue in his chair. Perhaps the unrequested training was going to cost him even more – and he was painfully aware that the currency would not be galleons.
“So, you weren’t lying,” Nasir said with quiet interest, his eyes flicking back to Dumbledore’s frame as the man continued to demand answers.
“I never lied,” Snape almost whispered.
He knew that Nasir was referring to their conversation in the woods and how he’d said that Dumbledore had not agreed to him seeking his help. It was a ridiculous comment for Nasir to make – he could tell when people were lying, he’d known that very night that Snape was there of his own volition. Perhaps he was just toying with him, which only made Snape’s insides twist further. “You knew that then.”
“True,” Nasir said indifferently. His eyes glinted as his gaze returned to Snape. A small hint of a smile formed on his lips as he ignored Dumbledore and spoke as if the room were quiet around them. “But you did lie about their skill. They are remarkable, Severus – on their way to becoming quite formidable in fact. With training, the two of them might even make your goal a reality. Though you never mentioned the dynamic between them. It is rather–“
Nasir’s voice cut off, his eyes narrowing a fraction. Snape had stiffened at his words, knowing exactly where he was headed and his eyes had unconsciously darted to his left toward the Headmaster’s frame. Snape and Phineas had made an unspoken agreement not to disclose the nature of Potter and Granger’s relationship to Dumbledore. They’d done it for three reasons. First – it was none of his fucking business. As it was both Snape and Phineas wished that they did not have to know the information themselves, they certainly didn’t want to share it. Second – it likely went against Dumbledore’s ‘plan’ in some way and he did not need the old wizard bitching even more than he already did. And third – because once again, it was no one’s business and there was no fucking way he was going to discuss his student’s sexual relationships with a dead old man.
“I see,” Nasir said slowly, tilting his head to the side as he eyed Snape, evidently picking up on his subtle reaction. He then continued on in his indifferent tone though his eyes continued to glint. “Hermione is healed – she will regain full use of her arm, so I will not be needing these.”
Nasir pulled the extra vials of black nerve regeneration potion from his robes and placed them on the desk.
“Thank you,” Snape said tightly, nodding toward the man. “I appreciate what you did.”
“You helped them?” Dumbledore’s voice sounded louder and Snape finally looked toward him to see that the old wizard’s face was dark with anger. “Severus – you fool! I told you, we cannot accept help from him. He is incapable of picking a side and he will not do the right thing. He doesn’t help people. He will use you and take what he wants – he is not helping you!”
Snape opened his mouth to respond but surprisingly, Nasir beat him to it, his rich deep baritone filling the room.
“You speak as if you are well acquainted with the concept of manipulation, Albus.” Nasir’s gaze had flicked to the portrait and the glint in his eye had grown. He remained unnaturally still in the chair, but his voice had darkened. “How many people have you used now, Albus – tens of them? Have you crossed into the hundreds yet? You’re not still upset that I refused to be your dog and do your bidding, are you? That was decades ago. Surely you’ve let that go by now.”
A strange noise came from Dumbledore’s portrait, almost as if he’d scoffed at the words and Snape saw a look of dark hatred cross the old man’s face. He’d not seen that expression in years – not since he’d come to Dumbledore for help on the hill after he’d found out that the Dark Lord intended to kill Lily. It was pure disgust and his voice was laced with contempt.
“Yes, and look at you now.” Dumbledore’s cold voice was chilling, his eyes narrowed at the man in the chair. “Physically unchanged – yet you’ve become an empty shell. A soulless creature that can hardly be called human or alive – wandering through life with no point or purpose except to claim what you want. Your existence is an abomination that was meant to have been corrected.”
Nasir’s eyes darkened. “I am hardly the first being to walk the Earth with no soul, Dumbledore. It’s not necessary to live, you know this.”
“Dementors were not the by-product of an experiment that never should have been conducted!” Dumbledore’s hatred darkened. “You sold your humanity, just for the sake of doing it – because you had to have more! Despite what you think, I don’t manipulate people into being servants, Nasir – I asked you to join me because it was the right thing to do, because I needed your help. Yet you ran off to the Ministry and became an Unspeakable just so that you could operate outside of the law, without repercussion, simply for your own gain! Specializing as an assassin, slaughtering countless numbers of people on the Ministry’s Orders – you became their dog, Nasir! You just didn’t care because you had something to gain from it – and now look at you.”
“Fascinating that you seem to have forgotten your own history.” Nasir’s voice had become low, his eyes were burning as he stared at Dumbledore’s portrait with dark intensity. “And convenient, that you can speak so freely about my past and intentions to fit them in your narrative – when you know that I am incapable of speaking on them.”
A heavy silence filled the room, Snape’s entire body was frozen stiff as his eyes darted between the dead Headmaster and Nasir. Unsure of what he should do or say – or if he should even breathe. The air felt laced with electricity as a deep cold settled over the room and he could feel his heart involuntarily quicken. Phineas was rigid and unmoving in his frame as if terrified to draw attention to himself – as if he was attempting to look like a muggle picture as the rest of the portraits in the office were currently doing. Then Nasir shifted, his face become impassive once more as his eyes flicked back to Snape’s gaze.
“As I said before,” Nasir said slowly, his voice the familiar rich baritone again. “I’m here to discuss your offer.”
“Of course,” Snape said tightly, swallowing down his nerves and forcing his face to remain impassive. The sinking feeling in his chest had grown heavy and tight. “What is it that you want?”
“I need strength potion,” Nasir said, his voice impassive.
“How much?” Snape said slowly, knowing that this couldn’t possibly be the only thing that the man would request.
“Two full vials.”
“Alright.” Snape extended his hand and summoned the bottles from his stores, they flew through the open door to his chambers and into his hand. He stepped forward and carefully placed them on the desk before sending the spare nerve regeneration potions back to his quarters.
“Three vials of blood replenisher,” Nasir continued.
Snape once again extended his hand and summoned the ingredients, directing them to the desk in silence and feeling the tension grow in his chest.
“One container of burn healing paste, one container of murtlap essence.”
The containers flew soundlessly to the desk.
“And your soul.”
Snape froze – he’d extended his hand once more to summon the next potion, only to freeze as his brain caught up with his actions. He felt all the air leave his lungs like he’d been kicked in the diaphragm. He’d heard the intake of breath from Phineas behind him and somewhere in the deep recesses of his mind he heard Dumbledore yelling something, but he did not bother to look at the portraits or listen. Snape slowly turned his head to look at the man in the chair, his arm dropping to his side as the man’s impassive face came back into view.
“My soul.” The words came out as a raspy whisper. He could feel a hollow, cold emptiness begin to radiate from his center.
“Yes.” Nasir’s eyes glinted as he looked at him, a low dark smile moving over his lips. “Just part of it – I am not so detached that I would request the entire thing and leave you with nothing. You will live.”
“Just a part of it,” Snape repeated.
It was like he could not get his brain to come up with an original thought, his eyes narrowed as he stared at the man before him in disbelief. He’d known that the price would be steep – he’d known that he’d made a deal with a devil but he’d not known that the man would ask for part of his fucking life. Of course souls could be split – Voldemort had done it, Nasir had done it, others had done it before them. There were countless documented cases of it if you knew where to look. It happened when you tinkered with things that you shouldn’t touch or if you purposely meddled with it. His own was already marred by the things that he’d done. It was damaged and debatably useless as it was – why someone would want a part of it was beyond him, and if he gave a piece of it away he wasn’t sure what the fuck he would be left with.
It wasn’t like a carton of eggs, he couldn’t just go to the fridge and give Nasir a few from the dozen. It wasn’t something that was easily split, or easily sliced – it was the essence of your life force, the very thing that made you human – that made someone who they were. Regardless of one’s beliefs, regardless of what one wanted to call it – either a soul, one’s humanity, one’s conscience – they were all words used to describe the pieces that made up one’s being and it was never intended to be divvied up like a fucking birthday cake to share amongst friends. There were consequences to cutting it, if done wrong it could kill you – he couldn’t just casually hand him over a piece, and he didn’t know why the fuck Nasir would want a part of his already damaged one at all.
“Why?” Snape’s voice rang painfully tight as his shoulders tensed.
Nasir only stared at him, his dark glinting eyes moving over his body and making him feel even colder than he was. The man’s desire for conversation was clearly gone as he provided no response and simply continued to stare. Snape felt his jaw growing tighter as Dumbledore’s ranting started to ring in his ears.
“Are you backing out of your offer?” Nasir shifted in his chair, uncrossing his legs, and Snape felt his back stiffen.
“No – wait,” Snape breathed, his heart beating heavy in his chest as his brain raced through every possible scenario. He ran his hand into his hair and closed his eyes, letting out a deep low breath before he looked back at the man before him. “Alright – when do you need it.”
“SEVERUS!” Dumbledore’s bellowing voice finally cut through the fog in his head and Snape turned to glare at the old man in agitation. The wizard simply refused to keep his nose out of other people’s business. “You are absolutely NOT giving part of your soul to that man!”
Snape felt a deep anger ignite at his core as he stared at the desperate expression on the old wizard’s face – and he exploded.
“Why the FUCK would that matter to you!” Snape bellowed at the wizard, his face contorting in anger. “I’M ALREADY DEAD! My life will end with this war just as you’ve designed it! Don’t fucking pretend like you give a shit now, Albus!”
He could feel the anger shaking through his body as the realization of what he was about to do hit him like a bludger. These were the consequences of his actions – this is where it had led him. This was his life. His fucking miserable broken life. He would split apart his soul, sell off the pieces of his body – he would give every remaining literal piece of himself to take back what he’d done. To repair the damage and bring an end to that red eyed demon – because it was the only thing he could do, it was the only way that he could make his life mean something. He was dead anyways, so why the fuck would it matter if he ripped a piece of himself off and handed it away.
How was it any fucking different from anything else he’d done to date?
How was it any different than what Dumbledore had asked him to do last year – what he’d forced him to do?
At least this was a consequence for a decision that he had made on his own. It was something that he had done for the right reasons because he believed that Nasir could help and he had – the man was single handedly responsible for Granger’s recovery and he was now teaching them the skills necessary to win the fucking war. For the first time since that disfigured, horrifying lump of human flesh had become the Dark Lord reincarnated Snape finally felt like they stood a real shot at winning and it was no thanks to Dumbledore.
This was his purpose in life – to give himself fully, so that that piece of shit Potter and his annoying Granger girlfriend would live until the very end and defeat the Dark Lord. He was as much of a sacrificial pig as the boy was – the only difference was that he’d known it the whole time, he’d accepted it fucking years ago.
“Severus, this is different!” Dumbledore called to him desperately, the strain clear on his face even in the dim lighting.
“No different than anything you have already asked of me,” Snape sneered before turning back to man before him. “When?”
“Now.” Nasir’s eyes had darkened and he began to unfold himself from the chair, rising like the dead unearthly thing that he was.
“Now.” Snape’s voice was strained, but he nodded, his lips set in a tight line. “Fine – what do you need?”
“Some place quiet,” Nasir said darkly as his eyes flicked to Dumbledore. He’d already gathered the potions and containers from the desk and pocketed them in his robes.
Snape felt his jaw tighten but he nodded once, turning on his heel towards his quarters and ignoring Dumbledore’s calls. He’d almost reached the door when he froze on spot once more at the sound of his name.
“Severus.” It was small and agonizingly sad.
His shoulders tensed as he stiffly turned around to look back at Phineas. The man was standing in his frame, his hand braced against the edge, his eyes were glossy, and his voice had sounded like it might break. He opened his mouth twice as if to say something but faltered both times. Then he clenched his jaw tightly, his eyes meeting Snape’s fiercely and he nodded once firmly. Snape swallowed as something ached deep within his heart. Then he nodded in return, twisting on his heel once more before he made his way into his quarters with Nasir directly behind him.
Snape shut and warded the door behind them with a flick of his hand. He flicked it again to lite the fire and illuminate the room as he made his way to the center of the open space before turning to face Nasir.
“What do I need to do?” Snape asked, fighting to keep his voice steady as his hands remained clenched at his sides.
“I assume you are familiar with rune carvings?” Nasir said indifferently as he moved toward the two chairs that sat facing each other before the fire and began removing his outer robes.
“Yes,” Snape felt the hollow empty in his chest grow deeper.
“Good – take a seat.” Nasir gestured to the opposite chair and then summoned the floor length mirror that Snape had tucked into the corner of the room over toward them.
Snape moved stiffly across the room, his legs feeling heavy like lead as he forced himself to sit in the chair to the right of the man. It had briefly crossed his mind to kill the man to get out of his debt – but the thought was fleeting at best. The truth was, Nasir added more value than harm and his own life was more expendable – in fact it was rather worthless. There was no need to try and save it, it would be foolish and shortsighted, and he was in this for the long game.
He watched quietly as the tall man pulled out a silver dagger – one that had likely not been seen by anyone else alive since the experiment. They’d only made 21 of them after all and only 5 of them had returned to the world of the living. He’d pulled out paper and a strange looking pen and was using the small table between them as a surface to write on. He quickly covered the paper with runes and three other symbols that Snape did not recognize. They weren’t runes – they were something else entirely, which he supposed made sense. Rune carving, as far as he knew – could not be used to take a portion of one’s soul. As disturbing as it was to watch the process unfold and as much as he knew it was going to be excruciatingly painful, he couldn’t help but watch with a sort of morbid fascination.
He’d never seen it before – though he had researched it extensively in his youth and had even contemplated using it several times in the past.
Nasir left the paper on the table, turning towards Snape and outstretching his hand. “Right forearm.”
It was an order and Snape obeyed. Without hesitation Snape unbuttoned the cuff of his wrinkled white dress shirt and rolled up the sleeve, exposing his pale white flesh and extending it to the man before him. Nasir’s warm hand closed around it and before Snape could even begin to wonder what he was going to do Nasir summoned his silver dagger to his hand and drew a straight clean line through his flesh. Snape didn’t flinch, it was nothing compared to what he’d endured in the past and he simply watched indifferently as blood spilled from the wound. Nasir grabbed his wand, using it to collect a portion of blood into a small floating sphere before tracing his finger over the cut – it closed into a silver line before he removed his hold from Snape’s arm and stepped away.
Snape’s eye’s flicked to the new scar that decorated his arm. Perhaps the dagger had a counter spell – something like Vulnera Sanentur was to sectumsempra. He was unaware of any healing spell that could close a wound that efficiently otherwise – typically dittany would be required.
His eyes moved back to Nasir and he watched as the man moved before the mirror, the blood floating next to him as he began undoing the buttons on his cuffs and rolling up his sleeves to reveal tanned skin laced with thin silver scars. Then he began to unbutton the front of his black dress shirt to expose his chest, a lattice work of silver traced across his skin as if the man had been diced up and sewn back together. Feeling uncomfortable with the scene before him Snape made to turn his eyes away only to stiffen in his seat when the man traced a finger down his chest and black symbols appeared across his skin. He felt his eyes widen and he couldn’t look away from the sight before him – like the silver dagger he doubted that anyone alive had seen this.
The man was covered in black runes. They ran down his body in three straight rows from collarbone to mid-torso. Some seemed to be single markings while others appeared to be a string of several runes spaced closer together as if carved in a sequence at one time – he counted twelve in total, and he felt his mouth go dry. He’d heard of people taking one or two, he’d even heard of witches and wizards in the past who’d accepted up to half a dozen. But he’d never read any documentation that suggested someone could have a dozen runes carved into their soul.
Snape sat immobile, watching transfixed as the man summoned his wand and pointed it at the unmarked section of his chest – directly above his heart. He uttered words that Snape did not know and a string of black symbols spun from his wand, travelling through the sphere of his blood then sinking into his skin as bright red characters. They spun into a small almost rectangular shape across his skin, enclosing the section of unmarked flesh.
Then Nasir turned back to the table and grabbed the paper and dagger. He wrapped the dagger in the paper, sandwiching it between his hands before him and uttering more unknown words before the entire thing burst into flames, burning away the paper to leave a glowing red dagger in his hands. He moved back before the mirror and raised the burning blade to his skin.
Snape felt himself tense, he didn’t know what would come next and by all accounts of the reading that he’d done – no one ever gave a fucking rune carving to themselves. Yet unbelievably the blade sank carefully into his skin and he proceeded to carve three small runes into his flesh. With each precise cut blood ran down his body but his face remained impassive and his movements unshaken until finally, Fehu, Jera and Mannaz stood like bloody scripture in a neat column down his chest as the blood continued to run.
He seemed completely indifferent to it, completely unphased as the markings bled. He simply moved back to the chair that held his robes to draw out a second sheet of paper.
“I thought that was supposed to be excruciating,” Snape said hoarsely, his eyes locked to every movement that the man before him made.
Nasir placed the burning blade on the table with the second sheet of paper and turned toward him.
“It is,” he said darkly, his eyes glinting. “If you have a soul.”
“I see,” Snape said tightly, his jaw clenching once more. He knew the Revenant were soulless. He knew that was what people had said – yet somehow seeing the proof of that left him feeling uneasy and his mind continued to ponder. “So then the runes did nothing – the whole premise of the carving is to complete an exchange. How can they work if you’ve nothing to exchange for them?”
The markings on the man’s body had begun to hiss and darken, the red that ran down his chest becoming marked with streaks of black.
“I will feel it later,” Nasir said, his eyes darkening as the hissing grew louder. He went silent for a moment his eyes watching Snape carefully before he spoke once more. “This is merely a summoning target for the piece of your soul I plan to take.”
Snape felt his heart falter in his chest as the words clicked in his brain. “You’re not taking it now.”
“No.” A dark look crept over Nasir’s face. “I only plan to split it tonight – I will call for it when I need it.”
“So you've marked runes into a piece of soul that you don't even have yet,” Snape said slowly. “And you're going to mark up my remaining piece, too.”
Snape stared at the man in disbelief. He didn’t even have the soul yet and he was already spending it, using it, tainting it. Was this the reason why he’d asked for it? Was this what he did? He’d spent so much of himself that now he had to go and take from others so he could continue in whatever his pursuit was? Was this his currency?
Snape felt his body tighten. He would be left with nothing. He would be left with a hollow fucking fragmented piece of his former self and an enormous weight on his chest. He could feel his agitation growing, it was shooting down his spine like the beginning of a migraine. He knew that he was going to die in the end and he didn’t even care that he was giving a piece of himself away – what he cared about was that he did need to fucking function until his role was over. Would he even be able to fulfill his role after this man carved him up?
Nasir stared at him as if reading his thoughts, the interest still radiating from his eyes as he spoke. “The soul is more resilient than most realize.”
Snape clenched his jaw harder. Was that supposed to make him feel better? Was that supposed to make him think that this was okay? That he would be fine after?
“When are you planning to call for it?” Snape asked tightly
“Soon.”
“And what will happen when you summon the piece that you split?”
“It will be painful,” Nasir said slowly, his eyes moving over Snape’s face. “Hopefully – you will be some place safe when it occurs as it is unlikely that you will stay conscious.”
Snape’s back stiffened and his hand tightened its hold on the arm of the chair. His anger was burning now, his agitation transformed into full-fledged flaring irritation. Terrifying as this man might be Snape was used to being in the presence of unearthly deadly creatures and as much as he needed him his patience was wearing thin. He was already giving this man everything the least he could do was tell him when a part of his soul would be ripped from his body. Snape stood from his chair, his eyes darkening as he glared at the man before him.
“You understand that I do have a job, don’t you?” Snape said tightly as his eyes narrowed into slits and his words became a darkened angry snarl. “That I am a Headmaster, a Death Eater, a Spy and a fucking babysitter for Potter and Granger. I am summoned every other day by the Dark Lord and I am at constant risk of being attacked in this fucking castle while trying to prevent two insane sadists from killing half of the school’s population. I’m perfectly willing to give you a piece of my soul – I told you that I would give you whatever you wanted and I will follow through on our deal. I will happily die for this war but not until I’ve played my part. Surely you can give me some indication as to when you plan to rip a piece of my being from my body!”
The newly carved marks on Nasir’s chest had gone quiet, each symbol now jet black against his tanned skin. Nasir’s eyes practically shone as he stepped toward Snape, closing the distance so they were less than a foot apart. Snape stood rigid in his place, glaring at the man before him as his hands clenched at his sides. He wouldn’t fucking react and he wouldn’t back down on this – not now. He wasn’t asking for much. He wasn’t asking for a chance to live or to barter on his dues. He just wanted the chance to finish his job. Nasir stared at him for a long moment, his piercing eyes digging into him almost painfully as the silence stretched between them. Then a dark smile curled across his lips once more and he leaned forward, his face so uncomfortably close to Snape’s, he could feel his cold breath on the side of his cheek.
“Likely – Monday,” Nasir’s low voice rumbled. “I suggest that you take the morning off.”
He lingered too close for too long, until discomfort shot down Snape’s spine like needles and the man’s step backward felt like a physical relief of pressure.
“Thank you,” Snape said tightly, his eyes still locked to the man as he moved back to the table and vanished the red and black blood from his chest.
Snape stood watching as the man followed a similar procedure once more – picking up the pen, covering the second page, drawing blood from his own arm and collecting it into a small sphere before sealing the wound. He could feel the tension growing in his body as he knew what was coming, but then surprisingly Nasir moved back to his robes and drew out a small vial, pausing briefly before he held it out to him. Snape carefully took the vial, turning it over in his hand to see thin wispy black tendrils circling inside it. It almost looked like memories except that the colour was wrong and they moved in a much more sporadic and jerky nature.
“What is this?” Snape asked, looking back up to the man who stood before him.
“The final thing that I will ask of you,” Nasir said slowly, his entire body was impossibly rigid as his eyes latched intently to Snape’s gaze. “You will store that, safely, and when this war is over, assuming that they are successful – you will give that to Hermione.”
Snape’s eye’s flicked down to the vial once more. “And what if I die first?”
“Then they would not have been successful,” Nasir said, his voice dropping to a low rumble. “As you’ve said Severus – you have a role to play, you have things to do and you are not to die until it is time – until the end. Not a moment before you are sure that they are about to succeed. Do not open that. Store it somewhere now – then we must finish this.”
Snape nodded stiffly, making his way to his secret storage compartment by the bed and locking away the vial before returning to the tall man.
“What do you need me to do?” Snape asked as he came to stand a few feet away from him once more.
“Unbutton your shirt,” Nasir said indifferently as he turned to pick up his wand once more.
“I was under the impression that rune carvings were almost impossible to complete successfully without help,” Snape said quietly, his hands moving to the buttons on his shirt, undoing them one by one. It was in moments like this that he was almost thankful for the life that he’d led – it had given him a deeper strength. An ability to look at death indifferently and without fear. His fingers were steady, unyielding, they moved deftly and his body was still despite the weight of what was about to happen.
“They are,” Nasir said slowly. “But thanks to Hermione and Harry – I have a way around that now.”
Snape’s hands froze over his last button, his eyes darting back up to the man before him.
What did that mean? Had he given them runes? Had he worked with them on developing a way to implement runes on others – to stop the aggressive flailing and screaming? Or had Granger and Potter actually managed to teach him something that he could use?
“What did you do?”
Nasir simply stared at him, his eyes glinting before he spoke. “You’re going to want to lay down on the floor. Otherwise, I can’t guarantee that this will work.”
-x-x-
Shell Cottage
“Harry, why does the wizarding community use blood replenishing potions?”
“Because magical signatures are not all compatible,” Harry answered his eyes watching the tall man before them. Nasir had only just arrived and yet he’d immediately asked the question. “Similar to muggles, direct blood transfusions can be deadly if the donor does not match the recipient, plus the effects of directly transferring magical blood into another being is permanent – it’s different from when blood is used in a potion or in combination with other magic.”
This Harry was immensely familiar with. He’d researched blood magic a great deal with Hermione over the winter when they were looking into the bonding magic. Based on his readings, he’d actually suspected that he and Voldemort were compatible – though he’d never spoken about that to anyone, it was just a suspicion based on the fact that Voldemort had been able to easily use his blood to create his new body. Yes – it had been done as part of a potion, so it was not exactly the same as a direct transfusion. Still though – they seemed to share a strange connection and it had only gotten stronger after he’d taken a physical form. Harry had always wondered if it was related to the fact that a part of him was now inside Voldemort and would be forever.
Magical direct blood transfusions resulted in a bizarre mix of magical signatures and the effects, while known to be permanent, were not well researched. There was a reason why someone had invented the blood replenishing potion – many witches and wizards adamantly refused direct transfusion in the past because they didn’t want to deal with the lifelong lingering effects of having someone else’s magic flowing through their body.
“So what did witches and wizards do before the potion was invented?” Nasir asked, his eyes glinting as he watched Harry.
“They used to test not only for blood compatibility but also magical compatibility – though finding a match was difficult,” Harry answered again, his eyes flicking to Hermione who was watching him with a small smile. “And many of them refused it anyways due to the long-term effects. So often, they would just bleed out.”
“Exactly,” Nasir said as he stepped forward. “Though it seems ridiculous that a witch or wizard should die from blood loss. Which is why today I will teach you two spells that could save your lives. The first slows your heart to the minimum required beats to keep you alive – it will slow the loss of blood to buy you time, but it is never to be used in combination with an antivenom or asthma potion or spell. The second – is to test for blood and magical compatibility. While some may think that they do not wish to deal with the lingering effects of a direct transfusion – your opinion might change if your life is truly on the line.”
Nasir immediately turned on his heel and began making his way to their sand dune. Harry looked to Hermione with a raised eyebrow and then they both turned and followed diligently behind him. They spent the next two hours learning how to cast the spells and cutting their palms open with their daggers to test their compatibility.
As it turned out Harry was compatible with Hermione – but neither of them were compatible with Fleur, who had been kind enough to allow them to trial the spell on her for practice when she’d brought them dinner later that night. Oddly, Nasir had refused to allow them to practice on him entirely – which was a first in their training thus far. He let them cast raging bouts of fire at his face, he let them attempt to stab him with their daggers and yet he seemed uninterested in knowing if they were magically compatible.
The rest of the afternoon had been spent working on controlling said raging fire and this time, miraculously, neither one of them had gotten burnt. Harry’s sweater, while smelling strongly of burnt ash, remained un-marked and Hermione had been able to stop her small fire on her own for the very first time.
The week progressed at a steady pace, each day similar to the last and following the same structure. They woke early, ate, completed their workout and training regime as Fleur, Luna, Dean and shockingly Ron (despite being injured) trailed along behind them and completed a similar but modified routine. Nasir arrived every day at noon and taught them relentlessly for the full afternoon until dinner. Then they returned to the cottage and continued teaching the members of the Order how to cast their shields.
Mrs. Weasley had not been present on Tuesday night, Ron had come but refrained from trialing the spell and instead focused on further mastering the verbal and wand motions separately. Both Harry and Hermione left him on his own unless he specifically requested pointers and by the end of the second night almost everyone had been able to send out purple sparks – and Remus and Fleur were able to hold their shields for a full two minutes.
Wednesday night had been somewhat surprising as both Fred and George had shown up and Mrs. Weasley had returned. Which had clearly not been planned as it only added more tension to the already tight air of the room and resulted in a rather colorful explosion.
“Harry – Hermione!” the twin’s voices rang out in unison, matching wide smiles splitting across their faces when Harry trudged into the cottage with Hermione and Nasir. Not everyone had gathered yet and Mrs. Weasley was standing in the kitchen with Arthur close at her side.
“Fred – George,” Harry couldn’t help but grin as he saw the twins, moving toward them but stopping a few feet short with Hermione at his side while Nasir seemed to melt into his usual spot along the wall. “I’m glad that you guys came.”
The twins seemed to quickly pick up on several observations at once, their eyes darting between Harry and Hermione, the closeness between them, their hair, their clothes, the smell of burned grass that radiated from their bodies and the space that the two of them left between themselves and everyone else around them. It was like watching a download of information happening and Harry was reminded just how different the twins were from their brother. Sharp, intelligent, quick witted – he could see their eyes narrow as they digested the information and then, their smiles widened broadly in wholehearted acceptance.
“Nice haircut,” Fred grinned at Harry, not making a move toward him like he would have in the past and instead maintaining the distance between them and gesturing with his head. “Very devil-may-care.”
“But not quite as badass as Hermione,” George said with an equally wide grin. “Tell me – who have you been trying to burn down? Another old pureblood family that has been mistreating house-elves?”
Harry snorted as Hermione’s eyes narrowed.
“Perhaps,” she said in a low dark voice before a grin split across her face too. It couldn’t be helped, the twins were infectious and their blatant open acceptance rivaled that of Luna’s. “It’s the first thing on my list once this war is over. How have you two been?”
“Well,” Fred smiled. “Desperate to know what’s been going on – to know how you two were, but dad has been pretty closed lipped on everything so far. We weren’t sure when we’d see you again.”
“We’ve been helping the Order when we can but keeping up appearances in Diagon Alley while funneling supplies to the DA at school has been eating up a lot of our time. Ginny sends us a list of what they need, and we sneak it in,” George said quietly, dropping his voice a fraction.
“You’re in touch with Ginny?” Harry asked taking a step forward. “We figured that she got the DA back together based on the map, but we didn’t have any details.”
“How is she?” Hermione asked, dropping her voice lower as well.
“She’s okay,” Fred said, his voice a bit tight. “She and Neville have been orchestrating everything at the school with some help from a few of the teachers and other students.”
“Susan is okay too,” George said as Harry opened his mouth to ask. “They worry about you two a lot – I’ll send word to them that we’ve verified you’re alive and healthy – but don’t worry we won’t say anything else.”
“Good,” Harry nodded, feeling a tightness in his chest. It was so easy to get caught up in the war. For him to lose himself with the tasks that he and Hermione were desperately trying to complete – it was easy to forget about everyone else. It was like he’d said to Hermione Monday night. They needed to remember why they were doing this and as uncomfortable as it made him to be surrounded by all these people it was the perfect reminder. It was painful, stressful, it set his nerves on edge and made his body riddled with tension – but it was good for him. For them. They needed this.
“Susan Bones?” Hermione asked quietly, her eyes darting between Harry and the twins.
“Yeah,” Harry turned and smiled at her – he’d never told her who Ginny was with when they’d discussed everything. It felt like years ago know but he could see the smile creeping onto Hermione’s face once more as he confirmed her question with a nod.
“They’re perfect,” Hermione said quietly, her eyes softening in a way that Harry had not seen for weeks.
“They really are,” Fred grinned.
“So you’re sending supplies to the school – how are you getting them there?” Harry asked.
“Aberforth,” they said in unison.
“Dumbledore’s brother?” Hermione asked in disbelief.
“Yeah – there is a secret passage that runs from his place in Hogsmeade to the castle. He used to send Dobby to our flat to collect the supplies and then Neville and the other DA members would go collect the goods but he hasn’t been able to find–“ Fred went silent as he took in the quiet tight expression that passed over Harry’s face.
“Dobby saved our lives at Malfoy Manor,” Harry said quietly. “He didn’t make it.”
“I’m sorry,” George said tightly, and being gracious enough not to ask for details on the Manor. “We looked for him everywhere I – we didn’t know that Aberforth sent him to you.”
“We didn’t know it was Aberforth that sent him,” Hermione said quietly.
Harry felt Hermione’s hand reach for his and he gripped her tightly as his chest tightened at the thought of Dobby. He didn’t miss the tight expression that swept over Mrs. Weasley’s face from the other side of the room as her eyes locked to their joined hands, or the way she began making her way over.
“He was the best elf,” Fred said tightly, nodding his head. “I’m sorry Harry.”
Harry nodded, his mouth drawing into a tight line as he ignored Mrs. Weasley’s approach. “Have you been able to re-establish a way to move the goods?”
“Sort of – it’s a bit rudimentary but it will work,” Fred replied with a tight smile, then his expression softened, and he looked at them intently. “If the two of you ever need anything just let us know and I’m sure we can find a way to get it to you.”
“We brought a few supplies for you tonight,” George added, a small laugh breaking into his voice. “Though from the looks of things – it seems like you’ve got it covered.”
“You two look intense,” Fred added, the expression on his face becoming a look of appreciative awe mixed with light humor. “We might actually stand a chance now.”
“Oh we will definitely take the supplies if you can spare them,” Hermione grinned beside him, clearly ignoring Mrs. Weasley’s approach as well. “Your products are highly effective – we used them for our Ministry break- in.”
“Really?!” the twin’s eyes went wide with excitement. “We read about that in the paper and were wondering how you–“
“Am I the only one who is concerned with the consequences of what is going on here!?” Mrs. Weasley’s sharp voice cut through the air, silencing her sons and the entire room. “Why does it seem like everyone is encouraging this?!”
Harry felt Hermione’s grip on his hand tighten as they both resisted the urge to groan. Harry could feel the tension creeping into his spine as he finally looked toward Mrs. Weasley. Most of the others had arrived and Harry saw Luna, Dean and Ron slow in their descent down the stairs into the living room as Mrs. Weasley looked around in flustered irritation. Remus paused on his way through the door of the cottage, Arthur looked like he was about ready to face palm himself in exhaustion and Fleur simply twitched up a disapproving brow as Mrs. Weasley gestured between the twins and Harry and Hermione.
“Harry – Hermione,” the woman said tightly as she turned back to face them, her voice growing louder as her anger spun and her desperation poured out. “What are you two doing? Every time I see you – you smell like you’ve been in the middle of a raging fire! You’re cold, distant – avoiding your friends – you’re training with that man?! You’re teaching people a spell that can kill people – where did you even learn it!? And then I found out yesterday that you two were captured and taken to Malfoy Manor – that you were tortured and Hermione, you nearly lost your arm! What is going on?!”
“Molly!” Arthur’s voice cut through the air as he started to approach his wife. “We already discussed this – it’s none of–“
“I don’t CARE what we discussed Arthur!!” Mrs. Weasley turned and yelled at her husband. “They are just KIDS! The level of their involvement is inappropriate! It’s bad enough that you refuse to stop your own daughter from the ridiculous stunts she’s pulling at school but now you’re encouraging what Harry and Hermione are doing!”
“They’re not ridiculous stunts!” George turned to his mother, as irritation rang from his voice. “You do understand that she is solely responsible for saving the lives of three first year students – that she, Neville and Susan stopped the Carrows from cutting off a girl's arm AND that they’ve prevented the violent torture of nearly three dozen students!”
“At what risk!?” Mrs. Weasley spat out. “She’s sticking her neck out and possibly making it worse – she is antagonizing them! She is baiting them! She’s on her own there and we can’t extract her without getting everyone killed – soon the bloody Carrows will be after her head!”
“She’s not on her own,” Fred said as a look of dark resentful anger crossed his face. “She’s with Susan and the two of them are more than capable of –“
“Oh would you stop bringing her into this like it isn’t just some passing phase!” Mrs. Weasley all but screeched at her son. “This entire thing is a mess! People are letting this war influence their reason and they’re behaving desperately – making stupid decisions without thinking things through! You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“I don’t know what I’m talking about?!” Fred spat as his anger flared to a new level, he sounded like something within him had broken. “How the fuck would you know that! Did you ever think that maybe I might understand what she’s going through?! This isn’t a phase! You need to get over that fact before you lose her forever – and it won’t be because of the war! She and Susan are doing what is necessary – there is a reason why the professors are helping them!”
Mrs. Weasley’s eyes had widened at Fred’s words but Harry saw her shaking her head in disbelief.
“Molly,” Arthur’s voice was dark. “You need to–“
“That is exactly my point!” Mrs. Weasley yelled, her anger flaring once more as she refused to accept what Fred had said, she refused to acknowledge the meaning of his words. “Why are the teachers allowing the students to engage?! Why is no one else concerned about what our children are doing – why is everyone in this room encouraging Harry and Hermione down a path of blatant dark morality! What will be left of them when this is all over?!”
“Nothing,” Harry’s cold dark voice rang out and Mrs. Weasley turned to stare at him wide-eyed as the room fell quiet. His patience had worn thin the second the women had opened her mouth and he clenched Hermione’s hand to keep his anger at bay.
He looked at her hard, his expression cold and emotionless except for a trace of disgust. He’d always loved Mrs. Weasley like a mother. She’d always been kind to him and he could understand why she was upset. He couldn’t imagine what it must be like to have seven children, raise them, love them, watch them grow, practically adopt himself and Hermione, protect them with everything she had and then be asked to step aside – to allow these lives that she’d protected for years to face death and adversity. He couldn’t imagine how painful it must be for her to watch as her husband and children willingly put their necks out – willingly stepped to the plate all while knowing that it might be their last day.
He understood – but she was wrong in how she chose to deal with it, and it was affecting the Order.
It was affecting his friends' emotional and mental wellbeing and therefore it was affecting their ability to succeed. He couldn’t afford to have Arthur dealing with this shit, not Fred, not George, not Ginny – not anyone. Everyone needed to be at their absolute best.
Enough was enough.
“It’s very likely, Mrs. Weasley – that nothing will be left,” Harry said slowly, his voice dropping to a dark low tone. “I am perfectly well aware of what I’m doing – as is Hermione. I’m aware of what I’m giving. I understand the consequences of my actions – I know that there is a good chance that I will die in this war and if I somehow don’t, I know that what’s left of me will be damaged and broken. I know this and I’ve accepted it.”
“We both have,” Hermione’s voice was cold and emotionless at his side. “It’s a price that we are willing to pay to win so that everyone else can be free. You were in the last war Mrs. Weasley – surely you understand that victory does not come without sacrifice.”
Mrs. Weasley’s face tightened at the words as her body went rigid. Harry knew that she’d lost her brothers in the last war and it was undoubtably what Hermione was referencing.
“I understand that it must be difficult for you to watch the people that you love risking their lives,” Harry’s voice became harder. “But their lives will be in danger whether they are actively involved or not. As long as You know who exists their lives will always be at risk and he’s not going to just roll over and die – we will only succeed in defeating him if we are willing to do what is necessary. Ginny understands that. She is willing to do what she must, and you should be proud of her – support her, help her so that she stands a better chance of survival because the more you try to drag her away from this the more vulnerable she’ll be.
“Everyone here – except you – has accepted what we must do to succeed. Everyone here has accepted the risks associated with what I’m teaching them because in the end the risk is worth it. It could save their life and it could mean the difference between success and failure at a critical moment,” Harry shook his head, a low hollow laugh leaving his chest. “You all kept asking me what it was that Dumbledore sent me to do – what our secret mission is, and yet here I am telling you what is necessary to complete that mission, and you don’t want to hear it. I can’t tell you what Hermione and I are doing but I can tell you that this – is required. And without it – I promise you – we will lose.
“I understand that this is hard for you Mrs. Weasley – you’re not the only one struggling with the situation but you are the only one making it into a problem,” Harry dropped Hermione’s hand and took a small step toward the woman, lowering his voice to a dark whisper. “We are in the middle of a war and I can’t have you wasting everyone’s time – it’s not personal Mrs. Weasley and this may be difficult for you to hear so I apologize for that – but your behaviour isn’t fair to everyone else who has come to terms with the situation and are willing to do what it takes. I may have changed, and I’m sorry that it’s hard for you to accept – but I still care about the safety of everyone in this room and I am trying to prepare them so that they can be safe throughout this war.
“But you are disrupting the Order and endangering their lives, which I will not tolerate, so this will be the only warning that you get. Either accept the reality of the situation and complete the training without disturbing the group – or, I will personally remove you from this cottage, you will not return, and you will sit out the remainder of this war in silence at the Burrow so that you stop endangering the people around you,” Harry watched as Mrs. Weasley’s jaw tightened, her eyes wide as she stared at him in shock disbelief. “I don’t think I need to tell you that no one will try to stop me – so make your choice, I don’t have all night.”
-x-x-
April 7, 1998
Hogwarts 8:07 pm
Snape moved stiffly to the bathroom in his quarters, he felt like an erumpent was sitting on his chest and he found it incredibly difficult to breathe. Though somehow, against all odds, he was alive and had not died in his sleep. He had been sort of hoping that he would since everything hurt so fucking bad. But of course he would not be so lucky.
He could feel it in his neck, his head, his toes, his ankles, his bones, his blood – his chest ached and every muscle in his body seemed to be pulled and strained. The dull stream of light that poured through his window told him it was some time after dinner, he’d not left his room since Nasir had disappeared in the wee hours of the early morning and he had no idea what had happened in the castle that day. Though it hardly felt like it mattered. Not after what had happened – he was just grateful that Phineas had remained quiet and had not called him. He suspected that the wizard was either fending off Dumbledore’s angry ranting or had abandoned the castle frame in its entirety just to escape the nagging.
His lips twitched at the thought. He would need to thank Phineas some day – in a strange way the dead wizard had become the closest thing to a friend that he had over the last few months – or in the very least Phineas had become a good partner in the war.
Snape stumbled into the large bathroom with a groan and flicked his finger to light the room with a dim glow. Despite the fact that it was healed a dull ache radiated from his femur where Nasir had broken it during the rune carving – it hadn’t been intentional, it had just happened. It was just one of the many broken bones he’d been riddled with after the burning had stopped.
He supposed it wasn’t the worst thing in the world compared to how things could have gone. There was a reason why in the past rune carvings were conducted by several people, as it was nearly impossible for the person completing the physical carving to hold the body of the recipient still enough. In the few cases that Snape had read about it being done by a single person, often the runes were carved incorrectly – too messy, or too deep and the carving ended poorly.
Yet Nasir had managed it.
It turned out that Potter and Granger had been working with tethering spells – which Nasir had apparently found fascinating and discovered a new use for them. He could use them as a means to control someone’s body during a rune carving so that he didn’t need additional hands. He couldn’t tether the person directly as the magic would interfere with the carving – but he could tether an object on top of the person to the floor. And he could fucking kneel in the middle of the person’s chest, tethering his own knee to the ground through the recipient so that they couldn’t move. While additionally painful, it had proved to be an effective restraint.
Snape groaned as he pulled off the shirt and pants that he’d somehow managed to change into before passing out on his bed for fifteen hours straight. Once the runes had been completed and while Snape had been half-conscious Nasir had vanished the blood from his body, healed his broken bones and then told him to go to sleep. He’d hardly needed the instruction – he’d barely been able to keep his eyes open or stand straight when the man had pulled him to his feet.
He’d watched with bleary eyes as the man made his way to the window, nodding in farewell as if their meeting had been a normal occurrence for him and then casually stepping out the large opening as if it wasn’t several hundred feet in the air. Yet despite his ragged exhaustion and agony Snape had not wanted to pass out in the clothes that he had on. In fact, he’d never wanted to see them again. So he’d fought against his urge to pass out as a heavy weight crushed on his chest, he’d stripped the clothes from his body and thrown them into the fire before summoning new ones.
Now staring at his dim reflection in the bathroom mirror he felt his shoulders slump. Two black runes, in stark contrast to his pale white skin sat in a neat column down his chest, encircled by a crimson red border of symbols that contained his fractured soul.
Two pieces.
He could practically feel it in his chest. He could tell it wasn’t whole despite the fact that they were both still there. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what it was going to feel like to have the smaller piece ripped from his body. Experiencing the break had been bad enough. It had been embedded with the carving process, completed right after the first rune was cut. When Nasir had cleaved it into two neat pieces, he’d thought that he was dying, he’d thought that it was over – his vision had spotted with red before it went completely black and he’d passed out in agony only to be woken by the man above him and told to breathe.
Which had been really fucking hard to do because Nasir’s knee was pressed so hard into his sternum it had cracked right through it. The bones might be healed now but a deep bruise had formed just to the left of the runes. He could heal it. He could use some of the balm from his storage – yet he didn’t have the energy to make himself summon the container. It hardly seemed to even matter – it was just superficial damage. Though perhaps if he healed the deep bruises it would make breathing easier.
He let out a heavy sigh that burned his torn throat, his eyes looked dead as he stared at himself before shifting his eyes back to the two symbols on his pale chest.
Hagalaz and Mannaz.
It wasn’t hard to figure out why Nasir had selected those two for the process. He was frankly thankful that the third one hadn’t been required. He might not have made it through a third rune – then again, after the first one he’d thought surely the second would kill him. It hadn’t. He’d lived.
Barely - he'd never felt so cold and hollow.
Snape’s eyes traced slowly down his body to the blunt black ink image that marred the forearm of his left arm and his chest tightened further. His eyes closed tightly as he clenched his jaw, forcing himself to breathe.
“It doesn’t matter,” he murmured hoarsely to himself, biting back the wave of nauseous despair that radiated from his chest before turning to the shower and walking to it stiffly.
He flicked his finger, turning on the water and cranking the heat before stepping inside. It burned, but it woke his senses and forced the muscles in his pain riddled body to loosen as the water ran over his frame. He stood there for a long time, hands braced against the wall for fear of his legs giving out, staring at the drain as his sopping wet hair hung heavy on either side of his face. The only thing that kept him calm were the two small thoughts that circled in his head:
We might actually win this now, he breathed. Thank Merlin the Dark Lord is unaware of this magic.
In some ways, he suspected, that it could only be performed by an empty shell – and while the Dark Lord was all things evil – twisted and warped and fractured, he still had a piece of his soul. And perhaps it was those last lingering remains of his humanity that had prevented him from becoming something worse.
Hermione lunged forward, swinging her dagger, aiming for the heart and using her legs to drive her upward in one rapid push. She’d managed to close the distance by dodging and rolling and this had been her only opportunity to strike, yet her blade missed its target and she was forced to pull back quickly as she ducked and rolled to the side. She narrowly escaped the blade that swung over her head, she could feel it brushing over her hair as she dropped to a crouch and made her escape. She was panting, covered in sweat, her body was aching and screaming at her to stop but she couldn’t – there would be no break. She dodged again, rolling twice to the right this time in order to escape the attack that followed.
Fuck!
She could feel her frustration growing tight like a coil in the center of her chest as she continued to dodge, only managing to make two small attempted attacks as she retreated and tried to gain some distance. She couldn’t keep up. She could hardly breathe and with her left arm tethered to her side she was severely disadvantaged. She wouldn’t be able to land a hit, it was impossible, she was going to lose.
She was going to get hit.
He was too fast, too strong – she was no match for him.
Knowing that there was nothing else she could do Hermione rolled forward under the blade that swung over her head once more, popping up to her feet quickly, her eyes meeting the glinting dark ones before her as she silently cast a full body binding curse. For a fraction of a second she thought that she’d gotten away with it and then three things happened so rapidly her mind was barely able to process it. His glinting black eyes twitched to a narrowed gaze; she felt the familiar tug of three tethers across her body and suddenly her feet were ripped out from underneath her. She was yanked forward, her chest colliding with the ground hard and crushing the air from her lungs in a loud painful grunt. Her cheek smashed against the surface and she instantly felt the bite of the cold metal blade on the back of her neck as his knee pressed hard into her spine.
“I thought I said no magic,” the familiar rich baritone echoed behind her head.
If she’d had any air left in her lungs Hermione would have groaned in frustration and rolled her eyes at the man that was currently pinning her body to the ground. But with the weight of him on her back all she could manage was a small grunt of acknowledgment before he shifted and suddenly the air came rushing back in. She felt the tethers release and she coughed as she rolled onto her back to look up at the tall dark man above her as she felt hot blood trickling down the back of her neck. She’d have yet another thin silver scar there as a result of this exercise – it would match the other two that ran along the back of her neck. Panting for air Hermione pushed herself up on her elbow and darted her eyes to Harry who was sitting on the dune to her right and watching with a single brow raised.
“He did say no magic,” Harry said as a small smile of amusement crossed his face – likely because yesterday it’d been him who Nasir had face planted into the sand.
They were both extremely grateful that they practiced on the dunes – otherwise their training injuries would likely be worse, had they been on rock or even dirt Hermione was sure that her cheek bone would have shattered when she collided with the ground. Yet instead it was simply bruised, and it could be easily healed. But this was how Nasir trained them – and injuries in knife fighting seemed to come with the territory. It was never lethal – he’d never land a blow to any important organs and technically he’d never actually stabbed them, at least not deep. He would just land the odd shallow blow or break the odd bone in order to teach them how to move and when to move.
It wasn’t done out of morbid dark intent; it was never excessive or extreme and he never cut them in obvious places. She’d watched yesterday as he’d purposely pulled back his dagger at the last second to avoid clipping Harry across the face – but he’d landed a blow on his upper arm with no hesitation. It was only ever what was necessary, and he always healed them afterwards. And regardless of how much it might hurt at the time both Harry and Hermione had to admit his methods were extremely effective. At the start of the week she’d not even been able to take a single swing at him and now it was Friday and she’d just taken several.
Hermione groaned at Harry and gave him an exaggerated eye roll before she returned her eyes to Nasir, looking at him in defeat. “I know that – but I couldn’t land a fucking hit. You’re too fast, I thought if I snuck in a simple body bind it might give me an advantage – you told us to use everything and to be creative.”
Nasir’s eyes glinted as he looked at her before he extended his hand to her. Hermione gripped it tightly and let him pull her from the ground. She was too tired to do it herself and she stood on shaking legs before him as she continued to pant. She habitually tilted her face to the ground, her shoulders heaving as her braided hair fell to the side and exposed the back of her neck to him. She felt the familiar touch of his finger dragging across the cut he’d made, and she felt her skin sewing itself back together in a thin silver line. It was one of many that randomly marked her body now. Had she truly cared she could have healed them with dittany so that they wouldn’t leave a mark – but she didn’t want to waste any of their resources and the silver lines were so thin they were hardly noticeable anyways. Hermione let out a deep breath and raised her head once more to look at the man.
He was standing beside her and watching her carefully, his own dagger still clutched loosely in his left hand. Despite his unnatural rigidity he fought with a fluidity that made him difficult to track and he often held his dagger loosely when fighting them. It made her wonder what he might be like if he ever fought seriously.
“I did say that,” Nasir said slowly a small hint of a smile tugging at his lips. “But I also said not to use magic on me.”
Hermione’s face tightened in thought as her breath finally regulated. “So – you’re saying I should have used magic on myself or not at all.”
“When was the last time you saw a grown wizard throw a punch?” Nasir asked slowly his eyes flicking between the two of them.
Hermione’s lips twitched as an image of Arthur lunging at Lucius Malfoy in Flourish and Blotts before second year popped into her head. She could see a similar twitch across Harry’s face, and she didn’t doubt that he’d recalled the same memory as they exchanged a quick fond smile.
“Not for a long time,” Hermione said quietly. She let out a deep sigh in understanding. “You’re saying that most wizards will be prepared to fend off magic attacks – but not physical ones, so we should use that to our advantage.”
“Exactly,” Nasir's eyes darkened. “There will be times when magic is ineffective against your opponent and in those times a physical attack could make the difference between success and failure. However, if you find yourself outmatched by them physically or you need to land a quick blow be creative in how you use your magic or consider carrying a strength potion within easy reach.”
“I could have used an ascendio or even a tether charm on myself to pull myself closer,” Hermione nodded and ran her free hand through her hair as she felt her shoulders relax. “I didn’t think of that.”
“Here,” Harry’s voice pulled her eyes to the right and she smiled when she saw the water bottle that he held out to her.
“Thanks,” Hermione closed the distance between them and took a long sip from the bottle before returning her gaze to Nasir. “So what’s next?”
Nasir’s eyes darkened. “We go again.”
“Again?” Hermione could hear the falter in her voice as her legs trembled beneath her. Everything hurt and she barely had the energy to stand let alone fight him again. “Now?”
“Now,” Nasir said darkly as he stepped toward them and she saw his hand tighten on his dagger in an unfamiliar way. “Both of you.”
Hermione swallowed hard, barely having enough time to drop the water bottle and summon her dagger to her hand before he was upon them both.
-x-x-
Hermione’s hands shook as she accepted the plate that Fleur held out to her and uttered her thanks. Her shaking matched the tremble that seemed to inhabit Harry’s body and she knew that it was completely unrelated to her nerve damage. They were exhausted. She was drenched in sweat, her pant leg was burned again, her clothes were dirty, and Harry looked like he’d walked out of an explosion. She could smell the burning that radiated off their clothes and yet somehow Nasir looked almost untouched.
Almost.
For the first time that entire week he’d removed his outer robes and unbuttoned the top two buttons of his collar. She could see a slight sheen of sweat across his skin and it made it look like he’d actually put in effort during their training. Which she supposed he must have in some way since he’d fended off the two of them for an hour before returning to teaching them how to control fiendfyre.
Though the two undone buttons were nothing in comparison to the small cut in his shirt on the right side, along his ribs about halfway up his torso. Her eyes latched to it as she ate her food, she found it hard to look away from as the sight seemed impossible and miraculous – it was as if her brain could not process it. She could still feel the tug against her dagger when it had caught against his skin, splitting it open and spattering her shirt with red.
She’d done that.
She’d landed a hit on him while Harry had attacked from the opposite side. The success of her blow had startled her so much that when it had happened, she’d lost her concentration. Her eyes had gone wide as the blood flew before her and her feet had faltered – which had resulted in her being promptly elbowed in the ribs and grabbed by the neck before getting slammed to the ground for the second time that day.
Still though, she couldn’t help but feel like it was a success. Even if Harry did have to heal her nose after while Nasir stitched up his split side.
Hermione leaned on Harry contently as she ate quietly and allowed her mind to roll over their work with the raging flames. For the first time all week Harry had been able to control them, and she’d successfully demonstrated her ability to keep control for the third time that week. The fire burned in a way she’d never seen before, with a heat that she’d never experienced. It was terrifying and yet it felt… powerful.
The force behind it was incredible, it was horrifying, formidable, dangerous – she could feel it throughout her entire body when she cast it and it took everything that she had to control the monstrous beast that erupted from her wand and tore across the small enclosed sand dune that Nasir had established. The flames took the shape of violent creatures as it burned though she’d yet to figure out exactly what hers was. Harry’s appeared to be a snake of some sort and she knew that it bothered him. She knew that he’d been contemplating his connection with Voldemort since they’d resumed their discussion on Horcrux hunting and finding out the shape of his fiendfyre only seemed further his suspicion that he was connected to Voldemort in some way deeper than what Dumbledore had revealed. They’d discussed it the night before but everything at this point was nothing more than speculation – though something about the whole situation sat heavy on her chest.
It didn’t feel right.
She groaned heavily when she hauled herself from the ground and smiled when Harry cast a quick cleaning charm over them both before they made their way back up to the cottage with Nasir. He’d been doing it ever since Mrs. Weasley’s explosion on Wednesday night since it removed at least some of the smell of burning fire from their clothes and it seemed to settle some of the unease in the cottage.
Tonight would be the final training night with the Order, tomorrow would be the final meeting before the attack and Sunday they’d all agreed to take the day off to rest and prepare. The next few days would be tense, busy and stressful. Tomorrow morning before Nasir showed up for training, she was going to work on trackers for everyone to take with them on the mission. They’d give her a feed on everyone’s vitals, and they allowed for single words to be passed between them so that they could alert each other if they ran into trouble or needed to request backup. She planned to magically adhere them to everyone’s bodies so that there was absolutely no chance of them being lost in battle. She hadn’t told anyone about this plan yet and she didn’t know how it would go over – though she didn’t really care. It wasn’t optional and everyone was getting one.
Including Nasir – though he was the only one who had a shot of getting away from it.
Harry had made it abundantly clear on Wednesday night that despite the fact that they were younger than almost every other Order member in that room they were to be taken seriously and they were in a lot of ways, leading the charge. Mrs. Weasley had resentfully nodded in agreement to train and while she’d kept her mouth shut for the entire rest of the evening, she’d also made her annoyance with the situation plainly obvious by the agitated looks and scowls she dished out. By the time they’d packed up that evening and everyone was heading out Hermione thought the woman’s face would be permanently stuck that way.
Somewhat surprisingly Mrs. Weasley returned on Thursday to train – though this time her demeanor was entirely different. She looked defeated in every sense of the word. Her shoulders were slumped, her eyes were almost glazed, her quiet demeanor felt eerie and the tight scowl on her face had been replaced with a look of heavy sadness and disbelief. Neither Hermione nor Harry commented on it but it seemed to unnerve the entire group. It wasn’t until this morning during their exercise routine that Hermione asked Fleur what was going on and the blonde had quietly told them the news that had shaken Mrs. Weasley to her core.
Susan Bones’s parents were found dead in their home.
Their garden.
Their driveway.
And in the park down the street.
Their bodies had been shredded into pieces, blood had soaked the floor and walls of their home and their remains had been littered across the property like someone had been throwing rose peddles at a wedding. The most disturbing part of the information that Shacklebolt and Arthur were able to obtain was that it wasn’t done by a werewolf.
It had been a strategic attack made by Antonin Dolohov and as a result Susan was now the one and only Bones left alive in the wizarding world. She had no one. She had nothing. The house had been torched and the news had been delivered via owl by the Ministry to the school before anyone in the Order could do anything about it. Susan would have found out Thursday morning during breakfast – in front of the entire school – that her family had been entirely wiped out. She was alone.
They’d done it on purpose Hermione knew. The Bones were a rather prominent family and by axing the last of them aside from Susan it was a clear indication of the power that Voldemort and his followers had. The fact that there were ‘no suspects’ in the murder and that no investigation would be completed was yet another blow against any families that were still fighting against his power. And the delivery of the news to the school in such a fashion was intentional too. It was a message to the children – that no one was untouchable and that there were ways that Voldemort could cause them pain other than by doing it directly.
The news had stilled Hermione’s heart and she’d felt the weight on her chest grow heavy as a coldness formed in the pit of her stomach. It radiated through her body like a hollow empty echo and when she’d looked to Harry, she’d seen it – the same dead empty gaze that she knew matched her own.
They would kill him.
Without hesitation.
They would rip him apart if they got the chance.
Hermione followed Harry inside the cottage with Nasir on her heels, knowing that the training tonight was going to be a different than the previous. Knowing that it was likely going to come with some protests – though hopefully, after what had happened to the Bones, they would understand why this was necessary.
“Hermione – Harry,” the twins nodded at them from their seat at the table next to Luna and it caught the attention of everyone in the room.
It was a full house – literally, as everyone had shown up. Hermione bit back her nerves and smiled at the twins before looking to Harry. He gave her a small smile and nodded before turning back to the group before them.
“Alright – tonight we’re going to do things a little bit differently. We’re going to have two groups,” Harry said slowly, his eyes flicking over the crowd of people in the kitchen. “Given the upcoming mission, Hermione and I believe it is important that a select few of you learn some additional spells. Therefore, Arthur, Remus, Bill and Shacklebolt – you will go outside to learn with Hermione. In the future if there is time, we will teach the rest of you but for now you’ll continue to practice shields in here with me.”
The twins were the first to move, getting up from their seats and nodding in agreement before making their way into the living room as Luna and Ron followed behind them. Hermione squeezed Harry’s hand once before making her way back outside into the dim evening light and summoning the sticks that they’d gathered earlier that morning.
She wasn’t surprised to feel Nasir following along behind her as she started to line up the sticks a few feet away from the cottage. She’d fully expected him to follow her. Her eyes flicked to watch as he casually leaned against the outside wall of the cottage to observe the training – taking his typical indifferent stance and crossing his arms over his chest before becoming unnaturally still against the hard surface. What she hadn’t expected was for him to flick his finger and illuminate the area with several floating flames as Bill, Remus, Arthur and Shacklebolt filed out of the small cottage. She smiled at him in thanks and for a moment she almost thought she saw his lip twitch – but when she blinked his expression was just its normal indifferent look.
Turning back to the small group of males to her left she rolled her shoulders and fought back the exhaustion that riddled her body. Tonight’s lesson would likely be hard. Some of them would not want to learn this.
“So what are we learning tonight?” Bill asked as his eyes flicked curiously to the large sticks on the ground.
“Tonight,” Hermione said slowly as she moved to stand a few feet before them. “I’m going to teach you how to effectively kill one of Arlo’s werewolves.”
Hermione watched as Remus and Arthur’s faces tightened. She could see the tension that formed in their bodies the second she’d uttered the words. Bill to his credit simply seemed solemn while Shacklebolt nodded in full understanding.
“Hermione,” Arthur said softly. She knew that he was going to argue so she didn’t let him and simply cut him off.
“Look Arthur, I know that this is hard for you but Nasir’s latest estimate puts them at having over 230 werewolves in that den – you are literally about to walk into a death trap. I know that you want to save them, and I do want you to be able to save as many as you can,” Hermione gave him a sympathetic look. “But in order to do that – you’re going to have to kill some of them. Or they will kill you. We don’t know what’s going to happen once you go in there to set the bomb – any number of things could go wrong and you’re going to be trapped underground with 230 werewolves ordered to attack you. They won’t get distracted – they won’t go for any other targets – they will go after what they’re told to hunt and that will be you.
“You need to be prepared for the worst case,” Hermione said slowly, flicking her eyes over the other men before her. “I’m not asking you to go and personally slaughter everything that’s in there – I just want you to be able to defend yourself. I don’t mean to imply that you couldn’t already do so – I know that you are all capable of fighting but what I’m going to teach you tonight is highly effective against werewolves and Harry and I have found that it is what works best.”
“What’s the spell?” Shacklebolt asked. He seemed sincere in his question and she saw him draw his wand from his robes.
“Sectumsempra and a tether spell,” Hermione answered him evenly. “We’ve used diffindo – but it doesn’t cut deep enough to do significant damage. Bombarda is almost entirely ineffective and Bombarda Maxima is too dangerous to those around you. Any spell meant to impeded them does little to slow them down and Duro doesn’t work on them. With sectumsempra you can cleave one in half or behead it – the tether spell will work almost like a leash, but I caution you that it might not hold them for very long. We’ll start with the original tethering spell as it is much easier to master.”
Hermione spent the next hour teaching the group how to cast a basic tether. They took turns casting it on each other and tethering each other’s feet to the ground. She showed them how to adjust the length when casting it, either making the imaginary chain longer or shorter – though she didn’t go into alternative usages or how to adjust the tether’s length after it had been cast. Which was something that Nasir seemed to be quite fond of doing during practices.
She explained the simple beauty behind the tether – how it wasn’t complicated magic and in fact any competent witch or wizard could remove a basic tether from their body even if it was cast by someone else. The thing was most witches and wizards didn’t know what a tether felt like so they didn’t even think to remove it since they didn’t know that one was there. Once they’d mastered the basics Hermione taught them the modified version of the tether that she and Harry had been using which involved locking the tether so that it could only be removed by the caster. It was a bit more complicated but was still relatively easy to learn.
She watched from the side as they partnered up and cast the tethers on each other. It didn’t take long until they had all figured out how to do it and some of them were even looking rather pleased with themselves. It had been the right choice to start with this spell – it had worked exactly how she’d wanted it too. They’d loosened up somewhat and weren’t thinking about fighting werewolves and killing them. After a few more rounds of practice Hermione directed them each to stand in front of one of the large sticks and then began teaching them sectumsempra.
“I’m going to be transparent with you, this spell is dark magic. If you cut something off with it – it cannot be reattached. So do not ever use this spell unless you have a clean shot and do not use it unless you mean it. You can’t take it back after,” Hermione said quietly to the small group as her eyes flicked over them. She could see that Arthur still looked incredibly hesitant. “We’ll go over the pronunciation first without wands, then move to wand movements only and then we’ll try it on the sticks.”
She reviewed the spell with them for half an hour, correcting even the slightly mispronunciation and instructing them on the precise slashing motion required. Then finally, she had them try the spell one at a time.
Shacklebolt went first and easily cut a clean deep line into the stick. Bill managed a cut as well though not quite as deep. Surprisingly, Remus cut his stick clean in half though he grimaced the entire time and Arthur – well Arthur didn’t even make a scratch.
“Okay summon another stick from the pile and keep practicing,” Hermione said as she made her way over to Arthur.
The man was glaring at the stick before him in disdain and she knew that his inability to cast the spell was entirely related to his reluctance to use it. It was not an overly difficult spell to pronounce and the motions were simple. If anything, this only confirmed what she already knew – he was simply too good hearted. It went against his nature and he was resisting the magic.
“Arthur,” Hermione said gently as she came to stand beside him in the glowing firelight. “You do have to want to cast it.”
Arthur sighed and ran his hand through his hair before turning to look down at her with a tight smile. “I know – I’m afraid that’s the problem, I don’t want to cast it.”
“I know,” Hermione said quietly. “When you tried it – were you thinking about how it was going to hurt someone?”
“Yes,” Arthur sighed deeply and shook his head. “It isn’t like I’ve never battled someone before, Hermione – I’ve severely injured people in the past but – that was different. It was self-defense and those individuals were not good people.”
“This is no different.”
“Yes, it is Hermione,” Arthur said sadly as he looked at her. “And I don’t want to forget the distinction. These are innocent people that are going to die – they’re paying the price on behalf of those who truly deserve it, they’re the ones suffering the consequences and it isn’t right.”
“None of this is right Arthur,” Hermione felt the weight on her chest grow heavier as she looked at the deeply saddened expression on the man’s face. She lowered her voice and stepped closer. “Arthur – if there was a way that we could save them all – I would do it. I hope you believe me when I say that because I mean it – but the reality is they will attack you blindly and you will need to use self-defense against them whether they are innocent or not and if you try to rely on the spells you already know they won’t be enough.”
Hermione hesitated, she could see the conflict in his eyes and the reservation that riddled his body. He was a logical man and she knew that he understood why she was teaching him, but he struggled with doing it because he knew using it would mean killing innocents. It made her heart break for the man and she felt the weight crushing further as she thought about how fucked the world was. How could she live in a place with a person like Arthur Weasley – who loved so unconditionally. Who wanted to help, wanted to think the best in everyone and desperately wanted the best for people while simultaneously living in a world with Voldemort and his followers. A demented sociopath led by blind hatred, rage and a disturbing lust for power. Someone who would use human beings as disposable tools in a war they had no place in.
It wasn’t right.
None of this was right and none of this was fair.
Hermione swallowed; she knew that the only hope she had to protect Arthur was by appealing to him on an emotional level. So, she slowly raised her hand to the high neckline of her shirt, fully aware that Arthur was watching her movement curiously as she spoke her next words quietly.
“There is a reason why Harry and I learned this spell Arthur – if there was any other way to fight this war we would. As Harry said Wednesday – we’re doing what we must do not what we want to do,” Hermione dipped two fingers under the neckline of her shirt and pulled the fabric down her sternum to reveal the clean red line on her neck and the start of her two top most werewolf scars. She saw Arthur’s eyes widen abruptly before they darted to her face and his mouth opened in shock. He looked physically pained, not repulsed, but utterly devasted as she lowered her voice to whisper. “This is what we are trying to prevent you all from experiencing.”
“Hermione,” his voice broke as he spoke, and he brought his hand to cover his mouth as he stared at her and shook his head. “Wh-what happened?”
“Harry and I were attacked in an alley when we went to get more supplies a week after Ron left,” Hermione released her hold on her shirt and the fabric sprung back up to her neck. “We never even saw the bonded wizard – the werewolf just attacked us. Back then – we didn’t know the shield charm, we didn’t know this spell – we didn’t know fucking anything and we both nearly died. We weren’t even in a risky area Arthur – we’d covered our tracks, we were hidden from view, we’d done everything right and everything that we could have done to the best of our ability at that time and it wasn’t enough.
“It attacked me first and nearly cut me into three pieces. I cracked my head open on the pavement from the impact and then Harry nearly got his leg bit off while he tried to attack it and get to me. He threw everything at it, Arthur – everything,” Hermione shook her head and looked at the speechless man before her almost desperately. “And it did absolutely nothing. I ended up blowing up the entire alley before I managed to grab his hand and apparate us away. It was a disaster – I was barely able to complete the apparition, I crashed us, it broke most of Harry’s ribs – somehow he found me in the grass and managed to patch me up before I bled out. But that single random, unplanned moment nearly killed us and it was one werewolf. It put us out of commission for a long time and it made us realize that what we were doing wasn’t good enough.
“These people aren’t playing by the same rules Arthur – they’re not going to give you any mercy I can promise you that. But you know what the worst part of all of this is,” Hermione almost laughed as she bit her lip. “That what we’ve learned so far still isn’t enough – we’re still just scraping by and narrowly escaping death. Harry and I need you – we need everyone here to learn what they can so they can help. The only reason we got caught and brought to Malfoy Manor was because Ron didn’t know this stuff – he wasn’t trained – so when he abandoned his post he got caught. He didn’t stand a chance against them and we couldn’t risk him being interrogated because of what he knows so we had to surrender. We only barely escaped that Manor and I nearly came out in pieces once more. Which is why I’m asking you to learn this – it could save your life Arthur.
“And – I don’t want to lose you,” Hermione felt her voice tighten in her throat as she spoke. “I don’t want you going in there unless you’re prepared and willing to do what it takes to come back out. You have a family here that needs you – Harry and I need you. I know this is hard for you Arthur and maybe it’s selfish of me to ask you to do something that goes against your morale code but you are the only parent we have left – and I – I can’t lose you. I need you to be safe while you’re in there and knowing this spell will help ensure that.”
Her chest felt tighten as she stared at him, it had started as a ploy to get him to learn the spell and it had ended with an emotional confession of the stress and anxiety that had been building in her body the entire week.
She needed this man in her life. She refused to let him be hurt simply because he was too good of a human to do what was needed. It wasn’t right that the despicable survived and the compassionate good-hearted people who could better the world seemed to die so easily. The thought of losing Arthur on this infiltration mission terrified her – it terrified her that she was being asked to stand on the side lines while he and Remus went in. Remus was about to be a father – he shouldn’t even be here and yet there he was splitting sticks next to Shacklebolt because it was what he had to do. The only reason why she was even remotely okay with this plan at all was because she knew Nasir would be with them and he was skilled enough to stand a chance inside the den.
She could see the emotion in Arthur’s eyes, they were shining almost like he might cry and then he moved, grabbing her tightly and pulling her into a warm hug – the kind of hug that only a father could give their own child. She felt his chin on the top of her head as he clutched her and she swallowed hard and hugged him back, gripping him tightly as his voice rumbled quietly above her head.
“I promise you I’ll come back Hermione – you have my word,” Arthur whispered before he let out a deep breath. “I’ll use the spell.”
-x-x-
“You want to do what?” Shacklebolt asked, his brow arched in confusion.
“I want to tag everyone going on the mission on Monday,” Hermione said, and Harry fought back a small smile.
She’d explained the inner workings of the tags to him and he’d helped her make a few of them this morning before heading out to exercise, though he’d suspected that some of the Order members might not get the concept right out the gate due to the high stress that seemed to fill the room. It was probably for the best that everyone was taking Sunday off since people seemed tired from the week and he was feeling it too. If not for the occlumency that Nasir had taught him he would be in even worse shape from lack of sleep. Friday had ended late as everyone was determined to keep practicing and Hermione had woken them up early on Saturday so they could complete the tags and fit in a small round of physical exercise before Nasir arrived at noon.
It was only 8:30 pm, the Order meeting had just concluded and yet it felt like midnight.
Nasir had worked them hard today – debatably harder than he’d worked them all week. He taught them several new spells, gave them the brewing instructions for a strength potion and then doublechecked Hermione’s arm before giving her the all clear to use it in full. They drilled with knives, they drilled their dueling and then, when they were exhausted and had nothing left to give, he made them cast their fiendfyre and fight to control it. They’d both been able to successfully cast it and cut it off – though Harry’s proudest moment of the day had been landing a hit on Nasir. He’d managed to clip him on the arm before the drill ended and Nasir had nodded to him after as if in acknowledgement.
It had felt strange.
The entire day had felt like some sort of final last ditched effort to pile as much information on them as possible and it made Harry uneasy. He could see that Hermione felt it too from the glances that she’d given him, he knew that she was also concerned – but there wasn’t anything they could do about it. If they asked Nasir questions he would simply remain silent and so they’d both agreed to just absorb anything he handed them.
Perhaps Nasir was just worried about the mission – the man didn’t show it like the rest of the Order members did but maybe he was stressed about what was to come. Maybe this was how he showed his unease – by relentlessly preparing and cramming in what should have been weeks’ worth of training into days. Maybe he was worried that the group was too underprepared, and he was trying to make them less of a liability. Or perhaps he was planning on leaving them once the mission was complete and he wanted to impart as much knowledge as he could. After all they’d not discussed what was to come next and both he and Hermione had always doubted that the man would follow them to war.
Yet regardless of the reasoning behind the strange vibe of the day, they now all sat around the table – Nasir on Hermione’s left while he sat to her right. They’d completed their discussion on the mission and agreed to the final details over the course of the last hour and a half. Now he watched the faces of Arthur, Mrs. Weasley, Remus, Fleur, Bill and Shacklebolt as they waited for Hermione to explain the tags.
“They monitor your vital signals – heart rate and stress level mainly, and report the data back to my main tag,” Hermione held up one of the small white rectangles that they’d made from paper that morning. They’d been charmed to be waterproof and could not be easily damaged. “They’re also charmed so you can use them to send a single worded message to the rest of the tags – it will appear with your initial before it so you know who sent the message. It will allow us to keep track of one another during the mission and if you get stuck you can request help, and someone will go to you. If you’re able to assist the person in need then you can respond back quickly to indicate that you’re going to go help.”
“How do we send a message?” Bill asked from the opposite end of the table.
“Just place your finger over the tag and think the word you want to send,” Hermione said as she pulled up the sleeve on her right arm and touched the white paper that was currently stuck there. The word ‘Hr-Hello’ appeared across the papers that sat on the table before her. “I’m only sticking them to you so that you don’t lose them or drop them. I’ll remove them after the mission is completed.”
“Zis is a good idea ‘ermione,” Fleur nodded with genuine approval. “Zis way Molly and I can alert you if somezing goes wrong at ze office too.”
“Exactly,” Hermione gave the woman a smile. “Pick the arm you want it on and roll up your sleeves and I’ll fasten them on.”
Harry stood from his seat and moved to lean against the counter by the sink so that everyone could come get their tags. He watched with amusement as Nasir stood as well – knowing full well that Hermione intended to tag that man too. Though she let him go without complaint and instead fastened Arthur’s tag first. The whole process took a little less than five minutes each person as Hermione set the tag, stuck it to their body and then charmed the tag to respond to them and track their vitals. He watched her work, a small smile tugging on his lips as she carefully placed each tag. She was methodical, attentive to detail, brilliant – perfect.
Sometimes when he watched her work it blew his mind that she’d ever befriended him in the first place. Sometimes it blew his mind that she was his and he was hers.
That this incredible woman had picked him.
That she loved him.
It made his heart stir and it felt like every day he saw her she’d somehow become more incredible. It was like she was permanently running at a sprint and if he blinked and opened his eyes she’d be yards ahead of where she once was. She was relentless. She was formidable. She was his everything.
She glanced to him and he saw a small smile tug at her lips before she returned her eyes to her work and he continued to watch her quietly until a voice sounded to his right.
“You really love her – don’t you?” It was Mrs. Weasley and her voice was quiet, almost sad. Harry turned to look at her, taking in the weighed expression on her face as she watched him. He could see Arthur standing with Bill further into the kitchen and the man’s eyes flicked over to them warily.
“More than anything,” Harry said quietly, his eyes flicking back to watch Hermione work.
“And Ginny,” Mrs. Weasley hesitated, and Harry could practically feel the tension radiating off her body. “She – she and Susan they really–“
“Ginny loves Susan more than life, Mrs. Weasley,” Harry responded quietly when the woman couldn’t finish her words and he turned his head back to her. His voice softening at the expression on her face. “I was the first person that she told – and the two of them – it’s like they were made for each other.”
Mrs. Weasley swallowed hard but said nothing and instead nodded her head quietly before turning back to watch Hermione apply the tags.
-x-x-
Hermione finished attaching the second last tag to Shacklebolt’s arm and then stood from the table, grabbing the last tag and giving Harry an amused look of ‘well here we go’ before moving toward the living room. The rest of the Order was standing around the kitchen talking and practicing with their tags – but Harry was standing silently next to Mrs. Weasley and watching her movements.
When she’d first seen the woman approach him from the corner of her vision while she was working she’d felt her spine tighten anxiously – but surprisingly it seemed like nothing had happened. Or at least nothing in comparison to the explosion on Wednesday had happened. Instead the woman just looked sad and Hermione could see a glaze over her eyes, and it made her wonder what they’d spoken about. She’d ask Harry about it tonight – but right now she had one last tag to install.
She made her way across the living space to the tall, still man who stood leaned against the wall in his usual spot. His eyes tracked her movements closely until she was just a few feet before him. She held up the last white tag and raised her eyebrow, aware of the fact that several eyes from the kitchen were watching her discretely.
“Which arm?” Hermione asked, not giving any room for discussion around whether or not he should accept a tag.
A dark glint sparked in Nasir’s eyes at her words and she saw the corner of his lips twitch as he looked down at her but remained completely motionless before her, arms crossed firmly over his chest as he leaned against the wall. He made absolutely no indication of moving.
“Mostly everyone has gone with their left arm – since they’re right-handed,” Hermione said quietly as she took a step toward him, closing the distance further and nodding to his hands. “I’ve yet to confirm which is your dominant hand – since I’ve seen you use both rather adeptly.”
“And which do you suspect is my dominant hand?” Nasir said quietly, his deep voice practically vibrating between them as his dark eyes watched her intently.
Hermione’s eyes narrowed and she gave him an amused smirk.
“Your left,” she whispered so those in the kitchen would not hear. “You use your right hand more – but I think that is intentional because you want people to think you’re right-handed. I think you look more comfortable when you’re using your left.”
His eyes burned as he watched her, and a dark smile crossed his lips. “You’re very observant.”
“So, I’m right then?” Hermione asked as she arched her brow in question. He remained silent before her, watching her closely as the silence stretched between them until finally, she sighed and smiled in defeat. She outstretched her hand between them, palm up and open in wait as the silence continued to ring for a long painful minute.
“Why?” Nasir asked quietly, his eyes tracing over her face.
“Because regardless of why you’re doing this, regardless of what your intentions are – on Monday you are part of this team, Nasir,” Hermione said quietly as she looked up at him. “What you choose to do afterwards is up to you – I will not ask anything of you, as what you’ve given us already is more than I could have ever asked for. But on Monday – I am going to ensure that our team is safe and that means you too.”
Silence stretched between them again and Hermione could feel the eyes from the kitchen burning into her side as her hand remained upturned between them. She felt her chest tightening as she looked at him until finally, unbelievably, he shifted. His right arm unweaving from the knot across his chest like a serpent uncoiling until he pulled up his outer black robe and placed his right forearm in her open hand.
He seemed unwilling to put in any additional effort aside from giving her his arm, and thus his white dress shirt remained buttoned at the wrist – but she didn’t care. Hermione shifted her hands to reach for the cuff of his shirt when his other hand grabbed hers quickly to stop her and jerked her forward another step. Her eyes flicked to Harry before they locked to Nasir’s – she’d seen Harry tense and she could almost feel the collective tension from the kitchen radiating in the air from those who were watching the exchange anxiously.
Nasir had not hidden the encounter with one of his masking charms this time. His attention was fixed only on her and his warm hand sandwiched hers tightly against his wrist.
“If you add that tag,” Nasir’s low slow voice made her shiver. “Then there is something that you must promise.”
“Okay,” she whispered as she nodded and felt the nerves in her stomach knot. His grip on her wrists tightened as he stepped closer, fixing her with a dark intense gaze that made her throat tighten.
“If I tell you to go,” Nasir nearly whispered, his low dark voice echoing around them. “You will listen to me – do I have your word?”
Hermione swallowed, a hundred questions spinning in her head as she stared at the man before her. She wanted to ask him why. She wanted to ask him when. She wanted to ask him if it was specifically about the werewolf den infiltration – it had to be, right? She’d told everyone that she’d remove the tags afterwards. Did he not want to be saved if something went wrong? Was he planning to do something? Was he going to betray them, and he simply didn’t want her to get hurt? After all she knew that he seemed to be only somewhat loyal to her and he was particularly indifferent to the rest of the Order members aside form Harry. Was he anticipating something happening in Birmingham?
But she knew that he wouldn’t answer any of her questions.
She knew that he wouldn’t tell her a thing – so she nodded.
“Say it,” his dark voice rumbled and sent a tingle down her spine. He’d leaned down so he was only a foot away from her face and his eyes burned like they had when she’d asked him about her wand.
“You have my word,” Hermione whispered and then she felt his grip on her hands loosen and fall away as he stepped back and became completely impassive once more.
Hermione swallowed as she nodded firmly and then got to work, forcing the questions in her mind to quiet. She undid the buttons at the cuff of his sleeve and rolled the fabric up his impossibly steady arm, taking in the sight of hundreds of small silver scars that laced his skin – including a long narrow one along his forearm that she didn’t recall seeing during her rune carving. She focused her mind on task and set the tag midway up his forearm, continuing to ignore the eyes that watched her work and concentrating on semi-permanently sticking the paper while connecting the charm to his person so it would feed the correct stats. When she finished, she rolled his sleeve back down his arm and redid the buttons.
“There,” she said quietly, her eyes moving back to his impassive face. “Can you test it so I can make sure it works?”
Nasir retracted his arm and placed a single finger over the place where the paper was beneath his shirt before he pulled his outer robes back into place. Hermione felt the tingle of the paper against her own arm and she pulled back her sleeve to look at the message in unison with the seven other eyes in the kitchen.
N-Test
-x-x-
“He made me promise to go if he told me to,” Hermione said quietly as she sat across the table from Harry.
Her hands cupped the warm beverage before her loosely, she could feel a hollow emptiness growing in her chest as she stared at the steaming mug. They’d said goodbye to the Order members several minutes ago and were now drinking tea in the dimly lit tent, the sound of the waves and rising winds rumbling throughout the tent. Hermione’s jaw tightened as she looked up to Harry and she felt the unease that had been gathering in the pit of her stomach compound further. She didn’t know the intent behind Nasir’s words and it left her feeling disturbed and wary.
“Harry – either he doesn’t want us to help him if something goes wrong,” she said quietly, feeling the strain in her voice as she spoke. “Or he’s planning something, and he just doesn’t want me to get injured. Harry – what if we were wrong to trust him – I still believe that he isn’t going to hurt us but what if he is willing to sacrifice the lives of the Order for his own plans?”
A heavy and strange feeling was curling in her chest. She was torn between doubt and insecurity, and a feeling that was similar to how she’d felt when she’d spoken to Arthur on Friday night. Somehow this unnatural and disturbing man had burrowed a hole into her heart and claimed a space. She wasn’t entirely sure she fully understood why. He wasn’t compassionate. He wasn’t even kind. Their relationship could barely even be called friendly and if anything should be classified as alarming and yet – she didn’t want him to die.
She didn’t want to lose him.
She didn’t want to leave him behind if something went wrong.
He’d taught her more in a week than she’d learned in years. He’d helped her, he’d given her the use of her arm back, he was impartial and didn’t berate her for asking too many questions. He’d willingly taught her dangerous magic so she could be safe and in an odd twisted way he’d become her mentor – their mentor. Both she and Harry looked to him for guidance and in a bizarre way he’d become a part of their team, they’d adopted him in and like Arthur – they needed him. Even though it was strange to admit it – she wanted him around. She didn’t want to lose him in the same way that she did not want to lose anyone else on this mission.
And yet she still wasn’t even sure if she should trust him at all. She was painfully aware that they might be about to get completely fucked over by him even if he refused to hurt her directly.
“I know,” Harry said quietly his face strained as he nodded. “I got that feeling while we trained today – but Hermione, what he said doesn’t mean that he’s going to die and it doesn’t necessarily mean that he is going to betray us either. The reality is we don’t know what it means. He might just be planning to leave afterwards – and maybe he doesn’t want us to follow him. Or maybe he knows that you’d risk your life to save Arthur and he doesn’t want you running into a death zone – we both know that he is on your side – so maybe he is just trying to protect you.”
“Maybe,” Hermione said quietly though in her heart she didn’t know what to believe. “Harry, I don’t want to lose anyone on Monday.”
“We won’t,” Harry said firmly as he reached for her hands.
“If something goes wrong inside,” Hermione said slowly as she took his hands. “We will be the ones that go in after them – not Bill, not Shacklebolt. They wouldn’t stand a chance – and I’m not leaving Arthur, Remus or Nasir to die. Promise me that you won’t stop me from going in.”
“I’m going to go with you Hermione,” Harry squeezed her hand and she smiled sadly. “Always. We won’t leave anyone behind.”
Hermione laid curled in Harry’s arms. She could feel that he was still sleeping, his deep even breaths echoed in the crook of her neck while she stared into the darkness above her. It was still an hour away from daylight and she’d woken early since she was no longer mandated to sleep for ten hours. She’d cut back on the dreamless sleep potion and started using the occlumency that Harry had been using. It had been effective; she’d slept soundly and it wasn’t nightmares that woke her.
It was sadness.
She’d been thinking while she slept – thinking about tomorrow, about Monday. She’d been rerunning the plan in her head and reviewing her arsenal of spells. She’d woken when she’d thought of Arthur and she’d stayed awake after the uneasiness settled back into her heart. The weight on her chest was heavier today and it felt like it was growing as more time went on – but she knew it was related to the mission. She knew it was because despite her best intentions she was allowing dread to seep into her core and pollute her mind.
She couldn’t lose these people.
She wouldn’t lose these people.
Hermione flicked her eyes to Harry and she felt a tug across her chest. She loved him more than life itself and she wouldn’t lose him either. She would make sure of that.
She would do whatever it took on Monday to make sure that everyone got out alive – and then, while they planned for the break-in, she would teach the rest of the group everything that they could so they were prepared. She would show Luna how to break someone and then heal them. She would teach Fleur sectumsempra and she would even show Ron how to measure out blood replenishing potion and then she would get everyone busy with brewing and stocking up their supplies because this was a collective effort now. After what happened at the Manor it was impossible to think that they could do this alone – and even if they could it would do no good if they were constantly trying to protect everyone around them.
Voldemort had built his army and so she and Harry would build theirs. They would fortify their team and make sure that everyone could protect and defend themselves.
Hermione let out a low deep sigh and then slowly and carefully extracted herself from Harry’s hold. He was exhausted from watching over her all week and she knew that he hadn’t been getting the same rest that she had. She would let him sleep in today – he needed it. But she couldn’t lay there any longer while her mind ran in circles. She knew that she wasn’t the only one up as she felt some hearts fluttering through the tags within her mind. She needed to get up and get to work – she had things that she needed to do before Monday, and she wanted to review some of the notes that she’d taken while training with Nasir.
She wanted to be prepared.
-x-x-
Hermione stood outside the cottage with the small group of Order members, Harry close at her side. It was dull, raining, grey and dark. The weather had turned on them and the wind was howling as a storm blew in. She could feel the electricity in the air, it rattled through her body like a cold chill and made every muscle in her tense with suspense. She could see it on their faces too. She could see the fear, the anxiety – the seriousness of what was about to happen was almost tangible. She felt like she could have reached out into the air before them and grabbed it tightly in her fist.
No amount of training or time would have left them feeling any more prepared than they did right now. Nothing could steady the unease that riddled everyone’s body as they waited for the last few minutes to count down in silence.
They’d gathered at 6:30 am. They’d double checked the tags to confirm that they were working, they’d taken their small collection of supplies that Fleur and Luna had assembled with input from Hermione so everyone would have emergency blood replenishers, dittany and a collection of other helpful potions. They’d reviewed the plan one final time and then Hermione had cast a heavy scent blocking charm on each person. It was what she’d worked on Sunday morning while Harry was sleeping, and it would give them just another layer of added protection while they staked out their positions. According to Nasir’s data all of the werewolves and bonded pairs should have returned to the den by 7 am but they would not yet be asleep. They would be inside turning over their captures and eating so the odds of running into anything outside would be unlikely though not impossible and she didn’t want to take any chances. At least this way if anyone was straggling behind they wouldn’t be noticed immediately by scent.
Then there’d been nothing else to say.
Just a small group of people huddled under a charm to avoid the rain while they waited to apparate to Birmingham. They couldn’t even make themselves wait inside because it had felt too tense. It had been too excruciating. Hermione, Harry and Nasir had been the ones to go outside to wait first, but they were followed quickly by everyone else. And she knew why they’d done it – she could feel their vitals, she could feel every single one of their heartbeats and she knew they were nervous.
Hermione glance to Fleur and Mrs. Weasley who were currently standing in a copy of their husband’s clothes and holding a small vial of Polyjuice potion each. They would be leaving at the same time, but they would be headed to the Ministry instead – which was debatably just as dangerous. Mrs. Weasley was very nervous, but Fleur seemed much more settled.
Hermione’s eyes flicked to Arthur who looked tense, but she could tell from his heart rate that he was resolved. Remus seemed to be calm yet consumed by a dark sadness that was echoed by the odd erratic beat of his heart. Shacklebolt was determined and ready to go and his heart beat steady but quickly, and Bill was tense but oddly steady. Harry was like her – heart rate elevated slightly above normal but beating at a steady even pace.
Then there was Nasir, who stood rigid and indifferent in all black like death itself. Black pants, black dress shirt, and a set of thin black outer robes. His eyes were fixated on the dune in which they’d trained for the last week and he stood absolutely immobile as the rain started to pour around them. His heartbeat was slow and steady as always – completely unchanged. Entirely naturally unnatural.
She felt Harry grab her hand and she gripped him tightly, knowing that it was almost time. She flicked her eyes to the ground, watching as the rain rolled off her charmed boots and collected into puddles on the sandy ground around them. She and Harry had gone for a similar look to Nasir since they didn’t need to immediately apparate to a job and pretend like nothing had happened after the mission. They were both wearing dark black pants and dark black sweaters under their jackets and they both had their daggers fastened to their thighs. Her purse was stuffed into Harry’s pocket and tethered there, but they each held their own small pouch of supplies in their left jacket pockets like everyone else.
She heard the timer go off in her head.
“It’s time,” Hermione said quietly, stepping forward with Harry and extending her hand to Nasir. “Stay safe everyone.”
She saw Fleur and Mrs. Weasley nod firmly before downing their potion and starting their transformation. They would have two hours until it wore off – which should be plenty of time given that their window for extraction at the werewolf den was seven and a half minutes and they needed to be out of there before 8 am. Arthur took Bill’s hand who gripped Remus, Remus gripped Shacklebolt who then gripped Nasir to form a chain back to Hermione. She felt the familiar tug behind her navel as Shacklebolt apparated all of them to the West side of Birmingham and she heard the raging thunder before the apparition had even been completed.
The wind whipped at her face as she landed, and she felt the sting of cold rain despite their water proofing charms. It was dark and cold and wet, and they’d landed in the clearing that Nasir had selected but it seemed like the storm here was even worse than at Shell Cottage. They all quickly congregated under the charm that Arthur cast and reviewed their final positions once more before they began to split off to execute their roles.
Shacklebolt left first – apparating to the Southern side to begin encasing the already existing wards and charms with a set of his own to contain the explosion. He would re-ward the entire building and then at 7:30 am he would begin dismantling the ones that were there so that Arthur and Remus could enter undetected at exactly 7:42 am. It was an immense task and possibly the most important one – if he couldn’t successfully dismantle the existing wards then Nasir would be the only one able to sneak inside. They’d planned for this – it was back-up plan A but it meant that almost no muggles would be rescued as Nasir would barely have enough time to set the explosive and get out.
Bill left second, disillusioning and shielding himself to make his way to the Eastern sewer where he would wait quietly until 7:39 am and then he would seal the sewer. He would keep watch and wait to see if additional help was required before returning to work at 8:01 am once the mission was completed.
Arthur and Remus would leave third, disillusioning themselves and shielding as Bill had done and making their way to the Western and Southern sewers. They would seal the sewer and then apparate just outside of the new wards that Shacklebolt had created to meet Nasir on the Southern side of the building and sneak inside to set the bomb and rescue as many muggles as they could.
From the second that they entered the building they would have seven and a half minutes to complete their task and get out. They wouldn’t be able to apparate inside the wards and depending on what happened Arthur might not be able to use his portkey to return to his office. If he was injured, he would need to be healed first – he couldn’t show up bloodied and smelling of explosion in his office and Shacklebolt had been unable to get additional portkeys for escape. As it was, obtaining the six that he had had already been a massive stretch of his resources that risked drawing attention to the Order.
Ideally, Arthur, Remus and Nasir would join the muggles they rescued and use the port key that took them to the safe house to escape – but Hermione knew there was a risk that that might not work either. She knew that Arthur would not leave the den until he had extracted as many people as he could and until he was sure that the research had been destroyed and the den was wired to explode. She knew that they would likely be leaving the building the same way that they entered it or that they’d be exiting through a sewer to get outside of the wards.
Nasir would leave next – he would slip inside the wards and wait until 7:40 am and then take out the patrol that rounded the den. He would then meet Arthur and Remus and escort them inside.
She and Harry would leave last to move to the Northern side of the den. Sealing the main gas line to the building at 7:38 am and cutting the sewer at 7:39 am. Then, like Bill, they were to wait quietly and hope that the others were successful.
Hermione nodded to Arthur and Remus before they disillusioned themselves and vanished. The rain started coming down harder as a low rumble of thunder broke through the air. She turned to look at Nasir, he was staring at her intently, every so often his eyes would flick to Harry and then his gaze would return back to hers. Yet no one said a thing, the three of them just stood there in the rain and stared while Hermione’s next timer counted down. Thirty seconds before Nasir was to leave, he moved, stepping toward her and glancing at Harry once more before stopping a little more than a foot away from her.
She blinked away the rain that was eating through her charm and watched anxiously as he raised his hand from his side and extracted a black leather-bound notebook from his robes. He paused for a moment before he held it out to her. She hesitated, eyeing him carefully before she reached for it and took it from him. His dark intense gaze made her throat tighten as she clutched the book to her chest.
He didn’t say anything. His eyes flicked to Harry with a heated intensity and she felt Harry shift at her side before he looked at her one final time, then Nasir turned swiftly on his heel and began walking his way toward the dark wet forest. Hermione felt her heart constricting with panic as Harry grabbed her hand tightly, and she stared after the silent shadow of the tall man as he walked away.
“Be careful!” the words left her mouth before she could stop them, and she saw Nasir freeze momentarily before he continued and faded into the darkness.
The second he vanished from sight Hermione shrunk the book and stuffed it in her pocket. She tethered it and used a sticking charm so that it would absolutely not fall out. She forced the sickness that was growing in the pit of her stomach to calm as she felt the flutter of six nervous hearts within her mind. She could feel their anxiety – she could feel each unsteady heartbeat as they waited and worked on their tasks. She could hear their timer counting down in her head and she felt the tension growing in her chest as the seconds ticked by.
She turned to face Harry, gripping his hand like death as he stared at her intensely.
“I love you,” Hermione said firmly as she swallowed hard. Her eyes racking over his face and taking in every detail even though she’d memorized it months ago.
“I love you,” he looked at her firmly, his expression was tighter than it had been a minute ago. “We are going to get everyone out.”
She nodded, urging her heart to calm as the wind whipped her braid to the side. She rechecked everyone’s vitals once more as if she were scrolling through a list until her timer went off. She dropped Harry’s hand, getting her wand and casting a shield and disillusionment as he did the same. Then she reached for him once more and apparated them to the Northern end of the den.
They moved silently, vanishing their muddy tracks through the woods until they came to the gas line and sewer. Both of them monitoring the time as they got into position, uncovered the lines and then waited in tense silence. The rain had drenched through her newest water proofing charms as they were less effective with the scent blocker – but she hardly noticed it. It dripped down her chin and rolled down her forehead as she stared intently at the enormous sewer pipe she’d exposed before her. The sound of it echoed heavy in her mind as the sky lit up with lightening but they both remained rigid and unmoving. Harry’s wand was pointed at the gas line to her left and his heart beat at an eerie steady calm like her own.
At 7:38 am Harry cut and sealed the gas line.
At 7:39 am Hermione cut and seal the sewer, leaving the end open just outside of the wards as agreed to so that they had an escape.
At 7:40 am she felt Mrs. Weasley’s stress levels increase though she seemed to be okay.
At 7:41 am Shacklebolt sent word: S-Complete and she knew that the wards had been dismantled.
At 7:42 am she felt Remus and Arthur’s heart rates spike with adrenaline though Nasir’s remained calm. She stood with Harry, their eyes locked into the dark rain around them as the listening intently for any signs of incoming people and squinted their eyes through the sheets of rain as they crouched low in the mud.
At 7:44 am Fleur’s heart fluttered quickly before it evened out. And Hermione gripped her wand more tightly.
At 7:46 am she felt Remus’ heart spike once, followed quickly by Arthur’s but no message was sent.
Then at 7:47 am her whole body went rigid as she felt Nasir’s heart rate spike. It happened so quickly she nearly missed it – she almost didn’t believe that it had happened except that after the spike his pulse evened out to a higher rate than its normal resting beat.
Hermione looked to Harry as her jaw tightened and she saw his eyes harden with understanding.
At 7:49 am she’d still not heard word of anyone exiting the den. Her eyes shot anxiously toward the tall building that poked up from the trees as a deep panic unfolded in her chest. They were late, they should have been out by now, they only had twenty seconds left on the clock.
At 7:50 am Remus’ heart rate spiked, his stress levels soared, Arthur’s vitals read like he’d gone into shock – and Nasir’s heart rate instantly doubled. Hermione felt a deep cold terror settle over her body.
“Harry,” at her single clipped word his eyes shot to hers instantly and he nodded, jumping into the large sewer line before her. She followed him immediately, setting off at a sprint behind him as she tapped her arm twice with the agreed upon code.
Hr-Extraction
Hr-Hold
Warning:
This chapters includes violence, blood, and injury.
-x-x-
Saturday April 11, 1998
The Tonks’ Family Home
“Remus?”
He’d been so quiet.
He’d moved so carefully he was sure that she’d not woken – but leave it to Tonks, the woman was probably either sleeping with one eye open or she was blatantly awake and refusing to go to bed until he got back despite the fact that she was nearly bursting at nine months pregnant. It was all he could do to keep her from attending the Order meetings in person and so he’d settled on the compromise of returning to the Tonks family home after meetings and keeping her in the loop with the information that Arthur and Shacklebolt agreed he could tell her regarding their plans and actions. Though she was supposed to have been sleeping by now and he’d been planning to update her in the morning before returning to his small ramshackle apartment to prepare. He should have known better – of course she would stay up.
Remus let out a soft sigh, unable to fight the smile that tugged at his lips at the sound of his wife’s voice.
His wife.
He wasn’t sure if he would ever get used to saying those words. It felt like just yesterday that he’d been resigned to walking through life alone save for a very few limited close friends. He’d never in a million years imagined that someone would want him, like him – love him.
There were still some mornings where he woke up thinking it was a dream. That everything he now had wasn’t real – for how could it be? How could Tonks, a beautiful, talented young witch find anything about him desirable? It baffled his mind; it was like he just could not accept it, and for the longest time he hadn’t.
He’d seen this before. He’d been through this before once himself though he’d never had feelings for the woman – it happened in the small but elusive community of werewolves that tried to exist in wizarding society despite the stigma around lycanthropy. Every so often a witch or wizard would pop up that viewed them as a pity case, they viewed them as something that could be helped or could be fixed. Their attraction wasn’t real – it was never true love; it was just a desire to want to help or a fixation. He had never been foolish enough to allow himself to indulge because he could see it for what it really was. The one time previous that this had happened to him, he’d created space between himself and the witch and sure enough she’d lost interest and was married within the year to some bloke in the Ministry who was missing a leg due to a potion disaster.
He’d watched in the past as others mistakenly pursued these relationships only for them to fall apart weeks, months or in the longest case – one year and sixteen days later. That was how things worked for those who suffered from lycanthropy. Once their partner realized that they could not actually be fixed, that there was nothing that they could do they eventually grew weary or lost interest. It was almost like they were a fad to these people – like they were something daring or rebellious that they could take in or be a part of until the adrenaline rush of it being new and exciting wore off and they realized it was exhausting. After seeing a few transformations, or after too many close calls suddenly the danger of their condition became real and these people realized that they did not want to watch or put up with the difficulties for the rest of their lives. Not to mention the social ostracism that came from dating or marrying a werewolf, the lack of job, the financial stress – it was a burden and their ‘love’ faded as quick as the seasons.
Though when Tonks had revealed her feelings to him it had been ten times worse than these other relationships he’d seen in the past, and it had been nothing like the incident he’d experienced with that woman from the Ministry – because this time, he’d actually liked her. He’d more than liked her. He was smitten. They’d been working together for several months on Order missions and they’d grown oddly close. Tonks was a spark of life, she was mesmerizing, brilliant, talented, blunt, courageous and before he’d even realized what had happened, he’d fallen for her and she’d managed to completely capture his affection.
He’d never before in his life fallen in love and he’d been waiting and fully prepared to watch from the sidelines as she fell in love with someone else. A handsome Auror perhaps. He’d been prepared to feel his heart break, he’d been prepared to watch her be happy and he’d been prepared to continue his life alone like he’d always intended. So her admission had hit him hard like a blow to the chest. He couldn’t process it – he couldn’t accept it. It fundamentally didn’t make any sense and it had terrified him.
So, he pushed her away.
He’d rejected it so instinctually that he’d actively fought it. He’d fought his feelings for her and he’d tried to convince her that hers weren’t real – because he didn’t think that they were. He’d told her that they would never work, he’d told her that he had nothing to offer – no money, not even a damn job. He’d told her that he was too old. He’d told her that it was too dangerous – that he was too dangerous. He’d told her that it was just a phase and that she didn’t know what she wanted, that she didn’t truly want him and that her infatuation was only because they’d been thrown together in desperate times.
He’d stopped going on missions with her. He’d actively avoided her as much as he possibly could and then when that failed he’d stopped talking to her for two months straight. He’d accepted every dangerous mission that the Order had, he’d thrown himself fully into the cause and emotionally shut himself down because he’d refused to accept that this could be real. He’d refused to involve her in his sad, depressing life and he’d refused to allow her to throw her life away because she thought that she loved him. He’d pushed and pushed and pushed.
And yet… Tonks had refused to relent.
She’d refused to let it go.
She’d refused to leave him alone.
She’d chased after him worse than a dog with a bone and she didn’t let up for single second for over the course of a year.
She’d actively sought him out, she’d spoken to him even though he refused to answer, and she’d repeatedly told him that she loved him. She’d helped collect potion ingredients for his Wolfsbane potion, she’d delivered it to him from Snape, she’d even witnessed several of his transformations and still stuck around. She’d been entirely uncompromising about the situation and it had started to affect her health – her appearance changed, her behaviour shifted and Remus finally started to question things when her patronus changed. He finally started to accept that perhaps maybe – despite all odds, she did truly love him.
Yet he’d still refused to be with her.
He’d still refused to allow her to deal with the dangers and hardships associated with lycanthropy. It wasn’t right, it was selfish and because he cared for her, he especially could not allow her to take those risks. So, he pushed even harder.
And she still didn’t let up.
Things eventually got so bad that Arthur had gotten involved and shockingly, his redheaded friend had taken her side and so had Molly. The two of them had endorsed the idea of their relationship and actively encouraged it. One night, post meeting before the attack on Hogwarts, Arthur had told him that love was both the most beautiful and terrifying thing in the world – then he’d told him to be brave.
Though even then it took another few weeks until he’d finally cracked. Not until after the battle at Hogwarts. Not until after Dumbledore was buried. Not until after Tonks had confronted him at his ramshackle apartment and kissed him and he’d felt his walls falling down around him – she’d broken them, slowly over the course of a year, crack by crack until finally she’d ripped down every last piece.
She had fought for him.
She chased him and until the day he died he would never understand why.
He had literally nothing to offer her. Nothing to give other than himself and he’d spent the entirety of his life thinking that he was not enough. So why she would want him he would never know, and yet here he was, returning to his wife and unborn child. Things that he never in his wildest dreams ever thought he would have.
Remus made his way through the kitchen of the Tonks family home, knowing that her mother Andromeda was ‘sleeping’ in the second main floor bedroom next to Tonks’ temporary room – and by sleeping he meant sitting up awake because Tonks was awake. The woman had placed a charm on her daughter to monitor her health and would wake the second she moved an inch and was constantly monitoring the vitals of their son – which Remus knew he would never be able to properly thank her for. She was doing everything that he should be doing, everything that he wanted to be doing and yet couldn’t because of the war.
Thankfully, so far things were going well and his son wouldn’t inherit lycanthropy – but Remus knew that Tonks was tense. She didn’t do well cooped up inside and once she’d reached four month and started to show she was all but confined within the house for her own safety. While his wife agreed that she should not participate in any missions while pregnant, she disagreed that she should be kept from things entirely. She hated it. Remus knew she complained about it and once again he felt a wash of gratitude toward Andromeda for putting up with Tonks’ agitation and displeasure with being kept away from the Order. He knew he would never be able to repay the woman and frankly he wasn’t really sure where he stood with her or if she’d want his gratitude.
He’d suspected that her parents disapproved of their relationship due to his condition. He’d suspected that they disliked him and were upset about the pregnancy – he’d be lying if he said that he wasn’t. When he’d first found out he’d been positively livid with himself for being so irresponsible. He’d regretted marrying her, he’d regretted giving in – he’d felt like the most selfish person in the world and he’d seriously wished he could undo it all. It had taken him a long time to come around on the idea and he knew that a small part of him would always be uneasy with their relationship. That a part of him would always feel terrible about giving in.
Yet oddly, her parents had always treated him respectfully. So, he really wasn’t sure what to make of them – he just knew that he was grateful for them taking her in and caring for her when he could not.
“Hi,” Remus said softly, keeping his voice down after he’d carefully closed the door to her room behind him. She was sitting up in bed, an open book next to her and her hands folded neatly across her belly. “You’re supposed to be asleep.”
“Pft please,” Tonks rolled her eyes and fixed him with a look though she kept her voice low despite casting a silencing charm. “All I ever do nowadays is sleep and lay around. It’s boring – I hate it – and I worry about you. Of course I was going to wait up – you’re my husband and you’re my only connection to the real world right now. So, what happened? Is everything still on track for Monday? Did you learn anything else new tonight? How is everyone?”
Remus smiled, Tonks was practically jittering with pent up energy and she was looking to him with a desperate sort of excited worry as she fired off the same list of rapid questions that she did every time he came by.
“Everyone is well,” Remus said as he took a seat next to her knees on the bed and took her hand. “We didn’t practice tonight – we just went over the plans and then Hermione tagged everyone so we can communicate during the attack.”
Remus pulled up his sleeve to show her the paper and he saw a look of relief wash over her face.
“Thank Merlin for that girl,” Tonks shook her head as she ran her fingers over the paper. “Incredible – you can pass messages through it then?”
“Single words, yes – and she’s monitoring all of our vitals through it so she and Harry can ensure everyone’s safety.”
“They’ve really changed – haven’t they?” Tonks asked softly, her eyes moving back to his as she stopped tracing the paper and took his hand once more.
“Almost entirely,” Remus said quietly, a grim smile forming on his face. “Though every now and again you see traces of their old selves in there. They both smiled more tonight than I’ve seen all week.”
“They’re going to be okay Remus,” Tonks squeezed his hand as she looked at him sincerely. “Maybe not the same as they were before but they’ll be okay – it will just take time. But they have us – they have Arthur. They’re not alone anymore.”
“You’re right,” Remus leaned forward and placed a slow kiss on her cheek, leaning his head against hers and letting out a deep sigh when her hand came to rest on the side of his face.
“So everything is a go for Monday morning?” Tonks whispered as she turned her head and rested her forehead against his.
“Yes.”
“And this guy – Nasir – do you think he’ll do his part?”
“I don’t know,” Remus said slowly as he swallowed hard, his eyes locking to her. “I sure hope so or this might well be the last mission that the Order ever runs.”
He felt her grip tighten on his hand and she looked at him fiercely.
“Don’t say that,” she whispered almost harshly. “If he does something – if something goes wrong – you and Arthur get out of there. You do whatever you have to, use your shield and you hit him with everything you have because I need you to come back to me – Remus I can’t stand knowing that I can’t be there with you. I wish there was a way that I could come with you and bring our son safely into this world.”
“I know,” Remus squeezed her hand back, though he didn’t dare say that he was truthfully glad she would not be coming on the mission with them.
Tonks slid her hand to the back of his neck and curled her fingers tightly into his robes. “You need to be safe – save who you can but you need to be safe.”
“I will,” Remus said firmly even though he wasn’t entirely sure he believed it. “I promise.”
“Good,” Tonks said firmly before she closed the distance between them and pressed her lips to his and then whispered against him. “Because your son needs you.”
Remus gripped her tightly and he felt himself melt against her lips as something painful tugged across his chest. It was those words – words that he never thought he would ever hear. It was her – she was everything to him and yet he deserved none of it. It was the fact that for the first time in his life since James and Sirius died, he had something to come back to. He had a home, he had a life – he had more than he could have ever dreamed of and it was exactly as Arthur had said. It was beautiful and it was terrifying, and he knew that there was a chance that he would not be returning home on Monday.
-x-x-
April 13, 1998
Birmingham, 7:35 am
Arthur blinked back the rain as he quickly excavated the soil above the Southern sewer line. The raging winds and thunder made it difficult to hear anything going on around him and it set his nerves on edge. He did the best that he could to remain calm and focused as the large drain came into view and he tried to steady his heart as a tightness began to grow in his chest. He couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that Hermione was not only dealing with her own nerves but everyone else’s. He could barely contain his panic and yet he knew that she was experiencing eight different sets of vitals aside from her own – but he knew that she would handle it. He knew that she would be fine.
After finding out what she and Harry had been through since September he’d completely abandoned the notion that she was at all vulnerable, or that she and Harry needed help – because they didn’t. They were survivors and what they needed was support from a competent team.
It was painfully obvious after training with them this week that the duo’s biggest weakness right now was the Order itself. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that they were the ones who would probably be fine today – it was himself and everyone else that might not make it out safely. And that had been a very sobering realization. It had sat heavy across his chest and led him to practice almost every spare minute that he had outside of evening training and work. He’d spent his entire Sunday inside the Burrow splitting sticks and when the mission today was done, he would do it again – again and again until he became someone who could be what they needed. Until he was no longer a liability, until he was an asset who could truly help them.
He knew that most of the others had drawn the same conclusion, though it had taken Molly until Thursday to really start to accept the concept. It had been the news about the Bones family that had done it. It had shaken her in a way that he’d not seen before and it had left her deep in thought. He’d yet to discuss it with Molly (because it wasn’t up for discussion) but the second he could safely pull Ginny and Susan from Hogwarts he would offer Susan a home at the Burrow for as long as she needed it – because she was family and he would make sure that she was safe. Susan was technically of age and no longer required parental guidance, but he had discussed the situation with Shacklebolt just the same and the man had agreed to help Arthur protect her. They would ensure that nothing happened to her.
He’d gone to her family home with Shacklebolt in the night to try and retrieve her belongings, but almost everything had been burned to ash. He’d found only a single singed family picture, a small somewhat toasty stuffed rabbit (which he’d washed very carefully by hand and placed on Ginny’s bed for safe keeping) and one knit sweater buried under the ash in her closet. It wasn’t much, but he preserved it all and took it home with him before he and Shacklebolt arranged to have the house completely demolished. They never wanted Susan to see it – they never wanted anyone to ever see it. He was thankful that no one else had because as it was, he knew that he’d never be able to un-see the horror that had happened inside that home.
Just like how he’d would never be able to un-see the marks that riddled Hermione’s body.
He wasn’t a stupid man – he knew that they were even worse than what she’d shown him and those were in addition to the scaring that he suspected she’d gotten from the torture. It had broken his heart to see it. He’d felt a sickness burn in the pit of his stomach as he mourned for her, for the pain she must have experienced, for the agony and the fear. And yet she’d stood before him speaking of it calmly as if it was just another thing that one might go through in life. As if these situations had become normal to her.
She’d already accepted it.
An eighteen-year-old girl.
She was still a child in his eyes and yet she spoke and moved like someone with twenty years her experience and he finally understood exactly why. She’d been to hell and back and she’d survived. If it had been anyone else, it would have broken them. If it had been a more superficial girl, it would have destroyed them – he knew how some girls could be when it came to appearances and yet Hermione had viewed it as nothing more than another obstacle to overcome. It had kept him up half the night on Friday thinking about it and it strengthened the resolve that he had to do what he needed to do.
From the second his son had introduced the small bushy haired girl to him he’d been fond of her and he’d long since considered her to be his second daughter. She was part of the family and to know what she had been through, what someone had done to her… it had been the equivalent to lighting a raging protective fire deep within his core. It sickened him to think that he might kill people today and it hurt to think that most of them were innocent people who deserved better. Yet he knew she was right. He knew that if he did not find a way to detach himself from this mission and do what was necessary, he would not be coming back out – and they deserved more than that. They’d shouldered the weight of this entire war, they’d bore the burden alone when it should have been shared amongst everyone in the Order and everyone in the wizarding world.
He was going to make up for it.
He would do what was necessary and he would ensure that no one hurt his daughters again – not Ginny, not Hermione and not Susan.
Arthur clenched his jaw as he pointed his wand at the sewer and waited for his timer.
Today would be the day that the Order returned to its full potential. It would be the day that they became what they should have been this whole time. They would become a force to be reckoned with, they would shift the power in the war as they made their very first large counterattack against You Know Who and when this mission was over – he would make sure that they didn’t stop. The training would continue, the planning would continue, and they would do what they should have done years ago and take down the opposition by systematically taking out every facet of You Know Who’s army.
Arthur checked his internal timer, waiting until precisely 7:39 am before cutting and sealing the sewer. Only the Northern one would be left open for a backup escape route as they could not afford to have any werewolves getting outside of the wards. Then he re-covered the pipe and stood silently in the rain, waiting for the signal from Shacklebolt as his hand ran over the pocket of his robes – ensuring that the bomb was still there. The rain echoed loudly in his ears as the seconds ticked by and the tension started to grow, then the familiar tingle across his arm came with Shacklebolt’s note and he apparated himself to the edge of the wards to meet Remus. Even disillusioned he knew that Remus was there. He could feel the man’s presence even before they exchanged their agreed upon code word and then set off through the new wards toward the base of the building.
His eyes darted to the left as he walked quickly across the soggy wet ground, taking in the sight of the two dead bodies – both were fully intact but their eyes stared lifelessly up toward the sky. He didn’t even need to wonder how Nasir was able to take out two patrolling pairs in less than a minute. It was clear from the remaining evidence, but the bodies would be taken care of when the explosion went off so he walked past them silently. The explosion was just another thought that made his stomach twist in discomfort but he bit it down and forced himself to continue.
When they were just a few feet from the base of the building Arthur saw Nasir appear in one of the broken glass windows, giving them both a single tilt of his head to indicate that that was where they were to enter. It was unnerving to note that the man seemed to be watching their approach even though they were disillusioned and he could not see them, though then again – perhaps he very well could. Arthur felt his pulse quicken as he carefully climbed through the small opening after Remus before removing his disillusionment charm, casting a quick drying spell on his robes and a muffling spell on his feet.
The second he crossed the threshold of the window the sound of the rain seemed to become louder as it echoed throughout the decrepit building, pinging loudly off the metal as water drizzled down the broken walls and flooded the old concrete floor with puddles. It mixed with the echo of screams and low soft growls and it made his spine stiffen with anticipation of what he was about to see. He felt a heavy silencing charm surround them like a bubble before Nasir began leading them at a breakneck pace through the building and down a broken set of stairs. He weaved easily under the broken beams despite his typical unnaturally stiff and still appearance. His wand was clutched loosely in his right hand, his movement precise and quick like he’d taken the route a million times before.
Arthur felt his heart race as Nasir motioned for them to step around a broken step and he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as he caught a glimpse of the man’s eyes.
They were burning with an intensity that he’d only ever seen twice.
The first time was when he’d shown Arthur his runes, and the second time was when he’d grabbed Hermione and tugged her towards him in the living room of the cottage.
He felt his stomach knot with what could only be described as fear.
He would never understand why Hermione let that man touch her – why both she and Harry seemed comfortable with him. Either they were both so confident in their own abilities that they trusted that they could defend themselves against him. Or, as he’d come to realize while he’d laid awake thinking about the scene that had unfolded in the cottage Saturday night, both she and Harry knew if Nasir wanted to kill them, they’d be dead. So perhaps they knew and had accepted that fact and decided to trust him anyways.
Regardless of the reason, Nasir’s fascination with Hermione was disturbing. He watched her in a way that could only be described as obsessive and it unsettled him. It was obvious to anyone who watched them for longer than a minute that she was his main interest – though as the week went on, Arthur had started to notice that Nasir’s glances toward Harry had shifted into something almost equally as concerning.
He didn’t like it. Yet the duo seemed okay with it, so he’d bit his tongue and decided to trust them. They’d made it this far after all – they’d unlocked the secrets of the werewolf den, the banding magic and developed a shield charm that could save lives. They were debatably better leaders and more effective in the war efforts than Dumbledore had been. They provided guidance and they had a solid plan that they shared with the team except for one small aspect and he understood that it was only because they couldn’t risk word of that plan (whatever it was) getting back to You Know Who.
So despite the fact that the man before him unnerved him, he would trust Hermione and Harry – and thus, he would trust Nasir.
For now.
They reached the main underground level of the den just before 7:44 am and Arthur and Remus both took a second to recast their shield charm and set their timers before making their way through the small, dim, narrow hallway toward the center of the base. He couldn’t hear the rain anymore, but he could hear the heavy sound of breathing followed by the occasional scream as he fought to keep his own breath under control. He’d known that the pace would be fast, but Nasir had moved them even quicker than he’d anticipated all while keeping them surrounded by a silencing charm.
His eyes flicked to the left as they passed what seemed to be a dirt ramp and he felt his eyes widen as he took in the sight below. It was precisely as Nasir had described, exact to a bloody tee – but far more graphic.
They’d dug huge pits into the dirt below the building to house the werewolves and there were small single dugouts in the walls several feet above the pit to house some of the extra human bonded pairs. In the bottom of the first pit all he could see was a pile of fur. It was almost impossible to distinguish the individual bodies as the werewolves slept on the wet muddy ground. The stench of it was suffocating, he could taste the rot in his mouth as he walked by. They were living in their own filth, surrounded by decaying corpses and bones. Arthur fought back the urge to vomit as he took in the sight of the rotting dismembered limbs that littered the ground between the sleeping bodies as their deep breathing rattled through the darkened lair and set his nerves on high alert.
He’d not been prepared for this.
It was so much worse in person than he ever could have imagined and he began to understand what Hermione, Harry and Nasir had been talking about. These people… some of them, if not most of them, were too far gone.
His body tensed with fear as they quietly snuck past the den of sleeping beasts – his mind agitated with the knowledge that even one of them was capable of tearing them to pieces in a single bite. He forced his eyes back to Nasir’s indifferent posture as he continued to lead them silently down the hall and he made a mental note to thank Hermione for the scent blocker charm. There was no way they would have made it this far undetected without it.
When they got toward the end of the hall Arthur could make out the low voice of a man speaking, and he realized that the screaming was actually coming from a room several feet away though he could not make out the man’s words. Nasir slowed and turned to face them, motioning for them to stop and then Arthur felt the silencing charm around them double to an almost choking level before the man’s low voice echoed quietly but quickly around them.
“These are the holding cells for new captures and new creations,” Nasir pointed to the two thick doors on the right side of the hall. “I suggest that you send these groups back using your port keys immediately as we won’t have time for any others – I’ll help Remus with the new creations and keep watch.”
Both Arthur and Remus nodded, each moving toward a door and unlocking it as Nasir turned his burning gaze to the door with the newly banded werewolves. It didn’t take long for Arthur to unlock the door, it was secured only with a simple charm – nothing else was needed to contain muggles and it was clear that they had not bothered with extra security or effort. Arthur heard the three new werewolves snarl and snap at the door as Remus and Nasir rapidly cast tethering charms and stunning spells through the barred window before they dared open the door.
Arthur felt his heart spike with agony when he opened his door and saw the newly captured muggles – they all cowered against the opposite wall at the sight of him. There were seven in the room. Some of them were bruised, some of them were bloodied, all of them were terrified. One girl only had on an oversized sweater which she was tugging down to keep it stretched past her hips and he quickly realized that the shirtless man in the room must have given it to her because she’d been brought in naked. Bruises and blood covered her legs and he felt the sickness in his stomach build.
He grimaced.
He’d wanted to save more. He’d wanted to un-band as many werewolves in the pit as he could, but he knew that there would not be enough time. After seeing them – deep down he knew there was no way he could save them, not like how he’d wanted to. They’d designed their only two port keys to drop off in two separated locations at the safe house. The intent had been to transport the uninfected muggles separately to one spot and any werewolves they could capture to the other enclosed and protected space so that the muggles were kept safe. If Remus used his port key now to send back the newly created werewolves – they would not be able to save any others.
He hated knowing that it was the only option.
He heard Remus declare that he and Nasir had already successfully un-banded the three werewolves even though it had been less than a minute and Arthur knew he needed to pick up the pace, he couldn’t allow himself to get trapped in his own thoughts or overwhelmed by the conditions around him. It wasn’t how he’d wanted this to go down, but he’d made a promise to come back and even he could see that he’d been overly optimistic in his original hopes.
“We’re here to get you out,” Arthur said calmly as he pulled his port key from his robes and every single one of them flinched and tried to press themselves further into the back wall.
“Stun them and be done with it, Arthur,” Nasir’s deep indifferent voice rang out almost coldly behind him. “Tether their hands to the portkey – we don’t have time.”
Arthur’s jaw clenched but he flicked his wand and seven bodies dropped to the ground in quick succession. Nasir was unfortunately right – they didn’t have time. It was already seconds after 7:46 am and he still needed to destroy the research and set the bomb. His eyes flicked back to the tall dark man who had returned to standing in the dirty hallway as Remus finished transporting his own rescues using his port key. Arthur felt an odd feeling creep down his spine as he eyed the man.
Something was different in the way Nasir was standing.
Something was off.
Yet he couldn’t be sure because the entire situation was tense and moving so quickly, he barely had time to think while the eerie feel of the repulsive building ate away at his calm. He couldn’t tell if his increased anxiety was simply because of the nature of the mission, the dissolution of his original hopes, or if it was truly related to the shift in man before him that he seemed unable to pinpoint.
He forced his eyes back to his task and expeditiously tethered the hands of the muggles to his port key, hitting them each with a final stunning spell before he activated the port key and sent the group to the safe house where Luna and Andromeda would be waiting to further stun and clothe anyone that they saved. Fleur would join them immediately after Bill had returned to work and changed places with her and as the small group of bodies disappeared from view, he knew that they had at least saved some lives.
Though it did very little to settle his unease as he returned his gaze to the mysterious man before him and made his way back out into the hall to press onwards. He was sure that something was different, his voice, while still indifferent, had almost sounded impatient. As if there was something else here that he wanted to do, or like he knew something was about to happen that he’d yet to share. His body seemed almost tense, his grip on his wand had tightened and something dark and deadly was radiating from his body.
“One room left,” Nasir’s deep voice was low, and it echoed with a darkness that made Arthur’s stomach drop in anticipation as he led them the last two steps down the hall and into the final room. Cold fear ran through Arthur’s body as the air in the room became tight, Nasir moved soundlessly, unnaturally – like a predator stalking its prey as a heavy silencing spell snapped shut around them and his dark slow voice resonated like death across the walls. “Hello, Arlo.”
He moved so quickly that Arthur was barely able to register the short gray-haired man to the left. Or the way that the old man’s body had frozen at the sound of Nasir’s voice before Nasir closed the distance, grabbed Arlo by the throat and slammed him against the wall with so much force the concrete behind him cracked. The man choked and grabbed at Nasir’s arm as a strangled laugh poured from his lips.
It felt like time slowed as Arthur forced his eyes to move and take in their surroundings. The research notes that littered the tables around the room, the shelf of vials along the right, the naked young woman strapped to the dirty medical table who had screamed in terror upon their arrival but rapidly seemed to conclude that they were not on the same side as those who had captured her. She was now calling to them and begging them to let her go. Arthur forced himself to inhale before moving his legs into action.
“Remus, free the girl,” Arthur moved to the right side of the room and began burning the vials and papers as he kept watch on Nasir.
“On it,” Remus moved to the brown-haired woman and began working at the restraints that held her to the table as he spoke to her in a calm voice and tried to keep her attention on his face. “You’re going to be okay – what’s your name?”
“Ava,” her voice was hoarse from her screaming and her eyes kept flicking back to Nasir nervously as Remus undid each restraint with a tap of his wand and summoned the small paper medical sheet from the bench to the left and fastened it around her like a short dress.
“I – thought – th-they had – you killed – with the – rest – of them,” Arlo choked out as he stared at Nasir with a bizarre mix of fear and surprised amusement.
“You seem to be mistaken,” Nasir’s slow deadly voice sent a shudder through Arthur’s body. “Regarding who they tasked with completing the killing.”
It was crystal clear to Arthur now what the shift had been, what had set his nerves on edge and made him even more uneasy – the killing intent that radiated from the man was so violent and intense it rivaled the wrath of the storm outside. Arthur tried to remain focused on his task but could not help but watch from the corner of his eye as the scene unfolded between the two men. Nasir’s eyes had darkened with something that could only be described as deep hatred – though Arthur wasn’t entirely convinced that the man was capable of real feelings since the darkness seemed to pour off of him in waves of pure death. It all but suffocated the silenced room as the heat from the small fires that Arthur lit made it harder to breath.
Arlo choked out another laugh as his nails bit into Nasir’s skin and his feet scrapped against the wall below him.
“Haha – ha of course,” Arlo choked, a grimace forming on his lips as his nails drew blood from Nasir’s wirst. “How much – d-did they – pay you this time? What – did – they give – you – to come here?”
“Wrong again,” Nasir’s voice was so low and lethal that even Remus looked up and they both saw Nasir draw a silver dagger from his thigh. A dark and disturbing smile twisted across his lips as he spun the blade in his hand to grip it more tightly. “This – is personal.”
“For Nazira?” Arlo gasped as his eyes went wide with a look of shocked understanding.
“Goodbye, Arlo,” Nasir drove the dagger so hard through the man’s chest Arthur heard it clink as it hit the wall on the other side.
He’d barely seen the man move before the blade was buried to the hilt in the left side of the man’s chest and a cry of pain poured from Arlo’s mouth. Arthur watched open mouthed in horror as Nasir dragged the dagger down his torso, splitting him open in one quick pull before slicing horizontally across his lower abdomen. His innards spilled out across the floor with a sickening sound, they covered Nasir’s boots in red before leaking across the dirty floor and sinking into the grooves between the tiles – each organ making a soft thud as it fell to the ground. As if disemboweling him wasn’t enough, Nasir pulled the blade from the corpse and severed the head before finally stepping back and starring at the ground for a long tense second before he dropped the head to the floor in the pile of organs and turned to face Arthur with an indifferent expression.
“We need to leave,” his tone had returned to his typical impassive baritone and his eyes seemed completely void of the darkness that had been there seconds ago. “Are you done?”
“No,” Arthur felt breathless as his eyes flicked from Nasir’s face to the pieces of what was once a human being that now littered the floor. The whole exchange had happened in a matter of seconds and yet it felt like it’d been ages.
How on earth was this person human? How on earth could he do something like that and become immediately disinterested in the situation afterwards? What kind of monster was this man and how the hell did he know Arlo?
Remus recovered first as the girl on the table stared at the mess on the floor in stunned silence. Though she must not have been too upset about it because her face quickly twisted into one of pleased disgust.
“I can’t get this last restraint,” Remus looked between Arthur and Nasir desperately. “I think it was tagged to Arlo’s magical signature but – now I won’t be able to get it undone.”
“What?” Arthur had already finished torching the last of the research tables and he quickly moved over to inspect the band, tapping it with his wand and bending down to peer at it more closely. He felt his heart drop before he looked back to Nasir in frustration. Clearly this man didn’t give a shit about the people in here, he’d come with the sole intention of killing Arlo and now they might have to leave this poor girl behind. “Nasir – this was tagged to him – we could have gotten him to unlock it first–“
“He would not have unlocked it,” Nasir said indifferently before moving towards them. He walked through the bloody remains on the floor as if they didn’t exist and Arthur nearly vomited once more when he saw Arlo’s heart pop under Nasir’s boot. Ava watched him warily as he approached, leaning away from him toward Remus as he rapidly inspected the restraint that wrapped around her left forearm. After a second’s pause Nasir’s eyes shifted indifferently back to Arthur. “We can’t undo this restraint and we’re running out of time – we must leave now – Arthur set the bomb.”
“Wait – wait just a second,” Arthur pulled the bomb from his pocket and quickly placed it on the floor behind him before turning back to the cuff and tapping it with his wand desperately. It seemed to be partially embedded into her arm and the few cutting and unlocking spells he tried did nothing to the metal. He didn’t understand why this restraint was locked but it must have something to do with the banding process or transformation. He gently grabbed the girl’s arm and tugged, but she groaned in pain and her whole body flinched. Arthur could feel the panic building in his body as his timers in his head started to run out. He looked to Nasir and Remus desperately. “There has to be something we can do – we’re right here – we can’t just leave her here to die in the explosion, Nasir.”
“End it now quickly if you want to spare her,” Nasir said evenly as he turned and moved toward the door.
“Please!” Ava grabbed the front of Remus’ robes, desperately clutching the fabric between her dirtied fingers as she sat up on the table and pulled at her arm despite the pain it obviously caused her. The small medical sheet that Remus had turned into a dress slid up her legs as she fought against the restraint, but she did not seem to care as her voice became a shrill panicked plea. “Please – you can’t leave me here – please – I don’t want to die – please take me with you!”
“Arthur, set the timer,” Nasir’s voice darkened as he turned and looked over his shoulder at them.
“Nasir – we can’t just leave her,” Remus was holding the girl’s hand as she clutched him tightly and desperately looked between the men in the room. “She’s not infected yet – she’ll make a full recovery!”
“Set it now,” Nasir turned fully to face them. He’d drawn his wand and his eyes had darkened once more. “Or I will leave you both to die down here.”
“Of course you would,” Arthur’s face twisted in disgust as Nasir’s burning eyes flicked to him. “Once an Unspeakable always an Unspeakable – to you this was never about helping!”
“PLEASE!” Ava turned to Nasir, her face becoming desperate. She tugged Remus closer as if holding him hostage. “Please you have to take me with you – I have a son! He’s just a baby! Please! I’m all he has left – HELP ME! PLEASE – I’M BEGGING YOU!”
Arthur saw Nasir visibly stiffen, his gaze darting back to the woman on the table as something shifted behind his eyes. In three rapid steps he closed the distance to the table and in one swift motion Nasir drew his silver dagger and severed her arm just below the elbow above the restraint. Her scream rang out through the room as blood poured from her arm. The sound pierced Arthur’s ears as he backed away in alarm, watching as Nasir forcefully ripped her severed limb away from the restraint, the final threads of her skin ripping apart before he locked her arm under his against his side to hold it steady while he placed his hand over the bloodied leaking stump.
“Fucking Merlin! WHAT are you doing?!” Remus cried out as the woman’s nails dug into his chest and she yanked to pull away from Nasir. Her blood seeped through his fingers, staining the front of his robes and leaking down his chest. Her face grew pale as he held her stump steady and Arthur watched in disbelief as the skin across the exposed bone began to knit itself back together.
“Saving her life,” Nasir said darkly his eye flicking to Remus with a glint before he cast a quick ferula on her mostly healed arm. The bandages closed around the open wound and stopped the rest of the bleeding. “Now set the timer.”
Evidently most of the woman’s pain must have dissipated when the wound knit back together because she stared up at Nasir blankly and murmured a thank you. Her fingers were still tangled in Remus’ robes, tears stained her pale white cheeks and she began to sway unsteadily on the table from blood loss. Her gaze drifted to Arthur as if in a daze and then her eyes went wide at the same moment that Nasir rapidly began to turn around to face him – and she began to scream for a completely new reason.
Arthur saw Remus’ eyes widen in horror before he felt it – the bone in his leg snapped. He heard it. A loud crack splitting through the air as it cut through his flesh and tore through his pants. His mind registered the feel of his skin shredding at the same moment that he heard a low growl fill the room. Nasir had turned around, his eyes flicking to him before Arthur was knocked to the ground with so much force he couldn’t breathe. Not even a second later something hot and wet sprayed across the back of his neck and he forced himself to roll over despite the agony. A groan of pain poured through his lips as he stared at the bloodied white bone the stuck from his leg and the blood that leaked from his torn pants as the sound of a hundred waking werewolves filled his ears.
He felt his body growing cold with shock.
Remus’ wand was drawn, the werewolf behind him was split in half and Nasir had dropped the woman’s stump to slaughter the second werewolf that entered the room. They must have been the timed internal rounds, which meant they were officially out of time – and they’d just set off the damn alarm.
Arthur felt his hands start to shake as he pulled the pack of supplies from his pocket and downed a bottle of blood replenishing potion before daring to try and move anything else. He could hear Remus calling to him as he pulled the woman from the table, but it echoed dully in his ears before he saw a tanned hand shoot out and grab his leg. It jammed the bone back into place with a rapid shove that made him scream out in pain as his vision blurred before the familiar burn of dittany stung like daggers across his flesh.
He looked up blearily to see Nasir kneeling before him as he felt bandages encase his leg tightly. Arthur saw him pull a small potion bottle from his black robes – it wasn’t part of their kit. The man downed all but a third of it and then he reached forward and grabbed Arthur’s face – dumping the last bit down his throat before tossing the bottle aside. Arthur nearly choked on it, he saw Nasir’s pupils dilate and then he felt a strange heat flood his body. The pain in his leg started to numb and Nasir hoisted him from the ground with an ease that could only be granted from a very well brewed strength potion.
“Remus bring the girl, or this was all for nothing,” Nasir’s voice was almost menacing as he looped Arthur’s arm around his shoulder and all but carried him from the room to the hall.
“I haven’t set the bomb,” Arthur groaned as he limped quickly beside the man and kept his wand gripped tightly in his hand. He didn’t want to know if it was a bite or if he’d simply been hit by claws. It didn’t matter – the only thing that mattered was that they needed to destroy this place and get out, but Nasir ignored his comment and tugged them to the right. He moved them farther down the hall instead of going back the way they entered, Arthur could hear the howls behind him and he immediately knew why but he tugged on the man anyways to stop. “Nasir – I didn’t set the timer – Remus!?”
Remus was moving behind them, the woman was still clutching his robes like death, and she was shaking terribly on her feet as he kept her moving at a run. “I didn’t set it either – Nasir – the timer, we need to go set it.”
A loud snarl cut through the air behind them and Arthur grunted as Nasir pushed him against the wall as something green shot in between them. The tall man instantly hurled three green shots of his own and two men and a werewolf fell to the ground in the hall with a thud.
“There are other ways to burn this place down,” Nasir said darkly and grabbed Arthur again. “There’s a large open unused den at the end – I can get you to the Northern sewer through there.”
Arthur heard more of them coming, but this time it sounded like thunder. The first two had been internal patrols, they’d woken the den and the next three had come to check it out, and now – they were all coming. He could feel the ground trembling beneath his feet as they set off at a scrambling run. Whatever Nasir had given him, and he assumed that it was a very expensive strength potion laced with pain blockers, let him hobble on his leg despite the fact that he knew the bone was still broken and blood was still leaking from his torn flesh. There was a good chance that the bone would pop back out again if he stepped wrong.
The hall quickly turned to slick muddy dirt that dropped into a pit. Nasir held his weight as they all but slid down the ramp into the large open dimly lit space. Water covered the bottom of the farthest half of the pit and they skidded in the mud before ducking as something shot from a ledge across the space. Arthur felt his chest tighten as he took in their surroundings – they’d left one kill box for another.
A string of wizards lined the top of the den and began hurling spells at them as the werewolves flooded down the ramp on the left. Arthur recast his shield charm as Nasir blasted a hole in the wall farthest from them and storm water gushed from a large open pipe, filling the lower half of the pit with an even deeper pool of water.
Arthur felt like his heart was going to explode in his chest as he cut three men on top of the ledge down only for them to be immediately replaced by more. Nasir began taking out the flood of fur that was threatening to destroy them as they tried to move across the room to the sewer. Remus was moving toward them, keeping the woman shielded and splitting werewolves open behind him, picking off the ones that managed to lunge past Nasir’s first set of attacks. Mud and dirt flew everywhere, the ground rattled from the attacks and his mind was deafened from the sounds of explosions. It was like a muggle airstrike inside an underground cave – nothing but explosions and teeth and claws and fur and death as spells flew about, encasing them like a swarm of black flies. They were almost pinned down, the only reason they’d yet to die was because the werewolves were being funneled in through the small hallway opening so it bought them time as they tried to cross the pit.
Arthur’s gaze flashed back to Remus as he cast another sectumsempra to split a man on the ledge and his eyes widened in panic. He screamed to him as he saw a werewolf dodge Nasir’s attack and dart along the wall to Remus’ left – but Remus saw it too late. He tried to push the woman out of the way as the werewolf grabbed him across chest and shoulder, but its teeth grazed her shoulder before she fell to the ground. Ava slid into the mud, falling to her knees, sliding and struggling to push herself up from the ground with her single hand as she groaned out in pain. Blood ran down her arm as she turned back to Remus and Nasir split the werewolf in half.
“Remus!” Arthur ducked as the wall behind him exploded and Nasir turned to fire back a counterattack at the ledge. He saw Ava help Remus shove the dead werewolf corpse from his body. His eyes flicked to Nasir and the strange expression on the man’s face made his heart sink – it wasn’t enough.
They weren’t enough.
Not like this – they were outnumbered. There were too many. They just couldn’t keep up and they wouldn’t make it out of here alive.
Then he saw something dark flick across the man’s face. Almost like he’d been calculating, like he’d reached a decision – and he moved in the most unnatural way Arthur had ever seen. His body twisted around to face the ramp to the left once more, but it happened so quickly it shouldn’t have been possible. Then he adjusted his stance, his back stiffening as he shifted his feet and raised his wand in a dueling form Arthur had never seen.
“Nasir–?” Arthur started to question as he hurled another spell at their attackers, but before he could finish his question bright red and orange flames erupted from the end of the man’s wand.
They curled across the ground, swerving around Remus and ravaging their way up the ramp – cutting through the werewolves like butter, dropping them to the ground and burning them to ash. The sound it made was deafening, it roared as if it were alive and it weaved with precision across the pit like a vicious animal, taking out targets one by one. Arthur shielded his face from the heat, sweat poured from his face as he tugged his last bottle of silver mixed dittany from his pocket. He could hear the wizards on the ledge screaming out orders as they cast wards against the fire and more of them came into view – he would need to cover the ledge as Nasir blocked the ramp, he wouldn’t be able to go to Remus himself. He looked to his injured friend, hoping to Merlin that the woman wasn’t too far gone.
“AVA!” Arthur yelled. The woman was huddled on the ground with Remus who was sitting up and looking pale as he downed a bottled of blood replenisher while still casting attacks at the ledge. She was staring in shock at the fire that poured from Nasir’s wand as it burned through the beasts, but her eyes flicked to him at the sound of her name. Arthur threw her the bottle. “Pour it on the wounds – NOW!”
The woman caught the bottle against her chest with her single hand, staring at it shakily before something in her eyes hardened. Her shoulders stiffened and then she bit the stopper, ripping it from the bottle with her teeth before she scrambled to Remus and dumped the potion across his shoulder.
Arthur turned his attention back to the ledge as billowing green smoke poured from Remus. He fired spell after spell as he ducked and dodged the attacks, and lifeless bodies began to drop into the pit along the wall. He heard a grunt of pain to his left and suddenly Remus stumbled into view, Ava beside him as he cast several spells toward the wall to help cull the men that were climbing atop it.
“Move to the sewer,” Nasir’s voice rang out and they started to dodge their way across the pit and into the water as Nasir continued to warp the fire through the room and take out the werewolves as they entered – though the number coming down the ramp seemed to dwindle as they’d clearly discovered it was a death wish. But they’d not killed nearly enough of them to put a dent in the numbers and he knew the werewolves were being held back.
Arthur’s leg shook dangerously beneath him as they moved. Remus was hunched, his left side was bloodied but he was still capable of moving and Ava stumbled weakly at his side as Nasir backstepped toward them. For a brief second Arthur thought that they were going to make it, they were more than halfway there as the heat in the room became unbearable and it grew hard to breathe – and then the ledge before them exploded and Remus and Ava were sent flying toward the sewer into the muddy water as Arthur landed painfully on his back. Nasir’s fire immediately went out, his hand cutting off the spell a split second before the wave of flames would have washed over them as it was blown by the explosion. His arms flew up before his face, his feet digging into the ground with what must have been a massive sticking spell as he braced himself and leaned into the explosion. Arthur felt the burning heat from the fire scorch painfully over his face as he saw the last remnants of flames wash over Nasir’s body before werewolves began to pour through the newly shattered wall as they continued to stream down the ramp on the left.
Arthur felt his chest tighten.
They would be completely surrounded.
Remus and the woman might yet be able to make it to the sewer – but he and Nasir would not.
-x-x
Hermione ran through the sloping knee-deep water faster than she’d ever moved in her life. Her mind didn’t even acknowledge the smell as she trailed closely behind Harry, her heart beating in her chest like a drum as she felt wave after wave of spiking heart rates in her mind. She felt a tingle on her forearm and she glanced to see that it was Shacklebolt asking for an update – but there was no time to respond with details, she simply told him to hold again.
Something had gone wrong.
Very, very wrong.
She flicked through each set of vitals as they made their way, observing each one for a second before flipping to the next one and feeling the tense anxiety that had riddled her body since the moment they met outside the cottage morph into full-fledged fear. She fought to bite it back as their legs drove them forward. She could see the tension in Harry’s body as he ran and from the way he gripped his wand she knew that he was just as terrified. They both knew that they were running into a death trap. They both knew that there might be nothing that they could do.
But they’re still alive.
They’re still alive.
She repeated the words in her head like a mantra as they began to close the distance to the building and the sewer dropped sharply into deeper water before it leveled out into a second sloping decline. When they were 200 meters away, she felt the ground shake and suddenly the water around them began rushing toward the end. There was only one explanation for it.
“Harry, they opened the sewer!” Hermione yelled at him as they fought not to get swept under the rush of water. They used the movement to push themselves forward faster until the water had completely drained and they were running on bare slick metal. Their feet clanged loudly, it rang in her ears until suddenly the sound was drowned out by an echoing sound of explosions and screaming voices. Hermione felt her pulse quicken as her chest tightened – it sounded like they were running towards a fucking war zone and as they got within twenty feet of the broken end of the pipe heat and a familiar smell filled her nose.
Fiendfyre.
Hermione felt her heart plummet into her stomach and Harry visibly tensed before her. Nasir had specifically told them to never use fiendfyre in small enclosed spaces, especially underground as it would be a deadly mistake. It consumed too much oxygen, there was a risk of explosive gases underground, there was nowhere for the heat to escape to and you could end up dead faster than a blink if you didn’t have immense control of your fire. If he was using it – then they were incredibly fucked.
A deafening sound echoed through the pipe as the ground shook and Hermione fell into Harry, both of them stumbling into the wall of the pipe ten feet short of the hole. The explosion shook the ground and Hermione struggled to right herself as the air burned with a heat that made her throat and eyes sting.
“We need to hurry!” Harry yelled as he grabbed her hand and tugged her forward, covering the last ten feet at breakneck speed.
Hermione slid to a stop, sweat pouring from her face as she looked out the end of the broken pipe and her eyes widened at the sight before her. It was a large open muddy pit. Werewolves were streaming down a muddy ramp on the opposite side, the wall before her to the right looked like it had just been exploded, the top was lined with wizards and werewolves were pouring through the hole at the base.
Remus was less than twenty feet from the sewer. He was covered in blood, his robes were torn and a small muddied woman clung to him, hiding behind his body as he tried to make his way to the sewer while werewolves ran toward them. They were drawing a line between them and the only other two people in the pit.
Nasir stood farther to the left, the sleeves of his shirt were burned almost entirely away, exposing his arms and the raw flesh along his forearms. Blood covered the front of his robes, his hands were covered in ash and he was stepping between Arthur and the ramp as he hurled an explosive spell at a wave of werewolves. Arthur was several feet behind him, his leg was wrapped tightly in bloodstained muddy bandages, he looked slightly disoriented as he tried to pull himself from the ground but he was still slicing down werewolves that poured through the middle.
It was so much worse than anything she could have imagined.
Aside from finding them all dead.
Without pausing for a second and without uttering a word Hermione and Harry jumped into the pit and immediately split off toward their intended targets, instinctively knowing exactly what they needed to do and exactly where the other would go. Hermione felt Harry’s pulse spike like hers and they set into action.
Harry would go to Remus and the woman as neither one of them seemed capable of walking properly and he was physically stronger than her. He could handle them both while Hermione could manage Arthur on her own. Nasir could still walk and didn’t need her physical support. She grimaced and bemoaned the fact that she couldn’t just tether the man and retract him – she wasn’t close enough; she’d have to clear the path and physically get closer since retractable tethers only worked close range.
“ARTHUR!” Hermione bolted towards him, dicing through the werewolves between him and her target with a quick succession of silent sectumsempras at the same moment she heard Harry call for Remus.
She saw both Arthur and Nasir turn to look in their direction at the sound of her voice. Arthur’s eyes widened and Nasir’s face darkened at the sight of them as she cut her way across the room, dodging the spells that were blasted toward her by the men on the ledge and closing the distance between them. She heard an explosion to her right, the ground shaking as Harry broke the top of the ledge and blocked half the hole and crushed several werewolves.
A fresh wave of werewolves burst in through the left and Nasir ignited his fiendfyre once more to take them out as Hermione rolled toward Arthur under an attack and hauled him up on his shaking legs. She fired down the center and split the guy who’d tried to cut her head off into pieces. Then the three of them moved their way back toward Harry and the sewer, ruthlessly cutting down their attackers as they slowly closed the distance to the exit to just a few meters.
“Harry!” Hermione screamed when she caught sight of a werewolf darting around his right while he was attacked by one on his left.
He ducked at the sound of her voice as he cast his spell so she could send her attack over his head and decapitated it. She felt her heart race with fear as she forced herself to take her eyes off him so she could take out the ones in the middle – she didn’t want anything to happen to him. The thought made her sick and she fought to force down her panic as she sent an attack at the ledge while the heart rates beat like a nauseating drum in her head and sweat poured from her body. She felt like they were in an oven but as Nasir’s fire burned across the ground and up the ramp he managed to massacre the werewolves in numbers that sectumsempra just could not compete with.
She could hear her shield timer counting down as the hole that Harry had half sealed exploded open once more and dozens more werewolves and wizards raced into the room as a second hole blew open to the left. Hermione moved from Arthur to launch a round of spells to cover Harry as he lifted the girl into the sewer before he turned and quickly sent an explosion at the collection of wizards that had tried to flank him. He was holding the right side of the room with Remus while she and Arthur fended the center and Nasir abolished the left – but there were just so many of them. She knew that Nasir could wipe them all out with his fiendfyre but it would burn them all to a crisp in the process.
She could feel her shield charm counting down in her head and she felt her stomach knot with dread.
Her eyes darted back to Arthur and Nasir and she felt her jaw tighten as her mind calculated. She couldn’t recast her shield until it fully ran out, which would be in seconds, but there were too many new attackers and she wouldn’t have enough time to complete the wand movements because the spell was too fucking long. She saw two werewolves coming from an angle towards Arthur as more careened from the right. She made a split-second decision and allowed her shield to clock out as she closed the two steps between her and Arthur and rapidly dismembered the beasts that were lunging toward him. She side stepped a spell hurled from the ledge, creating a small window of time and she began to recast.
“Plenus-“
She ducked two spells as she spoke.
“Pro-”
Three werewolves came from the left.
“tego- petram”
Arthur cut down one.
“corPus-LoC-”
Arthur cut a second one down.
“omo-“
She knew she wasn’t going to finish casting it in time but she needed a shield and there wouldn’t be another opening with how rapid things were moving.
She grabbed Arthur by the collar as she finished her wand movements and physically hauled him back from the last werewolf as she finished her words, glancing to Harry to make sure that he was still safe and knowing that the purple spark wouldn’t encase her body in time. She’d be bitten – but she would live through it, the shield would kick in and then she would kill the beast, Arthur would be safe and then she’d be protected for another fifteen minutes which would let them get out of the den.
“tor!”
She saw the jet of purple start to shoot from her wand as the werewolf’s open jaws moved toward her and she jerked Arthur to the ground out of harm’s way. She braced for the feel of its teeth cutting through her skin – knowing that she could not utter an attack until the purple spark had left her wand, she would never be able to move out of the way fast enough without magic and Harry was fending off a swarm that was trying to get inside the sewer after Remus and the girl.
Then the air left her lungs as something collided hard with her chest and she was sent three feet back into the wall behind her. Her purple spark followed, encasing her body as her mind barely registered the sight of Nasir’s tanned and blood covered hand before the sickening sound of crunching bone echoed around her. The werewolf’s jaws clamped around Nasir’s hand which filled the space where she’d stood only a fraction of a second ago – the switch had been instantaneous, and she saw his hand and wand shatter between large white fangs as the fire on the left side of the room instantly went out.
Her eyes shot wide, but she did not falter as Nasir drew his silver dagger with his left hand and drove it through the werewolf’s eye. She raised her wand and took out three werewolves behind him as she heard Harry shout to her and two more dropped to their right before Nasir severed its head from its body with what must have been a wordless sectumsempra. She hit another two werewolves behind him, covering the left side of the pit for him while Arthur took out two men from the center as Harry dropped three more on the right. Nasir yanked his hand from the dead creature’s mouth. His eyes locked to the mangled remains of his hand for a split second before he vanished the blood from his blade – then hacked off his hand above the wrist in one quick unrestrained motion.
“NASIR!” Hermione screamed to him, her eyes catching the glint of something gold and feathery jutting from the end of his arm next to the bone before blood started to gush from the wound at a dangerously rapid pace. His escalated heart rate was all but draining it from his body and she could tell from the way his pupils were dilated that he’d taken something – she suspected that he’d given some of whatever it was to Arthur too because his eyes were the same.
She saw him stagger a fraction before he clamped his left hand over the end of his right stump, she registered the sight of the skin knitting itself back together before she moved to run towards him with her potion pack.
Their eyes locked and she felt her feet stick to the ground, holding her in place, as suddenly time seemed to slow and the thick heated air around them grew tighter. His eyes darkened in a way that she’d never seen before. She felt her heart falter in her chest as black runes began to fade into view along his throat and arms. Her rational brain surmised that he’d just dropped a masking charm that he’d evidently been constantly holding in place – and she felt her blood run cold with understanding as more and more of them became visible.
The illusion was no longer necessary.
He was freeing himself up for something else and she already knew what it was.
“No!” she shouted, tugging at her legs desperately as she cut down another werewolf behind him and one before Arthur. They were all supposed to get out – she wouldn’t let it end like this, no one was going to be left behind.
“Go,” his voice was low, the rich baritone laced with a darkness that made her stomach roll and the hair on the back of her neck stand up.
He grabbed Arthur from the ground, hauled him to his feet with his single hand and all but threw the man to her. Blood continued to trickle from the end of his right arm as Hermione caught Arthur, and she heard Harry call to her once more as he covered their right flank and fended off the opening to the sewer while shifting his way across the few feet that separated them.
“Hermione!” Harry yelled from behind her, his voice dripping with urgency.
Hermione wrapped Arthur arm’s over her shoulder and cast a silent feather light charm on him to ease the weight. “Nasir, we’re all leaving–”
“You gave me your word,” his dark voice cut her off as his eyes started to burn and then they shifted to Harry. “Harry – get her out of here!”
It was the one and only time that she’d ever heard him raise his voice and the intensity of it cut through her chest like a knife. She felt Arthur stiffen at her side as Harry’s tether pulled them both backward in a harsh tug before fiendfyre erupted from the end of Nasir’s wandless left hand as he cut down a werewolf on the left simultaneously and Hermione’s eyes widened in shock. The flames cut across the ground between them, snaking its way up the ledge across the top and spreading down the wall like a wave as it consumed everything in its path. The roar of it was deafening and the heat was unbearable, it forced her to step backward with Arthur as she felt Harry’s hand grab her arm tightly, his barely audible voice sounding in her ear as he tugged her toward the sewer.
“We have to go Hermione – now.”
She turned with Harry, dodging a spell from two men still left on the ledge. They were cut into pieces as Harry fired back and Hermione lifted Arthur into the sewer and told him to run. The woman and Remus were already inside making their way up the sloped pipe as the heat in the room caused the metal to grow hot. Hermione hauled herself inside, helping to pull Harry up the small ledge while taking one last look at the only man she’d ever truly considered her mentor and she fought back the urge to go try and save him. He looked unreal, he looked elegant and terrifying. He looked like death itself, dressed in all black and covered in blood as flames poured from his bare hand and surrounded him in a ring of red, orange and yellow fire. He shifted the line of fire before the sewer to block it off from the rest of the pit as he set the place alight – carving through the bodies like they were nothing.
She felt a sharp tug across her heart, and she clenched her jaw in pain. Then she turned on her heel with Harry and ran.
“Get Arthur!” Harry panted as he sprinted ahead of her to Remus and the woman. She could see in the dim light ahead that they were desperately struggling to make their way up the sloped sewer with their injuries.
“I’ve got him,” she caught up to Arthur quickly and wrapped his arm over her shoulder once more, casting a second feather light charm and using tethers to pull them along the pipe quicker. Sweat poured from her body as she moved them down the pipe at a rapid speed. She was drenched in it and she had no idea how Nasir was still alive and standing in the middle of the firestorm. She had no idea how he hadn’t blown the place up by hitting the gas line and while a small part of her was desperate to believe that he would still make it out – she knew that she’d never see him again.
She could feel a pain in her side as her breathing became labored, but she didn’t relent, she pushed them forward and forced Arthur to run despite his injury as the sound of the fire echoed down the pipe around them.
They needed to get out. They needed to get outside the wards.
She could feel Nasir’s calm and steady heart beating at a racing pace and she knew that he would not blow the place until they were safe – but there was only so long he would be able to hold it. She approached the drop seconds after Harry had just hoisted himself over the ledge after lifting Remus and the woman before him.
“I got him!” he called down to her as he lifted Arthur up over the edge while she jumped up and used a tether and sticking charm to quickly pull herself over. She grabbed Arthur once more as Harry moved before her to grab Remus and the woman. Then they set off at a rapid run, their feet echoing loudly through the sewer as they made their way to the exit at a full-on sprint and pulled themselves forward with tethers.
This wasn’t how this was supposed to go.
Hermione’s mind raced as Arthur heart fluttered painfully in her head and he cried out in pain. She cast a levitation charm on his body, balancing him before her as sweat poured into her eyes. She could see a bone in his leg had broken free of his soggy bindings.
They weren’t supposed to get hurt.
Hermione felt her jaw clench painfully tight as her eyes flicked to Arthur and she felt an anger spark to life in the center of her chest as she took in his burnt and mangled form. He was supposed to be safe – not maimed and injured and possibly infected.
We were all supposed to make it.
She felt her chest constrict as her breaths came in pants. She hadn’t been able to save Nasir – and he’d made himself solely responsible for destroying the base and protecting their escape. Her eyes flicked to Harry and her heart ached at the soot covered sight of him, the blood that covered his clothes and the strain across his shoulders as he hauled Remus and the barely clad woman forward.
I should have been stronger.
She could hear the storm and see the rain as the exit came fully into view and they rapidly reached the end of the pipe. Remus was panting so hard before her she was worried that he was going to pass out or vomit. Harry was already lifting the woman through the burst pipe as Hermione came to a stop behind him, flicking her wand to start lifting Remus who looked ready to pass out as Harry took Arthur and carefully levitated him out next.
“Let’s go,” Harry grabbed her arm when the others were safely topside and he cast an ascendio, launching them both through the opening and back into the storm.
The cold wind and rain stung against her heat burned face, it sent a shiver down her back as she landed on the soggy ground next to Harry and he instantly began to seal the sewer. Remus was tending to Arthur and the woman sat huddled on the ground with her knees drawn to her chest as she shivered uncontrollably. The second the sewer was secured Hermione pressed her fingers to her forearm and sent a single message.
Hr-Safe.
A split second later the ground trembled louder than the thunder from the storm and the roaring sound of flames reverberated through the air despite the wards. Her eyes shifted to the building that stuck out above the trees – and her body went rigid at the sight. Flames burst out through the windows, weaving through the building and punching holes through the sides as it threaded its way through the concrete. It moved like it was alive, pulsing like a single beating heart until a great raging dragon burst through the roof and consumed the entire building. It wings burst out through the walls and torched the surrounding area.
Hermione felt the wards enclosing the space shudder before her as everything inside the bubble burned and melted under the extreme heat of the raging fire. It was larger than anything she’d even seen. It was violent, angry, beautiful and horrifying. She felt eight panicked hearts beating heavy in her head as her legs started to tremble and she grabbed Harry as he came to stand next to her. The stress levels soared, the panic grew, and the collective fear consumed her mind as Harry tugged her closer and they watched the inferno burn in awe.
She forced her mind to focus on the one and only steady heartbeat that thrummed quick but calm as the dragon raged and brought the building to the ground. Suddenly the ground shook violently as the deafening sound of an explosion went off, signaling the ignition of the gas lines, Arthur’s bomb and the complete obliteration of the den. Hermione’s fingers dug into Harry as she held him tightly, his arms wrapping firmly around her as she forced herself to watch the explosion unfold.
Her eyes pinched closed when the light from the fire became blinding and at 8:07 am she felt the calm steady thrumming heartbeat come to a stop after one final hard beat.
Dear Neha, thank you for nominating my fic. It means more to me than you could possibly know. I was unaware of this page, but it was flagged to me in the discord group and it made my week. David - thank you for your kind comment on the nomination post. I can't remember the last time that I smiled that hard. You two are simply too kind.
-x-x-
The second that Nasir’s heart rate stopped the fiendfyre went out, and the enclosed space and rubble was left burning under a slow steady blaze. Hermione’s grip on Harry tightened and she felt a painful hollow emptiness forming in the center of her chest as her eyes started to sting. She swallowed hard, forcing the emotional wave that threatened to consume her down as the ninth tag rang empty and silent in her head.
She didn’t have time for this.
She didn’t have the luxury of having feelings right now.
She had seven other heart rates fluttering with panic in her mind and she had three people half-dead and crumpled on the ground behind her.
Her hands tightened on Harry once more and she felt him return the gesture before she forced herself to push away from him and step back. Her eyes met his, he was looking at her with a sadness and a deep worry that made her heart ache. She couldn’t handle it. She couldn’t deal with his concern right now, so she simply shook her head at him once as her jaw clenched into a tight line. She felt the tingle of a message appearing on her forearm at the same moment that a numbness started to encase her body. It felt like someone had cracked an egg over her head – a cold detachment was starting to run down her spine from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. It was hollow, it was empty, and a dull ringing began to sound in her ears. Adrenaline was still pumping through her body and keeping her on her feet despite her desperate exhaustion – but she could feel herself disassociating from her surroundings as she stared at Harry hard. She saw the concern in his eyes growing as she took a second step back and she felt her eyes harden and her body growing cold.
It hurt.
Everything hurt and yet none of it mattered right now.
The mission wasn’t over. There was still so much left to do, and she didn’t have a spare second to mourn or take a breath or hold Harry tightly and scream. They needed to leave. They needed to leave right now, and they needed to get Mrs. Weasley and Fleur out of the Ministry as per the plan.
She needed to somehow heal Arthur so he could go into work. She felt her stomach roll anxiously before the coldness finally encased her entirely. It settled over her body like a thick blanket as she closed down the panic that had been consuming her mind and forced herself to focus on the immediate next steps. Harry’s hands lingered on her waist as she took a final step away, like he was hesitant to let her go because he knew exactly what was happening – he knew exactly what she was doing and he was worried. He knew that she was disconnecting herself so she could deal with what was left of the mission and she saw his jaw clench before he finally let his hands fall away and he nodded somewhat stiffly.
Hermione forced herself to tear her eyes away from him, she’d already wasted precious seconds since the explosion, and she could not afford to waste any more time. She swallowed hard and glanced at her forearm to see that the incoming message was from Kingsley, he was asking for an update. She felt the weight on her chest from her rune grow heavy as her eyes darted to the three other people who were huddled like a mess on the ground behind them and then her body became robotic as she set into motion.
“Harry, tell Shacklebolt and Bill to cut the blaze and leave now as per the original plan,” Hermione said as she moved rapidly towards Arthur, Remus and the woman. She dragged them closer together so she could grip them all for apparition. The woman flinched when Hermione grabbed her wrist, but she was too weak to fight against her pull and too dazed from blood loss to complain.
“On it,” Harry said as he quickly began sending messages to the team through his tag. She could feel the buzzing on her forearm, but she could also hear the tightness in his voice. She knew that he was tense with worry even though his body was responding robotically like hers regardless. He moved toward her as he sent the messages and then grabbed hold of Remus tightly. The man had vomited violently after being lifted to the surface and his breathing was ragged and wheezed – Hermione suspected that his lung was either punctured, or damn near close.
“Harry – grip my neck. I’ll hold Arthur and the woman and try to make this as smooth as possible. Arthur,” Hermione paused briefly as she looked at the injured man, his eyes were red with tears of pain and he looked slightly disoriented. She grimaced; she knew that she shouldn’t be apparating any of them with their current injuries, but she also knew that they could not stay here. They needed to get back to Shell Cottage where it was safe. She couldn’t heal them here; it was way too risky. “We’re going to apparate – this is going to hurt but I need you to try and stay awake.”
He nodded, his jaw clenched too tightly for him to respond.
Hermione hesitated for a fraction of a second as Harry gripped the back of her neck tightly, her eyes flicking to the woman whose wrist she held tightly. She was covered in mud and blood and was looking up at Hermione with both fear and awe.
“This is going to be unpleasant,” Hermione said to her quietly. “Just try to breathe.”
Without another second’s hesitation Hermione apparated all five of them to Shell Cottage. She tried to land them as softly as she could, but apparition was never intended to be completed when injured because of the pressure that it put on one’s body. It always made injuries worse. So, when screams broke out when they landed on the wet sand in the still raging storm Hermione was not at all surprised.
The woman collapsed on the ground by her feet the second the apparition was completed and began retching violently as fresh blood trickled down her arm where the skin had ripped open and torn wider. Arthur screamed out in pain, his hand shot to his leg where the bone had twisted during the apparition and was now sticking almost a foot out of his calf as blood gushed from the re-opened wound. His face was pale, and she could see that he was going into shock as the rain poured down on them. Hermione’s jaw clenched tight as she cast a feather light charm on him and wordlessly levitated him from the ground. She looked to see Remus clutching his chest in agony, he couldn’t seem to breathe, and his legs were shaking violently beneath him as Harry held his slumped body.
Fuck, she wished there was a way to stun an injured person but it was generally frowned upon in medical care as it impacted the healing.
“Harry,” Hermione called out quickly, her eyes flashing over to him to see that his eyes had hardened. He was entirely focused now – she knew that he would want to talk to her about what had happened afterwards but for the moment his attention was entirely dedicated on the three people bleeding out around them. “We need to get inside now – can you get her?”
“I got her,” Harry had already started to answer before she’d even finished her words. He moved quickly and picked the woman up from the ground like she weighed nothing, his arm wrapped tightly around her waist as he moved quickly toward the cottage.
Hermione carried Arthur with the aid of her levitation charm as he continued to groan out in pain with incoherent sentences. Each scream he made grated against her soul and threatened to break her cool detachment. She felt her heart rate spike with a fresh wave of adrenaline as they closed the short distance to the cottage. When they got within ten feet the door burst open and an extremely pale Ronald Weasley came rushing out.
“Dad!” he looked like he was about to be sick as his eyes took in the sight of them. “Fucking Merlin – Dad! What happened?! What happened?!”
“MOVE!” Harry shouted as he shoved past him, carrying Remus and the woman inside as Hermione followed closely behind him.
Hermione said nothing as she carried Arthur past Ron and through the entrance of the cottage, but she heard Ron following closely behind them as questions continued to pour from his mouth at an increasingly panicked intensity. Dean was standing in the kitchen with a look of shock on his face and for the first time since she landed them inside the wards Hermione realized just how loud the collective cries of pain were. Ron had probably heard them before he’d seen them and immediately come running out.
“Clear the table!” Harry had yelled at Dean the second he’d entered as she hauled a soaking wet Arthur toward the kitchen behind him. Dean hesitated for a moment before he pulled out his wand and everything on the table flew off to the floor.
Hermione pushed forward and dropped Arthur on the table as her legs started to shake. Her eyes latched to the man’s face as he groaned out to her in pain.
“It’s okay – I’ve got you,” she said quickly as she tethered him to the surface to limit his movements.
Harry had plunked the woman into a chair then dropped Remus into the vacant one next to her. She’d already curled her legs up to her chest – she was sobbing and shaking in her seat as her single hand latched over her ear to try and block out the sounds while Harry quickly began ripping Remus’ robes from his chest so he could assess the wounds.
Hermione rapidly cast a set of diagnostic spells, one appearing above each of the three injured people before she glanced to Harry once more. “Harry – what do you got?”
Everything felt like it was happening all at once and the voices in the cottage were growing louder as Ron came to stand beside his dad. His face grew impossibly white as his hand knotted into his hair and he watched the scene unfold with horror. He looked ready to lose it as Dean shrunk back into the corner with wide terrified eyes. She could feel the tingle of messages rolling in on her forearm, but she had no time to look at them or send anything back.
“Punctured lung – bite – torn ligaments,” Harry called as his eyes rapidly scanned the diagnostic charms above him, and he ripped the final shreds of Remus’ clothes from his chest and shoulder. Then his voice dropped, and his jaw clenched. “The girl is infected – but her wounds are shallow, I’m not sure what happened to her arm though – it looks like it was cut clean off, she might have been hit during the attack.”
“Fuck,” Hermione’s hands were moving over Arthur as she ripped away the tattered remains of his pant leg and vanished the blood soaked bandages that had temporarily held his leg together. “Broken tibia – cracked fibula – destroyed tissue, muscle, ligaments – all of it.”
Hermione felt her heart constrict in her chest before she uttered her next words with a grimace.
“Arthur is infected.”
She saw Harry’s shoulders tense as Ron’s voice cut through the air above the nauseating cries of pain that echoed in the small room.
“Infected?! Infected! Was he bitten?! What happened – Hermione – what happened?!” Ron was gripping Arthur’s hand tightly. He was looking at her desperately and adding no value while being completely in her way.
“Move,” Hermione said harshly as she pushed around him. She quickly yanked her small potion pack from her pocket and dumped the contents onto the table. Harry had pulled out his small pack as well, but he’d not yet managed to untether her purse since his attention was flicking rapidly between the two injured people before him and he was focused on getting air into Remus’ failed lungs before the man turned blue. She did a quick mental calculation of the potions on the table and clenched her jaw.
We don’t have enough supplies out – or enough hands, she thought bitterly as the two of them continued to rapidly move around the injured people. Her eyes flashed to Ron and she groaned internally before she begrudgingly opened her mouth.
“Ron, where are Fleur’s potions? I need more dittany – grab it from her stores or get the purse from Harry’s pocket, he doesn’t have enough hands.”
“Hermione, please – is he going to be okay?! What happened, please?!” this time Ron’s voice broke as he spoke. He’d stumbled back when she’d pushed him aside and she could see that tears were forming in his eyes.
“Ron – Dean! Get extra dittany!” Harry yelled in frustration as he began trying to repair Remus’ lungs while simultaneously disinfecting the muggle woman’s wound. Her cries of pain rang out loudly as she writhed against the tether he had placed on her to hold her in the chair. They’d brought the muddy war zone into the small cottage and the current inhabitants had not been prepared for it. The cold wind was ripping in through the open door as thunder rumbled and shook the walls.
Hermione felt her stomach knot as her left hand started to shake while she opened the wound cleanser she’d wordlessly summoned from the pile of potions on the table. It was currently the weakest part of her body and she had overworked it during the extraction. She knew that the damage would not be permanent because it was fully healed, and Nasir had said it was okay to use it – but it was giving out on her just the same, and so were the muscles in her legs. They were starting to tremble more intensely, and she could see the fatigue that riddled Harry’s body too as her eyes flicked to him.
Come on body! she screamed internally. Not now! We’re not done yet!
Hermione’s eyes flashed back to Ron with annoyance at his lack of response to her direction but then she stiffened. He was looking at her with an expression similar to the one that Harry had given her when he’d seen her after Malfoy Manor.
This is his father and he’s not prepared to deal with this, she thought with annoyance. She groaned outwardly and forced herself not to yell at the redhead for his incompetence because she knew it would only make him even more useless. She knew he’d never seen anything like this – he wasn’t desensitized and able to block everything out like Harry and her. So as badly as she wanted to shake and scream at him, she didn’t.
“We don’t know exactly what happened,” Hermione said to the redhead quickly when their eyes locked, and she fought to keep her voice from sounding too cold and harsh. She placed a hand on Arthur’s chest and added two more tethers before dumping the wound cleanser down his leg. His screams filled the air and Ron flinched hard as he watched his dad fight against her tethers as she pressed down on his chest to hold him still. “We didn’t have a clean exit – he was bitten, yes – but I’m trying to save his life – I CAN save his life – but I need you to get your shit together and help us. Get the extra potions that Fleur keeps. I need dittany, Ron – dittany, blood replenisher, calming draught and silver powder. I know this is hard – but I need you to focus!”
Hermione moved back to Arthur’s leg once the cleansing potion was done fizzing and she rapidly began to pick out the pieces of fabric that littered his wound, her eyes flicking up to the diagnostic charm to monitor his blood levels and stress levels before they darted back to Ron. She could feel an anger igniting in her chest as she stared at the incompetent redhead. His eyes were still teary and wide with shock as his gaze was locked on Arthur while her hands became stained with his blood. She looked to see Harry use the last bottle of blood replenisher they had out on the table to stop the muggle woman from blacking out while he treated Remus, and her already thin patience snapped. Arthur was barely conscious and was about to pass out or go into shock and she needed him to drink a blood replenisher first.
She didn’t have time for this shit.
In two seconds she was going to stun Ron, throw him from the cottage and start blindly summoning for potions and damaging the cottage to get what she needed.
“RON!” she screamed his name harshly, her eyes blazing with anger as her trembling hand continued to tend to Arthur’s wound. The redhead flinched at the sound, it seemed to shake him from his dazed horror and his eyes darted to her immediately. “We don’t have enough hands! FUCKING DO SOMETHING!”
Ron’s eyes went wide and for a brief second she thought he was going to freeze up again, pass out or just continue to be entirely useless like Dean – who was currently in shock and pressed against the far wall with his eyes shut tight and his hands covering his ears.
She opened her mouth to stun him and get him out of the way – but then the unbelievable happened.
Ron’s jaw clenched, and he nodded. He turned on his heel and darted toward a large cabinet at the back of the kitchen, rapidly tapping it with his wand to unlock it and grabbing potion bottles from the shelf by the arm-full. He ran back and dumped them on the table before moving to Hermione’s side as she finished removing the last bits of the torn fabric from the open leg wound.
“What else can I do?” Ron’s voice was tight, his face was pale, but his eyes no longer looked crazed with panic.
“Give him one full vial of blood replenisher – the tall black bottle there,” Hermione’s eyes flicked back up to the diagnostic as she began removing the bone fragments from Arthur’s leg. “Make sure he swallows the whole thing – then help Harry – I’m about to set his bone.”
Ron grabbed the blood replenishing potion from the table and moved to Arthur’s head, coaxing the contents of the bottle down his throat before tossing the empty bottle aside.
“Can’t we give him calming potion or something?” Ron asked desperately as Arthur’s groans grew louder and sweat poured from his forehead.
“No – someone gave him something and its effect are still lingering – I can’t mix the potions,” Hermione’s eyes darted to the diagnostic once more and she took a deep breath before she cast several more tethers across Arthur’s body and he became completely immobilized. Her eyes locked to Arthur’s bleary unfocused ones and she gripped his hand tightly even though she doubted that he knew what was going on around him. “Arthur – I’m so sorry.”
Then, without hesitating she let go of his hand, grabbed the bone jutting from his leg and with a sickening crunch – she twisted it and jammed it back into place. The cry that split from his lips was deafening, it sent a shiver down her spine, but she ignored it – tuning out everything around her and allowing the cold detachment to encase her fully once more as she forced her mind to focus on the bone in her hands. She aligned it carefully so she could mend it with her wand. Arthur’s cries were short lived as he passed out the second her left fingers dipper further into his leg to keep the bone set. She fought against her tremors to keep everything steady as her bloody right hand slipped on the handle of her wand before she quickly cast the bone mending spell.
It was a rudimentary one, one that was intended to heal cracks or simple break – not massive breaks that stuck out of a leg. Thus, she had to hold the broken bones in the ‘right place’ for it to work – but it was the best that she had as she’d not yet mastered the trauma repair spells that would have been used at St. Mungo’s for such an injury.
She made a mental note to add the trauma spells to the top of her list of magic that she needed to perfect as part of her training. From the corner of her eye she saw Ron pale further, but he continued to help and was currently pouring silver-mixed-dittany over the muddy woman’s shoulder under Harry’s verbal instruction. A quiet pop sounded somewhere outside and Hermione twisted in time to see Bill running into the cottage with his wand drawn as lightning flashed behind him.
“Harry, Hermione – oh my – fuck – what happened?! Is everyone okay?” Bill ran toward Hermione just as she’d finished healing the bone and summoned a bottle of dittany and silver powder.
“Sort of,” Hermione said tightly her eyes flicking to Bill before she began sprinkling the silver powder over Arthur’s leg. “Everyone is alive – and they’ll be okay soon, but you’re supposed to be at the Ministry – we need to extract Fleur, what happened?”
“I know – but Shacklebolt sent me here after we extinguished the blaze and took down the wards because you weren’t responding,” Bill moved toward his father and his face grew pale as a grimace formed across his face. “Though now I can see why you weren’t – what can I do – what do you need?”
“Nothing,” Harry’s voice was tight, but he gave Bill a quick sympathetic look over his shoulder. He’d finally managed to inflate Remus’ lung and patch the hole. It looked like he’d pulled a fang from the man’s chest as a large white tooth was sitting on the floor by his feet. The greying wizard wheezed in a huge ragged breath of air before coughing up blood violently and groaning outwardly in pain. “We need you to get Fleur out – Luna and Andromeda will need her help and Hermione and I can’t go there until we’re done here. Remus how many did you extract?”
“Eleven total,” Remus wheezed, his eyes watering with pain as Harry rapidly summoned silver powder and began dusting it over the puncture holes in his chest and shoulder. Fresh blood had started to trickle out of the holes since it was no longer draining into his lungs. “Ten at the safehouse – three of them are werewolves.”
Bill nodded, his jaw clenching in a tight line as his eyes flicked back to Hermione in time to see her dumping dittany over the gaping wound on Arthur’s leg. Green smoke billowed from the wound as the skin and muscle began to reform.
“Alright – Hermione,” Bill paused as he begrudgingly moved toward the exit. His hesitation to leave was clear and Hermione understood exactly why. “Is – is he?”
“He’s okay Bill,” Hermione said as gently as she could. She began cleaning up some of the blood around Arthur’s leg as it continued to heal. “He was bitten but he’s okay. Did you have any problems cleaning up the explosion?”
“No,” Bill responded automatically, his brain working logically despite the fact that his eyes were still locked on his father’s battered form and were laced with concern. “Shacklebolt had cast some anti-muggle wards and blocking charms so the explosion wouldn’t be seen. We removed our wards, put out the fire and did a quick sweep – there was nothing in the area, no person alive within miles. We fixed the blast zone too, so it doesn’t look so circular. It will look like the gas line exploded like we’d planned. No one will know until tonight when Bellatrix comes by to inspect the place as per their usual schedule. Fleur and my mum have made a point of being very visible in the office so far this morning so we should be okay with our cover.”
“Good,” Hermione nodded.
Bill’s eyes darted around the room and his brow furrowed before his eyes shifted back to her. “Where is Nasir?”
Hermione felt her spine stiffen as suddenly the room seemed to go quiet and emotions threated to distract her focus. Then a loud clap of thunder made her body flinch and she swallowed everything back down. She focused on the dull weight that sat on her chest because the burden made it easier to feel nothing.
“He didn’t make it,” she said stiffly, forcing her arms to keep working on the injured man before her.
Bill remained quiet for a long few seconds before he finally spoke. “I’m sorry.”
Hermione only nodded, the cold detachment becoming more hardened in her body as she kept her eyes glued to Arthur.
“What are we going to do about my mum’s extraction,” Bill’s voice was tight after another painfully long second had passed, though his eyes were once again locked to Arthur. “She only has just over half an hour left.”
“I only need another fifteen minutes tops,” Hermione said tightly, knowing that Arthur was about to have a very terrible day. “Once I’m done, I’m going to wake him up, load him up with potions and pain pills and he’ll be able to go into work.”
“You’re sending him to work?!” it was Ron who spoke, his voice was incredulous, and his face was twisted in pain.
“We have to,” Bill said tightly, and Hermione saw him swallow hard as he nodded once firmly. “It’s too risky to leave mum there and he needs an alibi for the full day with the right people or we are all fucked.”
Ron’s jaw tightened but he didn’t say anything else. Instead he followed Harry’s direction to give the woman a calming draught potion.
“Bill,” Hermione said in the calmest voice she could manage as her hands stilled by Arthur’s leg.
His eyes darted to hers and she could see the tension through his body as his jaw clenched tighter. She knew that he knew what he needed to do but he was struggling to physically pull himself away from the cottage – away from Arthur.
“Go get Fleur,” Hermione said softly, her eyes locking to his intently. “I swear to you on my life – Arthur will be safe.”
“I know,” Bill said quietly, his voice like a whisper as he nodded once and then forced his legs to carry him back out into the storm.
Hermione heard the pop of him disapparating before she set a timer for fifteen minutes in her head and then focused her attention back on Arthur. She needed to repair every tiny scratch that littered his body and fix his burns so that he could function at work. It made her stomach roll to think that she was going to send him into work after being this injured – but they really didn’t have a choice. Mrs. Weasley had already been at the office too long and every minute longer put them at risk of being exposed. The woman had already sat through his morning department meeting, but she didn’t have the skill set to do Arthur’s job in full and she was likely barely getting by pretending to be her husband as it was. Hermione had briefly considered going into the Ministry to fill the role herself, but the reality was she would not be able to pass off as Arthur any better than Mrs. Weasley could, and they could not afford any mistakes or suspicions.
She also knew that despite the severity of his injury, he would be okay when she woke him up. Despite how gruesome it looked; the worst part was actually over. Physically he would be fine. His pain could be managed, his leg would be functional – it would just be stiff and sore to walk on like how her muscles had been after reforming in September. He would be okay so long as his mind could rationalize what had happened and adjust to the trauma.
Hermione finished cleaning the blood from Arthur’s leg and inspected the new tissue – it seemed to have healed okay and all the muscles were in the right spot. She moved toward his chest, summoning a new bottle of dittany and quickly treating the small cuts on his hands and face before moving toward his head. Her left arm was shaking so badly now it had become weak and when she summoned a container of burn cream, she struggled to unscrew the lid. She was about to curse outwardly in frustration when a pale hand came into view and gently took the container from her shaking hand. Her eyes darted upwards and then widened in surprise.
“I’ve got it,” Ron’s voice was so soft it sounded sad. He quickly unscrewed the lid and then looked up to meet her gaze. “What do I do with it – just cover the burns on his face?”
“Yes,” Hermione said as her brow furrowed a fraction. She reached forward and took some on the index finger of her right hand and began carefully spreading the cream over the tops of Arthur’s burned hands. “Put a thin layer over his whole face. It needs to set for ten minutes – then we wash it off and it should be healed. Work quickly though because we’re running out of time.”
Ron nodded, placing the open containing on Arthur’s chest so that they could both use it as they began coating the burns that littered his skin. Hermione’s eyes darted up to Harry and she noted that the woman was now sitting calmly in the chair by his side. Her eyes were half lidded; her breath was coming in low slow gasps, but her wounds had healed, and her vitals were reading strong on the diagnostic charm. The magic had taken – her body had not rejected it.
Remus’ wounds were now closed, though he looked beaten and worn. He sat slumped in his chair; his glazed eyes locked to Arthur’s unmoving form as Harry summoned small globs of burn paste from the opened container on Arthur’s chest to tend to the burns that littered his skin.
An eerie quiet settled across the cottage as all three of them worked in silence. The rain was pouring in the door of the cottage, but no one paid it any mind as the thunder continued to rumble and the lightning lit up the sky. As the burn paste was setting Hermione made her way over to Harry and untethered her purse from his pocket so she could get out their broader potion collection while he finished tending to Remus. She pulled out a few different bottles and placed them on the kitchen counter before she pulled out a collection of muggle medications as well. She received a message from Bill that he had successfully swapped places with Fleur and then Fleur sent one to say that she was at the werewolf safe house. Shacklebolt indicated that he was back at his post and his absence had been undetected and Hermione notified Mrs. Weasley that she needed to prepare because her swap with Arthur would be imminent.
When the ten minute mark hit Hermione quickly washed the dried burn paste from Arthur’s skin and then prepared to wake him up.
“Rennervate,” Hermione muttered for no other purpose than the benefit of the others in the room. She hadn’t needed her wand or her words to cast the spell.
Arthur’s eyes shot wide, his vitals flared, his heart raced, and his breath came in short quick gasps as his mind reacted to the pain that he’d been in before he’d passed out. Undoubtedly, he was still in pain, but she knew his reaction would lessen once his mind caught up to the current state of his body.
“Arthur,” Hermione said firmly as she squeezed his hand and placed a hand on the side of his face, directing his gaze toward her and waiting until she saw recognition in his eyes. “Arthur – you’re okay, it’s okay. Just breathe – I need you to focus on my face and tell me if you can move your left toes.”
“Hermione?” his voice was tight, and she could see the confusion in his eyes as his breathing slowly began to regulate. Then realization dawned across his face. “Oh Merlin – are you okay? Is everyone okay? Did we get everyone out? Was the den destroyed?”
“Arthur,” she tightened her grip on his hand. “Everyone is fine, the den is destroyed – I need you to do what I say because we need to get you to the Ministry so we can get Mrs. Weasley home. Wiggle your left toes – can you do that?”
Arthur nodded and then grimaced in pain, but she saw his foot moving at the end of the table.
“Good,” Hermione nodded, her eyes checking his diagnostic to confirm that the final lingering effects of whatever Nasir had given him had worn off. “I have a collection of potions I need you to drink okay – I won’t lie to you Arthur; this is going to suck but I have to get you moving. So on the count of three I’m going to sit you up.”
Arthur nodded and clenched his jaw.
“One, two, three,” Hermione released the tethers and pulled Arthur from the table. He groaned loudly but he managed to sit up and twist himself around so his legs dangled off the edge of the table. His eyes were creased in pain as Hermione summoned over the first of a string of potion bottles. “Blood replenisher first – then calming draught to relax your muscles, then pepperup to clear your mind and then some muggle pain pills okay?”
Arthur diligently took everything that she handed him without question, and Hermione watched his vitals on the diagnostic to ensure that everything was working according to plan. When he had finally swallowed everything, she had two minutes left on her timer and just under fifteen minutes before Mrs. Weasley became Mrs. Weasley once more.
“Okay,” Hermione breathed out before she crouched down on the floor and took his leg in her shaking hand. “I’m going to numb your leg from the knee down – you won’t really be able to feel anything so just make sure that you don’t do anything obviously strange today like stand in a puddle or trip over it. You’re going to have to be careful using it because you won’t be able to feel it very well but it will get you through the day with less pain.”
“Alright,” he breathed as he waited for her to apply the charm. She saw his eyes look around, taking in the room and the people around them as she worked on his leg and cast the spell Nasir had taught her. Then she saw his face fall. “He didn’t make it.”
His voice was so low and quiet it made her heart still in her chest as she hauled herself from the ground and helped him to stand. She ignored his words, not wanting to address the fact that Nasir was gone for a second time and needing to keep that fact buried in the base of her mind so she could continue to do what was needed. She also knew that discussing it now was not the time – he needed to leave before Mrs. Weasley’s Polyjuice wore off, they didn’t have time to debrief on the situation.
“How’s the leg,” Hermione said flatly, her face entirely void of emotion as Arthur swayed on his feet before her. But his face had suddenly crumpled, he gripped her arms tightly as his bloodshot eyes latched to hers.
“It’s my fault,” he said as his voice broke. “It’s my fault Hermione – I – I’m so sorry – I wouldn’t leave – I – I was wrong about him, I didn’t think that he would – he stayed and I–“
“Arthur,” Hermione cut him off tightly as she gripped the man back in return. Her face twisted into a pained look as her voice dropped to a low whisper and she fought to keep her emotions in check while she held the rattled man before her. “Arthur I can’t even imagine what’s going through your head right now, but I need you to focus okay – I need you right now – we need you. The mission isn’t over yet and I need you to get it together for the next few hours. You need to go to the Ministry so we can extract your wife. I need you to do your job and pretend like everything is fine until your day ends at 4:30. Then you’re coming right back here to the cottage for the debrief, and we can talk then – I promise – but right now I need you to focus. Please – please, Arthur – can you do that for me?”
His eyes were swimming, but he nodded. Hermione had no doubt that his head was currently flooded with the smell and sounds and images of what he’d seen in the den and she started to doubt the decision to send him to work. If he couldn’t process this or lock it down, they were fucked.
“How’s the leg?” she repeated more softly as she held him steady.
“It’s okay,” he all but whispered as he took a tentative step and tried to figure out how to use a limb he could hardly feel. He didn’t ask about the wound – if it was from a bite or a claw, and so she did not tell him. She knew that he probably suspected the former and she knew that he didn’t want to know just yet. He wasn’t ready.
As he figured out how to walk without falling with Ron’s support, Hermione cast several cleaning charms over his body to rid him of the dirt and smell of death that clung to him. She summoned blankets from the couch and rapidly transfigured them into clean clothes that perfectly matched his original ones before they’d been burnt and torn. She stuffed his pockets with pepperup, calming draught and a second dose of muggle pain pills. Then she handed him the clothes and he carefully made his way to the bathroom to change. The second the door closed Hermione’s eyes darted to Ron who had been eyeing her strangely since the moment that Arthur had woken up and her eyes naturally narrowed into a glare.
Yet shockingly, he seemed unfazed by her hostile reaction and instead he took two steps towards her, closing the distance between them to less than a meter and meeting her gaze with a level, open and very sincere stare.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. Hermione could feel Harry’s eyes on her, and she knew that he was watching the exchange even though he remained silent and continued to remove the burn paste from the woman. “You saved my dad’s life.”
Hermione shifted uncomfortably. It was such an uncharacteristically Ron thing to do and say that she wasn’t sure what to make of it. So she simply nodded and then sidestepped around him to start collecting up the potions that littered the table while cleaning away the blood and checking the messages that came in from Mrs. Weasley. Less than a minute later Arthur exited the bathroom. His eyes looked clearer and the diagnostic bubbles that followed him showed that the potion and muggle pills were now working in full affect. He seemed calmer despite everything that had happened, and his gaze looked almost normal as he made his way toward them.
“Are you ready Arthur?” Hermione asked as she moved toward him from across the kitchen and looked him over carefully.
“Yes – how much time do we have left?” Arthur’s voice was back to its traditional calm and even tone, and she could not help but give him a small smile as his eyes met hers once more.
“Ten minutes until her Polyjuice wears off. She just said that she is making her way to a swap point – I believe that you will be landing in the bathroom on the third floor and she left you a note in your desk about what she did this morning. Burn it after you read it,” Hermione said as she checked her forearm once more. Then she fixed him with a level stare and dropped her voice lower. “Arthur – can you do this? If we have to, we can just send her more Polyjuice potion, she’s offered to stay for the rest of the day and given what happened it’s not a bad idea.”
“No,” Arthur said with a quick shake of his head, his eyes were clear now from the pepperup potion and he seemed firmly resolved. “It’s too risky for her to remain there much longer as she doesn’t know the job well enough.”
“Okay,” Hermione said slowly, her eyes searching his face for any hint of hesitation, pain or panic. “Keep in contact throughout the day, send an update every half-hour and if anything goes wrong or something happens with your leg – you let me know and I will come get you.”
“I know,” Arthur gave her a small smile, but it seemed laced with a deep sadness. “I know you will Hermione, you – you saved my life.”
Hermione swallowed as he placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. Her eyes shifting down to his chest as she shook her head and cancelled his diagnostic charm. “It was nothing.”
“No, it wasn’t nothing,” Arthur’s voice became hardened with a sternness that she rarely heard, and his eyes darted to Harry. “What you both did wasn’t nothing – it was everything. And without you we all would have all died down there–“
His voice faltered slightly before he took a deep breath and squared his shoulders.
“I promise you that from this day forward I will do everything in my power to become someone you can count on – someone who can support you. You two have taken this burden entirely on your own and it’s not okay – it’s never been okay, and I’m going to change that. Training resumes tonight after the debrief and it will continue until one way or another this war is over,” Arthur looked at Remus, the exhausted gray-haired man was staring at Arthur with a sober expression and he gave a single slow nod before their tags collectively buzzed. Arthur glanced down at his forearm and read the word from his wife, then he took a small portkey out from his pocket. “Ten seconds – right then. Ron, you help them with whatever they need. I’ll see you all here at 5 pm sharp. Hermione, Harry – thank you both. I wouldn’t be here without you.”
With that Arthur activated his portkey and vanished from sight. Hermione felt her heart clench tightly in her chest with pain as she watched her surrogate father return to the Ministry. He seemed to have gathered some sort of inner courage but still – she hated it. She hated everything about this situation and yet there was little she could do about it aside from watch his vitals and bust into the Ministry with Mrs. Weasley’s port key if anything went wrong.
Which they would do.
She and Harry had discussed that the day prior and they were both fully prepared to extract anyone on the team who needed it regardless of where they were. She just hoped to Merlin it wouldn’t be required because it would be incredibly dangerous.
A few seconds later Arthur notified her that he was secure at the office and everything was fine. Mrs. Weasley notified that she had returned to the Burrow as planned, she was waiting for the transformation to complete and then she would be bustling about outside the Burrow as she typically would before going shopping at 9:30am as she always did on a Monday morning – keeping up her typical schedule and appearance in case anyone was watching their home.
Hermione felt her shoulders sag a fraction as her eyes shifted to the woman who was sitting quietly in the chair next to Remus. She’d been watching the exchange with an abnormal calm – though Hermione suspected that was largely due to the calming draught that Ron had gotten her to drink. Resisting the urge to sigh – there was still so much to do. They needed to finish things up here and then apparate over to the werewolf safe house to help.
Hermione forced her exhausted legs to move once more and she made her way over to the woman as Harry finished removing the final bits of burn paste from Remus’ shoulder. Ron had gone to close the cottage door and was quietly cleaning up the floor, while Dean was no longer anywhere in sight. He’d been held the longest at Malfoy Manor and clearly it had had a significant impact on his ability to handle stress.
“What’s your name?” Hermione said quietly as she stopped before the woman, her muddy form shifted slightly in her chair, her muscles tensing a fraction as Hermione knelt before her.
“Ava,” she said hoarsely, her dark eyes carefully watching every motion Hermione made.
“My name’s Hermione,” Hermione said as she looked the girl over before meeting her eyes once more. Harry had healed her up well. All her minor cuts were completely gone and so were her burns. Only the permanent scars on her shoulder remained as evidence of the events of the den – that and the fact that she was missing half of her left arm. Hermione had seen Harry unwrap it and apply dittany to the stump – it was fully healed but he’d re-wrapped it anyway. Probably so that Ava didn’t have to look at the blunt end of her arm. It was a thoughtful thing to do, a small nicety to provide after so much trauma and the thought of Harry taking the time to do it made her heart hurt more. “Where are you from?”
“Hinckley,” Ava said quietly, her eyes were darting over Hermione’s dirtied face and then they dropped down to her blood stained hands. Hermione saw the girl swallow hard before she forced her eyes back up to meet her gaze. “What are you?”
“I’m a witch,” Hermione said quietly and she watched the woman’s eyes widen a fraction. “I can use magic.”
“I’m not – I mean – I’m not dead, right?” Ava’s voice sounded small and hesitant, and for the first time since Hermione had seen her, she saw a flash of doubt cross the woman’s face. “This – this is real, right?”
“This is real,” Hermione said as she kept her voice calm and even. “You’re not dead, and you’re not imagining this – this is real. Which I know is hard to process – but you are safe.”
Ava nodded silently; her eyes were fixed on a spot over Hermione’s shoulder and her body trembled from the chill. The adrenaline that had kept her body moving in the den was gone and the calm from the potion had relaxed her body into an odd state of blankness. Though she still seemed to be processing everything going on around her remarkably well.
“Ava,” Hermione said gently, and the girl’s eyes latched to hers once more. “You’re going to be okay.”
Ava nodded again, her eyes darting toward Remus before she swallowed hard.
“He saved my life,” Ava said in a shaky voice, and Hermione saw Remus’ body tense under her gaze. Ava swallowed hard again, her eyes moving back to Hermione’s as her brow furrowed. “And the other man, your – your friend he – he cut my arm off to save me. They stayed for me and he – I – I’m sorry.”
Hermione gave the girl a tight smile. “Do you want to come with me to get cleaned up? I have some clothes that you can wear.”
For some reason the mention of something normal, like clothes, seemed to pull her from the quiet calm she’d fallen into. Her eyes shot wide and she immediately sat up straight in the chair though the tether kept her physically seated.
“My son!” her eyes desperately latched to Hermione and she reached forward with both hands to grab at Hermione’s jacket. She seemed to immediately forget that she was missing a hand. “My son is at home! He’s at home alone – you must take me home, please! I never should have left him like that! I only ran to the corner store – I thought I’d be gone a minute – please, take me home!”
“I can’t take you home Ava,” Hermione grabbed her hand and squeezed it tightly “It’s not safe, but I can go get your son. I need you to tell me exactly where he is – where do you live?”
“In the Quarters – I have to go to him, please! He’s been there all night, he’s probably awake and scared! Take me home, now!” Ava’s voice had grown with panic and her grip was like death.
“Ava – which house?”
“Number 6 – wait where are you going?” Ava’s voice rang out as Hermione stood and pulled her hand from the woman’s grasp. “I want to go home! Please! Don’t keep me here – please!”
“I can’t take you home Ava,” Hermione grimaced at the pained look on the woman’s face. “You’re infected – it’s not safe – but I will go get your son and bring him here.”
“Infected?” her face had grown pale as realization seemed settle across her eyes and her body grew limp in the chair. Her voice became quiet like a whisper. “You – you mean by those animals – because I was bitten. Am I going to become one of those monsters?”
Hermione could see the pained terror that was forming across her face and she felt her jaw tighten. She’d wanted to have this discussion later.
“You will turn into a werewolf, Ava,” Hermione said carefully, knowing that no matter how she said it the information would be hard to swallow. There was no point in lying to the woman, it would only damage the small amount of trust she seemed to have in them since she currently viewed them as her saviours. Lying or downplaying the situation would only make things more complicated later. “But not a monster – they’re not one in the same.”
Ava glared at her. Her eyes hardened as some of the shock seemed to leave her face but it was quickly replaced with anger. “I saw what they are.”
“You saw creatures being abused by a terrible man,” Hermione said calmly. Before she jerked her head towards the quiet grey-haired wizard on her left. “Remus is a werewolf too – and he is not a monster. He saved your life – what you saw is not what you will become, I promise you that.”
Ava’s eyes widened again, and her gaze darted back to Remus once more. “What do you mean?”
“Ava – we’re going to help you and I promise you that we will explain everything, but right now we need to go get your son and then we need to get to the safe house – once we are sure everyone is safe, I promise you that we will answer all of your questions. What’s your son’s name?”
“Charlie,” Ava replied even though her brow was still furrowed, and she looked like she was holding back a million questions.
“We’re going to go get Charlie,” Hermione said calmly, casting a wordless warming spell on the girl and Remus before she turned to look at Harry. He’d finished putting away all of the potions with Ron while Hermione was speaking to Ava and he was standing near the table, purse in hand – ready to go. His eyes were still focused and hard like she knew hers were. “Remus – get a status update from Fleur and find out if she needs any additional potions or supplies. Ron – gather whatever Remus asks for, keep them warm, and get them some water. Neither of them move from those chairs. We’ll be back in three minutes.”
Ron nodded and moved to the kitchen cupboards to get some glasses.
“Hermione,” Remus’ rough voice caught her attention and she felt him gently grab her arm as she walked by toward Harry. She glanced down at him and took in his beaten and worried expression. He looked so much older than he was in that moment. “Please be careful.”
“We will be,” Hermione said, giving the man a tight smile before she followed Harry outside into the storm.
They both rapidly cast a shield charm as they moved and then wordlessly disillusioned themselves. Hermione reached out and grabbed Harry’s warm hand, knowing exactly where he was at her side even though she could not see him. He squeezed her hand tightly and she felt it tug painfully across her chest as she grit her teeth, set her mental timer for three minutes and then apparated them away with a loud pop.
-x-x-
April 9, 1998
Hogwarts, 7:03 am
Ginny stared blankly at the oatmeal before her, her right hand stirred the bowl with her spoon while her left absently rubbed at the burning sensation on the back of her neck. She could feel the raised letters, her fingers traced over them as she tried to ease the tension that radiated from the base of her skull into her shoulders.
‘I will do as I’m told’
It was the latest collection of words that now littered her body as angry red lines. It would take another two weeks for this set to fade into faint white scars.
The Carrows had very quickly found a way to change the charm on the pens from the Ministry so that it would cut into different places on the body – since they felt that layering the words on top of one another defeated the purpose. They wanted each phrase to be visible, legible – they wanted the students to see them and read them over and over again. Thankfully, but for reasons she had yet to figure out, none of the pens wrote on faces – yet. She scowled at the thought as she begrudgingly took a bite of the oatmeal before her and forced herself to swallow it. She suspected it was only a matter of time until the two sadistic bastards figured out how to charm the pens to write across their foreheads.
Even knowing this, she was happy to take it.
It was better than seeing the words on Beatrice – the tiny first year Hufflepuff who had gotten lost in the castle and was accidentally out past curfew a few nights ago. Ginny had managed to cause enough of a distraction to capture the Carrows’ attention so that Beatrice could sneak away with Susan back to the safety of the Hufflepuff common room, and thus she was the one who had wound up with that detention. She’d written line after line, feeling each letter cutting into the skin at the base of her skull – yet she’d hardly felt anything at all. She knew to grit her teeth and make it look painful so that the Carrows would continue to think that the punishment was effective – when in reality, she’d taught most of the students a numbing charm to combat the torture. Yet even without the numbing charm the small cuts hardly phased her anymore. She’d become naturally numb to it.
She hardly felt them.
She smirked to herself as she shoveled more oatmeal into her mouth. Her eyes darted over to Neville and she fought the urge to smile widely when he gave her a wink. The Carrows were currently receiving their payback for her detention and what happened to Susan – they were down at the boathouse trying to stop an angry swarm of charmed flying cloaks and rocks from trashing the place and sinking the boats. It would keep them busy for the next hour at least and it would give the students some peace during breakfast and freedom to get to class safely.
Her eyes shifted down to the opposite side of the table and she gave Seamus an almost imperceptible nod. None of them sat together anymore – it was too risky. They rotated seats at random and kept their heads down. They didn’t speak to anyone in the halls either. They hardly ever looked at each other in the Great Hall and they floated by one another in total silence until they were safe in the Gryffindor common room.
At this point the Carrows almost exclusively assumed that if a student was not a Slytherin they were a threat – but not giving them any hint as to who was speaking to whom made it easier to implement counter attacks. She also knew that they did not fully appreciate just how united the remaining three houses had become. For the most part Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw operated as a single unit, but the Carrows still assumed it was the Gryffindors implementing the majority of the attacks. Or, more specifically: her and Neville. And while they were not wrong that she and Neville were the brains of the operation – they were entirely wrong in assuming that they were the only ones who set the traps.
Her eyes moved up to the headtable and she took in the worn and weary expressions of the professors as they forced themselves to eat. Some of them had lost a drastic amount of weight. Some of them looked like they were in a daze, while others – like her and her group of rebels, were silently bearing the burden while doing everything in their power to protect the students and fight back. She’d found allies in McGonagall and Hagrid – which had been expected – but they’d also forged allegiances with Flitwick, Slughorn, Hooch and Sprout. She knew that the remaining teachers were on their side too, they just didn’t want to get directly involved in the war because they were too afraid. Her eyes skimmed over the empty Headmasters chair and her brow furrowed. Snape had been missing more meals lately and she’d taken note that he was starting to look thinner. In the case of today though, it was very possible that he was just assisting the Carrows at the boathouse.
Serves him right, fucking dick, Ginny thought bitterly as she thought back to the incident that occurred with Susan two days ago. She ducked her head once more and continued to eat. She was glad to give the professors a break from his presence so they could eat their meal in peace. It wasn’t like Snape came to the Great Hall to eat anyway. He never ate when he attended the meals – his presence seemed to be solely for the purpose of observing, instilling fear and looming ominously over the students.
Ginny smirked at her oatmeal as she thought about the bat of the dungeons being pummeled by cloaks and rocks as the Carrows inevitably caused more damage than help. She fought back a smile. It was the small simple things in life that gave her joy now.
Less than a minute later owls screeched overhead and Ginny fought the urge to roll her eyes. Mail had become a sick joke at Hogwarts – the only real mail that came anymore was for the Slytherins. The rest of the ‘mail’ delivered included: a single copy of the Prophet dropped on each house table so that the students could see the horrors of what was happening in the world, and letters to unsuspecting students to inform them that their family members had either mysteriously gone missing, were being trialed for treason, or had flat out died.
Regardless of what the letter said – it meant that relatives were dead.
Ginny’s eyes tracked the flock of feathers that poured in. She fought back the urge to frown when a brown owl dropped a letter on the plate of a small Ravenclaw boy and she silently prayed that the person next to the kid would help him hold it together. The worst possible thing that one could do during mail time was react – but at least the Carrows weren’t here, so today was a better day to find out that your family died.
It wasn’t lost on her that the opinion was morbid, but it was the truth.
Her eyes swept across the room once more, taking in each table until her eyes slid over the small Hufflepuff girl Beatrice she’d saved from detention. She was sitting close next to Susan and was finally eating some food. She fought the urge to smile – then her eyes went wide, and she felt her blood go cold as her heart stuttered painfully in her chest.
Susan was holding a small piece of paper tightly in her hands.
They were shaking.
There was an open envelope next to her plate.
Oh Merlin please no – please no.
Her eyes were hard, her jaw was clenched, her back was stiff and then she immediately pushed up from the table and beelined out of the Great Hall with the paper still clutched firmly in her left hand.
Fuck!
Ginny hauled herself from her seat, dropping her spoon to the table with a clang as she fought against the urge to run, and walked as quickly as she could from the Great Hall.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK!
She knew what had happened – she had been dreading this moment since the term began. She’d always known that Susan’s parents were at risk of being killed and in the back of her mind she’d always known that this was going to happen. It had only been a question of when. Susan knew it too – but receiving the news was entirely different than knowing about it. Panic rose in her chest as she walked through the doorway, then rapidly cast a silencing spell on her feet so she could run down the hallway to the right where she’d seen Susan head.
Going anywhere in the castle alone was a mistake – it was an invitation for attack and even though they did not speak or interact with each other in the halls they always travelled in groups.
ALWAYS.
She couldn’t believe that Susan would be so irresponsible and run out on her own. Ginny fought back the urge to be angry with her because she knew that she was hurting. She knew that Susan was more vulnerable given the incident that she’d had two days ago – the Carrows had hit her with a round of cruciatus before McGonagall stepped in and Snape got involved. To say that things had gotten tense would be an understatement. Susan was still in physical pain, she was emotionally compromised and not thinking clearly – this was literally the worst day that this could have happened. She knew that Susan was probably desperate to be alone so that she could scream and cry and try to come to terms with the fact that she was now the last member of her family but what she was doing was threatening her safety.
Dread filled Ginny’s heart as she ran faster than she’d ever moved in her life. She could see Susan turning the corners just ahead of her, she was running blindly as she tried to escape her agony and she was taking turns at random. Ginny fought back the urge to call out to her for fear of drawing attention from unwanted or dangerous eyes and instead clenched her jaw tightly and pushed her legs faster as she silently chased after her. She barely noticed where they were running until she recognized a statue to the left and she felt her heart plummet into her stomach.
No! Ginny screamed internally as she wordlessly cast a disillusionment charm on herself as she ran. No, no, no!
Susan whipped quickly around the next corner, she was only thirty feet ahead of her now and Ginny could see that her hand was wiping across her eyes as she ran. Enough was enough – they were dangerously close to the Headmaster’s office, Susan had to stop running. Ginny opened her mouth to yell as she skidded to a stop at the corner and froze. Her body reacted instinctively, she threw herself against the wall on her right, drawing her wand from her robes and watching in horror as Susan collided with the tall black looming figure that had just turned the corner ahead.
A wave of nausea hit her as the sound of their collision echoed down the hallway twenty feet before her. Susan grunted in pain as the man stumbled momentarily while she crumpled into his chest from the force of the impact. He’d not heard her coming. They regularly travelled with muffling spells and Susan had cast one instinctively before she’d fled the Great Hall. He’d had no reason to suspect that anyone would be walking around this part of the castle at this time – no one ever left breakfast early for fear of the Carrows, so he must not know about the boathouse either.
Or he was headed down there now.
Ginny felt sick as she watched. He must have cast a rapid sticking charm because his feet held steady on the ground and he quickly righted himself. His face twisted angrily in surprise, then his eyes widened a fraction with recognition as he looked down to see who had collided with him. It was the most emotion that Ginny had ever seen the man display, and she felt her body grow cold with fear as he glared down at Susan.
Snape.
Looked.
Livid.
Susan’s hands had reflexively shot out when she’d run into him, her fingers had tangled into the front of his robes to prevent herself from falling and Ginny saw her tear stained eyes go wide as she looked up into the two black pools of rage above her. Her body went entirely stiff, Ginny could see that her hands were trembling, but her fingers seemed incapable of letting go of the fabric that she clutched – the letter in her left hand now crumpled between them.
Ginny couldn’t breathe.
She couldn’t think.
She was rarely caught off guard anymore, but she’d not been prepared for this. She knew that she didn’t stand a chance against this heartless man. The hand holding her wand was shaking and she didn’t know what to do as she stared at her girlfriend and felt her chest tighten.
They were dead.
After what happened with Susan and the Carrows and the explosion that McGonagall had made they were fucking dead.
She knew that she needed to stun him, attack him – literally anything and yet she was frozen in terror at the scene before her because deep down she knew that she didn’t stand a chance in hell at attacking him. She wouldn’t leave Susan alone in this – but that just meant that they were both fucked. She’d seen him get hit with spells throughout the school year and nothing ever happened. It was like he was impervious and her arrogant boldness of attacking him outright had faded since Christmas as things had grown more dangerous. Now they only ever used calculated, well planned and strategic attacks around the castle.
Susan looked stricken with terror. Snape’s lips had twisted into an angry sneer, he’d opened his mouth to speak but then froze when his eyes took in the sight of the paper that was crumpled against his chest. His body seemed to stiffen, his eyes darted back to the tears that were running down Susan’s face and for a brief second Ginny thought that something in his gaze shifted. Then suddenly, time seemed to slow down and Ginny’s eyes went wide with disbelieving shock as she watched the next events unfold.
Susan’s eye twitched.
Her body became impossibly still as her back straightened.
Her legs steadied beneath her.
Her eyes narrowed into slits and her face twisted with hatred and blind rage. Her grip on his robes tightened, her hands knotting into the fabric and crinkling the letter further as a snarl left her mouth. She dropped the hold she had on him with her right hand, rapidly pulled back her arm and punched him in the face.
Susan had officially snapped, and Ginny thought that her heart was going to give out.
The crack split across the hallway, ringing against the walls as blood flew from his face and coated her knuckles. His head had snapped to the side from the force of her hit and she saw him take a step back to steady himself against the blow as Susan stepped forward and followed through on the punch. Ginny felt her legs grow weak, her body grow numb and her mind short-circuit as a heavy silencing charm that she did not cast surrounded the hallway.
Then Susan started to scream.
“FUCK YOU!” Susan screamed at him as her grip on him tightened further and she drew back her right hand to hit him for a second time.
Panic flooded Ginny’s body and it forced her muscles to move despite her fear. She raised her hand and aimed her wand at his face, preparing herself to attack as he turned his head back around to face Susan and his injuries came into view. Snape’s nose was blatantly broken, blood was dripping down his face, but when his head had fully rotated into sight Ginny froze – the spell she was about to utter lost on the tip of her tongue.
His angry expression was completely gone. His face was blank, but his eyes were filled with a heavy sadness that she never would have thought him capable of possessing – and he didn’t move when Susan hit him for a second time directly in the chest. Ginny felt her arm go limp as her face twisted with confusion. Snape may be a wizard, and wizards may not typically fight physically – but Susan was tiny in comparison to him. He could have rendered her unconscious without even twitching a fucking muscle – but he didn’t. He just stood there as she hit him.
A cold shiver ran down her spine as she stood there dumbfounded.
He was letting her hit him.
“YOU FUCKING MONSTER!” Susan screamed as she hit him hard in the chest three more consecutive times. Each time her fist collided with him it made a hollow thumping noise until Ginny saw Snape’s face flinch with pain at the sound of a second dull crack. He finally reacted, his hand shot out and grabbed her wrist as he took a step back from her and spoke.
“Susan – calm down,” his voice was tight, and she saw something that looked like impatience flash across his eyes before they quickly darted around the hallway as if checking to ensure that they were alone. But Susan simply dropped her hold on him and started hitting him with her left hand.
“Fucking Merlin,” Snape grunted in pain when her second jab hit his diaphragm. He quickly snatched her left wrist from the air and wordlessly vanished the blood from his face as he held both of her arms tightly in front of her.
“YOU FUCKING HAD THEM KILLED!” Susan screamed as she lunged toward him while trying to rip her hands from his grasp. Fresh tears began to pour down her face and her voice broke. Her body started to shake, her legs began to tremble, her hits became weaker as exhaustion set in while Snape stood there calmly holding her arms as she struggled until she began to sob and gasp for air between her words. “I hate you – I hate you – I hate you–“
A loud agonizing cry poured from Susan’s lungs as her legs shook so badly they gave out beneath her. Ginny stood immobile, wand still raised as Snape let out a deep heavy sigh and he adjusted his hold on her to keep her from crumpling into a pile on the floor as she completely fell apart. His jaw was clenched tight, his eyes were dark, and his shoulders looked tense and heavy like he was carrying the weight of the world.
Ginny didn’t breathe as Snape moved Susan two feet to the left and easily sat her on the edge of a low windowsill while she sobbed uncontrollably. He hesitated a second before he stepped in front of her and then gently grabbed her chin, forcing her head up so their eyes met.
“Obliviate,” he muttered the word so quietly Ginny almost didn’t hear it from twenty feet away. She saw Susan’s eyes go glossy, her shoulders sagged a fraction and then a blank look came over her face. Snape dropped his hold on her chin and stepped back. He wordlessly vanished the blood that had trickled down the front of his robes, along with the blood that stained Susan’s hands before he tapped his nose and it snapped back into place with a small crack.
Then, to her horror, the silencing spell disappeared and he turned and started walking towards her.
Ginny felt a new wave of panic wash over her body as she tried to comprehend what the fuck she’d just witnessed. If he got any closer to her, he would notice her – disillusionment charm or not he would know that she was there and then what would happen? Would he change her memories too? The only reason why he didn’t know she was there already was because Susan had caught him completely off guard.
She didn’t know what the fuck was going on.
She didn’t know why he’d done what he’d done, or what the fuck she was supposed to do with the information – but she knew that she did not want to forget it. She knew that she needed to find a way to tell Harry and Hermione – and only them. Ginny quickly and silently slipped around the corner. She cast a second heavy muffling spell on her feet and sprinted ten feet down the hall before rapidly turning around, removing her disillusionment and muffling charms and then sprinting nosily up the hallway toward the corner once more.
“Susan!” she purposely yelled out before skidding around the familiar corner for a second time and coming face to face with Snape.
He was standing five feet from the corner, clearly he’d heard her approach and slowed down to avoid a second collision. Ginny could hear footsteps coming down the corridor behind her, someone else was headed this way and Susan was now slowly pulling herself up from the windowsill behind him. She looked a little dazed, but her eyes were beginning clear and when her gaze moved to Snape her eyes narrowed at the sight of him. She clearly had no memory of their encounter – but seeing him was making the rage leak out once more.
“Susan!” Ginny said quickly, and Susan’s eyes snapped immediately to her as her hands balled into fists at her sides.
“Miss Weasley,” Snape’s voice was low and dangerous, as he looked at her and started to walk once more. “You and Miss Bones should be in the Great Hall for breakfast – not running around the castle undoubtedly scheming.”
“Severus!” McGonagall’s concerned voice sounded from down the hall and Ginny heard her footsteps quicken.
“Detention,” Snape said coldly as he made to step around her. “Starting tomorrow with Hagrid for the next week. But if I find another swamp in this hallway – you’ll be meeting with the Carrows and serving detention with them.”
“Yes sir,” Ginny said reflexively, but her voice sounded weaker than it normally would. It sounded nervous. It sounded unsure. It sounded – suspicious. She saw Snape freeze mid-step at the odd tone of her voice and he turned to look at her again as McGonagall grew closer. Panic shot through her body as she realized that he might suspect something, so she forced her face into a smirk before his eyes landed on her face and she spat out the first words that came into her head. “No more swamps – I’ll make a note of that specifically.”
His eyes narrowed at her, but McGonagall was all but running down the hall now and she knew he was boxed in.
“Congratulations Miss Weasley,” Snape’s voice was ice as he turned on his heal and began walking away. “Your detention has just been extended to two weeks and you’ll be scrubbing cauldrons for Slughorn over the weekend.”
Ginny watched him leave, his voice ringing down the hallway as his robes billowed out behind him.
Dear RogueofTimeyWimeyStuff and ybriKnoswaD, thank you for assisting me when my brain simply could not. Selecting OC names is one of the things I hate most, so I greatly appreciate your contributions and help :)
-x-x-
Ron watched them disappear from sight through the kitchen window before he heard the familiar pop of apparition as he filled two tall glasses with water. Then he set a three minute timer in his head and quickly made his way back over to the two slumped and exhausted forms in the chairs by the table. He needed to get whatever Lupin required for Fleur and he wanted to get the kitchen table disinfected before they returned.
When he’d heard the apparition pop signaling the group’s return to the cottage just after 8 am, he’d felt relief flood his body. While he and Dean had been kept in the dark regarding the specific details of the mission, they both knew that the group had set off early this morning to go complete something immensely dangerous. Bill and his father had tried to downplay the significance of it but he knew them well enough to see the tension in their bodies and hear the stress that laced their voices when he’d asked questions about the mission. They’d told him it was confidential and refused to say anything else. The only thing he knew was that it had involved werewolves and some sort of den – but he had no idea where they’d gone or what they’d done. He’d had no idea how long it would take or what risks were involved. So, when gut wrenching screams split the air his blood had run cold. He’d raced down the staircase from his room and out the front door faster than he’d ever moved in his life.
But he hadn’t been prepared for what he saw when he wrenched the door open. He hadn’t been prepared to see his father burnt, bloodied, covered in mud and dirt with a bone sticking out of his left leg. He’d hadn’t been prepared to see a mostly naked women with vomit dripping from her chin tucked under Harry’s arm like she weighed nothing while blood poured from a gaping wound on her shoulder – or Lupin gasping for air as blood leaked from deep holes in his chest. And he’d certainly not been prepared to see Hermione physically carrying his dad inside the cottage and dropping him on the table like a sack of potatoes.
His natural first instinct had been to panic.
It had flooded him like a tidal wave as his mind immediately began spinning while dread filled his heart and he realized that this mission had clearly been even more dangerous than he’d anticipated. It had obviously been fucking deadly. His mind was consumed with fear as he tried to understand what was going on and what might have happened. He’d tried to ask them – he’d needed to know, to understand, but the both of them had given him nothing and pushed past him like he wasn’t even there. Their expressions had been stone – and so incredibly cold and detached.
His brain couldn’t process it, he’d almost lost it entirely as he watched Hermione hovering around his father like his wound was nothing more than a sprained ankle – sticking her fingers inside the gash, saying he was infected and holding down his screaming form like she didn’t give a shit. Like it was easy for her – like she didn’t care in the least. She didn’t even bat a bloody eye while his cries cut through the air like daggers and blood trickled from his mouth.
Her chilling cold gaze flicked around the room robotically as she worked away completely unphased by the agony that his dad had been in. It had made him angry – it had made him sick and he was fucking terrified. It wasn’t until she’d screamed at him in rage and he’d caught sight of the tiniest glimpse of something desperate and pure flickering in her eyes that his panic finally faded. His anger was snuffed out and his body grew cold as a bizarre wave of understanding washed over him in an instant.
Bill’s words echoed in the back of his head as he stared at her wide-eyed, finally taking in her full form and truly looking at her. She was dirty, ragged, covered in blood that wasn’t her own, soot smeared her face, hair and clothes, and mud clung to her – she smelled of fire and death. Her eyes were burning, her left arm was shaking as she fought to control it and his father’s blood stained her hands and face.
‘Try to understand what they must have gone through. Something happened to them… something that made them realize that they will die, Ron, just like the rest of us if they don’t keep up – if they don’t grow up and become more than what they were’
The memory of her scar peeking out from the collar of her sweater popped into his head and then it clicked.
It hit him hard and cold in the chest as her blazing eyes glared at him. She was looking at him like he was a complete and utter waste of space – like he was single handedly the most useless thing in the room to her and she didn’t have time for him because – because she cared.
She cared a lot.
It was so painfully obvious in that moment that he’d felt it like a dagger in his chest.
She and Harry both cared more than he could have ever anticipated, more than he’d ever realized – more than he’d allowed himself to believe because he’d spent the last week convinced that they didn’t truly care at all. He’d been confident that they were detached and cold and he’d remained angry about their relationship even though he didn’t say anything about it because it was painful to watch.
They moved like a single entity, two separate beings with unique abilities yet perfectly synched. It hurt to watch. It hurt to see it while they trained even if it was incredible, because admitting that they were perfect together made him sick to his stomach. They’d become so utterly combined and yet distinctly different. It hurt to see them look at everything around them with disinterest and detachment – and to only show any shred of emotion when they looked at each other. It hurt to be on the receiving end of their disgust, and it was just easier to assume that they didn’t care about anything else around them.
He’d assumed that they’d become selfishly involved and only cared about themselves. That they viewed themselves as better than everyone else around them. Initially he’d thought they were being friendly with Bill because they met with him to talk about secret stuff but then he saw them interact and he quickly realized that they were cold to him too.
They were cold to everyone.
So, he’d assumed that they only tolerated Luna and Bill and Fleur and his dad because they were people who held some sort of value – that they could be used. He’d assumed that training was for that purpose – to make the rest of the Order members not ‘entirely useless’ since that seemed to be how they viewed everyone else. He didn’t think that they gave a shit about the Order or the people in it. He’d heard Harry’s words to his mother last Wednesday night, but it hardly seemed legitimate for Harry to claim that he cared about their safety given how they chose to talk to and interact with the Order.
Besides, he wasn’t stupid – he’d figured out what Harry had done to him after watching their training and going for a walk around the property. That bastard had tethered him to the cottage. He could feel the ties tugging against various parts of his body in different directions if he got too close to the wards. He knew that if he were to apparate away it would likely mean his death. He thought that was a pretty clear indication of how they viewed those around them and how little they cared for other human life aside from their own.
He’d only participated in the training because Bill’s words had made him realize that he needed to try harder. That if he wanted to be more than what he was then he had to work for it – so he decided to ignore the duo as best as he could and participate in training so that he could better himself. He wanted to be stronger. He had decided to stop blaming others for his shortcomings and he’d decided to improve his skills. But he’d also decided to stop caring about Harry and Hermione and to view them for what they were – cold, heartless, detached powerhouses who wanted nothing to do with the people in the cottage but were forced to tolerate them.
How else could he view the people who had essentially signed his death note without telling him he would die if he tried to leave the cottage?
But then he’d begun to second guess things once more when he’d seen Hermione hugging his father outside through the window on Friday night. It had felt odd and uncomfortable to watch and it went against his assumption that they didn’t care. So, he convinced himself that she must have been manipulating his dad in some way or using him and he ignored it and buried it down.
But today – watching the two of them moving rapidly – desperately – like every second mattered while they tried to save three lives, including one that they did not even know, he realized that he’d once again been wrong.
Entirely wrong.
Yes, they were calm. Yes, they were detached and yes, they were cold and harsh – but it wasn’t heartless like he’d thought it was. This entire time he’d interpreted their cold harsh words as an indication of their lack of compassion and complete detachment from anything aside from themselves – but he couldn’t have been more wrong. It was the farthest fucking thing from heartless he’d ever seen – and he’d felt simultaneously dumbstruck and mind blown at the realization.
What he’d seen as a coldhearted bitch who didn’t give a shit and used the people around her the others understood was actually a girl who cared more than words could describe and was desperately doing what she had to do because she’d already been through this. She’d already been through more than the rest of them and she understood what was coming. It was exactly as Harry had said to his mother, but he’d chosen to scoff at the words because he didn’t believe them. Because it was easier to think of them as being coldhearted detached assholes than to admit that maybe they were hurting just as badly as everyone else, but they just hid it better. And that maybe, in truth, they were more detached towards him because he’d betrayed them – because he’d let them down in such a fundamental way, they simply could not trust him.
He knew deep down that if they had wanted him dead, and if they were truly coldhearted and detached, they’d have killed him already.
He’d just been ignoring that fact because it was too painful, and while he’d understood his brother’s lecture regarding his failure to put in effort, he’d entirely misunderstood the part about what Harry and Hermione had done. Bill wasn’t just talking about their physical strength or their abilities as magical beings – he had been talking about their ability to do what was necessary. Their ability to detach themselves from their feelings so that they could do what they needed to do even though it was painful. That was what Bill had meant by them growing up and becoming more.
He just hadn’t fully understood Bill’s words until today when his father was bleeding out on the table before his eyes while Hermione stood calm, cool, collected – covered in blood and doing what she had to do so she could save his life. He’d felt his chest tighten as he’d looked at her in that moment and finally saw her.
It was so painfully obvious he couldn’t believe that he hadn’t seen it before. He couldn’t believe that he’d been so blind, so ignorant and so fucking childish – she was in agony. In every sense of the word his ex-best friend was fucking dying inside, and she was just as bloody terrified as he was.
She just buried it.
She buried it all down so deep it had left her cold and distant and robotic – nothing left but what was absolutely needed in the moment. And if not for that brief moment of rage that cracked her defenses, he never would have seen the true emotion that so clearly wracked her body under the cold and indifferent surface.
Her mouth had opened, and he knew what was coming. He knew that she was going to stun him, or kill him, or whatever was required to remove him from the room because he was in the way. He was a nuisance. He was the fucking embodiment of what she was burying deep down in her heart.
He was everything unnecessary that she constantly blocked out in physical form and there was no room for him in this war.
And then he’d felt something within him twist painfully. It hurt – it fucking hurt worse than being wrapped in that bubble of death last week but he felt like he finally got it. He was the problem. He’d always known it and it was the root of his insecurities but yet for some reason he never truly did anything about it. Even this past week when he thought that he’d accepted his shortcomings he hadn’t truly taken full responsibility – he’d not fully understood just how short his shortcomings had been. How much he’d been limiting himself and standing in his own way just like Bill had said – he was his own bloody worst enemy. And his failure with the shield charm was a perfect reflection of that.
He’d not realized what he represented to the duo, just how useless he was, just how helpless he was. Just how unbearably dense he was for not understanding what must have happened to them for them to become like this.
His dad was fucking bleeding out before his eyes and he’d not even offered to help them yet – he’d just been standing there with his hands in his hair getting in the way like a bumbling fool while she desperately tried to remain calm and save his life – all while keeping tabs on Harry, Lupin, the girl and battling her internal emotions. It struck him in that moment that she had asked him for help – which meant that she was truly desperate, and things were even worse than he could comprehend.
Then a switch flicked in his head and his body moved into action.
He refused to be a failure AGAIN. He refused to be responsible for the death of his father because he was either too scared, too stupid or too useless to help.
So, he helped.
He bit it all down and he forced his mind to focus. He knew he wasn’t anywhere near as calm and collected as they were, but he did everything that he could. He asked what to do and he did what she and Harry told him to without question because he knew that they were his dad’s only chance at survival. He fought back his fear and anxiety – he stopped his mind from interpreting their cold and harsh directions as being a personal attack and instead understood the situation for what it was – a bloody emergency.
When he saw Hermione struggle to open the container because her arm was too weak, he didn’t hesitate to step in and help. It was the least he could do given the fact that her body was practically falling apart on her and yet she refused to relent and had continued to care for his dad with skills that he didn’t even know she possessed.
Then, once she’d woken his dad, he’d watched her interact with him – truly watched. He saw all the minute facial movements he’d missed before. He saw the way her pupils dilated when she inspected his healed wound. The way her eyes creased ever so slightly and her voice dropped to a lower tone in concern when she held him steady while his face crumpled in pain and distress. He listened to the words that she used when she spoke to him, the gentle way that she touched him and moved around him and he once again realized that he’d been entirely, completely and whole heartedly – fucking wrong.
Hermione cared.
Harry cared.
They cared so much it made his heart hurt and his stomach twist.
They cared so much it made him want to get a time turner so he could go back in time and punch himself in the face for being so bloody blind.
He let out a deep sigh as he passed the water glasses to Lupin and Ava and cast a second warming charm over their bodies.
He was done.
It shouldn’t have come down to this. He shouldn’t have had to see his father dying before his eyes and screaming in agony to get what everyone else around him seemed to intuitively understand. He was done feeling sorry for himself. Done with blaming everyone else, done with thinking Harry and Hermione were assholes who didn’t care and done with being bitter. It was blatantly obvious that the two of them belonged together and that he had no leg to stand on to justify his anger – except to say that he was livid and frustrated with himself.
In some ways, now that he could see everything clearly for the first time in probably his entire life – he’d gotten off lucky.
They could have killed him. Maybe they even should have. His family had torn into him about his behaviour sure, but they’d still treated him like a human being. They’d welcomed him home, protected him and taken care of him despite his resentful nature and unjust anger.
He was done with being unnecessary and it was time to make a change.
“Does Fleur need anything?” Ron asked as he quickly began disinfecting the table with a spell his mum had taught him years ago. He wasn’t very good at using it, but he didn’t care, he would do anything and everything that he could.
“More calming draught, some food and more dittany,” Lupin said hoarsely as he took a slow sip of the water.
Ron nodded and started to collect the potions that Lupin had requested.
“So – are you a witch too?” Ava asked him, her eyes watching his movements as he placed the items Lupin had asked for on the table. Her voice was quiet and rough, she held the glass of water before her but had yet to take a sip.
“Not exactly,” Ron said and a small smile tugged at his lips. “I’m a wizard – we call female magical people witches and male magical people wizards.”
“Oh,” she took a tentative sip of her water before her eyes shifted back to Lupin and she eyed him strangely. “So, you – you’re a wizard too and – and a werewolf?”
“Yes,” Lupin said quietly but he didn’t turn to look at her as he continued to send messages through the tag on his arm.
Ava watched him a moment longer before turning back to Ron. “How long has it been?”
“One minute and forty-five seconds,” Ron placed the last of the potions on the table and then went to gather some dried foods from the cupboard. “They still have time left.”
Ava frowned and her jaw tensed. It was clear that she was uncomfortable and what she truly wanted was to be at home with her son.
“What if something happens?” her eyes were filling with worry. “What if they don’t come back? What if something goes wrong – how do you know that they will bring him here safely?”
“Because they said they would,” Lupin said quietly, and his eyes finally shifted to Ava. “Harry and Hermione will come back with your son – you saw what they’re capable of.”
Ava swallowed hard and her eyes flicked between them as Ron continued to pile food onto the table. Her hand was drumming on the glass she held, and her body was growing tense.
“How much longer?” she whispered when only another few seconds had passed.
“Fifty-two seconds,” Ron said as he removed the last of the mud from the floor but watched the small woman from the corner of his eye.
“I never should have run out – I could have waited ‘til morning, but I was supposed to work at nine this morning and I didn’t think I’d have time,” the words were falling from her lips as she shook her head and stared at the cottage door.
“It’s going to be okay,” Ron said firmly as he made his way over to the table and took a seat across from them. “They’re coming back and they’ll have Charlie.”
Ava frowned again, her jaw clenching tight as her eyes bore a hole in the door.
“So, are there a lot of you?” she asked after another few seconds of silence had passed. She seemed incapable of staying silent and she was tapping the glass in her hand nervously again.
“There’s a decent amount,” Ron said quietly. “Are you cold or hungry?”
“No,” Ava shook her head and her eyes darted back to him. She looked scared, more scared now than she’d been while Harry was healing her. It was clear that she valued her son higher than herself. “Are you sure they will bring him back?”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything,” Ron said quietly, his eyes dropping down to the small amount of blood that still stained the table. He could feel Lupin’s eyes flick to him at the comment. The older man knew that there was tension in the group. Hell, the whole bloody Order knew that the trio had fallen apart and that he was not on friendly or even speaking terms with Harry and Hermione, so his words had probably come as a bit of a surprise to Lupin.
“They – they’re sort of terrifying,” Ava’s voice came out as a whisper and Ron’s eyes flicked back to hers.
She was talking about Hermione and Harry – both he and Lupin knew that. He saw Lupin’s face soften and a small smile tugged at the corner of Ron’s lips. He snorted and shook his head as an odd bittersweet feeling filled his body.
“They’re brilliant,” he said quietly – a second before a loud pop rang out from outside and his internal timer went off.
-x-x-
They landed almost silently in an alley near the Quarters, the rain and thunder of the raging storm easily covering the small remaining sound of their apparition. They moved quickly, their movements invisible to anyone who might be looking out the window and perfectly in sync with one another as Hermione led them toward their intended target. She wasn’t joking about only needing three minutes – this was outside of the scope of their plan and they could not afford to spend any time here, but she also could not knowingly leave the woman’s son home alone. She was glad that no one in the cottage even dared to challenge her on completing the extraction because it wasn’t up for discussion.
Despite the tremble in her legs, the shake of her arm and the exhaustion in her body she felt confident. Empty – but confident. Nothing would go wrong here, and the extraction would be perfect because she simply would not tolerate anything less than that.
After what happened this morning, she had no threads of patience left and she would obliterate anything that stood in her way. Besides – there was no reason to believe that anything would go wrong. Arlo’s men had been grabbing people outside in the dark and from the sounds of it, Ava must have slipped out in the middle of the night for something at the corner store down the street. She’d gotten unlucky, been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hermione knew it was unlikely to be a trap because the bonded pairs had not been hunting down victims in their homes.
They darted across the street, easily vanishing the splashes that they made through the water as they moved and ran their way along the sidewalk past the row houses until they reached #6. Hermione moved up to the door, quickly casting a detection spell and confirming that there was only one human inside the residence while Harry cast a silencing bubble around them and a detection spell outside the house which turned up nothing out of the ordinary. It was quiet, people were either already at work or were inside because of the storm.
“It’s clear,” Harry’s low voice sounded to her right.
“Inside is clear,” Hermione responded.
So, without another second of hesitation Hermione unlocked the door and they carefully slipped inside. She shut the door behind them and locked it as Harry cast a silencing charm on the entire home. The last thing that they needed was for the kid to start screaming and drawing in attention. She’d not asked the woman how old the kid was but from the detection spell she’d cast she knew he was under three – he’d registered only as a small blip. She cancelled her disillusionment at the same time Harry did, then made her way up the stairs to where she knew the small child was as Harry trailed along behind her.
“You get the kid,” Harry said quietly knowing that the silencing charm around them would keep Charlie unaware of their approach. “I’ll grab a bag and pack some stuff for them quickly since I’m not sure when or if we’ll be able to come back here.”
“Good plan,” Hermione nodded as she moved towards what looked to be the smaller bedroom of the two at the top of the stairs. “We’ve got one minute, and fifty-two seconds left – if anything happens return directly to the cottage.”
Harry nodded once and darted into the main bedroom. Hermione carefully opened the door to the smaller bedroom and froze at the entrance when two large, bright brown eyes looked up towards her at the sound of the opening door. They were tear stained and red, the kid couldn’t have been older than a year and a half. He was sitting up in his crib, snot dribbled from his nose and he looked distressed. Though he seemed oddly quiet as if he was so distraught, he couldn’t even make himself cry outwardly.
“Hi Charlie,” Hermione said softly as she forced herself to smile and moved carefully across the room. She silently vanished the blood from her hands and cursed herself inwardly for not taking a moment to remove the grime from her body. She surely looked horrifying right now, but then again magic could only do so much. What she really needed was for someone to wash her off with a firehose. “Do you want to go see mummy?”
The boy looked at her, his body tense but unmoving, his eyes wide but not quite fearful. Even though his apprehension was blatantly obvious in some ways he seemed happy to just see another human. She didn’t know anything about him or his routine, it was possible that he’d been awake for hours and crying for his mother. In fact, it was likely – otherwise she suspected that he’d have freaked out by now.
Hermione carefully reached into the crib and lifted him up, he leaned away from her, but he seemed too confused and exhausted to do anything but stare at her. So, she carefully sat him on her hip and grabbed the small blanket from his crib. Harry moved swiftly into the room a second later, rapidly summoning clothes, diapers and other random objects from around the room and directing them into a bag slung over his shoulder. Clearly he’d grabbed it from Ava’s room and had extended it to hold as many belongings as possible. Thankfully the kid didn’t scream at his sudden appearance, but his eyes went wide again, and his body went stiff at the sight of the tall dark haired stranger. Though he seemed pretty enraptured at the sight of items flying through the air of his room.
“Did you get anything from downstairs?” Hermione asked as she wrapped the blanket around the small child. He seemed not to care about anything but watching the stuff in his room disappear into the bag.
“Yeah, a few things,” Harry said over his shoulder as he swept the entire contents from the top of a dresser into the bag. “You ready? Thirty seconds.”
“Yeah – I’m going to stun him though, otherwise he’s going to get sick from the apparition,” Hermione muttered before she carefully stunned the tiny child. He immediately went limp in her arms and collapsed against her chest. She quickly cast a diagnostic charm on him to make sure that he was okay and let out a tense breath when his vitals all read strong. She hated the idea of using magic on muggles, especially children, unless if it was to save their lives – but she knew that apparition would likely make him violently ill. And she seriously doubted that Ava would handle seeing that well – it would only cause them more problems and possibly break her trust in them. She grimaced as she looked at his tiny unconscious form.
“He’ll be okay – it’s safer this way,” Harry said gently as he moved towards her.
“I know,” Hermione sighed and gave him a tight smile. “Are you ready?”
“Ready.”
“Okay – come here,” she reached out to Harry as he stepped toward her and pulled him close. She fought back the urge she had to cry as his strong arms circled around her and he gently grabbed the back of her bare neck. Charlie was pressed tightly against her chest between them, her right arm wrapped firmly around his small body while she made sure to hold his bare hand tightly. She tried not to think about how it felt to hold a child between the two of them as she gripped the back of Harry’s filthy jacket and let out a deep breath. It was a foreign and bizarrely domestic feeling, one that she wasn’t sure they’d ever experience again but she had no time to think on it – they still had one more stop after this one and then the rest of the war after that. “Okay, I’m ready.”
She felt Harry nod against the side of her face before the familiar tug pulled behind her navel and Harry apparated them back to Shell Cottage.
She landed firmly on her feet, carefully stepping away from Harry and checking over Charlie again to make sure he was still in one piece. His diagnostics still read strong, so she cancelled the charm and followed Harry toward the cottage door. She woke the kid just before they crossed the threshold. His eyes shot wide as he came to, he took in the sight of her with terror and opened his mouth to start screaming when a familiar voice cut through the air and he froze.
“Charlie!” Ava called to him as Hermione walked into the kitchen. “Charlie! Oh my god – Charlie are you okay?! Mummy’s here!”
“Mummy!” relief flooded his small face and tears began to pour from his eyes as he turned and reached for Ava who was fighting against her tether to get to him.
“Charlie!” Ava was crying now. The tears were pouring from her eyes as exhaustion and relief set across her face when Hermione carefully placed her son in her arms. “Oh my god – oh my god – I thought I’d never see you again. I’m so sorry – I’m so sorry Charlie, mummy would never leave you. I promise you I’ll never leave again. I’m so sorry, love.”
She held him to her chest tightly, rocking him back and forth as she murmured into his ear and promised him everything was okay. Hermione felt her jaw clench as emotions ached painfully through her body and a sickening coil twisted in the pit of her stomach. She frowned and ripped her eyes away, quickly turning her back to the emotional display – she couldn’t stomach it.
It hurt too much.
It was too raw, too honest – too open, and it was unbearable. It threatened to break her, and she couldn’t afford to crack now. So, she moved toward the table and started collecting the items that Ron had obviously gathered into her purse.
“Is this all that Fleur asked for?” her voice was low and detached as she rapidly loaded the items inside her bag.
“Yes,” Remus said hoarsely. She could tell that he was watching her. She knew that he was concerned, and she knew that he’d seen her reaction as her face twitched into a frown. “Hermione are –“
“Good,” she cut him off and turned back to look at Harry. Harry’s face looked tight like he was straining against something and his eyes were watching her face closely. “We’ll go to the safe house to help Fleur with the other rescues – I’ll send Luna back and she can help Ava get cleaned up. Nothing was out of the ordinary at their house – I didn’t expect anything given how Arlo was taking people, but we should still be careful and avoid going anywhere near it if possible. Harry grabbed some of their belongings in that bag – so they should be set for at least a little while, but we will need to figure out what to do going forward and Ava might need to call her work and make up a lie as to why she wasn’t there today. Harry can you untether Remus and change Ava’s tether so it gives her length to walk around the main floor?”
“Done,” Harry said without so much as moving a finger. He dropped the bag of Ava’s belongings to the table and moved to help Remus up from his chair. “Take some calming draught to relax your muscles but don’t go anywhere – stay here with Ron and Ava, we’ll send word through Andromeda to Tonks that you’re okay.”
“Thank you, Harry,” Remus nodded as he carefully stretched his shoulder and grimaced in pain.
“Ron get them something to eat and help Luna with whatever she needs when she gets here,” Hermione turned to look at the redhead who was standing on the opposite side of the table. He’d stood up the second they’d entered the cottage and she’d noted that he’d had an odd smile on his face at the time. Though now he was looking at her with an expression that could only be described as sad. Her eyes narrowed at him a fraction as he nodded at her instructions before she looked back to Harry – Ron was being incredibly odd and un-Ron today, but she didn’t have time to think on it. “Are you ready?”
“Yeah,” Harry nodded and turned to head back outside. Hermione moved to follow him but was stopped by the sound of Ava’s voice.
“Wait!” Ava’s hoarse voice echoed. Hermione turned and looked back at the woman. Tear tracks stained the dirt on her face, she was clutching her son with her only remaining hand, but she’d thrust out her stump toward Hermione when she’d yelled. “Y-You’re coming back right?”
Hermione faltered, her brow furrowing in confusion as she stared at the woman. She’d sort of assumed that Ava feared the two of them most out of the wizards that she’d met thus far, and she’d not thought that the woman would care about them returning now that she had her son. That was part of the reason why she planned to send Luna back to help her – because Luna was softer, she was more compassionate and could help the woman emotionally in a way that Hermione simply could not.
The other reason why she wanted Luna to return to the cottage was because Hermione knew that she couldn’t handle being around that woman and her child right now – she was barely holding herself together and she still had ten other people who needed her help. She had seven minds to infiltrate and obliviate because she was now the only one left in the Order capable of doing it properly without leaving a time gap. She’d gone from being the backup plan to the only plan now that Nasir was dead. She and Harry had to return each of those seven muggles safely to their homes because it needed to be done today and they were better suited to complete stealth drops than Fleur or Luna were, and Remus was out of commission for the day while Andromeda would need to get back to Tonks who was due to pop any moment now.
Then she had three muggles who had been werewolves that needed an explanation and might want to die. They were new transformation yes – but based on the data that Nasir had given them before the attack there was a possibility that the ‘new transformations’ had already eaten someone or been out on a trial run patrol and attacked another muggle. There was a possibility that they may not want to live with those memories even if she offered to remove them – and with Nasir gone, she and Harry were the only ones left willing to grant them that mercy.
She might be killing people today, and if not today she might have to tell three people that they were going to die painfully over the course of the next few months
Then she had to somehow hold it together and complete the debrief tonight – they needed to discuss the mission, the repercussions, the fallout – she needed to tell Arthur that he was a werewolf and that his first transformation this upcoming weekend would be painful, wild and dangerous because it was already too late to start the wolfsbane potion.
And then… she wanted to plant a cross next to Dobby’s grave to signify the death of a man that no one would remember. A man that most people didn’t even know existed – and who was feared by the ones that did. A man who had given her more in one single week than she’d ever gotten in the entirety of her life previous. A man who had given her the strength and ability and skills required to be able to save the people she’d saved today.
So, no – she did not have it in her to sit with that woman and support her emotionally. She didn’t care if she was coming off as cold and detached. She didn’t care if she was worrying people or if they were concerned about her reaction or lack thereof. The only person whose opinion mattered was Harry – and she knew that he understood. She couldn’t deal with this woman and fight to contain the emotions that threatened to consume her from the inside out while doing everything else that she still needed to do.
Agony filled her heart once more as she stared at the woman and forced her voice to remain calm as she spoke. “Yes – we’ll be back soon.”
Ava licked her lips nervously and nodded, her eyes moving rapidly between Hermione and Harry. “Thank you – for getting my son.”
Hermione nodded once.
“It was nothing,” she said quietly before turning on her heel and moving outside with Harry.
They didn’t bother with disillusionment charms and instead apparated immediately to the safe house per the coordinates that Arthur had given them. Harry held her hand so tightly it hurt, but she didn’t let go, and she squeezed him right back as she swallowed the tightness that ached in her chest. She forced herself to focus on her rune once more as they made their way toward the small farmhouse in unspoken unified pain.
-x-x-
The farmhouse wasn’t anything to write home about, it was small, cozy and remote – which was all that really mattered. Though if Hermione was being honest, she quite liked it. She liked that there was nothing significant about it. It blended in completely with the rural surroundings and even without the protective wards and spells it would be unlikely that anyone would ever approach the property. It was just so obviously plain it was entirely inconspicuous. It was completely safe.
There was a large red barn out back divided into two sections – one containing a group of seven unconscious muggles and the other containing the bodies of three unconscious werewolves. Each section was reinforced, heavily warded, silenced and secured to ensure that no one inside could leave without being part of the approved list on the wards Shacklebolt had created. It was specially designed to contain werewolves and included a small door to an outdoor fenced paddock so that they could roam somewhat free once transformed. Ideally it would be unrequired because with wolfsbane potion in effect the werewolves would simply curl up and sleep indoors until the full moon was over – but given that it was too late to take the set of weekly potions now they’d anticipated needing to give them additional space for the first transformation after their rescue. So, they’d designed the barn with that in mind and very carefully constructed safety mechanisms around the pen to ensure that no one could get out and no one could get in unless it was approved.
By the time Hermione and Harry got there Luna, Andromeda and Fleur had cleaned everyone up, clothed them and healed the majority of their wounds all while keeping them unconscious. They’d run out of dittany for some of the werewolves as they had to wait for their bodies to return to their human form but otherwise things were well under control. Within five minutes of getting there Harry sent Andromeda home with an update on Remus and Hermione debriefed Luna and sent her back to Shell Cottage to help Ava. Luna had been more than happy to help and had placed a calm and gentle hand on Hermione’s shoulder before leaving.
Which left them alone with Fleur.
Which Hermione was grateful for because she needed a break from being surrounded by people. They worked in silence for twenty minutes, carefully healing the final injuries that the three muggle werewolves had sustained from their transformation and checking the diagnostics of each of the rescues. Hermione silently thanked Fleur for being the single most understanding person that she’d ever met outside of Harry and internally vowed to tell her that someday. The woman was incredibly good at reading situations and had seemed to instantly know that Hermione and Harry were both very tense and did not want to talk. So, she remained quiet and assisted them with the healing without giving them empathetic looks or eyeing them with concern. She trusted them on a fundamental level, she believed in them and she seemed to understand that they knew what they were doing and that they were doing what was required to get through this.
It wasn’t until Hermione spoke first that she finally asked for an update – and even then, she didn’t push for anything because she knew it would be covered in the debrief at the end of the day. When they confirmed that Remus and Arthur had been injured, she simply nodded solemnly, her jaw clenched tight, but her eyes calm and trusting when they told her that everyone was okay. It took them half an hour to get everyone completely fixed up before they started to assess and process the non-infected muggles.
They woke each one up individually and had them drink a small portion of calming draught to make the questioning and return home easier. They asked them their name, where they were from, what their address was and if they lived with anyone else. If they did live with someone, they asked who and where those people would be on a Monday morning. They asked if their home would be empty right now, and if they had a job or if they were supposed to be anywhere at the moment.
Some were completely compliant and gave as much information as possible while others cried profusely and begged for them to spare their lives. Two refused to answer, either out of fear or defiance Hermione wasn’t sure but either way that was quickly resolved. And one conversation left Hermione so enraged that her nails cut deep into the palms of her hands and a piece of her wished that the den was still alive so that she could find the bastard that assaulted the girl and pull his intestines out through his nose. She would have torn him apart piece by piece if he were still alive and her only solace was knowing that the girl would not remember the events of what happened, she hadn’t been infected, she hadn’t gotten pregnant and she would be able to return to her normal life.
Fleur took careful notes on each conversation while they questioned the rescues so that they could check back in on them later to ensure that their return to the muggle world had been successful. By 2 pm all seven muggles had been obliviated back to their appropriate timeline and successfully returned home. At which point Fleur forced them to break for ten minutes to drink some water and eat a small lunch before she allowed them to move on to the muggle werewolves in the next room. Hermione had picked at her lunch, barely eating half of her sandwich and downing her water quickly as she read the latest message from Arthur and did her best to ignore the tremors that wracked her body from exhaustion.
She’d had no appetite and frankly neither did Fleur or Harry after dealing with the seven muggles. Yet her distaste ran deeper – because she’d seen it.
She’d been the one to peek into their minds to locate the last appropriate memory and obliviate the events that came after. Obliviation wasn’t full blown legilimency but she’d seen enough to entirely lose her taste for food. She’d excused herself to go use the washroom that Arthur had retrofitted in the barn after working with the girl who’d been assaulted, and she gotten physically sick. She’d had nothing in her stomach to throw up at the time so she’d simply dry-heaved for thirty seconds under a silencing charm until she managed to get control of herself once more and went back to interviewing the remaining muggles.
Yet working with the three werewolves was much, much more difficult. They were confused – rightfully so, and they were scared. They instinctively did not trust them, they struggled to accept what was happening to them, two of them had thrown up after waking up, and Hermione had had to hold their mouths open while Fleur poured in the calming draught. All of them had to be tethered because they’d tried to flee and one of them landed a punch on Harry’s face immediately upon waking up.
Liza, a twelve year old girl, seemed to be the most accepting of the situation. She didn’t trust them, but she’d drank the calming draught that Fleur gave her after briefly trying to flee and realizing that she couldn’t get anywhere. She seemed to like Fleur the best and was mesmerized by her appearance. She told Fleur everything that happened and even accepted a small sandwich.
She’d been transformed the day before, had never left the den and had not been bonded yet. Based on the very minor lingering damage to her body post transformation she had the most promising future and the possibility of a somewhat normal life. Though they needed to look into her family situation to determine if her parents were still alive – Liza’s memories were foggy around her capture and it was very likely that Arlo’s men had stunned her and taken her parents too.
Colin was the second werewolf. He was a middle aged man with grey hair who’d been transformed two days prior. He’d been bonded to a wizard and taken out on a single trial run but had fortunately not attacked anyone or eaten anything. He’d thrown up and tried to flee, he’d fought against the potion and he’d begged to see his wife and kid. It wasn’t until the calming draught kicked in and he saw Fleur that he finally started to speak coherently and give them more information. He worked in management at a muggle store, he had an eight year old daughter and a wife. He’d been coming home late from the theater with his family and had stopped on the side of a quiet road because he’d gotten a flat tire. He didn’t remember anything after that so they took down his full name and address so they could look into the status of his family like Liza’s.
But Hermione already knew that they’d either been killed at the roadside, or they’d died in the fire at the den as werewolves. It was incredibly unlikely that they’d gotten away from the initial abduction when he hadn’t.
Then there was Ariel, a businesswoman in her early thirties. She’d thrown up immediately after waking. She’d tried to run, she’d screamed, she’d kicked, she’d clawed and she’d been the one who’d punched Harry in the face. Her body had extensive lingering damage and she was in severe pain from the deterioration. She’d been a werewolf for two months already and her bones hadn’t properly shifted back into their human form. Hermione had only been able to give her muggle pain medication to take the edge off. She’d considered trying to transfigure things back to their correct shape, but without a medical textbook nearby she was hesitant to do it – and frankly she wasn’t even sure if it would work.
Ariel had been in the cell because her previous paired wizard had been killed during a scuffle amongst the ranks and she’d needed a new ‘owner’ but Arlo had yet to re-bond her given her age and he’d been debating just throwing her into the pits unbonded as food. From what Ariel could recall, and from what Hermione was able to make out between her sobs and screams and distorted memories she’d bitten at least three people while on patrol. She’d eaten at least two muggles who’d had unsuccessful transformations after being ordered to do so and she’d consumed anywhere from two to three sick werewolves during her time in the pit.
She was the only one to ask for death.
They’d given dreamless sleeping draught to each of them, enough to knock them out solid until noon the following day to buy themselves time to figure out how to proceed. They needed to look into their family situations. They needed to figure out what kind of a life they could give these people and then discuss it with them. But most pressingly, they needed to get back to Shell Cottage because it was already 4:30 pm and the debrief would be starting in half an hour.
So even though Ariel had sobbed and grabbed Hermione’s hand, asking her to kill her and begging her to make the pain stop – Hermione had postponed it, and granted the woman a peaceful sleep instead.
She wanted to see if there was a way to fix the woman’s bones before she ended her life. She wanted to see if the woman responded better to the situation after the memories of eating people had been removed from her head – she just didn’t have enough time to do it all right now and she didn’t want to sign Ariel’s death note until she was confident that the woman wanted it. Until all reasonable options had been exhausted.
But as Hermione watched Harry tether the three sleeping muggle werewolves to their temporary cots, she felt her heart harden and her body grow cold. She made a silent promise to grant Ariel her wish if she could not find a way to give her a life that she wanted.
Aani, thank you for keeping me sane this week ;) you are simply put – the best human
By the time they’d finished packing up at the safe house, setting the alarms, rechecking the wards and placing monitoring charms on the three sleeping muggles it was 4:57 pm before they landed back on the rainy beach of Shell Cottage. The brunt of the storm had long since passed but the sky remained dark, dull and gloomy, and a slow cold drizzle continued to fall from the sky and flood the already waterlogged ground. They made their way silently across the sand, jaws clenched tight with stress since none of them had any energy left for conversation when it felt like they were carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders – the burden of their findings weighed heavy like stone in their minds.
Hermione felt spent.
She simply had nothing left to give because it felt like everything that she had had been completely stripped away from her over the last 12 hours.
The adrenaline that had kept her body moving was long since gone. The anger that had given her motivation to keep pushing through the conversations with the muggles had simmered down to low burning embers in the hollow of her chest, and the numbness that had encased her body and allowed her to detach and do what she had to do had grown cold. She felt dead on her feet and with each step toward the cottage her calm demeanor and mind threatened to break.
Her boots were waterlogged, her hair was muddy and matted, her clothes were entirely soaked through, her legs trembled with exhaustion as she walked, her arm shook at a steady vibration that would slosh tea from a cup if she dared try to hold one and she knew that she was still covered in a filthy layer of grime and blood – yet she just could not bring herself to care. She couldn’t even bring herself to think on her appearance. Despite the wet from the rain the smell of death and fire still clung to her and it served as a persistent reminder of what they’d been through; of what she’d lost – and it left her feeling empty yet vulnerable.
And she hated it.
Fleur had asked them prior to leaving the safe house if they wanted to delay the debrief to get cleaned up – but they’d both declined. The debrief would be unbearable whether she was cleaned up or not and frankly she just wanted to get it over and done with.
Harry held her hand tightly as they approached the cottage door, he’d not let go of it once the apparition was completed and for that she was thankful. By this point – it felt like it was the only thing left keeping her on her feet. It was the only thing keeping her fragile mind sane as she felt the tremendous exhaustion from the day weigh heavy on her emotional defenses. She needed to get this debrief over with so she could be alone with Harry. She needed this hellhole of a day to end so that she could finally mourn in private and let out the turmoil that threatened to break her into pieces she wasn’t sure could be repaired.
When they entered the cottage, she heard a large collection of voices go silent and she realized that the three of them were the last to arrive. Fleur moved quickly into the kitchen and wrapped her arms around Bill as Hermione froze on spot when six sets of eyes locked to her and Harry. It was a lot of people – and they all looked emotional.
Great, she thought nervously as she fought to remain calm.
She swallowed hard as her eyes shifted over Arthur, Mrs. Weasley, Ron, Remus, Shacklebolt, and Bill. All of them had cleaned up and were wearing fresh clothes. She and Harry were the only two left in the same outfit from that morning, the only two left covered in mud and stained with blood. She felt her jaw clench as she took in their pained expressions and she felt her stomach twist as she met Arthur’s exhausted and sad gaze. She knew she and Harry looked like hell – but now she realized they probably looked even worse than that.
Before anyone could even say anything, a strangled sob broke from Mrs. Weasley’s mouth and she rushed towards them.
“Molly!” Arthur’s voice broke out as he tried to stop his wife. His pain medication had worn off and he grimaced as he stepped forward and reached out to grab her – his fingers just grazed the fabric of her sleeve, but he wasn’t able to move quick enough to stop her.
Hermione felt a wave of panic wash over her at the woman’s rushed approach and she instinctively stepped back several feet with Harry. Her arm twitched violently, her grip on Harry’s hand tightened like death and she felt her chest constrict as Harry’s hand jerked in hers. Their outright reaction must have looked worse than she thought it did because she found herself surprised when Mrs. Weasley came to an abrupt stop several feet before them. Her face was pinched in pain, her eyes were wide and darting between them as she took in the sight of their tense bodies and blatantly obvious discomfort. Her mouth opened and trembled, then her head started to shake, and tears began falling down her face.
“I – I’m sorry,” she swallowed hard and clutched the front of her robes tightly. Her urge to close the space between them was obvious as she fought to keep herself in place and shuffled on her feet. Hermione could see the turmoil in her eyes as she looked between them in agony while relief flooded Arthur’s face when her movements stopped. “Arthur said not to crowd you, he said that it made you uncomfortable but I – I didn’t realize how much – I –“
“It’s fine,” Harry said somewhat tightly as he tried to give the woman a small smile, though it looked much more like a grimace.
“No – no it’s not fine,” Mrs. Weasley started to shake her head again as she clenched her jaw. “Nothing about this is fine – nothing about any of this is fine. You saved his life – again and I still didn’t consider how you two feel – I didn’t realize how hard this truly was for you, but I – I promise you that I will do better to give you the space that you need.”
“Thank you,” Hermione said quietly and that only made Mrs. Weasley’s face crumple more.
“Please don’t thank me Hermione, never – not for this – I’ll never be able to thank you for what you did,” Mrs. Weasley’s voice dropped to a whisper as she fought to control her emotions and struggled to get her words out. “I want you both to know that I’m grateful. That I’ll never be able to thank you – that you – I can’t – I can’t lose him and you – Ron told me how you fixed his leg and without you two – he wouldn’t be here.”
“It wasn’t a problem,” Hermione shook her head gently and swallowed hard as some of the tension in her shoulders lessened.
“It was everything,” Mrs. Weasley said quietly before her eyes darted over their dirty forms once more. “We can delay a little bit if you two want to–“
“No,” Hermione shook her head firmly and glanced toward Harry. “I’d like to get this finished.”
“Alright,” Mrs. Weasley breathed out a low ragged breath and seemed to finally gain some composure. She hesitated a moment longer, her eyes flicking between them before she finally, and to Hermione’s relief, stepped away. “Well, let’s get started.”
Hermione and Harry moved to the table, following behind Mrs. Weasley and taking two of the three empty seats at the end near the door. They were the same seats that they always took but as Hermione sat down her eyes shifted to the left and she felt her heart ache painfully in her chest at the sight of Nasir’s empty chair. A part of her wished that someone would have thought to remove the seat from the table so she didn’t have to look at it – but then again, that felt worse because it would have been like trying to erase him completely. She felt her jaw clench tighter as she stared at it and she unconsciously began to tighten her grip on Harry’s hand.
It hurts, she thought painfully as her stress levels grew. It didn’t help that she could still feel everyone’s heartbeat in her head, and she knew they were all incredibly tense. She forced herself to take in a low quiet deep breath and tear her eyes away from the empty chair. They landed on Ron. He was looking at her with that same odd sad expression that he’d had earlier and her eyes naturally narrowed.
“Why are you here?” Hermione’s voice rang out cold and she realized that she’d cut off the voices that had been talking around the table. She hadn’t heard them; she hadn’t been paying attention while she’d been staring at Nasir’s seat. She felt seven pairs of eyes latch to her as she glared at Ron.
“Well,” Ron said slowly, his voice remained even and cautious despite her harsh gaze. “It’s not like I can go anywhere. So, I figured I might as well try to be helpful. I’m going to assist Luna and Fleur with Ava and Charlie – and Bill with any fallout cleanup that can be done from here.”
Hermione stared at him for a long moment, she was too exhausted to comprehend why Ron had given them a small smile when he mentioned not being able to go anywhere. Clearly, he’d figured out that he was tethered to the cottage – but his reaction was not at all what she’d expected. She did not like the idea of Ron becoming involved again, but she also could not deny that the Order needed extra hands. So long as he remained at Shell Cottage, he posed little risk – besides, the details on the werewolf den and the muggles were inconsequential compared to the information that he already had in his head. So she clenched her jaw and bit back her anger.
“Fine,” she shifted her eyes to Arthur. “Sorry for interrupting – where did you want to start?”
“That’s okay,” Arthur gave her a small smile while Shacklebolt looked at her with an odd expression. “We’re starting with a recap of everything that happened since we left the cottage.”
The recap was exhausting but necessary. Everyone detailed the precise actions that they completed since leaving the cottage that morning. They specified who they’d spoken to and interacted with and identified any potential concerns that they had for loose ends. Thankfully, there weren’t many. Mrs. Weasley and Fleur had made a point of being extremely visible in the morning as Bill had said. They’d interacted with several key Death Eaters and Voldemort supporters within the Ministry and had not run into any issues. Being visible had proven to be easy because the office was spinning with gossip and people were mulling around and talking about the latest death, and while an official statement had yet to be released – Arthur had confirmed that it was Peter.
Peter the apothecary owner.
The man that she and Harry had stolen from and the man who had been smuggling supplies to the Order despite the risks. They didn’t know all the details yet – but apparently, they were gruesome. Gruesome enough that Arthur and Shacklebolt were now concerned about getting future supplies since most of the remaining apothecaries were already under Voldemort’s control and the ones that weren’t would be unwilling to risk involvement after hearing about Peter’s murder. Shacklebolt had sent Thomas, the man who assisted with disposing of the werewolf bodies, to one of Peter’s underground storage houses to clean out the supplies that remained – it was a decent haul but it would only last so long.
Arthur seemed to want to skip over the details of Peter’s death as quickly as possible and he only allowed Shacklebolt to confirm that Peter had been murdered and strung up to the front of his apothecary early that morning. He then changed the topic and pushed the debrief forward.
They all agreed it was incredibly unlikely that Voldemort would suspect that the Order had obliterated the den on the same day that Peter was murdered – and they doubted that Voldemort would think that the Order was capable of obliterating the den at all. They were a nuisance to him, like a fly on a horse’s back but he had never considered them as an actual threat.
So they agreed that it was incredibly unlikely that anyone would be brought in for questioning given that both Fleur and Mrs. Weasley had spoken directly with Yaxley that morning – but just in case, Arthur and Bill planned to temporarily extract their memories of the infiltration from their minds before going into work the next morning. It was a slightly risky affair since neither one of them were particularly talented with memory work – but Moody had taught them both how to do it well enough that they would be able to pass a veritaserum test. It wouldn’t stand up to a full blown legilimency interrogation but it was better than nothing, and if they weren’t approached tomorrow for questioning then it was highly unlikely that they would be questioned in the future.
Though despite this everyone agreed to start implementing regular occlumency drills into their training – which they all agreed would continue every night until the war was over. They would meet at the cottage at 7 pm to practice dueling and learn whatever spells Hermione and Harry deemed required. It was a unanimous decision and the conviction in the eyes of the Order members around the table made a shiver run down her spine as she realized that they were all finally taking this very seriously.
When Arthur and Remus recounted the events that unfolded inside the den most of the faces around the table went white, Ron looked sick and Mrs. Weasley gripped the table so tightly Hermione was sure that it would leave permanent marks. Yet hearing about the atrocities committed and the conditions of the den only made Hermione feel colder – she’d already known and fully understood the details based on Nasir’s shared findings and she’d briefly been in the den. Between her experience in the pit and seeing the memories of the muggles before she obliviated them, hearing about it now felt like just another regular part of her day.
What was hard, was listening to Arthur recount Nasir’s actions in a voice laced with heavy regret and sadness.
Nasir had murdered Arlo with his dagger, he’d saved Ava by cutting off her arm, he’d saved Arthur by temporarily mending his leg, and he’d downed strength potion and all but carried Arthur out of the den. He’d stayed and he’d kept them all alive after threatening to leave them behind when they’d refused to leave. Arthur had asked her if she knew who Nazira was – she didn’t – but it seemed to be someone important to him and Arlo seemed to be his motivation for assisting with the den infiltration.
Yet even that did not make sense to her. Based on what Arthur had described and based on her own training experience with the man – if his only desire was to murder Arlo for revenge then he could have done it at any point during his reconnaissance missions. He easily could have killed the man and made it look like an accident or made him disappear and then slipped safely out of the den. He hadn’t needed to work with the Order, there was no reason for him to put himself in danger and participate in a full blown den infiltration if he’d only wanted revenge. He hadn’t needed to die, and she knew that there must have been some other reason or Nasir would have simply killed Arlo and left weeks ago.
She refrained from stating that during the debrief but she felt Harry’s hand twitch against hers and she knew that he was thinking the same thing.
As Arthur spoke about Nasir she felt a lump form at the back of her throat and it became harder to control the wave of emotion within her. She knew that he was glancing to her out of concern, but she kept her eyes fixated on the porcelain mug before her, eyeing the now cold coffee as if it were the most interesting thing in the world. She couldn’t handle seeing the devastation in everyone’s eyes – the same eyes that had looked at the man like he was a monster only days ago. They’d all feared him, disliked him, distrusted him – and now they all felt guilty and were mourning him like he was a hero.
But he wasn’t.
He was just Nasir. A mysterious and complicated man with a complicated past and probably a laundry list of terrible deeds hidden up his sleeves. His actions in the den had been heroic yes but he wasn’t a hero, he wasn’t a good man – but she was okay with that. She’d accepted him for who he was in his entirety and she’d come to adore him, trust him, need him. She hated the idea of them warping their memories of him and twisting him into something that he wasn’t because they felt guilty and ultimately – they still could not accept him for who he was.
It was like their minds could not rationalize him being ‘Nasir’ and him being capable of doing ‘the right thing’ or acting like a ‘hero’.
They should have feared him – they were right to fear him. He was a terrifying man, but they should have respected him. They should have accepted him for what he was and learned to be okay with it. They’d misjudged him yes, but what they were doing now was still misjudging him and it just highlighted the fact that they would continue to struggle to do what needs to be done in this war. They’d started to take things seriously yes, but they still struggled to understand that there was no clear line between good and evil, and that there was an entire landscape of grey in between where intent mattered.
It was exactly why they all still struggled to accept Harry and her, their decisions and what they’d become – because she and Harry floated in the grey and it made them nervous. They wanted everything to be clear cut and perfect – they wanted this to be good versus evil like how Dumbledore had sold it to them years ago – but it wasn’t, and it never would be. Which meant that people like Nasir – people like her and Harry would never fit in when this war was over.
She felt her empty stomach twist painfully as her mind wandered and yet she couldn’t bring herself to eat any of the food that Fleur had set out on the table. She let Harry recount their events when it was their turn and she sat there silently at his side as her body grew cold. She let Fleur summarize the findings and follow-ups required with the muggles, and she didn’t speak until the debrief was almost over and the topic of Ariel’s death came up – another grey area that would undoubtedly cause trouble again.
“Ariel asked to die,” Fleur said solemnly, her fingers gripping the mug before her tightly.
“A-And did you,” Arthur turned to look at Hermione, his eyes wary. Shacklebolt seemed to tense at the table, knowing full well that this topic was a point of contention between the group based on the last time it came up. “Did you – did you do it?”
“I didn’t kill her today,” Hermione said quietly. She could hear the exhaustion in her voice as she finally pried her eyes away from the table and glanced up to Arthur. She felt six sets of eyes glance her way once more and she knew that Mrs. Weasley was clutching the neck of her robes tightly. “I want to try removing the memories she has of eating muggles from her mind first – and fixing her bones. However, even with that she was in werewolf form for at least two months. The damage done by the stasis charm is irreversible and extensive. She likely only has another two months to live – maybe four at best but that would be a painful stretch. She didn’t respond as well as the others did to the dittany either so it’s unlikely that healing her between the changes going forward will yield good results. Tomorrow I’ll complete the obliviation and repair what I can of her body – if she still wants to die after that, then I’ll take care of it tomorrow.”
“Hermione,” Arthur said quietly, and she could see the strain in his eyes. “You don’t need to be the one who–“
“Well with Nasir gone I just assumed that no one else would volunteer,” Hermione said flatly, a hint of bitterness to her voice as her eyes danced around the table at the tight expressions of the other Order members – but everyone else remained silent as the air seemed to grow heavy. It was the first time that she’d said his name during the debrief and the first time she’d made any outward acknowledgement of his death. The dull ache that had been beating in her chest since the moment he died began to beat harder as his name slipped through her lips. She turned back to Arthur and raised a brow as if to prove her point, but her voice waivered on her next words despite her best efforts to remain calm. “Besides I wouldn’t wish that responsibility on anyone else here – but it doesn’t matter right now anyways. We’ll wait and see what she wants tomorrow. What we need to talk about right now is–“
Her voice caught in her throat at the look of guilt and agony that crossed Arthur’s face. She knew that he blamed himself for Nasir’s death and she knew he probably thought she was angry with him about it. She faltered a moment as she cleared her throat and felt a tightness form across her chest. She didn’t mean to hurt Arthur’s feelings with her words, but it seemed like she had anyways because her control over her emotions was slipping – and that just made everything hurt more.
Keep it together – we’re almost done the debrief.
“We need to determine how to handle the remaining ones,” Hermione cleared her throat again and felt Harry’s grip on her hand tighten as her left arm began to tremble more viciously.
“Hermione,” Harry whispered as he turned toward her, but she ignored him and pushed forward.
“We need to figure out what kind of life we can give them and confirm the status of their families – and Arthur I still need to speak with you about your wound,” she felt her chest constrict further and suddenly it was getting harder to breath.
She could feel everyone watching her closely, the air was tense like they were expecting her to react or lose it completely and yet she couldn’t stop, she wouldn’t stop – there was still so much left to do. She had to remain calm because she had to tell Arthur about his infection, and she needed to help him plan how to manage it. They needed to plan the future of five muggles, they needed to close the loop so no missing persons cases were opened by the police, she needed to confirm her potion supplies and restock, she needed to tend to the bruise on Harry’s face and she needed to research how to alter bones for Ariel. There were a million things left to do.
She felt a panic building in her chest as fatigue consumed her and she forced herself to push forward. “And we need to figure out what to do with Charlie, and Ava–“
“Hermione – Harry?” Ava’s broken voice was so quiet Hermione almost didn’t hear it, but it rendered her speechless and made her spine stiffen as her heart began to thud more rapidly in her chest.
No not this woman, I cannot deal with this woman right now! She heard footsteps behind her and she barely managed to turn and look over her shoulder before a stumped arm was wrapped around the upper half of her body and she felt something warm press up against her spine.
“You guys came back,” Ava’s voice echoed near her ear and Hermione went rigid as the air left her lungs. She felt Harry tense beside her while the rest of the room fell eerily silent.
“Hermione – I’m so sorry – they needed to use the restroom, we were just going to slip by,” Luna’s voice echoed behind her somewhere and she heard more footsteps move towards them.
“It’s fine,” Hermione said tightly, her voice cracking slightly. Ava quickly pulled away and Hermione looked up at the woman. She’d clearly showered, she looked clean and fresh and normal – like how she would have looked before this nightmare started. Her eyes were shining brightly with unshed tears, she was wearing some of Hermione’s old clothes – the ones that Hermione had given to Luna to bring back to Shell Cottage for her. Her long dark brown hair hung past her shoulders, her son was fixed to her hip and even he looked well rested and much better than this morning.
“I’m sorry for interrupting,” Ava said a little sheepishly, a blush crept across her face as she took in the silence and eyed the room nervously. “Luna told me more about you and Harry – and I just – I wanted to thank you again and I wanted to say that I’m so glad that you’re back. And that I’m sorry if I seemed ungrateful this morning at all – I was just a bit overwhelmed with everything. But I know that I’m only here because of what you did, because of what your friend did, and I’ll never be able to repay that debt. You two saved my life and saved my son – you’re giving me the chance to keep living and I don’t know how to thank you.”
No stop – stop, stop, stop! Hermione felt her eyes start to sting as her throat grew tighter. She felt like a massive Jenga tower built on top of a single brick and Ava’s emotional display was threatening to kick the base block out from under her. What was worse than the woman though was her son and seeing them so happily together – they looked so normal it hurt. Charlie was looking at her without fear this time and his eyes were tracing over her curiously.
“Remember Hermione, Charlie? This is the girl who saved you – say thank you,” Ava said softly as she looked at her son with tear filled eyes.
Oh Merlin please don’t.
“Thank you,” Charlie’s small voice and shy smile tore through Hermione’s heart as he reached out and touched her dirty forehead.
Hermione felt something break deep inside her and the weight of her rune grew unbearable like an elephant had just sat across her chest. Pain radiated out through her body so violently even her teeth hurt.
“I can’t be here,” Hermione’s whispered words were barely audible as Charlie withdrew his tiny hand from her forehead and continued to smile at her. She felt like she’d swallowed shards of glass and her vision was starting to blur as her repressed emotions from the day flooded her. Her eyes darted away from Ava and she cleared her throat roughly before raising her voice to the people in the room as she fought to keep her face composed for another few seconds. “I’m sorry – please excuse me for a minute, you can continue without me.”
Without a word and without daring to look at anything else in the cottage Hermione dropped Harry’s hand and pushed away from the table. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t see – she could hear the echo of voices behind her, but she couldn’t make out the words because she felt like her head was under water. She made her way to the door as quickly and as calmly as she could. Ripping it open, she made sure that her shaking legs carried her into the safety of the darkness and out of view before she took off at a run. The wind ripped at her hair as the cold rain stung her face. Everything hurt and she couldn’t keep it in anymore as the weight of day crushed her like a blade of grass, but she refused to break within the vicinity of the cottage – she couldn’t stomach the idea of anyone in there seeing her collapse.
“Hermione!”
It was Harry, she could hear his voice echoing behind her and yet the sound only made her legs move quicker as she full on sprinted and dread filled her heart. She felt like she was dying as pain and sadness flooded her mind.
All those people, her eyes stung as she raced blindly forward. All those people had died today – and how many of them had she killed? Dozens? She knew it had to be done but that didn’t make it hurt any less. It didn’t make it any easier to bear.
And how many families were ruined from what Arlo had done? How would they ever be able to compete with Voldemort and the Death Eaters when they were willing to go to such horrible lengths? How could they win when even now that group in the kitchen was still fundamentally unwilling to grant a mercy killing and clearly struggled to walk in the grey?
How could that woman be so kind and so grateful after what she’d lost? Her life was ruined, and she’d probably never see her family again and yet she’d thanked her! Thanked her when she didn’t deserve it because deep down a small and twisted part of Hermione was angry that she was alive – if not for Ava, Remus wouldn’t have nearly lost a lung, Arthur wouldn’t be a werewolf and Nasir wouldn’t be dead.
Nasir died because of her, because he’d stayed back for her instead of dragging everyone out – he could have, she knew he could have. He easily could have stunned Remus and Arthur and dragged them from the den and yet he’d decided not to, and she didn’t understand why. A sick guilt twisted in her stomach as she fought the urge to vomit. She knew it was just an emotional response and grief over her loss – she didn’t truly blame Ava – but knowing that didn’t make it hurt any less.
She’d just lost her mentor.
She’d just lost a friend.
Nasir had wiggled his strange, emotionally detached and creepy self into her heart, he belonged in their group – but she hadn’t been strong enough to save him. If someone like him could die so easily then how in Merlin’s name could she ever even hope to protect Harry when he inevitably fought Voldemort? What chance did she stand?
For one brief week she’d truly, wholeheartedly believed that they had a chance. She’d thought that she’d had a real shot at becoming what she needed to be in order to protect him – and now it felt like that hope had just slipped through her fingers and she felt like her heart was breaking.
She loved Harry more than anything in this world. She’d let herself get attached to him despite her initial concerns that it would affect their mission and now she couldn’t live without him – and she’d just lost the only person who could have helped her protect him. The only person who could have and would have taught her what she needed to know to be successful.
There were still a million things that she’d wanted to ask Nasir. She’d been planning to talk to him privately once the mission was over so that she could ask him for help – so he could help her become stronger by any means necessary. He’d been their only shot at getting through this war and her only shot at ensuring Harry’s safety – but he was gone, and it was her fault.
“HERMIONE!” the sound of rapidly running feet approached behind her as she stumbled in the sand, but Harry grabbed her arm firmly and stopped her from falling. “Hermione, it’s okay–“
“Nothing about this is okay!” Hermione screamed at him as she twisted around to see Harry looking at her in concern in the faint light coming from the small cottage. “Harry I didn’t – I didn’t do anything–“
“Hermione it’s not your fault,” Harry said firmly as he tried to grab her by the upper arms, but she pushed away from him and stumbled further back into the darkness.
“YES IT IS!” her voice broke as she screamed and the rain hitting her face started to blend with the tears that she could no longer contain. Looking at Harry and feeling his hands on her body just made everything ache more and she couldn’t handle it. “We could have gone back for him! We never should have allowed Arthur and Remus to go in there with him in the first place! They weren’t ready! We knew that they weren’t ready Harry – and now Arthur is a fucking werewolf! Remus almost died and Nasir is dead, Harry! He’s fucking dead and it’s my fault! He was our friend, Harry! Our friend and we left him there to die! We left him behind when this never should have even happened!!”
“Hermione, I know you’re upset – I know you miss him, but you can’t blame yourself,” Harry had closed the distance between them and grabbed her arm once more. His voice had dropped and become more serious as he roughly tugged her closer and refused to let go despite her pulling away. “He never would have let you stay – you know that – even if there was a way that we could have saved him he never would have let us. I know that you cared about him Hermione, I know how much he meant to you but–“
“NO, YOU DON’T HARRY!” Hermione cut him off with an angry scream. Harry stiffened at her words, his body becoming impossibly still as his brow creased and he stared at her hard in the dull light. Her face crumpled as she realized how her words must have sounded to him and fresh tears started to pour down her face as her voice dropped to a broken whisper. “It’s not just about him, Harry – it’s everything, it’s about all of this – it’s you. I was going to –“
Her voice caught in her throat as she choked on her words once more.
“I was g-going to ask him to help me – so I could help you,” she looked up at him through bleary eyes as her body began to shake once more. She saw his expression soften as something painful crossed behind his eyes. “So I could make sure you were safe. How do we stand a chance in this war now that he’s gone? How can I save you if I couldn’t save him? He was my chance, Harry – he would have – if I’d asked him to, he could have made me more – I – I c-can’t lose you Harry –“
Her limbs started to tremble so badly her legs gave out as a sob wracked her body. Strong familiar arms wrapped around her as she dropped to her knees. Harry crumpled to the sand with her as she cried and she gasped for air. He held her tight against his chest, his arms gripping her small body like a vice as she clung to him desperately and fell apart. Neither one of them noticed as a wave of cold water washed up the beach and soaked through their bloodied pants.
“You’re not going to lose me,” Harry’s low voice rumbled gently against her ear as she gripped his ruined jacket and cried against his chest. He smelled of smoke and death like her, but she didn’t care, she just pulled him closer. “I promise.”
-x-x-
Harry clutched Hermione tight to his chest, unwilling to let go of her as she shook and cried in his arms. He didn’t care that they were sitting in several inches of freezing water, he didn’t care that he’d abandoned everyone in the cottage to chase after her, and he didn’t care if anyone from the cottage was looking outside and could see the faint shadow of their crumpled forms on the edge of the beach. The only thing he said when he’d gotten up from the table and followed her out the door was ‘stay inside!’ and then he’d cast a rapid silencing charm and sprinted after her.
He’d known that she was struggling all day. He’d known that she was having a hard time dealing with Nasir’s death and what happened to Arthur – not to mention the fact that she’d been the only one capable of properly obliviating the muggles at the safehouse and that undoubtedly took an additional toll on her. If he was being honest, he had no idea how she’d held it together for as long as she did. Even inside the cottage she’d somehow kept her voice even the entire time and her face indifferent as she calmly excused herself and exited the room.
He’d seen the confused look on Shacklebolt’s face – the man didn’t know her well enough to know that she was dying on the inside. But Arthur did – the concern that had flashed across his face when Hermione excused herself had been agonizing. Fleur and Ron seemed to know too whereas Remus, Bill and Mrs. Weasley were somewhere in the middle. They knew something was wrong, but they didn’t understand the extent of it.
He kicked himself for not pushing her to take a moment to breathe after dealing with the muggles, but the reality was Hermione never would have listened. Brilliant as she was the girl was stubborn and determined. He knew her like the back of his hand and he had known that she wanted to get the day done and over with so that she could be alone to deal with everything – but seeing Ava had been more than she could manage. He didn’t doubt that finding out Ava was ultimately the cause of Nasir’s death had hit Hermione hard during the debriefing and made seeing the woman even worse. All the other details about Nasir’s final actions that came to light as Arthur and Remus recounted what happened inside the den before they’d arrived had only agitated her more. He’d felt her hand tighten as they spoke and every time they said that man’s name her hand flinched within his.
He knew that Hermione cared for Nasir and while her relationship with him had always made him uncomfortable and that man’s interest in Hermione had unsettled him from day one – never had he ever been worried about her. Never had he ever not trusted her or thought that she might see the man as anything other than a mentor.
Harry knew that Hermione loved him.
Their relationship was so fundamental and so strong that he’d never once doubted it. So, when she’d pushed away from him only moments ago and screamed at him that he didn’t understand how much Nasir meant to her – he didn’t know what to think. For the first time ever, he’d wondered if he was wrong. He’d wondered if he should’ve been concerned.
He let out a low deep sigh as he rocked her gently back and forth. It was a ridiculous thought – and he berated himself for even allowing his mind to conjure it. He couldn’t believe that for a split second he’d doubted her – it was the first time and the last time; he would never do it again. He pulled her between his legs and half onto his lap as he kissed the top of her head and murmured in her ear while she confessed all the turmoil that had been building inside her through broken sobs.
He should have known.
They’d already talked about this to some degree and she’d said that she wouldn’t become tempted by the knowledge that Nasir might be able to offer them. She’d said that she would only learn what was necessary and nothing more, but he should have known that she’d been planning to ask Nasir to help her. He should have expected this. He should have known that she would do anything to win this war – and to save him. She’d already expressed to him how much it terrified her that she might not be able to save him. She’d already told him that she wouldn’t stop and that she’d do anything it took.
This was Birmingham all over again and just like how’d she’d laid out careful notes for him then, trained him and showed him how to use everything in her purse in case she died – she’d been planning to ask Nasir for assistance behind his back. She’d been planning to silently prepare yet again so she could ensure that he came out of this war in one piece even if it meant giving up herself and placing her neck directly under the axe. He felt his eyes burning as he gripped her tighter and her nails dug so deep into the fabric of his jacket, he could feel them cutting into his back.
Fuck I love her – but she gives too much.
Now she was not only devastated because of everything they’d endured today with the den, the muggles, the injuries, the guilt she felt over being angry with Ava and the agony she felt from the loss of her friend and mentor – she was devastated because she felt like they’d just lost their edge in the war.
And he would be lying if he said he didn’t feel it too.
As uncomfortable as Nasir may have made him feel at times, she wasn’t the only one who had been making plans. She wasn’t the only one who was relying on Nasir to teach them so that they stood a chance. He couldn’t lose her – he wouldn’t lose her, and he was willing to do whatever it took to ensure that. She wasn’t the only one who’d been planning to make a deal.
They sat there for what must have been nearly half an hour until Hermione had finally stopped crying, though she remained curled into his chest and clutching him tightly. His muscles were screaming at him from the cold despite the fact that he’d cast several wordless warming charms, but he didn’t dare move until Hermione shifted first.
“I’m sorry Harry,” her voice was quiet and broken as she whispered into his soaking wet jacket.
“You have nothing to be sorry about,” he murmured back and kissed her temple. It was such a Hermione thing to say – the girl would carry the weight of the world on her shoulders and still feel like she’d not done enough.
“I shouldn’t have left the debrief – I didn’t meant to –“
“It was basically done Hermione,” Harry said quietly as she leaned away from him to look up at his face. She looked ragged and exhausted and dark circles ringed her eyes. “We’d already discussed everything urgent by that point – everything left can be discussed tomorrow night. We should go set up the tent and get some rest.”
“But what about Arthur and everyone else they –“
“They don’t need anything else from us tonight,” Harry pushed some of the hair sticking to her face to the side and watched the rain drip from the end of her nose. “We have a plan for tomorrow already and that’s all that matters. We can work with Fleur in the morning on the plan for the muggles. This day has been long enough Hermione – I think it’s time we let it end.”
“Alright,” Hermione whispered though he could tell from the look in her eyes that she didn’t like it. He knew she was already berating herself for cracking and leaving the cottage but then her expression softened. “I love you Harry – more than anything.”
Harry felt a small sad smile tug at his lips. “I know – I love you too, Hermione. More than words can describe.”
He kissed her.
He didn’t care that they were both disgusting and drenched from the rain. He didn’t care that his legs had gone numb and his body was aching from exhaustion. He only care about her – he only ever cared about her.
His hand tangled into her soaking wet hair and he pulled her close to his chest once more as she gripped the front of his jacket and opened her mouth to him. The rain washed over their faces and made it hard to breathe but he just pulled her closer and held her tightly until they finally broke apart and sat there with their foreheads pressed together. He felt simultaneously heartbroken and healed as he stared at her. He wasn’t going to let her take on the burden of another death – and if Ariel still wanted to die after they’d removed her memories, he would do it.
He wasn’t sure how long they sat there after that, but eventually he hauled them both from the ground and they slowly made their way back to the cottage to get the purse he’d left at the table after his quick exit. He could have summoned it, and he’d offered to, but Hermione had insisted on going back to the cottage because she wanted to speak to Arthur. Harry had begrudgingly agreed under the condition that they did not stick around or continue any other discussion with the Order – they would simply grab the purse, speak to Arthur quickly and then go to their tent.
It proved easier to do than he’d anticipated.
When they’d entered the cottage, the entire room went silent, the only sound audible being their footsteps and the sound of water dripping from their clothes onto the floor. Hermione kept her head held high despite the fact that she looked like the embodiment of death and probably felt like it too. Ava, Charlie and Luna were nowhere in sight but everyone else remained seated at the table with tense expressions and everyone’s eyes darted to Hermione as she followed Harry toward the table.
“Unless there is anything else urgent that needs to be discussed for tomorrow we are going to turn in for the night,” Harry said as he picked up the purse from the table. No one spoke, they all continued to stare at Hermione until Shacklebolt cleared his throat and looked to Harry.
“Yes, that’s fine – we are all set for tomorrow. Arthur and Bill will remove their memories first thing in the morning and keep us posted on how the day goes through the tags – I hope you don’t mind, but we were hoping that we could keep using them for the time being,” Shacklebolt’s eyes darted to Hermione at his last remark.
“Yes, that’s fine. I might make some upgrades to them in the next few days but they will work for now,” she nodded to Shacklebolt before turning to Arthur. “Arthur if you have a second, I would like to speak to you quickly before we leave.”
“Of course,” Arthur agreed, his voice sounded rough as he spoke, but he carefully pulled himself up from the table and made his way toward the living room where Hermione was headed.
“Everyone else – we’ll meet here tomorrow night at 7pm,” Harry said to the table. “Fleur, Hermione and I will come by tomorrow morning and we can start working out a plan for the remaining muggles – I’m not sure what time but probably before lunch.”
“It ‘as been a long day ‘Arry,” Fleur said gently as she gave him a small smile and slid a container of food along the table towards him. “I will be ‘ere all day tomorrow, so come when you are ready.”
“Thanks,” Harry gave her a small smile as he grabbed the leftovers from the table and headed towards Hermione and Arthur. He could see that they were both waiting for him and Arthur was looking rather tense.
“Arthur,” Hermione started in a low and calm voice once Harry had reached her side. “I know that this is going to be hard, but we need to talk about your leg quick before you go home.”
Harry saw Arthur’s jaw tighten but he nodded firmly and did his best to remain calm.
“It was a bite – wasn’t it?” he said quietly, his eyes flicking between the two of them. Harry knew him well enough to know that the man was more concerned about their drenched and ragged appearance than the news he’d just been given.
“Yes,” Hermione said quietly. “We checked with the diagnostic – you’re infected, and it is too late to start the wolfsbane potion for this week.”
Arthur’s lips twisted into a grim smile. “Well at least the full moon is a Saturday this month.”
“It’s lucky,” Harry nodded. “But we need to come up with a long term plan because wolfsbane potion usually leaves you in rough shape for a week after transforming. We can discuss the details tomorrow – but either this war needs to end within the month, you need to take sick time from work and make it convincing, or we use our third option.”
“What’s the third option?” Arthur asked, his eyes darting to Harry as Hermione arched a brow at him in question.
“I’m not sure if it will work yet,” Harry glanced to Hermione’s questioning face. “Just a hunch I had but I need to discuss it with Hermione first to make sure that it’s feasible.”
“Alright,” Arthur nodded. “If there is anything I can do to help just let me know – for now I’ll start planning to use my sick time.”
Hermione asked Arthur about the pain in his leg and Harry fished out some additional muggle pain meds for him to use the following day. He knew that Hermione was itching to ask him about the third option he’d wanted to discuss with her, but it could wait. Instead they ensured that Arthur was set with a refreshed numbing charm on his leg and more pain pills before leaving the cottage and heading back out into the rain. He’d seen Arthur hesitate when they said goodbye – but thankfully the man let them go without returning the conversation back to gratitude or apologies. Harry had nodded to him before placing his arm over Hermione’s shoulder and leading her from the cottage.
He’d intended for them to head straight to their usual dune and set up camp – but Hermione had detoured and pulled him toward the small wood pile at the back of the cottage. Then using the light from her wand, and ignoring the rain – she carefully selected a large sleek looking tree stump and began hauling it manually out to the dune where Dobby was buried.
He didn’t protest – because he understood. Instead he placed Draco’s wand between his teeth to light the way and helped Hermione haul the large stump across the soaking wet sand. When they got to the top of the dune, they dropped the stump just a few feet from Dobby’s headstone and Harry lit the hill for her – standing perfectly still and silent as she worked. Her shoulders sagged, her body shook, her face was pinched with pain but she carefully transfigured the stump into a simple but elegant cross. She engraved only his name, centered on the horizontal cross piece in simple graceful silver letters. They stood there silently for a long full minute, encased entirely in darkness and rain until finally he felt Hermione squeeze his hand and they moved toward their dune.
Harry knew that he didn’t feel the same way about Nasir’s death that Hermione did – he knew that to Hermione; Nasir was her first true mentor. A kindred spirit. Something like what Dumbledore had been to him throughout the years, what Sirius had very briefly been to him, what Remus had been to him in third year and even what fake Moody had been to him in fourth year. He knew that Nasir’s death was leaving a bigger hole in her life than it had in his own.
But it still fucking hurt.
It hurt so bad that as he set up the tent, he couldn’t tell if it was rain on his face or if he was crying – and he knew that Hermione must be in agony.
Fluffy – as always, this Snape chapter is dedicated to you <3
Aani, once again, thank you for keeping me sane this week ;) you are simply put – the best human <3
-x-x-
April 9, 1998
Hogwarts, 10:15 am
Where the fuck is she?!
Snape moved soundlessly down the large corridor, his eyes sweeping along the statues and intersecting hallways as he rapidly moved his way past the library. He’d run into the Weasley girl countless times before by accident and the one damn time he was actually looking for her it was like she’d disappeared from the school grounds entirely. He wished that he had that map Potter had – he knew it was a map, he’d just never figured out how it worked.
Fuck!
He stopped at the next intersection, his eyes darting down the empty quiet hall to the left then flicking back to the main hall that diverted to the right. After spending most of the morning fixing the boathouse and repairing the damage that the Carrows had done – honestly, they’d done more damage than the bloody enchanted cloaks and rocks – he’d finally managed to get back up to the castle to look for the Weasley girl. He hadn’t liked the way that her voice had waivered when they’d spoken in the hall that morning. He hadn’t liked the look on her face either – something was off and based on the relationship he knew she had with the Bones girl he suspected that she’d seen something. She’d possibly seen everything and that was a risk that he could not leave unattended.
If not for McGonagall running her way down the hallway, he would have obliviated the annoying redhead right then and there without even checking to confirm what she knew – but he’d been boxed in. He’d not had any other option but to leave. He was already running late to get down to the boathouse, and he knew that McGonagall was always prepared to defend herself. He’d never have been able to get away with obliviating the Weasley girl in the hall without setting off McGonagall and if he’d gone for McGonagall first it would have turned into a duel. He knew that he could beat the woman in a duel no problem – but it would take time if he wanted to avoid killing her and it would be loud and obnoxious like the Gryffindor she was. His only option at the time was to leave and then seek the redhead out later to search through her memories.
It should have been easy because she should have been in class, but she wasn’t.
McGonagall had excused both Bones and Weasley from their classes for the day, sighting illness as the reason – he’d found that out after looking for the Weasley girl in her charms class and being informed by a rather pleased looking Flitwick that she was not there because she was ‘terribly ill’. Undoubtedly the ‘illness’ would be ‘verified’ by Pomfrey and made to look real by way of some Weasley joke shop abomination when in reality he knew McGonagall had given the girls a day off to deal with the death of Bones’ family. He grimaced and turned down the smaller hallway to the left.
He couldn’t blame the older woman.
Their deaths were unfortunate – it was always going to happen – but that didn’t make it any easier to swallow. The least they could do was give the girl some time to grieve but unfortunately the most she would get was a day. Anything more than that he couldn’t allow without drawing suspicion and even McGonagall would understand that. She knew that they could not afford to show weakness to the Carrows.
His chest ached painfully as he silently weaved his way down three more hallways. For being a small little brat, she packed a decent punch. It had been years since he’d been decked in the face and while he’d quickly healed all the broken bones and bruising on his face, he’d yet to do anything about the bruising on his chest and ribs. He could tell from the way it hurt to breathe that he was likely littered with a collection of dark bruises.
He turned another corner and moved rapidly up several sets of stairs.
He could have stopped her. He could have frozen her in place and avoided the physical violence – but seeing the distress and rage on her face had stilled him and made a heavy sadness fill his heart. The girl was devastated. She was in agony, she was angry, and she wanted to hurt him – so he let her, because he deserved it. Because he didn’t matter, because it didn’t matter – he was going to obliviate her regardless and frankly he just could not bring himself to stop her. She’d caught him off guard with her first punch and it had hurt more than just physically. In a twisted way it had seemed fair and a warped part of him had almost needed it to happen – he’d needed it to physically hurt to match the words she’d spat at him and the heavy agony that filled his soul.
He was a monster.
He was a terrible person, and while he’d not actually ordered the hit on her parents – he’d done absolutely nothing to stop it. Just like he’d done nothing to stop countless other deaths that weighed heavy in his mind and ate away at the back of his conscience. He might be working on the side of the light – but he was not a good person and he deserved everything that she gave him and more. Hell, he’d have let her go on for longer if not for the fact that she’d already broken his nose, two of his ribs and they were standing in the middle of a hallway at risk of being seen.
He bit back a groan as he turned another corner and tried to keep his irritation at bay – which seemed to be an increasingly difficult thing to do. McGonagall would never tell him where they were, Pomfrey would not allow him into the Hospital wing without pitching a fit ‘because they were ill’ – not that it mattered because he’d already snuck in there and he knew they weren’t there. Which meant that they were somewhere else in the castle. It was possible that they were in a common room somewhere – which made things more challenging but not impossible since most students were in class right now. Yet he suspected that wasn’t the case. Something was itching in the back of his mind that told him to keep searching the halls because if his suspicions were correct and the Weasley girl had seen or heard his interactions with Miss Bones – then she’d surely be trying to find a way to tell Potter, and he needed to make sure that didn’t happen.
He turned two more corners and then slowed – someone was coming down the hallway toward him. They were moving slowly, quietly, and carefully because they were disillusioned. They’d seen him but they had nowhere else to turn and were trying to sneak past. They were near invisible and had it been any other professor they probably would have gotten away with it because their muffliato was well done – but he could just make out the warped shape of the disillusionment charm near the top of their head.
It was Weasley – he fucking knew it.
He kept his face impassive as he moved down the hallway, noting that the individual slowed and froze near the wall on his right as he grew closer. Just before he passed by them, he turned rapidly and grabbed them roughly by the shoulder, yanking them away from the wall.
“Miss Weasley,” Snape said in a low cold voice. “I suggest you remove your disillusionment charm before you end up assigned as the Carrows’ personal demonstration assistant for the remainder of your term.”
The charm flickered and then disappeared to reveal a pale but yet not entirely terrified Miss Weasley. She was looking up at him carefully though the usual defiance and terror was missing from her eyes – which only confirmed his suspicions.
“You are to either be in class, in your common room or in the hospital wing – what are you doing on the sixth floor?”
“Nothing, Sir.”
His eyes narrowed at her. She knew. She bloody well knew, and she’d had three fucking hours to do something about it.
He felt his jaw tighten as his eyes quickly flicked to either side of them. There were no rooms on the sixth floor – and he wasn’t stupid enough to allow anything else to transpire out in the open or to waste time dragging her down the corridor to try and find a quiet place to obliviate her. Without hesitating he dropped his hold on her shoulder and quickly grabbed her hand – he felt her flinch at the contact, but he didn’t give her even a millisecond to react before he apparated them both to the Headmaster’s office. It was one of the few perks of being the Headmaster that he actually enjoyed.
They landed with a loud crack and he immediately dropped her hand, quickly grabbing her by the back of her robes to stop her from faceplanting when she stumbled forward. When she’d finally steadied herself, he dropped his hold on her and stepped back, watching through narrowed eyes as she clutched her stomach and turned around to face him. Thankfully she didn’t vomit, she must have side-apparated before – but evidently not too many times since her face looked slightly nauseous.
“Take a seat,” his voice was low and flat as he inclined his head toward the armchair in front of the bookshelf to her right.
She hesitated, her eyes flicking to it and then back to him before she slowly moved to the armchair and cautiously sat down.
“Severus,” Dumbledore’s low careful voice rang out behind him and he bit back the urge to throw the opposite armchair at the portrait. “What’s going on?”
“Just taking care of a small issue,” Snape turned and glared at the portrait. It didn’t matter what happened now – the office was locked, silenced and warded. The Weasley girl wasn’t going anywhere, and she would not remember a damn thing when this was over. He didn’t have the patience to reign in his frustration with the dead headmaster anymore after what happened with Nasir. “As per your instructions.”
He cast a wordless silencing charm around them to divide the room, blocking out Dumbledore so he could no longer interrupt them. The girl seemed to notice because her eyes flicked quickly between him and the portrait where Dumbledore’s mouth was still moving yet no sound could be heard.
“Where were you this morning?” Snape turned his glare to her.
“At breakfast,” she glared right back at him, her eyes defiant. “In the Great Hall.”
Snape’s glare narrowed. He was wasting his time – there was no point in questioning her because she’d never say anything to confirm or deny what she knew. Obliviation on unwilling subjects was just as illegal and morally wrong as using legilimency so he may as well search her mind and get this over with. He took a step toward her and her eyes suddenly widened, her grip on the chair tightened and her hand shot out before her.
“No wait,” her voice was tight. He could tell that her heart was racing from the way that her pupils had dilated and her body had tensed. “Wait – please wait – I – I didn’t tell anyone.”
He paused three feet away from her and raised a single brow. “Didn’t tell anyone what?”
She swallowed hard, her hand lowering back to her side and knotting into the fabric of her school uniform. “About what happened – what you did – I didn’t tell anyone that Susan punched you, or that you obliviated her and let her go. I – I didn’t say anything – so you don’t have to obliviate me. I won’t tell anyone.”
Snape fought the urge to roll his eyes as his face twisted into an amused smirk. She watched his display of emotion with wide eyes and he realized that this was probably the first time in history that a student had ever seen him emote. Aside from Potter, he was the only one to ever see him react – and in that case it had been rage. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what must be going through her head right now.
“Well it isn’t about who you would tell,” Snape said coldly before his eyes hardened and his face became serious once more. He moved another step forward and she raised her head to look up at him. “It’s about who would take it from you – or have you forgotten that veritaserum is used on a semi-regular basis here?”
She watched him carefully and he could see her rapidly fitting the pieces together in her head before she spoke again. “You’re still helping – aren’t you?”
She’s cleverer than her peers.
“That – is none of your business,” he said coldly, and his eyes narrowed in irritation. It was a good thing that he’d found her because she seemed to be realizing the bigger picture.
“But we’ve been – I’ve been – we’ve caused so much trouble for you!” she stood from the chair before him, her hands fisting at her sides as she glared up at him. “If you obliviate me I’ll just go right back to tormenting you and causing more problems! Most of the things we’ve done have prevented students from getting tortured or losing limbs but every time we directly attack you or the Carrows it’s a risk – but you – you’ve been the one making sure they don’t kill us!”
She took a bold step towards him and Snape’s eyes widened despite himself when she roughly grabbed the front of his robes as her face twisted in anger. He wasn’t sure if she was angry at him or angry at herself – but either way he glared down at the hand gripping his robes in surprise and scowled. This was too bold – this was fucking absurd. It was bad enough that the Bones girl had ploughed right into him this morning and clung to his robes to prevent herself from falling over – but this?! This was just a cherry on top of a cake of unacceptable behaviour.
What the fuck is with students nowadays?
“Surely you could just give them something other than veritaserum if I were to ever be questioned,” the Weasley girl said somewhat desperately as she ignored his obvious reaction to her encroachment on his personal space and complete disregard for boundaries. She’d always been reckless and brazen. “You can’t obliviate me – I’ll just cause more problems and I might get someone killed if you’re not able to stop them!”
Snape felt his patience snap, everything about this was a fucking waste of time and Miss Weasley was getting to big for her damn britches. He grabbed the wrist of the hand clutching his robes and jerked it away to break her hold on him as his temper flared.
“Well unfortunately you’ve already set the standard,” Snape’s icy words spat like venom as he pushed her back the step she’d taken, he let go of her as she stumbled against the armchair. His face turned into a dark sneer as he glared down at her and he saw her flinch under his gaze. “I can’t afford to have you behave any differently now or it will draw suspicion. The best you can do is cross your bloody fingers and hope that going forward you don’t do anything excessively stupid that gets someone killed – those are the consequences of your actions. Now – take – a – seat.”
She sat.
Her body moved quickly but her eyes were still searching his face with a myriad of conflicting emotions.
“Can you just remove them instead,” her voice was quiet and sad and so unlike her normal aggressive self. “And give them back to me when this is over.”
Snape faltered his mouth moving before his brain caught up. “Why?”
It was a stupid thing to ask. He didn’t care ‘why’ and he would never agree to such a request. He wasn’t sure why he’d even asked it – fuck he was really starting to slip up.
Ever since Nasir had carved those runes into his chest his exhaustion had tripled, his body felt slower, his mind was agitated and now he’d made two huge mistakes today – allowing the Bones girl to deck him in the face in the middle of a hallway and allowing the girl before him to say anything at all. He should have just used legilimency the second they landed in the safety of his office. Either he was more tired than he realized, or the war was starting to get to him worse than he’d thought and he was beginning to crack under the pressure.
Wasting my time having a fucking conversation with a student – what a fucking joke! How pathetic have you become Severus? he thought bitterly as he closed the distance towards her.
“Because I want to remember,” the redhead said slowly. “When this is over, I want to remember that you helped us.”
Snape felt the weight of the runes on his chest constrict and he knew his face had faltered.
“When this is over that will be an inconsequential detail,” he said quietly before he leaned forward to grab her chin. Legilimency always worked best when you maintained eye contact and the person didn’t move. “Don’t look away from my eyes.”
“I don’t think it’s inconsequential,” she whispered. She didn’t pull away from him as he tilted her head back up to face him and she met his eyes without hesitation. For once in her damned school career the girl was finally listening – but she was looking at him sadly. “Someone should remember what you’ve done – someone should know.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he muttered bitterly.
“But you’ll go to Azkaban,” her eyes creased and something heartbreaking shifted behind them. “Don’t you care?”
Snape looked at her for a quiet moment, he felt his shoulders drop a fraction as the weight on his chest became so unbearable it forced him to drop his guard. He let the coldness in his eyes fade and he knew she could see the agony that replaced it – but he just did not fucking care.
“No,” he said quietly. “Because I’ll be dead – legilimens.”
-x-x-
April 13, 1998
Malfoy Manor, 7:09 am
Snape’s dragon hide boots sloshed through the mud as he made his way through the unnatural downpour toward the front door of Malfoy Manor. He hated coming here on a good day and often he wondered how the hell Narcissa stomached it and managed to get by when her husband had become almost entirely useless. She was – for the most part – holding her own and fending for herself, and she had been for months. However today was possibly the worst day that the Dark Lord could have summoned him, and he fought to control his emotions as he ignored the burn on his left forearm and trudged his way toward the Manor.
It was Monday
The day that Nasir had told him he might lose part of his soul and the last thing he wanted was to lose it while at Malfoy Manor in front of the Dark Lord. It was still early – but Nasir’s words had been vague. Morning could mean anything from midnight until 11:59 am which meant that any time in the next five hours he could be rendered unconscious while being in incredible amounts of pain. He’d been planning to spend the entire day locked safely in his quarters – he’d even managed to plot a distraction for the Carrows to keep them away from the students so he wouldn’t need to worry about them.
But of course, life had other plans.
He’d woken from his already turbulent sleep to the excruciating burn on his arm and blindly grabbed his frock coat and put on his boots before apparating away to the Manor. He’d gotten in the habit of just sleeping in his clothes and using a de-wrinkling charm to save on time. He was glad he’d continued the habit last night even though he’d been planning to stay in today.
He wasn’t sure what to expect when he arrived. This was not a planned meeting and thus it could range from a quick five minute conversation, to a full blown interrogation, to a daylong group discussion, to a few hours of unnecessary torture – his stomach rolled at the thought. He was glad that he had not eaten anything yet. As far as he knew there were no new captives and there’d been little movement from the Order or Potter and Granger. He knew they were training, he knew they were planning to attack the werewolf den but he had no specifics because it seemed like they kept the purse closed during their meetings with the Order. Whether they had caught on to the spying and suspected something or whether it was purely coincidence he did not know – and it concerned him after what had happened with the Weasley girl.
It turned out that Miss Weasley hadn’t been lying, she hadn’t told anyone.
At least not from the memories that remained in her head. Everything was intact up until around 9:30 am. She’d gone with McGonagall to her quarters and stayed with Susan for a while. She’d been trying to think up ways to tell Potter and Granger about what she’d seen but any idea she’d come up with hadn’t been tangible. She didn’t say anything to McGonagall and at 9:20 am she’d left Susan with the older woman and made her way back to the Gryffindor common room disillusioned – at which point her memories became twisted. Distorted. Damaged.
Someone had obliviated her memories from the morning, but they’d not done a very good job. The time gap was painfully obvious. Fragments remained but none of them were useful to him and none of them gave any indication as to how she got from the Gryffindor common room to the sixth floor. There was a very good chance that at the time he’d found her even she didn’t know why she was there.
To say that his findings had been a concern was an understatement – but there was absolutely nothing that he could do about it. Aside from pulling in every one of her known accomplices and questioning them he’d never know what she did between 9:30 am and 10:15 am when he caught her. He got the distinct impression that it was intentional, and he realized there was a very real possibility that she’d done it to herself. She’d expected him to come find her and she’d made damn sure that he wouldn’t see whatever it was that she did. In a strange way – as frustrating as it was – he was impressed.
She was just as bloody relentless as Granger.
So, he obliviated the remainder of her memories on the topic, cleaned up the mess in her mind and let her go – he’d apparated her to just outside of McGonagall’s quarters, whispering quietly to her that she needed to go inside and see the Bones girl. He left before her dazed state wore off knowing that she’d never remember anything from their interaction. All he could do now was wait and deal with the fallout of whatever she’d done when and if it happened.
Regardless of knowing there was nothing he could do he felt his heart thrumming quickly in his chest at the thought as he climbed the front stairs of the Manor and wrenched open the door. He was about to make his way upstairs to the large dining room when a low groan sounded to his right and he froze. A second similar sound echoed through the dimly lit entrance way once more and he felt a shiver run down his spine. He knew that sound. He’d heard it many times over the years and it was just a precursor for much more terrible sounds to come. His stomach twisted violently in recognition of just what kind of call this was and he turned and made his way toward the front drawing room, preparing himself for what he already knew would be inside.
Sure enough when he entered, he came face to face with gleaming red eyes, the smell of blood and vomit, the sight of Nagini curled in the corner and a battered man tied to a chair in the middle of the room. Blood soaked the ground, more stains that Narcissa would never be able to remove. The individual in the chair was unrecognizable. Blood covered his body, his face was swollen and blacked with bruises, he was missing an arm, and his left leg was cut off just below the knee. It looked like someone had cauterized it with a blowtorch but they’d done a ghastly job of it. There was a distinct twitch to his body and Snape immediately knew he’d undergone several round of cruciatus and low groans continued to seep through his semiconscious lips.
“Ssseverus,” Voldemort hissed as he stepped away from the man in the center of the room and moved towards him.
Snape made sure that his face remained completely impassive as he gently closed the doors behind him and moved toward the wretched red eyed demon.
“My Lord,” he gave him a quick bow as his eyes flicked to the man in the center of the room indifferently before shifting back to the Dark Lord. “How may I be of assistance?”
“I need some information from our guest,” Voldemort said quietly, a disturbing smile curling across his lips. “It seems that he has been keeping ingredients underground – and artificially creating shortages to our supply lines.”
“I see,” Snape said impassively though his heart rate spiked. His eyes shifted lazily back to the man in the chair and he fought against the urge to react when he realized who it was. Peter. “And you would like me to examine him my Lord?”
“Yesss,” Voldemort moved around him toward the armchair by the fire and took a seat. “I always find you have a knack for locating memories I just can’t seem to find.”
That was a lie.
The Dark Lord was just as accomplished as he was with legilimency, but this was something that he did on a semi-regular basis. Peter had already been questioned. Question, torture, repair – repeat. It was the process the Dark Lord used to get what he wanted – then occasionally he would call in Snape and ask him to perform legilimency to confirm his findings. He did it to ensure that Snape was loyal – to ensure that he found everything that he already knew, and he usually did it when he’d already found something damming toward a previous known associate of Snape’s.
This was just another test.
The Dark Lord wanted him to find something specific and reveal it without hesitation – even if it meant the death of someone he knew.
“Of course, my Lord,” Snape nodded and moved toward the battered looking man. He paused when the doors to the room opened and Narcissa walked in holding a familiar vial of potion. She was carefully controlling her face, but Snape knew she was agitated, and she was carefully avoiding looking directly at the man in the middle of the room.
“My Lord,” she said quietly, inclining her head. “I have the potion as requested – this should make him lucid for Severus’ questioning.”
The Dark Lord nodded but made no movement so Narcissa approached Snape and handed over the vial. He ignored the slight tremble he felt in her fingers as they brushed against his and instead turned toward the man in the chair and got to work as Narcissa bowed to the Dark Lord and left the room.
He poured the potion down Peter’s throat and bit back a grimace as his eyes shot wide and an agonizing cry left his lips. He looked panicked, his eyes rolled before they began searching the room around him and then locked to Snape’s with glaring defiance.
“YOU!” he spat as he tugged against the restraints holding him in the chair. “You should be ashamed of yourself!”
Snape ignored his words, moving swiftly and grabbing his chin roughly before muttering one single word.
“Legilimens.”
It took a while to sort through everything – that was the problem with combining torture and questioning. It blurred things together, the pain messed with the mind and turned it into a cluster fuck. Not to mention that the Dark Lord had zero finesse and he rampaged through people’s memories like a rabid zouwu and left things in tatters. It was like searching through a rat’s nest except that he didn’t even know what he was looking for – but despite this he found it.
It took him just over half an hour to sort through all the shattered fragments and piece things together. It turned out Peter had indeed been hoarding supplies and creating shortages for the Death Eaters. He’d been working with them and complying with them, but he’d been limiting what he could and hiding large quantities of key ingredients unground. He’d also been packaging up goods and shipping them out at night with his disillusioned owl and even charmed broomsticks. Yet thankfully, there was no trace of who they were sent to – he had his suspicions, he knew it was all going to the Order but there was absolutely nothing in Peter’s head to confirm that. He fought back the urge to sigh in relief, the last thing he wanted to do was condemn Arthur or Shacklebolt to an interrogation – which he would have had to do if Peter had anything incriminating on them, but he didn’t.
In fact, Peter’s memories seemed to suggest something else entirely. He was shorting everyone including Molly and the other regular customers when they came in to buy common potion supplies. He had memories of her looking disappointed when he told her that he didn’t have enough for her pepperup potion requirements and she’d had to leave with half the bicorn powder she needed. He had memories of making agreements with the Death Eaters for supply orders, then memories of telling Arthur their deal was off and that he’d made other arrangements with the Death Eaters. Arthur had looked agitated and frustrated during their meeting – yet he also had those memories of shipping out supplies to an unknown source.
Everything in his head seemed to hint that there was another faction – some other unknown group out there that he’d struck a deal with. A new group that perhaps the Dark Lord should be very concerned about. Snape was smart enough to know that Peter must have been altering his memories or had some removed in order to protect the Order but because nothing appeared to be tampered with in his mind, everything looked perfectly legitimate.
He had no idea how Peter had done it, as far as he knew the man was not a occlumens or legilimens – but this was better than he could have anticipated. The Dark Lord would have already considered that this was a set-up. He would have already considered that Peter modified his memories and was setting a false trail. But the reality was, for as terrifyingly brilliant and immensely magically gifted as the Dark Lord was – he was extraordinarily paranoid. There was a reason why he kept strict ranks and killed people without a second thought if something looked suspicious. There was a reason why he constantly tested Snape and asked him to complete tasks like this. The man was obsessed with two things and two things only: killing Potter and keeping power. Both of which made him incredibly susceptible to doubt and suspicion. It was literally his only weakness but it rarely caused him any problems because he would just find new people to replace the ones that he killed and he was too powerful to ever feel legitimately threatened by anyone in his ranks.
The only blatantly incriminating things Snape had found was the memory of Granger throwing up on the floor of Peter’s study and apologizing before Potter dragged her backward out the window, and how Peter had lied to the snatchers about the alarms and what happened. Otherwise there was nothing else significant in his head that could harm anyone he knew. Snape dropped his hold on the man’s chin and stepped back. This would not end well for Peter, but at least the Order would be safe for another few weeks unless they majorly and obviously fucked up.
Narcissa had reentered the room some time while he was completing his review and was standing near the fire a few feet away from the Dark Lord.
“Potter was at the apothecary,” Snape said calmly, his eyes watching for a reaction on the Dark Lord’s face. “He stole ingredients, but I can’t be sure of the exact quantities because Peter never confirmed it. He lied to the snatchers about the break-in to cover Potter’s tracks, he’s been hoarding ingredients since the new year and creating false shortages. He’s be sending out large quantities of supplies to an unknown group, but –“
Snape paused for a moment in order to add additional seriousness to something he knew was a non-issue.
“I’m not convinced that it was the Order he was sending the goods to. I’ve double checked his memories twice – nothing has been tampered with,” that was a lie, there may be no evidence of tampering, but he instinctively knew they’d been modified. He kept his eyes serious and locked to the Dark Lord. “Something is going on – I’m not sure what but based on how things went with Arthur Weasley – I think we need to take this seriously.”
Snape had let his voice get a bit tighter as he spoke, and he saw the Dark Lord’s eyes darken as he stood from his chair and moved towards him.
“My thoughts exactly Ssseverus,” his voice was low, and Snape could hear the underlying agitation as he continued to close the distance with his unnatural gate. “I’ve heard rumors – about something that is deeply concerning, something that I’ve yet to share with you.”
“What is it my Lord?” Snape asked carefully.
“Someone has come back to England,” Voldemort said quietly as he stopped just a foot before Snape.
“Who my Lord?”
“Nasir.”
Snape’s eyes widened and he didn’t stop his brows from jerking up a fraction at the sound of the man’s name. “Are you sure my Lord?”
“Do you doubt me Sseverus,” Voldemort snarled as he took a final step closer, bringing him uncomfortably close and forcing Snape to crane his neck to look up at the tall man. He smelled of death and rot and he had to fight back the urge to gag.
“No, my Lord – of course not my Lord,” Snape said quickly. “I’m just surprised my Lord – I thought he was dead.”
“Asss did everyone else,” Voldemort hissed angrily in his face before he began circling around Snape like a predator circling its prey. “But I’d always suspected it to be untrue. I’d always suspected he was lying in wait.”
“Do you think he is working with the Order?” Snape prompted. He knew the answer to this already, but he knew that the Dark Lord would never suspect it. He just needed to solidify that doubt.
“Of course not!” Voldemort’s face twisted in rage as he stopped before Snape once more. “That man despises Dumbledore almost as much as I do – he wouldn’t be caught dead working with that sad excuse of a rebellion! He has no interest in them!”
Snape nodded, keeping his face neutral once more. “What would you have me do my Lord – do you want me to locate him?”
“Not yet,” Voldemort said quietly as he moved back toward Peter and grabbed his hair. His movements looked effortless, yet Peter’s head flopped like a ragdoll under his touch as he yanked his head back. “I’ll let you know what I need when I need it Severus – for now, be alert.”
“Yes, my Lord,” Snape nodded. He stayed where he was since he hadn’t been dismissed, and he watched as the Dark Lord yanked Peter’s head back so far he groaned out in pain.
“I – I’m not – going to tell you – anything,” Peter panted out as he glared up at the red eyes above him. He was brave, Snape would give him that, but unfortunately it would do nothing for him here.
“I know,” Voldemort whispered as he leaned down uncomfortably close to Peter and a disturbing smile cut across his noseless face, exposing a set of irregularly sharp teeth. “I already have the information that I need from your mind – but that doesn’t make your body worthless.”
Snape felt his stomach twist as bile hit the back of his throat. He knew exactly what was going to happen next, and he resisted the urge to glance at Narcissa. She’d never seen something like this, it was going to destroy her, and he just hoped that she had the strength to bear through it. He hoped she realized that this was a test for her and if she managed to get through it she’d be planting herself deeper in his pocket and thus making herself more indispensable.
“Narcissa,” Voldemort called to her. “The second potion.”
“Yes, my Lord,” her voice was even, and her steps were steady as she crossed the floor and brought him what Snape already knew was a bottle of blood replenisher. It would prevent Peter from bleeding out too quickly while the Dark Lord skinned him alive – and the potion, his potion, the one that he’d poured down Peter’s throat would keep him conscious throughout the entire ordeal. Or for most of it anyways, eventually his heart would give out or he’d run out of blood.
Snape felt his heart plummet to his stomach as he took several steps back to move out of Narcissa’s way, only for her to come and stand by his side as the Dark Lord began. Peter’s screams split through the air, they ran down his spine and threatened to make him sick as he watched the horror unfold before him. He could taste the vomit in his mouth as his heart rate spiked, his muscles tensed, and his heart broke into pieces.
He wanted to die.
He wanted the war to be over so his life could finally end, and he could escape all of this.
He wanted Peter to die.
He wanted it to be over so that man no longer had to suffer. It made him sick, it made him want to claw his own eyes out or rip his ears off so that he didn’t have to see it or experience it. Yet he watched it anyways – not only because he knew that if he didn’t the Dark Lord would turn on him – but because Peter’s pain was a million times worse.
Peter was going to die – die one of the most gruesome deaths possible while he stood there and did nothing. Snape deserved to die for letting it happen – but he couldn’t die yet, not until he knew that the Dark Lord would fall. So at the very least he deserved to feel sick, he deserved to be in pain because it was nothing in comparison to what the man before him was going through. The one other time he’d witnessed this practice he’d not slept for the entire following week. He’d been unable to eat and borderline unable to function, but Dumbledore had all but outright told him to suck it up – because that one life was saving dozens and it was about the ‘bigger picture’.
This was no different. Peter’s life and strategically altered memories would misdirect the Dark Lord and give the Order a better shot.
But it still wasn’t right.
It wasn’t fucking right, and he hated it.
The only thing that kept him sane as each piece of skin fell to the floor with a sickening slap was thinking about how this piece of shit demon was going to die. That he was going to fucking die and Snape would laugh the moment it happened before rolling into his grave reveling in the fact that he’d known it all along – that he’d managed to lie to the Dark Lord’s face for nearly twenty years and he’d gotten away with it.
Nasir had returned and he was actually working with the Order – and he was one of the few people in the world who stood a chance at taking the Dark Lord down. If Potter and Granger continued to train with him – they might stand a chance too. If they could find and get rid of the remaining horcruxes – he might truly get to see this monstrosity fall before he took his last wretched breath.
He was pulled from his thoughts when halfway through he felt Narcissa flinch at his side and his back stiffened in alert. She needed to keep it together or she’d only make things worse. But she flinched a second time – then a third and he felt a panic start to rise in his chest. He might not be able to save Peter – but he was not going to let her die at the hands of a maniac because she had a heart. Especially not when he knew she was only trying to clean up the mess that her idiot husband had dragged her into.
When the Dark Lord turned his back to them to shift around what remained of Peter – Snape, against his better judgement, reached out to his left and grabbed her hand. It was freezing cold and shaking with a low steady tremble that threatened to give away her inner turmoil. The second his fingers brushed hers she flinched and started to pull away only to freeze a fraction of a second later and grab his hand so tight he thought it might break. Her nails bit into his skin like talons, her grip disproportionately strong compared to how small and fragile her hands looked. He squeezed her hand back and they stood that way for ten long seconds until the Dark Lord shifted and they both let go.
The whole process only took ten minutes – but it felt like a lifetime. The room had gone silent three minutes ago and the empty hollow echoed in his ears as the Dark Lord turned to look at them both. It was important to show fear – he liked to know that his followers feared him, you just couldn’t show disgust, remorse, or look disturbed like you’d disagreed with his methods. Evidently Narcissa must have managed to sort out her face because the Dark Lord’s gleaming eyes showed no sign of displeasure – just the regular amount of crazed disturbing anger.
“Clean this up,” his low voice was deadly as he started to shift toward Nagini. Snape could hear the snake unfolding herself from her knot in the corner to slither towards him.
“Yes, my Lord,” Narcissa’s voice was even but laced with fear.
“And get your husband to pin the body on the front of the apothecary – now,” Voldemort said darkly as he reached out to touch Nagini’s head. “Surely it is a task that even he can manage.”
“Yes, my Lord,” Narcissa said again.
A loud pop echoed through the room as the Dark Lord and his snake vanished from sight. Snape didn’t move. He stood motionless by her side as she let out a shuddered breath.
“Lucius,” she called and a moment later the man apparated into sight.
He landed roughly, immediately sagging forward and clutching his stomach before looking up toward them – but seeing what laid before him only made him worse. He faltered completely, stumbling on his legs and gagging as he covered his mouth and turned away from the body and bloody mess on the floor.
“What – what happened?” Lucius gasped as Narcissa cut across the floor towards him.
“The Dark Lord has asked that you take Peter to his apothecary and pin him to the front of the building,” Narcissa answered tightly.
Lucius’ eyes widened as they darted to the chair and he gagged again. His face twisted and something started to shine in his eyes. “T-That’s Peter?”
Merlin he’s a broken man, Snape thought bitterly as he watched Narcissa wrap her arm around her husband and helped him walk towards the body. A fucking coward too – he bought this on himself and his family and he doesn’t even have the stomach or decency to deal with the consequences of his actions. Dick.
“Yes – it’s Peter,” Narcissa’s patience seemed to be running thin because her voice was becoming strained. She looked ready to break. “And the Dark Lord wants you to pin him to the front of his apothecary – now. I need you to do this Lucius – please, or I’m not sure what he’ll do. Something has changed, there’s a new threat and I think this is supposed to be a statement.”
Lucius’ eyes seemed to light up at that and if Snape didn’t know any better he would have thought that the man’d had a change of heart and was glad to hear that there was a threat to the Dark Lord’s cause. But he did know better – and he knew that Lucius was just looking for a way out. The man was a misogynist pig through and through – he hated muggles, he hated mudbloods, and that would never change. He just wanted a way out of this war because he seemed to finally realize that he’d bitten off more than he could chew.
“Okay,” Lucius nodded and he cautiously approached the corpse.
He pulled a handkerchief from his robes and wrapped it around his hand before inching toward it like it might attack him. He grabbed the wrist like it was the most disgusting thing in the world while maintaining a solid two foot distance from the body. Snape didn’t bother telling him that his caution was wasted since he was about to get covered in blood when he apparated Peter’s remains – he’d let him figure that out for himself.
With a loud crack the two disappeared from sight and Snape was left alone in the room with Narcissa. The only sound filling the silence was the drip drip drip of blood as it ran off the chair to the ground. Without a word Snape pulled his wand from his robes and vanished the pile of skin from the floor.
“Thank you,” Narcissa whispered. Her eyes were red, and a steady stream of tears were falling down her face as she stared at the empty chair. Snape doubted that she even realized she was crying.
He didn’t say anything, he just nodded and then continued to vanish the remaining blood from the floor and chair. It wasn’t possible to get it all – it never was. Not with the dark magic that the Dark Lord used, but after several minutes he got enough of it that it was no longer blatantly obvious someone had just died in the middle of the room. He then picked up the chair and moved it to the side – its normal spot until the next guest arrived. He scowled at that, glaring at the chair as his grip tightened and the knot in his stomach twisted so painfully he thought he might actually get sick. He didn’t realize how long he’d been standing there glaring until he felt a gentle hand on his left arm and he whipped around to see Narcissa staring up at him.
“Severus?” her voice was cautious and it waivered in a way that made his heart hurt even more. She was looking to him for help – for guidance. She was emotionally distraught and lost and he’d opened the bloody door to her when he’d taken her hand – and it had been a mistake.
He couldn’t stay here any longer. He couldn’t be her emotional support because despite her skills with occlumency it put them both at risk. She looked like she was ready to completely breakdown and if he lingered he would feel obligated to pick up the pieces – for fuck’s sake he already felt obligated to. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to, it was that it was too risky. Lucius could return at any moment, the Dark Lord could return at any moment, it was 8:04 am and he needed to get back to the safety of his quarters at Hogwarts before Nasir ripped a piece of his soul away.
He’d already gotten himself into a mess when he let the Bones girl attack him in the hallway – he couldn’t afford any other loose ends.
“I need to get back,” Snape said flatly as he kept his face impassive and stepped away from her. “Let me know if you need any additional potions this week – perhaps some additional calming draught might be a good idea.”
It was the most support he could give her right now and he saw her face crumple before she nodded and clenched her jaw. “I’ll let you know.”
Fuck it hurts.
He felt like he was abandoning her. She’d placed herself in his hands for safe keeping when she’d given him Granger’s wand and now he felt bloody responsible for her wellbeing.
He grit his teeth and nodded, then turned on his heel, cut across the room, moved through the entrance way and outside into the storm. The rain hit him hard as the doors closed behind him and he paused for a second as he looked up at the dark raging sky. It looked ominous, deadly, foreboding – it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as he stepped out into the flood and lightning flashed across the sky. The ground was soggy beneath his feet as he started his way down the path, through the mud and past the tall trees toward the gate. He hated this walk. It always took too long and it –
Snape froze mid-step as he felt something tug hard against his chest. It was like someone had tethered a rope to his core and given it a sharp pull. His hand started to shake involuntarily as he clutched the front of his robes and clenched his teeth.
What the fuck?!
It happened again, but this time it was harder, and he felt a sharp pain through his heart like he’d been stabbed.
“Oh fuck no –“ his eyes went wide with realization and he took off at a run toward the gate as the violent wind ripped at his body and threatened to knock him over. “No – no, no, no – NO ARGGGH FUCK!!”
The third tug pulled so hard he couldn’t breathe; his legs gave out beneath him and he collapsed to his knees in the mud as he clutched his chest and his face contorted in pain. A scream ripped through his lungs as agony exploded from the center of his being and radiated throughout his body. He could feel it everywhere, his hands, his neck, his eyes, his toes – it burned and ached as the runes grew heavy like a boulder. He gasped for air, black and red spotting his vision as he coughed and spat up blood.
I’m going to die.
It was the only thought that circled his mind as it felt like his body was set on fire while simultaneously being ripped in half. It was worse than the rune carving, worse than the cruciatus, worse than anything that he’d ever experienced in his life. Every muscle in his body tensed as every fiber of his being was scorched with pain and he dropped completely into the mud. He clawed at his chest blindly, his body twitching in pain as the burning sensation grew until it finally peaked, and it felt like every bone in his body had just broken. He vomited as his vision blurred. A fourth and final tug ripped through his body and a godawful sound poured from his mouth as blood trickled from his lips. He lost the ability to think, he lost the ability to see and his mind was consumed by agonizing pain until his vision went blood red and he lost consciousness completely.
-x-x-
Something warm was wrapped around him. Warm and dry. He tried to open his eyes, but they were too heavy. He tried to move his arm – but he couldn’t feel it. He wasn’t even sure if it was there. Actually – he didn’t know where there was since he had no idea where he was at all. He wasn’t entirely convinced that he was alive come to think of it. He was pretty sure that he’d died – maybe – he wasn’t sure.
He couldn’t hear or smell anything, and his brain didn’t seem to be working properly. Thoughts floated in and out of his mind like a whisper but each one was detached and fleeting. He tried to grab on to a few of them, but they slipped through his fingers like water and his mind slipped back into darkness.
It took multiple repetitions of this and what must have been several long minutes of coming in and out of consciousness before he finally shifted and let out a low groan of pain. It felt like his body was broken, he felt like he’d been run over and left to die as his eyes opened painfully and he grimaced at the dim light shining before him.
“Stop moving.”
I know that voice.
He couldn’t seem to make his mouth work and everything before him was swimming in and out of focus as he tried to sit up. Why was he laying down?
“Severus – will you stop moving!”
Something warm and hard pressed against his chest and forced him back down. He grunted in pain, hissing at the contact as his eyes pinched shut – it felt like he’d been punched in the chest, or like someone had just twisted a broken bone.
“Sorry – but you need to stop moving.”
His eyes snapped back open and his surroundings started to drift into focus. He recognized the ceiling – it was his house. His house in Cokeworth. How the fuck did he get to Cokeworth?! The last memory he had was of dying in the muddy lane of Malfoy Manor. His eyes shot wide as the memory finally became clear in his mind and he sat bolt upright in bed, a loud groan escaping his lips as he leaned forward in agony and clutched his chest.
“Severus!”
His head snapped to the left and he finally saw her, his eyes taking in everything now that they were finally working again.
“Narcissa?!” his voice sounded like broken glass and he saw her flinch at the sound as she gently placed a hand on his shoulder. “Why are you here?!”
“Why am I here?” she repeated as her face faltered and she stared at him in disbelief.
She was normally the type to respect his privacy, she was normally the type to not ask questions – but he could tell from her appearance that she was far from her normal self. Dried mud caked the front of her elegant robes, her hands were stained with blood (likely his) and several leaves and small twigs littered her hair from the storm. At the Manor after Peter’s death she’d looked ready to crack – but now it looked like she already had. Her normal poised and calm demeanor flew out the window as her face contorted in anger.
“WHY am I here?!” she dropped her hold on his shoulder and leaned down toward his face. He could see her perfect blue eyes flashing with rage and concern. “The better question is why did you collapse on my lane screaming in pain! I could hear you from the house! The sounds you were making could have travelled for miles, Severus – they were inhuman! Thank Merlin no one else was there and I was able to get you out before Lucius returned – what the bloody hell happened Severus?!”
Snape stared at her silently, clenching his jaw in pain as he fought to stay upright in his bed. He wasn’t comfortable being so blatantly vulnerable in front of other people, he’d wanted to go through this alone in the solitude of his quarters at Hogwarts. Not wake up next to Lucius Malfoy’s wife while she bombarded him with questions. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had looked at him with such obvious concern in their eyes and it only made him feel worse and more uncomfortable than he already did. His spine burned like fire, his muscles ached like he’d been beaten within an inch of his life and his head was throbbing in agony.
But despite this, she stared right back at him – her eyes burning with defiance as she waited, and he refused to answer her.
“How long was I out?” he finally asked, unable to cast a time check spell internally because his head was throbbing so badly.
Her eyes softened a fraction and he saw her extend her hand and summon something from another room. “It’s noon – you were unconscious for four hours. Here – drink this.”
He took the vial from her, recognizing it as a headache potion from his own supply. He did his best to ignore the fact that his hand trembled as he downed the entire bottle. At least he was able to move everything – he’d wiggled his toes to check and he’d shifted everything a fraction to make sure that it all still worked. And while his head felt like it had been bludgeoned – his memories seemed to be intact and his brain seemed to be functioning normally once more.
“Severus,” Narcissa said slowly as she looked him over. “What happened to you?”
“Nothing,” he said flatly as he looked around and took in the full state of his surroundings.
He could hear the rain outside though it sounded like the storm had mostly passed. Several empty potion vials littered his nightstand, an empty teacup sat next to them and a chair had been brought in from the kitchen and placed beside his bed. He was still in his clothes – they’d been dried, but his muddy outer robes had been removed and were hanging off the hook on the back of his half shut door. His eyes shifted down to his body at the same moment Narcissa folded her arms over her chest and he froze.
Fuck.
She’d unbuttoned the top three buttons of his dirty white dress shirt and his runes and the red markings on his chest were clearly visible. She must have done it because she’d seen him clawing at his chest – she’d likely even healed several deep scratch marks.
“Nothing,” she said flatly. He could feel the tension in the room grow as she leaned down before him once more and prodded him in the chest directly on his markings. He groaned in pain, flinching as he glared up at her and she arched a perfect brow. “Well then – let me tell you what I think happened. I think you knew this was coming – I think you were trying to leave before it did but you ran out of time. I think you collapsed on my lane, screaming in pain as you convulsed in the mud and spat blood from your mouth while it leaked from your eyes! I think you split your temple open on a rock when you fell to the ground and nearly bit your own bloody tongue off! I think that you nearly died! And I think that it happened because of those bloody runes on your chest!!”
She was seething now, eyes blazing as the final shreds of her pureblood perfection faded away and she allowed herself to be a real human being before him. And in some ways, it was slightly terrifying to witness.
“How long have you had those?” she glared at him hard. “Who gave them to you? What did they do to you – what did you give away Severus?! What did you just lose when you collapsed on the ground?!”
“Noth-“
“Don’t you bloody say nothing!” she screamed at him and he saw tears break from her eyes as she crumpled into the chair by his bed and grabbed his hand tightly. “I t-thought you were going to die! I patched you up the best I could but I’m not a healer Severus – and I had no idea if you were going to wake up again. You’re the only person I can rely on anymore and I didn’t know if you’d come back. The sounds you made – they – they were like nothing I’ve ever heard, they were worse than –“
Her voice cut off as she shook her head and her face went white. She didn’t need to say it out loud, he knew she was going to say it was worse than Peter – because it had been. She’d heard the sound of a soul being ripped apart and it was unlike any other sound on the planet.
“I know I told you that I didn’t want to know what you were doing,” she continued after she took a deep breath and quickly wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of her free hand. He tried to tug his hand from her grasp, but that’d only made her grip it more tightly. “But Severus, what you’re doing – you’re killing yourself. I know what runes are, I know what they do, and I know that those red markings are a contract – they’re a sealing spell. I don’t know why you’re doing this but–“
“Because it’s necessary,” he cut her off hoarsely as he stared at the hand she clutched and refused to let go of. “That’s all I can tell you.”
“All you can, or all you will?” she whispered.
“Does it matter?” Snape turned to look at her. Her eyes were red and puffy, but she was no longer crying. “Narcissa – the less you know the better. Trust me.”
Something painful flashed behind her eyes as she looked at him and squeezed his hand tighter.
“I do trust you, Severus,” she whispered as her eyes grew sadder. “But this is the result – you face everything alone. Always, for as long as I’ve known you and not only do you never ask for help – we just keep asking more of you and you take it. I keep asking more of you – because I trust you.”
She stared at him for a long and silent moment before her thumb brushed over the back of his hand.
“How much of yourself are you going to give away for the benefit of everyone else around you?” her words were barely audible, but Snape stiffened as they rang in his ears. It was a question he’d asked himself long ago and one that he already knew the answer to – everything. He’d give fucking everything.
But he wouldn’t tell her that.
“You should go home, Narcissa,” Snape said quietly. He gave her hand a single firm squeeze and she finally let him pull it away. “Thank you for healing me – I’m sorry that you had to hear that. I didn’t want to involve you or anyone else, but I do truly appreciate you bringing me here.”
Two slow tears trickled down her face as she stared at him and reluctantly nodded.
“Okay,” she whispered. “I’ll just – let me just use your restroom to clean myself up and then I’ll leave. But Severus – if there is anything I can ever do to assist you, please tell me.”
Snape nodded and Narcissa stood carefully from the chair and made her way to the door. He could already see the rigid poise returning to her body as her spine stiffened and her chin lifted higher. The woman was stronger than people knew, braver, kinder and far more compassionate. She didn’t deserve to go through this. She didn’t deserve to hear his soul being ripped from his body and she most certainly did not deserve to see Peter get skinned alive. He felt his runes get heavier as he watched the second closet thing he had to a friend walk out his bedroom door.
They both knew he’d never take her up on her offer.
This chapter is dedicated to Aani <3
-x-x-
Hermione’s eyes fluttered open, a cool breeze wafted over her face as she let out a quiet sigh and two heartbeats fluttered nervously in the back of her mind. It was Arthur and Bill. They were awake and likely getting ready to go to work, hence the nervousness and increased stress levels coming from their tags – but it wasn’t what had woken her. She’d woken up to the smell of burning, images of yellow glowing eyes, terrified brown ones and the blue of the snatcher’s she’d killed on the hillside months ago. It had been a long time since she’d thought of that man, but his eyes had floated up in the mix that swarmed her mind when her occlumency technique began to fail as her mind woke.
It was accompanied by a heavy weighted sadness and the last thing she’d seen before she opened her eyes were Nasir’s piercing ones. It made the rune on her chest weigh heavy as she stared up at the ceiling in the still dark tent. She took another deep breath of fresh cold morning air and tried to convince her mind that the smell of fiendfyre wasn’t real – though she doubted that it would leave her senses any time soon. Neither would the hollow sadness that ached in her chest.
A quick time check let her know that it was 5:30 am and she quickly concluded that Arthur and Bill were up getting ready, removing their memories and trying to calm down before they started their day in just one short hour. The next sixty minutes would dictate the next steps of the war – it would confirm whether or not the Order had been suspected of having any involvement in the attack and if they needed to prepare for a counterattack by Voldemort’s Death Eaters. So far, it seemed that everyone else was asleep, including Harry, who was pressed up against her side and sleeping soundly.
He deserves it, she thought fondly as her eyes shifted to the mess of black hair beside her. He’d been her rock the night before and he’d picked up the pieces when she’d completely imploded. He’d held her tightly in the cold water, he’d listened to all of her internal turmoil and guilt and he’d been completely nonjudgmental when she told him how she’d felt about Ava. Then he’d forced her to take a break when she refused to listen to her body, he’d been the one to make her go to bed and get the rest that she’d so desperately needed.
After speaking with Arthur, making Nasir’s tombstone and setting up the tent Harry had led her immediately to the bathroom – where they’d both stripped off their clothes, dropping them haphazardly on the floor before jumping in the shower. She’d nearly scrubbed herself raw to try and remove the smell of death and fire that clung to her skin and the blood that stained her hands before finally getting out and putting on her pajamas. She’d been too lazy to look at what clothes she’d grabbed so she’d ended up in Harry’s loose-fitting grey shirt and her own green pajama shorts while he threw on a pair of black sweats. Harry had made her eat a piece of toast (because she couldn’t stomach anything else) and then he’d dragged her to bed and made her take a small sip of dreamless sleep draught.
He’d kept her whole. He’d kept her sane.
Warmth radiated from his body and made the exhaustion that still riddled her bones feel a little less terrible. The shaking in her limbs had stopped, her mind felt clearer than it had before she’d passed out the night before and her emotions were back under control even if she did feel a bit empty. Her meltdown had helped – as much as it had killed her to completely fall apart and walk out of the debrief it was what she’d needed. After everything that had happened the day before she’d been entirely unable to keep it all in and she’d confessed to Harry the root cause of her pain and anguish. Aside from the guilt, she’d felt over being upset with Ava, aside from the sadness that bit into her soul when she thought about Arthur and Remus’ injuries, and Nasir’s death – it had been the loss of her edge in the war that had truly killed her, she’d lost the trump card that she’d yet to play. The fact that she could no longer make a deal to save Harry’s life or make herself more than what she was broke her confidence and her heart.
It hurt.
She let out a quiet breath and carefully slid herself out from under Harry’s arm. Despite her body still feeling worn from the exertion the day before her mind felt awake and she knew that she would not be able to get back to sleep. Not when Arthur and Bill were buzzing like little bees in her mind and her nose burned with the smell of fire from her dream. She wanted to take a second shower. Have tea. Maybe sit and stare at the wall of the tent for a few seconds while she tried to collect herself and prepare for what she knew would be another long and exhausting day. Then she wanted to get reading to see if there was a way to help Ariel. She wanted to take stock of their supplies and make a list of what needed to be replaced.
There were a million things to do and yet despite this she didn’t feel panicked like she had the day before. Her breakdown the night before had taken care of the desperate anxiety and now she was left feeling tired, worn, and sad – but calm. A heaviness lingered in her heart from her dream and left her solemn as she moved her way to the bathroom with a set of fresh clothes. She would shower, force herself to eat, then get down to business because it would help her remain calm and it would, hopefully, relieve some of the deep ache in her chest. Research, planning and working always did – but she would let Harry sleep until he woke on his own. He was just as exhausted as she was, and he needed his rest.
She moved to the bathroom silently, her feet padding softly against the cold floor as her mind monitored the tags in her head. Mrs. Weasley was waking, and Fleur had started to stir. When she reached the bathroom, her nose flooded with the smell of death and fire and she froze, her eyes immediately darted to the pile of muddy, bloody clothes on the floor. She felt her nose crinkling as she glared at them and images of Nasir’s eyes and fire filled her head once more as the rune grew heavier. Her shoulders sagged and she let out a deep low sigh.
“I should just burn these,” she whispered as she placed her clean clothes on the small shelf near the shower and bent to pick up the pile of ruined clothing.
It was unfortunate, Fleur had bought her this jacket and now it was stained and marked, and she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to clean it. She held it up before her and frowned. Perhaps she should at least try to salvage it – it was her only jacket after all. Tracing her fingers over the fabric she adjusted her hold and made to pick up the remaining clothes but instead froze for a second time when her fingers brushed against something firm. Her eyes shot wide and her heart rate skyrocketed as she rapidly tore open the pocket and untethered the book that she had almost entirely forgotten about.
“How could I have forgotten,” her eyes had started to sting as she desperately tugged the book free with shaking hands and enlarged it back to its full size. She felt her face crumple as she pulled the book to her chest and leaned back against the closed bathroom door.
It burns.
She pinched her eyes shut tight and fought to keep a sob at bay as her lungs ached and tears ran down her face. She hadn’t wanted to cry today; she hadn’t wanted to feel this agony for a second time as she crumpled down to the floor and cast a silencing charm on the bathroom so she could let out a ragged breath. But somehow, even though it hurt, and the tears flowed steady like a river – she felt the smallest spark of hope flutter in her chest.
“It’s not over,” she whispered as she pulled the book tighter and drew her knees up to her chest.
They weren’t doomed. Not yet. Nasir hadn’t left her with nothing and so she wouldn’t give up. She’d keep pushing. She’d memorize the entire contents of this book; she’d learn whatever he’d left behind for her and she’d push until her very last breath.
It took all of her willpower to force herself to shower instead of diving immediately into Nasir’s book, so she compromised and rinsed off quickly without washing her hair. Then she threw on her thick fuzzy socks, sweater and worn jeans before gathering her long curls into a messy knot on the top of her head. She moved silently back into the kitchen, glancing at Harry’s sleeping form with a small smile and starting the kettle under a silencing spell with a flick of her wand. It only took her three minutes to make a cup of tea, grab some oatmeal and take a seat at the kitchen table all while her heart raced anxiously in her chest. She fought to keep her hands steady as she carefully laid the book on the worn surface, took a deep breath, and then slowly opened it.
It was a journal, Nasir’s personal journal – but it wasn’t filled with ramblings, stories, or information about his life. At least not directly. While it wasn’t a diary that documented his thoughts or feelings it was a book that documented research, spells, charms, and potions that he’d either developed over the years or learned from someone else. It also included documentation of several modifications and alterations he’d experimented with and implemented on his body – and the majority of it was questionably dark magic.
Each time she turned a page her eyes grew wider, her heart rate increased, and she fought to stay in her seat. She wanted to go wake Harry. She wanted to run over and jump on top of him then shake him awake so she could show him the journal – and the urge to do just that only grew stronger the deeper she read. The journal spanned across decades, it included his research notes, scribbles and trial arithmancy calculations. Sections were crossed out when something didn’t work only for another page to be starred with a note indicating it had been resolved and documenting the final calculation.
And there were dates.
The first entry was marked November 5th, 1919 and based on the neat handwriting Hermione thought it was safe to assume that he must have been at least a teenager at the time, possibly a young adult but definitely no longer a child. This meant that Nasir had been well over 80 years old – yet he’d looked younger than Arthur.
She continued to read through the journal, her tea having long since grown cold and the oatmeal sitting beside her entirely forgotten as she flipped page after page until she reached one entry dated October 12th, 1939 where Nasir had made a note about receiving a silver dagger and he’d documented the counter spell required to heal wounds inflicted by it – sarciovolnus. He’d used it on them, she’d seen him do it to heal his own arm too but he hadn’t managed to teach it to them before the den infiltration. At the bottom of the page the date ‘November 1st, 1939 – 9:00 am’ was scribbled and marked with a star but there were no other notes made.
After this entry the journal jumped, skipping well over an entire year and the next entry did not occur until January 18st 1941. It was an incredibly brief entry and the closet thing to a traditional diary note that she’d come across thus far, the words ‘Test was partially successful, five remain. Existing runes still functional – new remain useless. Watch Anna’ were written neatly across the page.
After this date the entries became a bit more infrequent, the experiments more dangerous, more morbid and less detailed until she reached one dated April 19th 1944 – and Hermione paused. Her eyes grew wider, her mouth dropped open and she leaned down closer to look at the finely sketched diagram Nasir had created.
“Oh my god,” the words whispered from her lips.
“Oh my god, what?”
“Shit! Harry!” Hermione jumped in her seat and clutched her chest as she turned to look toward Harry as he made his way over to her. He was lucky she didn’t hex him. “You scared the bloody hell out of me.”
“Sorry, I tried to make noise when I was getting out of bed so I wouldn’t startle you but you were too engrossed in your reading and didn’t hear any of it,” he gave her a somewhat sheepish smile and came to peer over her shoulder. “Is this the book that Nasir left? I almost forgot abou–“
Harry’s voice cut off as he leaned forward more and reached around Hermione’s small frame, his hand gripping her gently and pulling the journal up closer just as she’d done a moment ago. She felt the heat from his bare chest radiating into her as it pressed against her spine. She could feel his breath ghosting along her neck as his heartbeat fluttered more quickly in her head.
“He didn’t,” Harry whispered.
“He did.”
“But how? Is it even possible?”
“His calculations here show that it is, it’s not so much about the wood they use – it’s more about the affinity to the magical core component itself.”
“Yeah – okay,” Harry said slowly, she knew he was skimming Nasir’s notes on the opposite page and working through the calculations and research himself. “So, the wood is just a mechanism to hold it and seems to contribute rather little overall – but did he actually do it? Sure, it works theoretically on paper – but did he really manage to do it is the question.”
“He did.”
“How do you know – did he tell you?”
“No,” Hermione said as she twisted around to look up at Harry. “I saw it – when he cut off his hand I saw it, Harry.”
Harry stared at her for a long quiet moment. She could see the gears turning in his head before he spoke the words that she already knew he was going to say.
“I want to do it.”
She felt a small smile tug at her lips. “We’ll run the arithmancy tonight.”
-x-x-
Hermione bit back a groan as she sat back on her heels. Her muscles were sore and tired from the day before and her mind was beginning to feel very, very dead as the glow of the setting sun shone through the small barn windows. It looked like a blazing fire – which only made her feel more unpleasant. The day had been long and productive with some high points – but it wasn’t ending well. After reheating her oats and eating breakfast with Harry they’d skipped their normal workout routine in favour of taking stock of their potions and ingredients. She’d managed to clean their jackets so that only a faint smell of smoke lingered on them and they were wearable, but the remainder of their clothes from that day were ruined and unsalvageable – so in a ritual that seemed to be becoming all too familiar, they burned them.
They’d discussed Harry’s plan for Arthur, which could be adapted to everyone infected, and then made their way up to the cottage to meet with Fleur – who, with the help of Luna and Ron had taken stock of her own potions and remaining supplies that morning.
They’d spent most of the morning going through each list, documenting the expected incoming supplies from Shacklebolt, discussing food supplies and communicating every few minutes with Arthur and Bill. By 11 am it looked pretty promising that the Order was in the clear. Hermione knew it was largely because not a single person on Voldemort’s side (including the demon himself) would have suspected that the Order was capable of such a large scale and violent operation – yet she still found it surprising that Dolohov or Yaxley didn’t at least stop by to speak to Arthur or Bill. Yes, they’d had decoys the day before and yes, they’d made themselves present to create a valid alibi but she couldn’t help but feel both surprised and nervous that they weren’t approached at all.
She kept most of her comments to herself as they worked, but she did whisper to Harry that it was something they should continue to monitor. It left a strange taste in her mouth that they would get off scot-free and it made her wonder if something else was going on. Either Voldemort and his followers were planning a return attack and didn’t want to give it away, or, and perhaps even more nerve-wracking – they suspected someone else entirely. Which made her cringe at the thought of someone innocent paying the price for their actions. Unless of course the obliteration of the den was blamed on someone internal to his organization – in which case, it made her feel rather self-satisfied.
They ate a late lunch at the cottage and awkwardly accepted Dean’s uncomfortable apology. The boy had come into the room while they were eating, moving nervously and skittishly like a mouse before he finally sat down at the table and apologized for abandoning them the day before when they’d dragged an infected Arthur, a half-dead Remus and a dazed injured muggle into the cottage. His hands twisted nervously, and he stared at his plate while he spoke, saying that he’d ‘seen some things at the Manor’ and that he’d not been able to handle it. He didn’t go into any more detail than that but the sad expression on Fleur’s face hinted that she might know more. Hermione and Harry both brushed it off and told him he was welcome to join them for training in the evenings – where they could teach him some occlumency skills that might help. This made a faint smile brush across his lips and he nodded before silently digging into his food.
Hermione had watched him as he ate – or better worded ‘picked at his food’. He was still skinny, he clearly struggled with eating and the dark rings under his eyes suggested that he’d not been sleeping well. Out of the four people that Harry had rescued from the Manor he seemed to be recovering the worst. Luna’s gaunt face had filled out, her hair no longer looked dull and her calm but bubbly personality was starting to shine through once more. She’d spoken a lot about Ava and Charlie during lunch, who were both upstairs in her room putting together a puzzle. The blonde seemed rather taken with them and was already flourishing under the responsibility of taking care of them and helping them adapt to their new life. It had gone without saying that the muggle pair were likely upstairs because they were sifting through potion ingredients that could kill a small child if he accidentally grabbed and ate something. Not to mention that Hermione was in the cottage and Luna was probably trying to give her space.
She’d bit back a sigh at the time. It was just yet another thing that she needed to deal with later. She needed to speak to Ava and apologize for walking out so abruptly after the woman had hugged her the night before – it was hardly the politest thing she’d ever done and she didn’t doubt that Ava had heard her whisper ‘I can’t be here’. She just hoped the woman understood it wasn’t anything personal. That she wasn’t upset with her she’d just been upset with everything. She’d been overwhelmed and unable to process anything else.
Once lunch was done Hermione had apparated to the werewolf safehouse with Harry and Fleur. They’d left Ron and Luna to put the potion ingredients away and to review through a copy of the final combined list of ingredients and tasked them to develop a plan which maximized the potions that they could brew based on what they had. Hermione planned to review what they came up with the next day so that they could get started on brewing as soon as possible. With what happened to Peter, Voldemort now had control of the apothecary market and things were about to get even more challenging as ingredient shortages became the norm. They would need to be very careful about what they brewed and what they used from here on out.
Food was also going to become an issue and a risk. They had five additional mouths to feed and Mrs. Weasley and Fleur couldn’t exactly go to the store and purchase the large quantities of supplies that they would require. They knew that even if the Order members didn’t get approached about the den they were still being watched. So, they knew they would need to develop a plan for collecting more food – which would likely include making several nighttime runs while shielded. Hermione and Harry had both already agreed that morning they should be the ones to do it as they were the best equipped to do so. Which, unfortunately, was just one more additional risk they would need to take on – yet it seemed like there were no other viable options. They couldn’t just let the group starve and they refused to get into rationing until it was absolutely necessary because it would only hurt them in the long run.
What good was an exhausted and malnourished army?
Especially when their ‘army’ was a fraction of the size of Voldemort’s and still severely untrained and ill-equipped to deal with the harsh realities of war. The Order was only just coming around on the idea of using force and making counter moves – Hermione and Harry were not about to let their health decline and they refused to let Arthur or Remus complete the run. Not after what happened at the den. Not until they’d gotten more training in.
Thus, during lunch Hermione and Harry had revealed their idea of completing a food run Wednesday night by going to a large muggle bulk store warehouse in Northern England. They figured it would be relatively safe since they doubted that Voldemort and his followers were even aware that such a thing existed. The plan – as discussed over lunch and developed based on the food that Fleur currently had and what Mrs. Weasley had communicated she could get away with buying on a weekly basis per her usual routine – was to stock up on dry foods like rice, beans, flour, nuts, and other canned goods. If all went well, they should be able to get enough stock to feed the entire group for over a month in one run.
And shockingly – it had been Ron’s suggestion that brought the plan together and made the large scale operation possible. Hermione, Harry and Fleur had been debating the logistics of transporting large amounts of food. Yes, Hermione’s purse was incredible and could technically fit everything that they needed, but it took a wasteful amount of time and energy to fill it and every minute they spent at the warehouse was another minute open to attack or being caught. Ron had piped up when they’d started debating making multiple trips saying ‘why not use the port keys? Isn’t that what Lupin and my dad did? Dad said during the debrief he tethered the muggles’ hands to the key, could you tether the food together to a port key?’
They’d gone silent after he spoke, all of them turning to look at the redhead in surprise. She’d watched as a blush crept across his face and he looked down at the plate before him awkwardly. He must have thought it was a stupid idea because he’d quickly followed up with ‘sorry, that’s probably stupid – I just thought it might work‘.
‘It’s not stupid,’ Harry had said quietly while Hermione had nodded, and Fleur and Luna smiled.
And that was how they came up with their new plan. They would use the port keys Shacklebolt had made to ship food to the werewolf safehouse. They would tether huge pallets of food to the keys and ship everything in one go to the barn where the Order members would be waiting to unpack and properly preserve and store the food as it showed up.
On the walk up to the barn that afternoon Fleur noted that the goblin could now walk on his own and that Mr. Ollivander, while still weak, was mostly just limited by his age at this point and had recovered well. She’d said that Dean was having night terrors, he wouldn’t talk much about what happened at the Manor, but she knew that he’d seen several people die. She’d also noted that oddly, Dean seemed convinced that if not for Narcissa Malfoy – he would have died within the first month of being taken captive. He wouldn’t say much about why he thought this, but Luna had apparently mentioned something similarly odd – which had left Hermione and Harry with (yet again) another strange piece of information to add to the massive pile they already had.
Fleur had seemed a little skeptical that Narcissa would’ve helped Dean or Luna and she seemed concerned about the long-term psychological effects of their capture. Hermione didn’t say anything to Fleur about how Narcissa had her wand at some point, or how it’d gone to Snape then to Nasir. She and Harry simply nodded at the information and changed the topic. It was confusing to say the least, but yet Hermione believed Dean and Luna. For as much as it didn’t make any sense – the woman had saved her life too. Nasir had confirmed it when he’d examined her arm, without the potion she’d given her during her torture her heart would have given out and she would have died on the parlour floor.
It wasn’t a question of if Narcissa had helped them – it was a question of why.
But she’d pushed the thoughts from her mind as they’d entered the barn and got to work. They’d arrived half an hour before the muggles woke up from their dreamless sleep and things almost immediately went downhill.
Colin still didn’t trust them, which if Hermione was being fair seemed entirely reasonable. Liza seemed to trust them a bit more now that they were not covered in blood and mud, but the girl still mostly wanted to speak to Fleur – who quickly decided to go on a walk with Liza outside in the fenced-in and secured area. It had proved to be a good idea, because it meant that Liza was not present when Colin had a meltdown. The man had thankfully eaten some food, but he was getting anxious for an update on his family. In the end Harry’d had to douse him with another round of dreamless sleep potion because his panic grew out of control because they didn’t have any answers for him – Shacklebolt had enlisted the help of Thomas from the Ministry to check into their family situations and so far, there’d been no update.
Initially Ariel had been in too much pain to do much else but groan in agony and beg for death. It had taken them the entire afternoon to work their way across her body from head to toe transfiguring her bones and correcting them into their normal human shape – all while referencing a biology textbook and trying to keep the woman calm. It had been quite the ordeal, Hermione’s purse was strewn open on the barn floor, both of them had kneeled by her side surrounded by different potions, muggle pain pills and reference books as they worked.
Then Hermione had performed obliviation and removed the worst memories from her mind – but it seemed to do little. She’d accepted the information that they told her, mostly because it seemed like she truly didn’t care, and she’d refused the food they offered. She’d spoken a little bit afterwards and asked a few questions but ultimately, she just started to collapse in on herself – hence the heavy suppressed groan Hermione made as she sat back on her heels then forced herself to stand as she stared at the woman sadly.
“Harry,” Hermione whispered as her eyes shifted to her dark-haired partner by her side. “I don’t know what else to do.”
Ariel was sitting on her cot, bare feet flat on the cold wooden floor, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and her eyes blank as she stared at her bruised and scarred hands. Even with the memories removed it was like her mind seemed to reject the false peace. It was like her body knew there was something wrong, that she’d done something wrong and it was rejecting the magic in the same way that Rose’s body had in the alley. The swelling around where the bones had been misshaped refused to go down, dittany was barely keeping her cuts held together, deep purple bruising spotted her body, and the muggle medications they’d plied her with were doing very little to ease the pain as a fever began to grow in her body.
“I don’t want to be here,” Ariel’s words fell like a whisper as tears started to fill her eyes. She lifted her head to look up at them, pain radiating across her face as her cheeks began to flush with the heat of her rising temperature. “Please just put me back to sleep – please don’t let me wake up.”
“Ariel,” Hermione said softly as she knelt back down before the woman and carefully took her trembling hands. “There is still a future for you – we can help you and we’ll keep working to find ways to lessen the pain. I know it isn’t wha–“
“Please,” Ariel cut her off as her face crumpled and her voice dropped to a broken whisper. “There’s nothing left for me – he was my only family and he’s gone now. I-I don’t want to live like this. I’m not stupid – I know I’m dying. I can feel it – it’s not right. Somethings not right and you’ve already told me that the most I would have are a few months at best. What kind of a life is that?”
Hermione felt her shoulders fall as her jaw clenched. Upon glimpsing Ariel’s memories while obliviating them she’d realized that the woman’s fiancé was killed during her abduction. After altering her memories Ariel had wept for him, she’d said that she had no other family, she’d asked how long she had to live, and Hermione had answered honestly – ‘two months, four at best’.
Maybe it was a mistake – but she could not bring herself to lie to these people.
Not after what they’d been through, not knowing what their life would be going forward. So – she, Fleur and Harry had told each of them the truth to any questions that they asked, even if it was hard to bear. They’d tried to be delicate but there wasn’t exactly a great way to tell someone that they were dying because their body was rejecting magic, that there was a whole other world in existence behind the scenes that they never knew existed and that within that magical world there was a war going on between decent people and people capable of some very terrible things.
Colin seemed to struggle the hardest to accept the news and he’d only grown more upset with them. Liza was handling the news of magic the best out of all of them, because she was a kid and thought it was ‘super cool’ just like in the movies – but she was also a bit nervous and wanted her parents. Considering all things Ariel had handled the news fairly well but it was mostly because she seemed to have given up entirely. Hermione could see it in her eyes.
They were dull.
Borderline lifeless.
Which made saving her even more difficult. It was hard to force a body to heal when it belonged to a person who fundamentally wanted to die. Hermione swallowed hard. She already knew exactly how this was going to end but she wanted to give saving Ariel her best effort – for Arthur’s sake.
“Ariel, there is a chance that I could be wrong,” Hermione said slowly as the woman’s body seemed to curl inwards even more. “We might find another cure – what you’re asking for is permanent. There is still a chance that we could fix this, if you give up now–“
“I’m not giving up,” Ariel whispered. Fresh tears began to slide down her face, anger laced her voice as she ripped her hands away from Hermione and grimaced in pain. “I’m accepting my fate – it’s not the same thing. It hurts, everything hurts – my mind hurts and I don’t want to die slowly over the next few months while you both prod me with your – your wands or whatever you call them. I’m not a science experiment and I don’t want to live four months in a fucking barn while you try to help so you can feel better about yourselves – about what you people did while I die in pain! So please – please, at least give me this. Please let me have a say in my final moments.”
Hermione felt the runes on her chest grow heavy as she looked at the woman. Ariel looked terrible. Not only did Hermione know that the woman was dying in agony from the diagnostic that floated above her head – she looked it. The deep purple bruises only seemed to want to grow darker, the rings under her eyes were worse than Dean’s and even her heart rate was slow.
“How about this,” Harry had knelt down beside Hermione and was looking toward Ariel seriously. “We’ll wait until tomorrow – let’s see if the pills that Hermione gave you bring down your fever. Tonight we’ll do some more research while you’re sleeping to see if there is anything we might have missed and by tomorrow – if things haven’t improved and you’re still set on ending things – then we’ll give you what you want.”
Ariel’s dull eyes shifted to Harry; she was watching him closely – sadly.
“It’s not like I can do anything other than what you want anyways,” she whispered brokenly. “I saw what you people are capable of. It doesn’t matter what I ask for – what I beg for – you’ll do whatever you want anyways. I don’t see how you think you’re any different from the ones that took me in the first place.”
Hermione felt Harry stiffen beside her and she knew that the woman’s words had hit him hard.
“Tomorrow,” he said in a low and even tone. “If nothing has changed, I’ll kill you tomorrow. I promise it won’t hurt.”
With that he summoned a bottle of dreamless sleeping draught from the floor, uncorked the bottle and held it out to her.
“This will keep you asleep and without pain until noon.”
The broken defeat and anguish on Ariel’s face was hard to bear.
“As I said,” the woman reached forward, grimacing in pain as she took the potion from Harry and downed it in one big gulp. She radiated defeat as she locked him with a dead stare. “You’ll do whatever you want anyways.”
Hermione stood up to catch the woman as her eyes fluttered shut and her body slouched forward. Harry helped her lay Ariel back down on her cot, tethering her in place before turning to give each other an exhausted look.
“Harry if nothing changes tomorrow I-“
“I’ll do it,” Harry said flatly as he began cleaning up their supplies and carefully putting them in the purse.
“Harry,” Hermione said slowly. “You don-“
“And neither do you,” Harry cut her off sharply, turning to give her a firm look before his eyes softened and he let out an exhausted sigh. He ran a hand over his face tiredly and his shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry – I didn’t mean to snap. I’m just tired – but you don’t always need to shoulder everything Hermione. You’ve taken more than your fair share of this war. I’ll take this one.”
“But-“
“But what?” Harry dropped the open purse on the edge of the cot and moved towards her, his hands finding her hips easily as he pulled her closer to his chest. “What reason could you possibly have for why you should do this?”
“Because it’s a weight Harry,” Hermione said quietly as she twisted her hands into the front of his sweater and looked up at him. “And I don’t want you to have to bear it.”
“And how do you think I feel,” he whispered, and she saw something painful shift behind his eyes. “Hermione – you killed Rose, you were the one tortured, you were the one attacked, you were the one who had to complete all the obliviations on the muggles yesterday – how do you think that makes me feel to know that you’ve been carrying the brunt of everything thus far? It’s not a competition to see who can bear more Hermione. I know that you’re strong. I know that you can take it and I know that the burden might never be equal because I don’t have the same skill as you. I can’t complete obliviations – so I understand why you had to do them, though I’m going to change that and I’m going to learn – but this is something that I can do. So I will do it. We’re supposed to be a team Hermione, you don’t need to shoulder this all on your own.”
Hermione let out a sigh and dropped her forehead against his chest. She hated the idea of Harry carrying around the weight of an innocent life on his conscience. Casting Avada Kedavra, while she’d since established would not actually shatter your soul – still weighed heavy like a burn against your heart. It still left a dark emptiness inside you and she didn’t want him to have to bear that. Yet the logical part of her brain knew that he wasn’t wrong. There was no true reason why he shouldn’t do it other than she just didn’t want to him. It was an emotional response that she simply could not help because she loved him and wanted to spare him – which meant that she also intuitively understood how he felt.
He’d had to watch her suffer a lot since September – arguably disproportionately to how much she’d seen him suffer in the last eight months. So as much as she understood how he felt she really couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for him to watch on the sidelines because if she thought about having to watch him go through the same things it made her sick to her stomach. She tightened her grip on his sweater and he wrapped his arms around her to pull her tight. There was no sense in arguing with him because she didn’t have a valid reason and she already knew that he wouldn’t accept any excuses she tried to give him.
“Fine,” she sighed into his chest and felt his fingers dig into her sweater in response. “What are we going to tell Arthur?”
“The truth,” he said quietly as she shifted to look up at him once more. “We’ve done everything we can, we’ll look at it again tonight and monitor her vitals through the charm. If there is no change by tomorrow, then we’ll grant her a peaceful death – we’ll tell Arthur just that.”
“He’s not going to like it.”
“I know.”
“He’ll want to keep trying.”
“I know.”
“Should we keep trying?”
“Maybe, but eventually we’ll be doing exactly what she said – keeping her alive for the sake of making ourselves feel better while she suffers.”
“I know,” Hermione sighed. She felt the exhaustion from the day settle in her spine as she looked up at him. He looked weary like her but still determined, still so very Harry despite everything that life seemed to throw at them. She gave him a small smile. “I love you Harry.”
“I love you,” his grip on her tightened before they heard the door to the barn open and they both slowly stepped apart, looking to their left as Fleur and Liza came back inside.
“We picked flowers!” Liza was holding up a bouquet of what looked to be mostly weeds. The majority of them weren’t even fully bloomed as it was still April and the weather had yet to level out or allow anything to start growing. But the girl seemed happy and calm – even further improved from how she’d been when she’d first woken up, so Hermione let a smile shift across her face.
“Those are lovely,” Harry said warmly from beside her, his hand still wrapped around her waist as a grin split across his face. Liza looked between the two of them curiously, from the small amount of time Hermione had spent with the girl she seemed clever and keen on details.
“Zey are, aren’t zey?” Fleur grinned and she made her way across the barn holding what looked like a collection of picked herbs. “I took Liza to ze garden at ze back of ze paddock. Not much is ready yet – but zere were a few items growing.”
“It sounds like you two had fun,” Hermione smiled.
“It was fun! Did you know that there is something called a warming charm and it keeps you warm!” Liza was waving the ‘flowers’ around as she spoke animatedly, and Hermione actually had to fight to keep a straight face as she watched the wonder unfold across the girl’s expression. They must have had a great time out there because Liza was practically exploding with excitement. “I didn’t get cold at all! We could have stayed out there forever! Fleur said it even works in the snow – and Fleur also said that I don’t have to go back to sleep now. She said I can come with you to the cottage for dinner!”
“Oh,” Hermione said as she arched a brow at Fleur in question and Fleur simply grinned wider. “She did, did she?”
“Yes – Liza and I ‘ad a very good chat, didn’t we?” Fleur affectionately ruffled the girl’s short black locks as she nodded. She was so naturally charming and so naturally caring that Hermione couldn’t help but think that someday the woman would make an excellent mother. “Now zat ‘er bruising is all ‘ealed and ‘er diagnostic looked good, I figured she might want to meet ze others – see who we are, get to know us a little yes?”
“Yes,” Liza grinned up at Fleur. “Fleur says there are more magical people there like you and that you’re trying to find my parents – so, I thought that maybe I could help? That maybe I could tell your magic policeman more about where I live and what my parents look like. Plus, I’d like to maybe see some more people.”
Hermione watched as Liza looked around the barn and her eyes landed on the sleeping forms of Ariel and Colin. The girl’s expression grew tighter as she stared at the two and Hermione felt her chest constrict as Harry gripped her side harder. She knew what Fleur was doing – she wanted to build trust with the girl and she clearly understood that keeping her here with the others was not going to help any. It wasn’t like they could keep the muggles drugged up and sleeping forever – they had to integrate them into the wizarding world in some way eventually. So even though she and Fleur both knew that the girl’s parents were likely already dead, they could at least allow her to feel welcomed. They could include her, make her feel like she mattered and like she might be able to help or had a role to play.
“That sounds like a great idea,” Hermione said as brightly as she could and thankfully it brought Liza’s attention back to them. “I know everyone there will be excited to meet you and we could use your help. Did Fleur tell you how we’re going to get there?”
“Yes appa – appary–“ Liza hesitated and looked back to Fleur.
“Apparition,” Fleur said without missing a beat.
“Yeah that,” Liza smiled nervously and clutched the flowers to her chest. “She said it is unpleasant though.”
“It is,” Harry crinkled his nose in a funny way and Liza gave him a shy smile. “It sort of feels like being pushed through a hose after riding a carousel too many times.”
Liza’s face faltered. “That sounds awful.”
“You get used to it,” Fleur smiled at the girl. “But if you like for ze first time you can sleep through it?”
The girl hesitated, her eyes darting between Fleur and them again.
“I don’t want to sleep like that again,” she said quietly, and Hermione made note of the way her fingers twisted nervously around the bouquet once more. “It makes me feel lonely. It feels fake and I don’t like it.”
“Zen you do not ‘ave to,” Fleur gave the girl a reassuring look. “But you might feel a bit – seasick after. If you do get sick zats okay, most people do their first time and we can give you something to settle your stomach when we get zere – is zat okay?”
“Yeah,” Liza nodded before her eyes shifted back to the cots. “Are – are they not coming to dinner?”
“No,” Hermione said gently with a forced smile. “Ariel isn’t feeling well enough yet and Colin had a bad headache and asked to sleep it off. But if they’re feeling better tomorrow they will join us for dinner then.”
“Okay,” Liza accepted the answer, but Hermione did not miss her nervous glance at the two sleeping figures once more.
Fleur had been right in her decisions outside. The barn was a perfectly acceptable place to stay when transforming, it was nice enough, cozy and had everything that they needed. But it was no place to leave a twelve-year-old. She would do better at the cottage with the others. Heck they should probably consider leaving her with Luna for a day to let the witch work her own unique magic – since Luna seemed to have a talent for making people feel loved and accepted.
Fleur took Liza back outside while Hermione and Harry set the wards, monitors and finished cleaning up the barn. It only took them a few short minutes and then they joined the girls outside in the paddock where Fleur was currently clutching both bouquets.
“Everyone ready?” Hermione asked as she came to a stop before them. It was almost 5 pm and she knew that Mrs. Weasley was likely already at the cottage cooking up a meal for anyone who decided to come for dinner. People would show up at varying times, but all of them would be there by 7 pm for training unless something major happened that prevented them from coming.
“We’re ready. I thought it might be best if you tether Liza’s hand to yours for ze first time,” Fleur said as Liza nodded nervously. “I will carry ze flowers for now.”
“Good idea,” Hermione outstretched her hand to the girl and tethered them together once Liza had taken hold. The girl’s eyes widened when the spell was cast, and Hermione paused and looked at her curiously. “Did you feel that?”
“Yeah,” Liza’s wide eyes looked up to her. “Is that weird? Should I not have felt it?”
“Not necessarily,” Hermione said as she considered the girl. “Typically muggles don’t notice magic but it isn’t impossible to think that some of them do, or that they might have different levels of awareness toward it – we should see what else you notice this week.”
“Okay,” Liza gave her a nervous smile.
“Alright,” Harry said as he grabbed Hermione’s other hand and reached out to Fleur. “Take a deep breath Liza and remember to keep breathing okay? It will only take a second then it will be over, and we can all go enjoy some of Mrs. Weasley’s cooking.”
The girl nodded and clenched her jaw, Hermione counted backwards from three and then Harry apparated them all to the cottage. They landed on the beach just a few feet from the door with a small crack. Liza nearly toppled over, her hand immediately went to her stomach and her face twisted with nausea – but shockingly she didn’t throw up, nor had the tether really been necessary since the girl was gripping Hermione’s hand so tightly, she was sure it would leave a bruise.
“Are you okay Liza?” Fleur was already moving before the girl and looking her over.
Liza nodded, taking deep long breaths as she stared at a single point on the ground until she finally stopped swaying and then looked up to take in her surroundings. Her eyes went wide and once again awe flashed across her face as her grip on her stomach fell away.
“How far did we go?” Liza asked breathlessly as she twisted to look at the dunes behind her, then back to the ocean and then to the small cottage. She’d still not let go of Hermione’s hand when her eyes shot back to Fleur. “Did you do that?”
Fleur laughed. “We went almost across ze country. ‘Arry did it zis time, because he is better at moving multiple people, but I can also apparate.”
“Wow,” Liza breathed out as the tension in her face started to lessen. “This is amazing.”
“Do you want to go inside?” Fleur quirked a brow.
“Yeah,” Liza nodded and then seemed to realize that she was still clutching Hermione’s hand. A small blush crept across her face as she awkwardly let go and looked up toward her, though she was almost as tall as Hermione. “Sorry – thank you for not letting me fall over.”
“No problem,” Hermione gave her what she hoped was a friendly smile and stepped away to give the girl some space. “You did great for your first apparition.”
“Alright,” Fleur grinned, placed a gentle hand on Liza’s shoulder and handed her back her bouquet of flowers. “Let’s go inside and you can meet everyone.”
Hermione had been right, Mrs. Weasley was already there, and she was cooking up a storm. Yet what she hadn’t planned for was walking into a kitchen bustling with people.
Ron was at the counter preparing a salad, Ava was setting plates and cutlery out on the table, Charlie was sitting in a highchair laughing as Luna floated magical bubbles around his head, and Dean was placing a bowl of buns on the table. The only two people not in the room were Griphook, which made sense because Fleur said he preferred to be alone, and Mr. Ollivander who Fleur had said was still too frail for more than a few visitors at a time and typically fell asleep after 4 pm. But everyone else was there and it looked like they were having fun. Chatter filled the room, it was busy, vibrant – alive, and even though Hermione felt herself instinctively tense she couldn’t help but smile.
When they stepped through the door and into the cottage they were greeted with a warmth that Hermione had not experienced in what felt like ages. It was such a stark difference to how she and Harry had been living for the past few months it was almost overwhelming, yet she felt the weight from the rune on her chest lessen as Luna smiled at them and Charlie waved. Mrs. Weasley gave them a polite and warm nod from a decent distance, sticking true to her word of giving them space. Then she excitedly welcomed Liza and praised the beautiful collection of flowers that she’d brought – she’d summoned a vase and placed them right in the middle of the table as Liza blushed under her praise. The woman’s warm motherly nature made the small amount of tension in Liza’s shoulders relax as Fleur brought her around the room and introduced her to everyone. The girl’s face was bright, her eyes shone as she took in the sight of a knife magically cutting the roast that Mrs. Weasley had been working on, the bubbles around Charlie’s head and the way that Ron was floating salad bowls from the cupboard to Ava – who picked them out of the air with her single hand and placed them by each plate on the table.
Ron could have just floated them into place himself – but he was choosing to engage Ava and make her feel like she could be a part of this world. Whether he understood how significant his actions were or if he’d done it on purpose or under Luna’s direction she wasn’t sure, but either way it mattered.
He was doing exactly what they all needed to do if they wanted the muggles to feel welcomed. It was so easy for witches and wizards to use magic for everything, which was fine if you were surrounded by nothing but witches or wizards. But when muggles got involved it became more complicated and it could make them feel lesser or left out. She’d learned that the hard way. She’d biologically turned seventeen before her 17th birthday due to her use of the time turner in third year – so she’d used magic at home the summer before sixth year and her parents had, for the most part, hated it.
They weren’t enamoured with magic the way that a young kid was because it looked cool. They’d hated feeling like their efforts no longer mattered, they’d hated feeling like there was no point to doing anything because their witch of a daughter could just do it faster or better with the flick of a wand. They’d hated it because it had made them feel like they couldn’t contribute and like they didn’t belong in their own home.
It had been a rather large point of contention in their already stressful and strained relationship, so she’d stopped using magic at home altogether unless she was in the privacy of her own bedroom.
She’d have to tell him that what he was doing mattered. She’d have to tell them all so that this sort of behaviour continued and they didn’t accidentally slip back into the habit of just flicking their wands for every little thing – because the smile on Ava’s face as she plucked each bowl from the air and made her way around the table was proof that inclusion was important. Especially when trying to build trust and establish a new life for these people who literally had no one else to turn to.
This was balanced.
This was warm.
This was welcoming.
It made her feel like they weren’t so alone.
She felt Harry’s arm wrap around her waist as he shifted closer, his warmth radiating into her side like hope as they both watched the commotion ensue.
“This is what we’re trying to save,” Harry’s low whisper echoed by her ear and made a shiver run down her spine.
“I think we’re going to be okay,” she whispered back as she felt a tightness stretch across her chest – but this time it wasn’t from pain. It was warm and deep and made her heart throb with a long-forgotten sense of community.
-x-x-
Follow me on tumblr or instagram for updates @t3tohru
This chapter is dedicated to Aani <3
-x-x-
Warnings:
This chapter contains: explicit smut (which can be skipped without missing out on main plot)
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Dinner had proven to be a rather interesting experience.
Everyone ate and talked and behaved like they weren’t in the middle of a war – it was like Mrs. Weasley was trying to inject some sort of normalcy into their lives by making everyone sit down around the expanded table and just be people. And it seemed like everyone had needed it after the horrors of the previous day.
Bill showed up just as everyone sat down and Fleur introduced him to Liza. Arthur showed up partway through, smiling warmly at the sight of everyone in the room, greeting Liza and then taking a seat by his wife before digging in. The twins showed up halfway through and Liza was completely besotted with them – though Hermione suspected that had something to do with the fact that they kept showing her neat magic tricks, changing the colour of the flowers on the table and floating food to her plate any time she asked someone to pass her something. She ended up asking for just about anything on the table just so that Fred or George could send it her way or make it loop in the air.
Remus showed up towards the end and caved to Mrs. Weasley’s badgering and took a plate of food. Ava immediately struck up a conversation with him and Liza was excited to find out that Remus was the werewolf that Fleur had told her about outside. She was thrilled when she found out that Ava was now one too and that Arthur was as well – the fact that she wasn’t alone and that these people who were just like her were so clearly loved and welcomed only made her smile grow wider as she asked Remus how long he’d been a werewolf. His response of ‘since I was four’ only seemed to make her even more optimistic and even Ava smiled at that.
After dinner everyone helped clean up, Shacklebolt arrived and Fleur introduced him to Liza – and everyone in the room fought to keep their faces encouraged as Liza carefully described her parents’ appearances to the man in detail. She gave him her home address and even told him where he could find a recent family picture. She also told him where her grandmother and aunt Alice lived since they were her closest relatives. Shacklebolt, who’d told the girl he worked for the magical version of the police, had carefully written down every detail that she gave him on a piece of paper. It was a bit heart wrenching to watch but the man kept his face serious yet pleasant and even shook Liza’s hand before Ava brought the girl upstairs with Charlie to play a game.
Harry then silenced the room and split the remaining group into two so they could train. They focused mostly on the shield charm, then started into tethers – teaching those who hadn’t already learned them how to cast and use them. They closed with half an hour of meditation as an occlumency drill. It had been an odd sight to see over a dozen people sitting in various positions on the floor throughout the cottage with their eyes closed in complete silence, but it seemed to be a great way to end the training as everyone was very calm when the timer went off.
Afterwards, Luna dragged Dean upstairs to see how Ava and Liza were doing and the twins went back home so that the rest of the Order members could sit down around the table for an update meeting. Shacklebolt told them that Thomas had no luck finding Liza’s or Colin’s family – without finding the bodies it was impossible to say with certainty that they were dead, but all signs indicated that was the case. He’d already located the grandmother and aunt that Liza had mentioned and confirmed that there was a current missing persons case open for the family because their car had been found abandoned. It was unfortunate and they’d need to decide what they were going to do about it. Fleur had nodded solemnly and said that she would deliver the news to Liza – but they all agreed to wait another day or two so that Shacklebolt could pretend to use the information that the girl had given him.
They didn’t want to draw things out and get her hopes up but they also did not want to dump it on her on her first day at the cottage.
Arthur and Bill summarized the events of their day – both of which had proven to be incredibly normal and uneventful with no indication that the Death Eaters were suspicious. Harry and Hermione gave an update on the muggles and watched Arthur’s face shift into a grimace when they spoke about Ariel. As expected, the man did not like the idea of giving up on the woman but based on the diagnostic information that they presented Shacklebolt had nodded in agreement and given them the green light to proceed ‘as they saw fit’. Which had resulted in Arthur looking particularly sullen.
Shacklebolt indicated that they’d been able to get some supplies from Peter’s storehouses before the Death Eaters got there and that they’d be delivered the following night. Harry and Hermione outlined their plan for completing a large supply run Wednesday night. They ended up tasking Mrs. Weasley with finalizing the list of goods required and agreed that going forward the primary focus would be restocking potions and training.
When the meeting finally ended it was late. Fleur transfigured a bed for Liza and Hermione added an unlocked tether to her, like Ava’s – giving her enough length to leave the cottage and walk around outside but not enough to leave the grounds. The girl seemed excited that she could feel the magic as it was cast and she was also thrilled that she was going to be staying at the cottage in Luna, Charlie and Ava’s room. The latter of which Hermione approached slowly before going back downstairs to meet Harry.
“Ava,” Hermione said quietly as she moved toward the woman.
“Yes?” Ava was cleaning up the puzzle they’d completed that night but her hand froze over the pieces as her eyes shifted to Hermione.
“I just wanted to apologize for my behavi-“
“Don’t,” Ava cut her off firmly, shaking her head as something sad shifted across her eyes. “Please don’t apologize – not ever. I shouldn’t have bombarded you like that. You don’t even know me, and I practically jumped you and put you under stress. Luna told me afterwards that you and Harry are struggling a bit with being around other people because you two have been alone for so long dealing with everything. I shouldn’t have rushed you like that.”
“No – no it’s okay,” Hermione shook her head and started to pick up some of the pieces from the table and placed them in the box. Luna’s justification for her behaviour was partially true, but it wasn’t the full truth and even though she didn’t fully understand why she wanted to clear the air she felt determined to do it even if it was uncomfortable. “I mean – yes, we are struggling but it’s okay. It’s something that we need to work on and it’s something that we’ll probably always struggle with but that wasn’t why I left yesterday. It was just–“
Hermione hesitated as she turned a black and red puzzle piece over in her hand and then looked back up to Ava. The woman was standing across the small table from her and watching her carefully. Quietly. Waiting for her to continue at her own pace. For a woman who had been through hell she seemed so bloody put together it was mind-boggling. Hermione wondered if it was because she had a child – because she had to be put together and steady like a rock, for his sake. Yet the open honesty on her face felt like a breath of painful hope and it was exactly why Hermione struggled with the woman. She was so blatantly compassionate and understanding that it made all the feelings Hermione buried deep down stir up to the surface.
As much as she hated it and as much as it made her uncomfortable, she knew that if she continued to push everything down she would only end up breaking again in another dramatic implosion – and she couldn’t afford for that to keep happening. So, she forced herself to continue and speak the truth.
“It was just a long day,” Hermione said quietly, and she felt her shoulders sag. Fleur and Luna were bustling to rearrange the room behind her and politely pretending not to be listening. “It was a hard day – Nasir was – he was important to me. Everyone here is important to me and doing what we did yesterday wasn’t easy. Not just physically in the den to get everyone out but emotionally. I – I’ve shut down a lot compared to how I was before, and I had to shut down even more yesterday just to get through it.
“When you saw me last night – I’d bottled up too much,” Hermione let out a breath, tossing the puzzle piece in the box and glancing to see that Fleur and Luna were now silently watching her. “Despite how it probably looks at times I’m not a robot and I’m not entirely heartless. Yesterday I was struggling to keep myself together and do what we needed to do. I couldn’t handle feeling anything else. I didn’t leave because you did anything wrong by coming over – I left because I didn’t want to break in front of anyone and I needed to be alone. I don’t want you or anyone else to think that they need to avoid me like the plague because I don’t handle being around people well – it’s a broken part of me that I want to fix, and yes, it’s hard – but I don’t want to stop trying. I need a slower approach until I adjust better – but still, it’s important to me that you know that wasn’t why I left. It was just bad timing and I was pretty much the equivalent to a ticking time bomb.”
“I understand,” Ava nodded, and a small but sad smile crept across her lips. She looked at Hermione for a long quiet minute before she dropped the puzzle pieces that she was still holding into the box and slowly moved around the table towards her. “What you two did was nothing short of a miracle Hermione. I know it’s magic and I know that I still don’t know anything about this world but, I don’t need to to know that what you did yesterday was incredible – and difficult. I can’t even imagine how hard it must have been for you.”
Hermione felt her throat tighten and she nodded. Ava was young, probably well under 30 and yet she was already such a mum. She was so intuitive, she was tough, she was a survivor and maybe that’s why Nasir had chosen to save her – because he saw her as worthy. Maybe somehow, he’d known that she would be able to push through this instead of falling apart like Colin was. Out of everyone they’d managed to rescue Hermione didn’t have a doubt in her mind that Ava was going to come out strongest – she was going to be okay. She was going to adapt, and she was going to live.
“Would it be okay if I hugged you?” Ava said when she’d come to a stop two feet away from her.
Hermione swallowed, her lips twitching into a smile as a small laugh left her lungs. “Yes, that’s fine.”
Ava grinned, slowly closing the distance and carefully pulling her into a hug. She felt warm and even though Hermione stiffened at the contact she hugged the girl back.
“Thank you for everything you did Hermione,” Ava whispered into her hair.
A familiar feeling of discomfort circled in her stomach at the words of gratitude. Hermione felt her eyes sting as she hugged the girl back and let out a ragged breath. She believed what she said to Harry before dinner.
Maybe they wouldn’t ever truly fit back into society. Maybe there wouldn’t truly be a place for broken and tainted people like them in the world after everything they’d done once the war ended. But they were going to be okay, and they wouldn’t be alone. There were at least a few people who might still yet welcome them and give them a place to belong.
-x-x-
“Everything okay?” Harry asked her as they made their way back to their dune and Hermione grabbed his hand.
It was dark, the wind had picked up and with it the smell of the ocean danced around them. Hermione felt a strange warmth circling in the center of her chest, it had sparked to life the second that they’d entered the cottage for dinner and it had done nothing but grow and fester as the night progressed. Ava’s hug and Fleur and Luna’s soft expressions had only seemed to awaken it deeper, and as she walked beside Harry she felt overcome by it. Like her body was being consumed by emotion, warmth and love – and she wasn’t entirely sure what to do with it.
So she’d reached for him.
“Yeah,” Hermione said quietly as she watched Harry from the corner of her eye. “Everything is okay.”
She watched him while he pulled the tent from her purse. She watched him while they set it up and added sticking charms to the pegs to protect them from the wind. She watched him as he set their alarms and wards before they went inside and kicked off their boots. She watched him so intently that he finally glanced over to her as he removed his jacket and raised a brow.
“What?” he asked, a small smile forming on his lips though his voice was a bit nervous in a way she could only describe as adorable. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Like what?” Hermione asked as she hung up her jacket, sent her purse to its usual place near their bunk and moved towards him.
“Like – that,” he said as he gestured towards her and she smiled at the expression on his face. She placed her hands on his chest and his instinctively moved to her hips. “Like – like I’m the only thing in the world.”
“I love you,” Hermione whispered as she curled her fingers into his sweater.
“I love you too Her–“
She cut him off, rolling up on the balls of her feet and catching his lips in a kiss. His surprise was short-lived, and she felt his hands shift as his arms wrapped around her tightly and she pressed herself against him. Somehow, no matter how many times she kissed him – no matter how familiar his lips were, it always felt different. Each time unique and each time laced with an infinitely different combination of emotions that made her heart flutter in her chest.
And this time the only word that came to her mind was ‘perfect’.
Her hand threaded up the front of his sweater and into his hair, pulling him closer as she deepened the kiss and all but devoured him. She needed him. She needed him closer, to know that he was there with her through all of this and because she couldn’t handle the emotions bursting in her chest after so much normal. She heard him groan as he pulled her closer, one hand snaking up her back to tangle in her hair while the other slipped under her shirt and grazed across her skin. She moaned into his mouth, shivering at his touch and groping at his chest as she tried to pull him impossibly closer.
Yet it wasn’t enough, she still needed more – so she grabbed his sweater firmly and pushed him back toward their bunk. They moved seamlessly, Harry’s hands still wandering her body as their lips slid over each other’s until his legs bumped the edge of the bunk and she pushed him down against it. While not aggressive, it was the first time that she’d taken such a passionate and firm lead as usually he was the one to guide them. She crawled on top of him, catching his lips once more and straddling his hips as he gripped hers. She could feel the coil in her lower abdomen begin to wind as she spread her legs and sank low on his hips, pressing her center against his cock and grinding her hips. He groaned in response, pushing at her sweater until she broke free from their heated kiss to hurriedly rip it off over her head. He shifted to take off his own, his hands moving to unbutton her pants as she undid his belt. Their clothes were quickly thrown to the ground as the desperation began to grow almost like a panic in her chest as she pushed him back against the bed once more and kissed him fiercely.
She needed him.
She would always need him.
She couldn’t live without him, she loved him so much it hurt to breathe and she needed him to know it. To feel the same overwhelming emotion that was building inside her.
She broke their kiss once more and shuffled down his body, his hands sliding up her arms until they found her hair and she took him in her mouth. She heard him groan out above her and felt his fingers knot in her curls as she bobbed her head up and down along his length before moving again and straddling his hips once more. Their eyes locked as she positioned herself above him, his gaze was hazy, and his lips were slightly swollen from their kiss like she knew hers were. She watched his eyes pinch closed and his mouth fall open as she lowered herself on his stiff length and groaned out blissfully at the feel of him.
Perfect.
It was perfect.
He slid into her already slick channel with ease, the familiar feeling of being full sending a wave of warmth through her body as the coil in her center grew tighter. She rolled her hips, leaning down to kiss him once more as she ground against him and revelled in the feel of his hands moving over her skin. His lips moved across her jaw, down her neck to her shoulder and she moaned as he sucked her pulse point and pushed his hips up to meet hers. It was everything she’d needed. She could feel the familiar wall of pleasure building in her body as he pushed himself up from the bed and pulled her against his chest – meeting each roll of her hips with a perfectly timed thrust.
He knew her, and he immediately picked up on her desperation and gave her everything that she needed as his lips skimmed back up her neck and his hand tangled in her hair once more. She panted and groaned out against him murmuring his name between a slur of ramble as he gripped her hip and pulled her down harder. He rolled them over, easily shifting her small frame beneath his and hovering above her on his elbow as he thrust into her and kissed her deeply. She could feel his own need growing as the air grew tight and heated between them. She rolled her hips up to meet his and pulled him down close. She threaded her fingers in his hair and lost herself to the feel of him as their pace started to quicken and the pressure built.
He felt so good, he made her feel so good and she loved the way that he made her feel completely encapsulated. She knew she was close, and she could tell he was too from his ragged breathing and the way that his grip on her body tightened.
“Harry,” she panted as he pushed into her deep once more and trailed hot open-mouthed kisses down her neck. “I – fuck Harry –“
She felt it snap, every tired muscle in her body tensing tightly as a wave of pleasure washed over her and the unbearable pressure of emotion on her chest lessened as her mouth dropped open in a throaty moan. She clung to Harry, riding out her high as he continued to thrust into her until she felt him break too. His low deep groan echoed by her ear, his body shuddered above hers before he collapsed on top of her and pulled her close. She kissed him deeply, her hands roaming across his back, up his arms and over the scar from the hillside battle. They laid there for what felt like an eternity, tangled in each other’s arms until they both grew cold and Hermione shivered against him.
“Do you want to work on anything tonight,” Harry asked quietly, his voice low and raspy.
“No,” Hermione whispered, and she kissed him again. “Let’s go to bed – we’ll do the calculations in the morning.”
“Good,” Harry murmured against her lips as he pulled her closer still and then deepened the kiss.
She didn’t care that they still had stuff to do. It could wait. Right now, the only thing she wanted was to stay curled in his arms and let her heart heal.
-x-x-
Wednesday, in a lot of ways, felt almost like a repeat of Tuesday. Except that it was also entirely different. They both woke within minutes of each other and started the day with a slow lazy kiss. They ate, completed the research that they’d delayed the day before, did a quick workout, went to the cottage to review the potions list that Luna and Ron had put together the day before and then set them on ingredient prep duty under Fleur’s supervision while they returned to the barn to check on the other muggles.
The barn was just as exhausting and upsetting as it was the previous day. Colin ate, asked more questions but didn’t handle the news about his family well. He entirely broke down and eventually refused to talk altogether. They weren’t really sure what to do with him, so they moved him to the other side of the barn and left him awake on a tether while they tended to Ariel – whose condition had not only not improved from the day before, it had gotten worse.
Her bruises looked larger and deeper. The rings around her eyes were disturbingly dark considering the amount of sleep she’d gotten, and her pain had only grown more excruciating. She didn’t seem to care that they were there, she looked at them with dead hollow eyes as they checked her diagnostics and tried a few new charms which ultimately did nothing. She remained quiet and perfectly still in her cot as they pulled potion after potion from the purse, working on her carefully until Hermione finally vanished the diagnostic bubbles and sat back on her heels in defeat.
“Please,” Ariel’s eyes flicked to Harry and her voice echoed empty and lifeless. She didn’t even need to speak the next words because her desire radiated from her being so deeply, they could feel it. “Please just kill me.”
Silence rang out between them until Harry slowly nodded. “Alright.”
Hermione rose to her feet, looking to Harry with concern only for him to shake his head and gesture for her to move aside. She did – and she hated it. Her fingers twisted into the fabric of the sleeves of her sweater as she watched Harry draw Malfoy’s wand and point it directly at Ariel’s chest. The woman simply looked at him, only the tiniest hint of relief showing on her face as she quietly waited. He hesitated only a moment before visibly swallowing and whispering the words.
“Avada kedavra.”
An eerie green light glowed throughout the room as the spell shot from his wand and Ariel’s breathing stopped. Silence surrounded them once more and the woman stared lifelessly toward them. Hermione could see the tension forming on Harry’s face as he stood there, wand outstretched, and eyes locked to the woman before him.
“Harry?” Hermione said quietly as she moved to his side.
“It shouldn’t be this easy,” he whispered as he lowered his wand and turned to look at her.
She could see it, the same painful hollow emptiness that she’d felt when she’d killed Rose was weighing on his heart. It was dark and it was heavy – and yet casting it was as easy as breathing, which made it even harder to bear. She knew he was questioning himself right now just as she had, and he would carry this weight with him every day until the day he died.
It was just like the rest of them, all the other lives they’d taken by using dark magic time and time again – yet somehow, Avada Kedavra felt worse. She wasn’t sure if it was because it was the nature of the spell itself, or because they’d only ever used it for mercy killing blatantly innocent people. Perhaps it weighed heavier than beheading a snatcher because somewhere in the recesses of her mind a part of her believed that the snatcher deserved it. She wasn’t sure – but she also did not plan to test the theory because she didn’t want to know. The burden was heavy enough as it was, and she didn’t need to determine if Avada Kedavra carried more weight over sectumsempra or not.
“I know,” she said softly. “It was for me too – you’re not alone Harry, and it doesn’t mean it’s easy.”
He nodded, but she knew her words would do little to help so she just stood there with him in silence until he finally took a step towards her.
“Fleur said there are shovels in that room,” he nodded towards the small supply closet that had been added to the barn. “We should go dig the grave.”
Hermione nodded, following behind him and taking a shovel before heading outside. They dug the grave by hand in silence, only using magic to shore the walls and prevent it from caving in. They located it outside of the werewolf paddock and under a tree near the garden. It took hours of relentless and exhausting work. Sweat poured from their bodies as they each dug in silence, every strike of the shovel like a therapeutic balm against their souls as they let out their grief and anguish and poured it all into this single action. Neither one of them noticed that they’d missed lunch and by the time they finished it was late and they knew they’d probably be last to dinner.
Yet it hardly felt like it mattered.
After placing Ariel in the grave and covering the hole they marked the grave with a small cross, Hermione using simple gold letters to identify her name before they stood there in silence for a few moments longer. They didn’t speak until they’d gone back to the barn to put away their shovels and clean up their supplies. They vanished Ariel’s temporary cot, then gave Colin the protein drink Fleur had sent with them along with more dreamless sleeping draught before apparating back to Shell Cottage. They arrived seconds after Arthur did and Hermione immediately regretted that they hadn’t cleaned themselves up better at the barn first.
With one look Arthur instantly knew what had happened – there was no other reasonable explanation for why they’d be covered in dirt with sweat streaks down their faces. It had been a stupid mistake – had Colin actually looked at them when they’d returned to the barn surely he would have gotten nervous. But the man was so closed down he only looked at the floor. She and Harry had been so exhausted they’d not even thought about it and it could have gone poorly. She felt her jaw clench tight as she berated herself internally and stared at the man before her.
Maybe it was their solemn and worn expressions or maybe it was the deep sadness in their eyes, but for some reason Arthur said nothing. He simply stared at them sadly for a long silent moment before nodding stiffly, making his way into the cottage and carefully closing the door behind him so the others wouldn’t see them. The second he’d disappeared from view they both cast a round of rapid cleaning spells to remove the dirt and sweat. Then they took a deep breath, refocused, and made their way inside to join the others.
Dinner proceeded similarly to the previous night and Hermione once again found herself thankful that Mrs. Weasley seemed so intent on bringing everyone together. It made the day feel a little less terrible and every time Remus or Arthur smiled, or Liza laughed at Fred and George it made the weight easier to bear. She watched Harry from the corner of her eye as he remained calm and collected before the group even though she knew he was struggling. It hurt to watch, and it made her feel even more for him that he’d had to watch her go through everything that she’d been through thus far.
In a twisted way – getting hurt was easy, far easier than watching someone you love suffer.
Yet despite his internal struggle the night was far from over: they still had training, the meeting and a food supply run to complete.
The first of which went well. Training was productive, everyone learned how to use basic tethers properly and most people’s shield times had increased by a few seconds. Ron still refused to try casting the spell, but he worked through the wand movement just the same and doubled down on his tether training before joining back in for the occlumency drill.
The meeting was somber at best. Everyone provided a status update, and they all agreed to begin potion brewing the following day since Shacklebolt confirmed that he’d be dropping off the ingredients at the safe house tonight while they worked to properly preserve the food supplies Hermione and Harry would be collecting. It would be a long and tiresome night, but it would put them in good shape for the foreseeable future and leave the Order free to continue their war efforts while Hermione and Harry pursued Horcruxes and finalized the Gringotts break-in.
News of Ariel’s death was met with a heavy silence. No one asked how she died, and the table was filled with a mix of reactions. About half of them looked to Hermione and Harry sympathetically while the other half intentionally looked away and stared at their coffees. Only Shacklebolt looked them dead in the eye and gave them a solemn nod of approval before uttering the words “Thank you”. They quickly changed the topic to the upcoming werewolf transformations and Hermione detailed out their alternative plan for how they could manage things going forward – and it involved banding.
Rightfully so the word banding was met with raised brows and concern, so she and Harry spent 45 minutes answering questions and explaining how it would work.
Since the banding magic was stable it wouldn’t cause any injuries – it was the stasis charm that had been killing the muggles. Creating bands without the stasis charm was rather straight forward and developing a bond based on the runes Gibo, Elhaz and Fehu as per the calculations they’d completed that morning would allow them to band someone with lycanthropy to another person who would essentially be their keeper during their transformation. It would act as their moral compass and keep them from harming anyone or damaging anything until they shifted back into human form. With the bands on – hypothetically – the werewolf could stay at home for the transformation and would be somewhat similar to a pet dog: controllable and harmless. Though obviously, it would be up to the individuals if they wanted to try this option since it came with its own set of questions and drawbacks.
The most obvious one being – they needed to be banded to someone who could be trusted on a serious and fundamental level. This was Arlo’s experiment all over again and it needed to be taken seriously. She could create the bond to be based on peace, she could make it more difficult for the bond to be abused but even then, she could not guarantee it. Hermione herself wasn’t entirely sold on the idea and neither was Harry now that he knew it wasn’t rock-solid, so they refused to give out any specifics as to how the bands were created because they absolutely did not want anyone to dabble in it. If they had more time – maybe someday they could create something more secure, a bond that could protect without risk of control or abuse, but for now, this was all they could do before the weekend.
So they left it open-ended and up for future discussion with the caveat that if they decided to go forward with the concept the bands would only be utilized during the full moon, removed immediately afterwards and Hermione would continue to work on them to make them safer.
After the meeting Hermione and Harry sat together with Fleur and Mrs. Weasley and finalized the list of food, making a few small changes based on what Hermione knew the bulk storage warehouse would stock. Ron cleaned up the kitchen and then went to go check on Dean while Remus left to go check on Tonks. Meanwhile Shacklebolt, Bill and Arthur discussed the latest war news from the office then tried to figure out what to do with Colin since he didn’t seem to be responding well to the news of his family or to Hermione and Harry. In the end, Shacklebolt decided to come to the barn the following day during his lunch break to speak to the man in person in the hopes that he might respond to him better.
At 11 pm Arthur Weasley left with Shacklebolt to gather the potion ingredients from Thomas. Bill, Fleur, and Mrs. Weasley apparated to the barn to wait for the food supply delivery while Hermione and Harry took the two port keys and got ready to complete the supply run. It was going to be a late night for everyone and the rising winds and cold front that had swept in made her stomach knot as they cast their shield charms and set their disillusionments. She found Harry’s hand easily like it was an extension of her own body and gave it a quick squeeze before she apparated them to the Northern warehouse.
As expected, the place was deserted.
She’d apparated them a little ways away just to be on the safe side but after sending out a few quick detections spells they confirmed that the only person nearby was the muggle security guard at the front entranceway. Getting in was easy, they cautiously and silently crept around the back until they found an ‘emergency exit only door’ and unlocked it. They froze the muggle alarm system with immobulus and then slipped inside completely undetected. With the werewolf den being destroyed, they no longer ran the risk of running into bonded pairs – not to mention that Voldemort’s snatcher squad had just taken a massive blow and was likely scrambling from resource shortages, so the odds of them running into any trouble in this area of England were so low they were almost zero.
That said, they took no risks and remained disillusioned and shielded for the entire mission.
It took them just under two hours in total to navigate the large warehouse and collect everything that they needed together into two piles of goods. They tethered all the items together before tethering them to the port keys and activating them. She couldn’t help but smile as she watched an entire pallet of rice stacked with canned goods disappear in the blink of an eye once she’d activated her port key and her arm buzzed with an immediate confirmation of the goods being received.
They’d have to thank Ron again – because this truly was a brilliant idea that saved them an enormous amount of time.
Hermione kept track of everything that they took on a spare bit of parchment so that they could reimburse the company later as she refused to allow a muggle company to suffer losses due to a war they had no fight in. The muggle community of England had already been terrorized by Voldemort and she wouldn’t allow them to take any other hits if she had the capacity to prevent it. It took them another twenty minutes to find the main office, break inside and adjust some of the ledgers to account for the stock losses. They didn’t worry about the smaller items – but they did account for some of the larger items. She knew it wasn’t a perfect heist since the stock quantities would be captured elsewhere and she knew that someone was probably going to get in trouble for the inexplicable deltas – but all she could do was keep track of it and then try to right the wrongs after the war was over.
Had it been possible to break into a wizarding food storehouse somewhere she would have – but as per Shacklebolt’s latest updates Voldemort’s forces had a large foothold there and they didn’t want to take any unnecessary risks when there were easier targets available. She hated thinking of it that way because it made her feel no better than the Death Eaters – taking advantage of muggles because they were easy and often defenceless in small numbers against magic. Yet they didn’t have a lot of other options, so she swallowed down the sickness she felt and followed Harry back outside into the night.
By the time they arrived at the barn it was bustling and by the bright glow of magical light that lit up the large space you never would have guessed that it was nearly 2:00 am on a Thursday. Mrs. Weasley had organized an unpacking chain and was instructing everyone on how to charm the food so that it would keep longer and she was organizing it against the side of the barn that they’d decided to use as a storehouse while adding wards to prevent any critters from getting into it.
For the third time in 48 hours Hermione found herself feeling oddly grateful for the brash woman.
As irritating and as overbearing as she could be at times, she was a truly gifted witch in her own right who added value to the Order in ways that Hermione never even would have thought of. No, the woman didn’t know many duelling spells and yes, she was often over emotional and dramatic – but she was good at making supplies last. She was good at organizing and keeping order. She’d run a household of nine while having the budget for three and had somehow made things work for years. She knew countless household spells and preservation techniques that Hermione didn’t even know existed. The woman was in her element – taking control and adding value in a crucial area that often got overlooked in times of war because it wasn’t glorious or deemed difficult. Most people would never think about food management, storage and organizational skills as being war assets.
Yet it was so incredibly important and it was a skill set that almost the entire rest of the Order lacked. Everything else could be taught. If Mrs. Weasley let them, and if she put her temper and moral compass aside – they could teach her how to duel like the rest of the Order members, and she would become a force to be reckoned with.
Hermione and Harry quickly joined in, taking direction from Mrs. Weasley and making quick work of the supplies before turning to assist Shacklebolt and Arthur with the potion ingredients in a similar fashion. She was pleased to note that Arthur’s leg seemed to be holding up well and he’d even declined a new numbing charm. By the time they’d finished, and locked and warded the barn it was almost 3:00 am.
Everyone looked tired and weary – and yet, strangely happy. Faint smiles ghosted across everyone’s face as they made their way back out into the cold wind and began apparating home. Hermione sent a message to Remus to let him know that the mission had been successful, then she gave Shacklebolt a copy of the list of goods they’d taken from the muggle warehouse. The man had gently patted her on the shoulder, gave her and Harry a small smile and told them that they’d ‘done a good job today’ before he apparated home to catch a few hours of sleep.
They thanked Mrs. Weasley for her assistance and direction with the supplies. She’d beamed at the praise and became flustered when Hermione and Harry both allowed her to hug them briefly before she apparated to the Burrow with Arthur – who, somewhat surprisingly, pulled them aside before leaving and told them that he was proud of them. Hermione could see the underlying pain in his eyes as he spoke but regardless of his own moral objections, he told them that he knew they’d only done what they had to do and that he respected them for it. He thanked them for bearing the burden and he once again promised to continue to support them no matter what. Hermione hadn’t really known what to say at his words, so she’d simply hugged him and gave him a painful smile before he grabbed Mrs. Weasley’s hand and apparated them away.
In the end, they were left standing in the cold with Bill and Fleur. Perhaps they looked more tired than they realized or perhaps the heavy weight Hermione knew Harry was carrying was finally starting to show because Bill extended his hand to them and offered to apparate them home.
Home.
He’d called the cottage home and he’d extended it to include them.
Hermione could only nod and take his hand before grabbing Harry’s. Then with a familiar lurch and a small pop Bill brought all four of them back to the cottage where they said goodnight and headed in their usual directions. It was 3:30 am by the time Hermione and Harry finally collapsed into their bunk after setting their wards and brushing their teeth. Hermione curled into Harry’s side, his arms wrapping around her and pulling her close as his lips brushed her forehead with a soft kiss. She could feel the multiple heartbeats within her head relaxing into slumber and she was glad that both Arthur and Bill were able to sleep in a little and go to work late since they had no morning meetings. She was so tired she couldn’t even make her mouth move to whisper goodnight to Harry and instead she tangled her hands into his shirt before passing out entirely.
They woke in a tangle of limbs and panic, cold sweat dripped down her back as she shot upright in bed and reached for her wand while gasping for air. The tag on her arm was buzzing violently, the wind was raging outside and she could hear rain falling as Harry’s gruff morning voice echoed near her ear.
“Hermione the wards–“
“I know I felt it.”
Something unfamiliar but very much human had brushed against the outer wards of the cottage on the Northern side. It was lingering there, shifting slowly along the outer border like it knew the wards were there but could not get through – it wasn’t a muggle. This was someone who knew what magic was and the brush against the wards had been cautious.
It was the first time since they’d arrived at Shell Cottage after setting their own wards around the property layered against Bill’s that they’d felt anything come even remotely close to touching them. Hermione jumped from bed, Harry crawling out after her and summoning two large sweaters from her open purse. He tossed one to Hermione and she quickly pulled it on, not caring that it was large and probably one of his as she checked the time, lit the tent and read the messages streaming in on her arm.
It was 8:08 am and the message was from Bill – he’d felt it too and he was going to go check it out while Fleur woke everyone in the cottage and prepared them for an emergency evacuation to the farm as per the ‘Shell Cottage emergency exit plan A’. Bill was asking them for backup as he closed down the wards to prevent any other entries and to only allow Fleur, himself, Harry and Hermione access in or out.
Hermione buzzed Bill back, telling him that they would be there in seconds as she rapidly pulled on her boots and ran out of the tent behind Harry who had summoned her purse and was already removing tent pegs at an astonishing rate. Thankfully, they hadn’t needed to pack anything else up because they’d never unpacked the night before after completing the supply run. They’d simply set up the tent and passed out.
She felt heartbeats spike to life in her head as everyone woke and prepared for the worst. The Order had long since agreed that safety was paramount and that they would not take any chances if the location of Shell Cottage was ever breached. That said, there were too many supplies and valuable resources to abandon the cottage entirely without confirming the threat. Step one of the Shell Cottage emergency exit plan A was to get everyone out – which was currently Fleur’s task. But step two was to check the wards and decide if the issue could be handled or if they needed to abandon ship entirely.
Thus, Hermione and Harry had agreed to help Bill assess the threat if a breach ever happened so that he’d know if he needed to torch the cottage before he left. Bill had told them that they had a minimum of 10 minutes before the wards could be disassembled, but disassembly could only be completed by an extremely powerful and skillful wizard like Voldemort himself – and it would take a lot of brute strength. For anyone else it would be a bloody nightmare and likely impossible because the wards were immensely layered, complex and tied to Bill and Fleur directly.
Hermione took out the final tent pegs as Arthur and Mrs. Weasley buzzed that they were heading to the barn with their supplies in case of injury and Fleur messaged that she’d already apparated Ava, Liza and Charlie there. Remus and Shacklebolt were on standby and Bill was running out of the cottage towards them through the rain.
“Harry – Hermione!” he yelled to them as he approached. “I need you to undo the locked tethers on Ron – he can’t leave otherwise!”
“On it,” Harry passed the purse to Hermione and took off at a sprint toward the cottage as Hermione finished stuffing the tent into her purse.
Any remnants of sleep or grogginess had been quickly driven from her mind as she’d stepped out into the cold wind and rain. She felt like she’d been viciously slapped awake from the sleep of the dead. Her mind was now racing as she kept her attention split between monitoring the wards, checking the nine-minute timer she’d set when she shot out of bed and watching the vitals flare in her head.
“Ready!” Hermione called to Bill and the tall redhead stopped his approach with a nod and waited for her to run the few feet toward him. The cold air and rain stung her bare legs, she was still in her green pajama shorts and her loose-fitting sweater was quickly becoming waterlogged. She ignored it though, casting a wordless warming charm on herself as she and Bill sprinted back to the cottage arriving just a second before Harry burst back out through the door.
“Ron’s set – he’s going to apparate with Fleur last once everyone else is out,” Harry said as he joined Hermione and Bill in a run to the Northern edge of the property. “Fleur is going to hold to move Mr. Ollivander and Griphook given their health until we give her the signal.”
“Alright,” Bill nodded as they raced across the wet sand in the dim morning light, not pausing to stop while they each cast a shield and disillusioned themselves.
They silenced their feet as they grew closer to the edge. Hermione’s muscles ached with exhaustion from the day before as they sprinted and jumped over driftwood and rocks. It didn’t take them long to reach the border and Hermione felt Bill’s heart racing with anxiety as they slowed and began to creep along the edge with wands drawn. She squinted through the rain as they moved and approached the spot where they knew the person was still lingering, her eyes scanning through the nearly invisible wards as she willed her heart to calm. When they rounded a small beach boulder Hermione froze and she felt Harry’s heart spike.
A tall dark figure was standing in the rain just twenty feet away from them – impossibly still with an almost imperceptible sag of their body to their left side. She felt her breath catch in her chest as her eyes grew wide, her legs instinctively carrying her forward while the others remained motionless behind her. She closed the distance to ten feet, knowing that Bill’s wards and her shield would protect her if she was wrong and she let her disillusionment flicker away – leaving her clearly visible. Drenched from the rain she stood there and stared at the man on the other side. Water ran down her nose, her hair was stuck to her face and her sweater was starting to droop from the weight of the water and yet she didn’t even notice it as she took one final slow step toward the wards.
“Impossible,” she breathed, her voice shaking as her arm went slack and her wand dropped to her side.
It was impossible. Her mind couldn’t rationalize it as she tried to understand what she was seeing. It had to be real, it couldn’t be a dream because she’d felt the wards – Harry had felt the wards. Yet she couldn’t believe it and her immediate thought was that she was going crazy, or they were being deceived by a sick and twisted plot, or she’d fallen asleep on her feet from exhaustion and was dreaming this. She blinked her eyes hard and shook her head as the tag on her arm buzzed like crazy with status updates and the heart rates in her head continued to race.
“You didn’t fall asleep,” the voice was warped because it came from the other side of the wards, but the deep tone was familiar even if the hint of amusement laced within it was not. “Hello, Hermione.”
Warnings:
This chapter contains: explicit smut (which can be skipped without missing out on main plot)
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She stared at him, motionless as the wind ripped across her face and rain stung against the skin of her legs. She could feel herself shaking her head in disbelief as she looked at the tall man before her, at Nasir – her mentor and the man she’d left to die. Her emotions were welling and twisting in her chest as she tried to find the words she wanted to say. She wanted to run through the wards and hug him, she wanted to yell at him for letting them all think that he was dead and for making her leave him there in the first place, she wanted to demand answers from him, and she wanted to drag him off to the side so she could ask him for his help now that she had a second chance.
She had a million questions and she didn’t know where to start – she didn’t even know if she could trust him and worse, she didn’t know if it was truly him at all. She heard Harry shift behind her as he directed Bill to tell Fleur to halt the evacuation and to hold for their signal.
“How did you survive the fire?” Hermione said after a long drawn out second passed by. She sounded breathless, relieved, angry, confused – she couldn’t pinpoint every emotion that laced her voice because she honestly couldn’t figure out how she felt. Instead she just felt like a mess.
“Does that matter?” Nasir’s warped voice sounded once more, and a somewhat familiar glint shone in his eyes.
Yet it wasn’t exactly the same. She’d seen it so many times in the short duration that she’d known him, and his eyes had haunted her sleep in the days since his death, so she knew they looked different . Somehow. But she couldn’t put her finger on it. Maybe it was just the wards warping his image – but maybe, and her grip tightened on her wand, it wasn’t him at all.
“Hermione asked you a question Nasir.” Harry’s voice sounded as he flickered into view on Hermione’s right side. His wand was lowered, but he was still gripping it tightly like she was. “The first of several you’re going to need to answer if you want us to let you through this ward.”
“Hello Harry,” Nasir said, his glinting eyes flicking to Harry’s form, taking in the sight of his drenched body. He stared for a long moment before his eyes shifted back to Hermione.
“There’s a reason why Death Eaters avoid using fiendfyre,” Hermione said almost coldly as she approached another step closer to the wards and squinted up at the man. “It’s dangerous. It’s volatile. It’s hard to control and kills the caster more often than not. Even You Know Who avoids it. At that size the air around you would have been well over 600 degrees – it would have been impossible to breathe and you would have burned to death. You were buried three stories underground with no exit, Nasir. Bill and Shacklebolt swept the remains after the explosion and found nothing. I felt you die – how did you get out of there without burning to pieces?”
“A port key,” Nasir answered her in a low even voice.
“A port key?” Hermione felt her brow raise, but Nasir simply stared at her and remained silent. Which was entirely normal and typical behaviour for him – which was promising. Her eyes roamed over his dark form. He seemed mostly the same, though his slightly slouched stance was both out of character and concerning just like the small change to the glint in his eyes. “Where did you get a port key?”
“I’ve had it for a long time.” His deep voice remained even. “I had it made back before the Ministry kept such a close eye on them.”
Hermione nodded, that made sense. The Ministry started heavily regulating port keys in the 1950s and she already knew he was alive long before that.
“Where did the port key take you?” Harry asked him, drawing Nasir’s eyes back to him once more.
“It’s tagged to a small pendant which I left in a safe place,” Nasir answered.
“What did you say to me when we met for the first time at the table at the Burrow?” Hermione asked him quietly. His lips twitched in a familiar way at her question, and she saw the glint in his eyes shift darker as he turned his eyes back to her.
“I’ve never been to the Burrow. We met here at Shell Cottage,” his low voice rumbled. “And I didn’t say anything to you when we met at the table – the first words I spoke directly to you were ‘of course’ and it was regarding your request to cast a simple diagnostic charm on me to ensure that I was not under disguise of Polyjuice potion. I complied then, and I will comply again now.”
Hermione nodded once more and loosened her grip on her wand. She was almost certain that this man was indeed Nasir.
“What shape does my fiendfyre take?” Harry asked quietly as his shoulders started to relax. Clearly, his suspicion of the man before them being an imposter was fading as well. Though his final question was a good one to ask since only three people in the world knew the answer.
“A snake.” Nasir’s eyes shifted to Harry once more, the intensity continuing to burn. “More specifically – a Death Adder.”
Harry turned to look at Hermione and nodded. They didn’t need to say anything – no one else knew the specifics of his fiendfyre and they knew that Nasir was both an accomplished occlumens and legilimens. The odds of someone having successfully ravaged his mind for information was low if not impossible. And even if someone had managed to steal his memories, the chances of them recalling that specific detail so quickly and flawlessly was virtually impossible. The only thing left to do was check his diagnostics.
Hermione moved toward the wards, pocketing her wand in the drenched oversized sweater and then extending her empty hand until it stuck through the wards up to her wrist. Without uttering a word, she locked her feet to the ground with a tether on the Shell Cottage side. This way he wouldn’t be able to pull her through the wards if he somehow did turn out to be an imposter – which at this point Hermione doubted so firmly she had to actively resist the urge to just walk through the wards entirely and bear hug him.
Nasir watched silently as she cast the diagnostic bubbles he’d taught her and they appeared above his shoulder. She felt Harry’s heart calm in her head just as hers did when they read the familiar vitals.
This was unmistakably Nasir.
They’d practiced the charm on him and each other so many times that she felt like she could pick them both out of a crowd based solely on vitals alone since everyone had a unique combination of signals. Even though his resting heart rate was elevated a fraction above the usual low steady rate he typically had, there were no signs of any potions affecting him. Hermione exhaled deeply, relief flooding her body with a sadden smile before her face crumpled and her shoulders sagged. She could hear Harry directing Bill again and the tag on her arm began to buzz as the news was spread to the other Order members.
“Where have you been?” her voice was quiet, almost broken as she removed the locked tether from her feet then stepped fully through the wards.
Without hesitating, she closed the distance between them, grabbed him firmly around the middle, pulled him into a tight hug, and buried her face into his chest. His dark robes were damp from the rain and they smelled like fresh air. It took everything that she had to keep the tears from falling. She could feel her eyes stinging as a whirlwind of emotions broke free and churned within her. Guilt, sadness, hope, exhaustion – her fingers knotted tighter into his robes as her chest constricted.
She had her mentor back.
Her friend. Her ally. She had a second chance - she could still make a deal.
She could still save Harry.
“Around.” Nasir’s familiar rich voice sounded above her. Without the distortion from the wards it was a comforting and familiar sound. He didn’t push away from her, but he didn’t exactly return the hug either. His hand simply came to rest gently on her back as he stood there and allowed her to hold him. “I was delayed.”
Hermione held back a scoff at his nonchalant words and squeezed him tighter, only to freeze when she felt him flinch. It was so microscopic and abrupt that she’d almost missed it. He’d tried to hide it, and if she didn’t know him any better, she might have assumed that he’d just shifted under her hold – but she did know him better, and she knew just how silent and still the man could be.
As quickly as she’d grabbed him, she let go and stepped back as Harry crossed the wards behind her and came to join them.
“Drop it,” Hermione’s voice turned serious as she looked up to his face once more.
Her eyes scanned across his neck, his chest, and then down his clothed arms before circling back up to his gaze once more. He stared at her, his dark eyes watching her carefully as he remained unmoving yet slightly slouched and she felt her jaw start to clench. He was injured, probably worse than what he’d ever let on and he was bloody hiding it.
Was he even able to apparate? Is that why it took him three days to get here? Questions flooded her mind as her eyes narrowed at him and her fists tightened at her sides in frustration.
“Drop the masking charm now, Nasir – I’m not going to have you die for a second time because you’re too stubborn to get help with your injuries,” she said flatly.
His lip twitched again and the glint in his eyes shone brighter.
Her eyes narrowed once more as she watched his reaction. It seemed… warmer somehow. His mannerisms were all the same. His voice was the same, his body was the same – still and quiet like it always was – and yet the cold that radiated from his eyes seemed somehow less harsh, less detached and not so empty. He almost seemed a fraction less unnatural. It only made more questions spark to life in her mind, but she ignored them as she forced her brain to focus on the problem at hand.
“You’re very observant,” he said slowly as his head tilted a fraction to the side. “Though I assure you I’m not going to die – not today at least. I simply did not want to cause any concern.”
“Drop it,” Hermione repeated, and she took a step forward into his space once more. “You’re wasting your energy maintaining it. I read the notes in your journal about masking charms, Nasir, so I know how they work now – they require a constant level of effort and magic to keep them in place. Which means that you’ve mastered the ability to dual cast, it’s the only way that you would’ve been able to hold a permanent masking charm on yourself to hide your runes and use other magic – which I have a million questions on, but that’s not important right now. So cut the facade - stop draining yourself and let us help you. We’re a team, remember? You don’t need to do this alone.”
“I know,” Nasir said quietly after a long silence rang out between them. He let out one of his rare quiet sighs and his shoulders visibly relaxed as he let his masking charm drop. “That’s one of the reasons why I came back here.”
Hermione felt her eyes grow wide – not at the multiple runes that began to fade into view along the underside of his jaw and neck, she’d seen those in the den when he removed his masking charm – but at the significance of his words and the collection of other marks that now covered the small amount of skin she could see.
Most of the skin on his neck was still raw, but several burn scars crept up the left side of his neck and two trails reached mid-cheek on his face like spiking flames. Two fresh scars ran across his perfect face, cutting from his hairline down across his eye nearly reaching his ear where he’d either been clipped by a werewolf’s claws or hit with something across the face during the explosion.
She’d been able to tell he was injured sure, but she’d not expected this. Yet she didn’t gawk or gush sympathy that she knew he wouldn’t want. It meant more to her than words could describe that he’d actually dropped the masking charm before them. As stern as she’d been just seconds ago she’d not entirely believed that he would listen and do as she asked. So, either he was more exhausted than he was letting on or he trusted them and perhaps genuinely wanted to be on their team – which only added more unanswered question to the ever-growing list in her head. Regardless though, she knew that she needed to treat this trust with care and not ruin it by making a fuss over something that he’d clearly hidden to avoid drawing concern. So, she set her jaw tight and nodded at him firmly.
“Let’s get you inside and heal those before they get infected,” Hermione said, and she closed the distance between them once more to help him walk through the wards.
It didn’t take long to figure out that his slouch was a result of an unresolved injury to the left half of his body and it only became even more glaringly obvious as he moved through the wards with them. Harry had wordlessly stepped up to Nasir’s opposite side to help when they both realized just how serious his injuries were. It was a miracle that he’d gotten here at all and Hermione fought the urge to bombard the man with questions as they silently made their way through the rain across the driftwood and small rocks. Bill had already run his way back to the cottage to help Fleur and Hermione silently thanked Harry for sending the redhead on his way since she doubted that Nasir would have dropped his masking charm before the Weasley.
They didn’t dare apparate Nasir and instead walked silently for ten minutes until they reached the cottage, then continued on towards their sand dune. She’d thought about pitching the tent somewhere closer so that he didn’t have to walk as far, but then they would be too close to the outer wards and she figured that Nasir might take that as an insult to his capabilities. Regardless though they would patch him up in the tent – neither she nor Harry even considered bringing him to the cottage just yet.
The cottage was already packed as it was and was undoubtedly swarming with questions and overly apologetic people who felt guilt-ridden about his sacrifice. Seeing Nasir injured would only make things more awkward and make those he’d saved feel worse. She figured it would be best to get Nasir fixed up properly before they brought him back to the cottage to be swarmed by the Order.
When they reached their familiar dune, Harry dropped his hold on Nasir opened the purse Hermione held and pulled out the tent. He set it up while Hermione stood bracing Nasir – it felt so oddly familiar to how he’d held her up in the cottage after healing her arm, except that now she was the one caring for him.
It seemed suiting that she could finally return the favour, and frankly, it was the least that she could do after everything this man had given her.
“You made me a grave?” his low voice rumbled to her left and she realized that he was staring at the dune where they’d buried Dobby and marked his grave. The shinning silver letters were just barely visible in the dim light.
“Yes,” Hermione said quietly as she looked up towards him and studied his face. His eyes were clouded with something that she’d not ever seen before but they remained indecipherable much like him as a whole. “I wanted to make sure you weren’t forgotten. We can take it down though if you’d like. I suppose it’s a bit odd to see your own grave. I hope it doesn’t–“
“Leave it.” he cut her off as he continued to stare at the grave. “It’s not entirely inaccurate and it seems suiting.”
“Nasir,” Hermione said slowly. “I felt you die. Even if you did have a port key to escape it doesn’t make any sense how you’re still alive – are you saying that you died?”
“In a sense,” Nasir said flatly as he turned and looked down at her. He clearly didn’t intend to tell her anything else.
“Why can’t I feel your vitals now – where is your tag?”
“It was damaged in the fire, so I removed it,” he said simply as he continued to stare down at her.
“Alright.” Hermione accepted the explanation for him not having the tag now, but not the explanation of his ‘death’. She knew the difference in the feel of vitals going silent because a tag was removed vs vitals flatlining. They were distinctly different and his had most definitely flatlined. She stared up at him a moment longer before she lowered her voice and decided to take a chance at pushing him. “Your vitals flatlined, Nasir. How did you come back?”
“Using something that I plan to never teach you,” Nasir said slowly and so quietly there was no way that Harry would have heard what he said. He was eyeing her as if he knew exactly what she was thinking and exactly where her train of thought was going. “Something that I used for the last time and will take to my grave.”
“Did you-” Hermione hesitated, glancing at Harry and waiting until he moved to the other side of the tent to secure the pegs. She looked back to Nasir as her heart started to flutter with nerves. Surely mentioning the name of them wasn’t an issue. This was Nasir. She’d read his journal; she knew the dark things he’d dabbled in – surely the man already knew what they were and surely just saying it wouldn’t hint at their secret mission. “Did you use a Horcrux?”
“I was wondering how long it would take you to ask that question.” Nasir’s lips twitched as if something was amusing. “No. That is a rather crude approach that requires you to obtain another body and rely on others to assist you. I wouldn’t recommend it, Hermione.”
Hermione stared up at the man, her fingers unconsciously knotting in the fabric of his robes as her mind raced and she continued to hold him up. Did he know that Voldemort used Horcruxes? Did he think that she wanted to use them? Did he think that Horcruxes were beneath him, or a subpar form of magic? It sure seemed like it based on that response.
Did he know they were hunting them? Had he ever met Voldemort? He was old enough after all, and certainly powerful enough to have caught the psychopath’s attention. Surely their paths had crossed at some point in the past and she was unsure if his small amount of amusement was directed at her or at the idea of him having used Horcruxes. Though she got the distinct impression that her and Harry’s original concern that he might be on Voldemort’s side was probably unwarranted.
“But you died – ‘in a sense’ you said – and came back?” She raised her brow at him. “And you’re not going to tell me how?”
“No.” He stared at her for another long second, his expression bordering on stern. “It’s an inconsequential detail.”
“But what if it could be useful to us.” Hermione dropped her voice lower, urgency growing in her chest as her eyes darted toward Harry who was just finishing up the tent. “What if that inconsequential detail could mean the difference between us winning or losing this war? What if I need that detail and as many others as you can give me so that I can ensure our safety so tha–“
“You mean his safety,” Nasir cut her off quietly. He ducked his head another inch towards hers and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Even if I wanted to teach you this magic – I’m not sure it is something that you could ever learn. You are talented, Hermione, but there are some spells that require certain qualifications that you, thankfully, currently don’t possess. Besides, I know exactly what you would do with it, and Harry would never agree to it.
“Nor would I wish the remaining fractured life you would have on either of you,” he said almost gently, and Hermione found herself swallowing hard under his intense gaze. “Death is a natural part of life Hermione – but it does not always mean it’s the end. There are other ways to win, there are other things you can learn. But that will not be one of them.”
Hermione stared into his dark eyes. She felt like she’d just been lectured or scolded, but she refused to back down and she refused to allow her hopes of protecting Harry to be snatched away from her for a second time.
So he wouldn’t teach her how to come back from the dead – fine. He hadn’t said no to helping her and he’d hinted that he’d teach her other things. She swallowed hard, taking a deep breath before she spoke the words that she’d been wanting to say to him for what felt like ages now.
“Will you help me keep him alive, Nasir?” she whispered, searching his familiar and yet oddly different gaze. “Please – I’ll give you whatever you want. I can’t live without him.”
Nasir stared at her for a quiet moment his eyes flicking between hers while her brain finally registered what the difference in his gaze was. It wasn’t just the warmth; it was the life that seemed to glint from within. He looked more human, less dead – still imposing and unnatural – yet less so, and small almost imperceptible traces of emotions other than interest were present in his gaze.
“I’ll do what I can.” His low voice rumbled, and she felt relief flood her body as a small smile crept across her lips.
“Thank you,” she whispered, and she felt her eyes stinging once more. “What do you want in return?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” he said quietly before he straightened and turned to look toward Harry who was coming back from setting up the tent.
They spent the next hour of the morning responding to messages and fixing the remainder of Nasir’s injuries, which largely turned out to be burns from the fiendfyre and a few small bone fractures that he’d simply not gotten around to fixing yet. The most prominent injury proved to be the large chunk of muscle he was missing out of his left calf. He didn’t comment on what happened, if he’d been bitten or clawed or what – though Hermione had a hunch based on the way it was healed that he’d likely carved it out himself after being bitten to avoid getting infected with lycanthropy. This meant that dittany would not regrow the muscles – though Nasir seemed to be aware of that and rather indifferent towards it. He’d permanently walk with a small limp; his left leg would always be weaker and his physical duelling might be affected – but he genuinely didn’t seem concerned.
Nor did he care about the fact that his right hand was missing, a massive silver scar covered the blunt end of his arm, but he seemed to get along just fine without it.
The slouch was due to torn ligaments and muscles in his shoulder and chest that he’d been unable to heal after running out of supplies. As it turned out, he’d used everything he had on his legs and vital organs. He’d managed to heal everything up to mid-chest so that he could walk then he’d largely abandoned any surface level injuries deemed ‘unimportant’.
When they asked him what happened after he used his port key, he simply stated that he spent the first day most unconscious, then healed himself. He spent the second day slowly making his way back to Shell Cottage. Without being able to apparate, he’d taken a muggle train and walked the majority of the distance. It went without saying after a simple look at the man’s injuries, that the experience must have been excruciating and yet he seemed entirely unphased by it.
When they asked him why he didn’t just leave his pendant at Shell Cottage or tell them that he had a port key, he remained silent for a long time then finally said: “I was uncertain if I would be returning. I did not know if my backup plan would be required, if it would work, or what would be left of me once it was implemented. Had it failed – it was best for it to happen away from here.”
Neither she nor Harry commented on the runes that covered the man’s neck, chest, arms and back when he removed his shirt so they could fix his shoulder – though they both exchanged a quick look and a raised eyebrow before getting to work. Hermione silently memorized each symbol and their locations as she smeared burn paste on the rest of his raw skin.
There were six on his neck, made up of a repeating pattern of three. Two on his back consisting of one on each shoulder blade. Two on his left forearm, two on his right forearm, twelve on his chest in neat columns and three more encased in a blood-red border consisting of symbols that she’d never seen before located directly over his heart. He also had a small roman numeral tattoo on the base of his neck depicting the number nine. The IX was slightly faded, and she could tell by looking at it that it was done with real ink and likely had no magical properties.
She didn’t ask what each of them were from or what they might have accomplished – at least not yet. She’d already pushed him for answers today and some of his responses thus far hinted that he’d been unsure if he was going to return to them after the den infiltration. Whether it was because of the lingering effects of the magic he’d used to prevent himself from dying or simply because he wasn’t entirely sure if he wanted to follow them any further, she didn’t know. Either way though she didn’t want to push her luck. She was happy to have him back and she wanted to ensure that the man knew he was accepted regardless of whatever questionable things he might have done in the past.
She’d meant what she’d said about him being part of their team – they needed him and if she was being honest, she had a strong desire to stick together with other people who dabbled in the grey and walked the line of right and wrong. There was an unspoken level of understanding and acceptance between them that she couldn’t quite articulate. Yes, things between her and Harry, and the other Order members had been improving over the last few days and she sincerely hoped that it would continue to improve – but they would never truly fit in. Not in their entirety and certainly not with the same level of understanding that this man could offer.
Just like how they’d all been quick to call Nasir a hero the moment that he’d died the Order didn’t fully understand them. Maybe someday they might, yet in a strange way she hoped that they would never have to – that she could spare them from as much of this weight as possible throughout the war. And she found herself wondering what the dynamic would be between Nasir and the Order now that he’d returned and if he’d remain the hero they seemed to think he was.
Besides, asking about his runes felt like a very personal thing to do while he sat there half-naked in their tent at the kitchen table.
Though, he seemed entirely unphased by the situation. Either he was incredibly comfortable with himself or he simply didn’t care. If anything, she and Harry were the ones who felt more awkward about it – since it was impossible not to be curious about his history and how he’d stayed in such ridiculously fit condition given his age.
Perhaps it was related to one of his runes, or some other dark magic that he’d used in the past. But they didn’t ask about that either – because that also seemed too personal, and frankly inappropriate.
It took them just under an hour to finish healing him. The burn scars would permanently cover his arms, chest and neck because they’d come directly from fiendfyre contact not just the radiant heat – they almost looked like an abstract tattoo laced with silver scars. He was fortunate that the skin healed smooth and flush with his body and that he wasn’t left with any rough or raised areas. The slouch was addressed once his shoulder was rebuilt and the remainder of his bones were quickly healed. The scars on his face had improved to thinner lines yet would not completely disappear, which made Hermione think that they’d indeed been caused by werewolf claws originally, but that perhaps they’d been torn wider by a subsequent collision to the face. Either way though, all said and done he looked pretty good and looking at him now she found it hard to believe that he’d been standing inside that blaze for as long as he did. She checked him over one last time with a diagnostic charm and confirmed that he was not infected and still as freakishly healthy as every other time she’d cast it.
Then she pulled an extra tag from her purse and fastened it to his right forearm once more. He didn’t argue or protest, in fact he freely gave her his arm and met her eyes with a level stare – uttering only the words: ‘Our agreement still stands’ and Hermione responded back with a small nod and the words she knew he was looking for: ‘you have my word.’
While they’d worked, Bill had notified them that they’d brought everyone back to the cottage safely. Arthur and Shacklebolt had gone into work albeit somewhat begrudgingly, Mrs. Weasley had come to the cottage to help with potion brewing per the original plan, and Remus was staying with Tonks because she was massively uncomfortable and agitated that she’d not gone into labour yet. Fleur offered to bring them breakfast, which they accepted after checking that having a guest show up was okay with Nasir.
He’d replaced his masking charm once they were done healing him, so Fleur didn’t see the scars or the runes – which Hermione suspected was because he didn’t feel like answering any questions from the Order. And frankly, she couldn’t blame him. She didn’t know how many people truly knew what rune carvings were but trying to explain twenty-seven of them would be a nightmare and a half – they were illegal and dark magic for a reason. She’d have to ask him how to perform a masking charm so she could hide her own if the occasion ever called for it. Otherwise, Nasir seemed completely indifferent about his shirtless state when Fleur entered the tent and he simply did up the buttons with his single hand while she handed plates of food to Harry and Hermione.
“Nasir,” Fleur said quietly as she approached the man and handed him his plate. “I know zat like ‘Ermione and ‘Arry you are not ze type to want attention or sympathy – but I do want to thank you for what you did. We will never be able to repay you and I know zat you must have paid a price zat we cannot even imagine.”
Fleur hesitated and moment and then took a small step closer.
“I promise to tell ze others not to swarm you.” She gave him a hesitant smile. “And I won’t ask you any questions – but I do want you to know zat it is appreciated, and words cannot describe ‘ow thankful we are.”
“Thank you,” Nasir said as he took the plate from her with his remaining left hand.
“If you would like – you can stay at ze cottage?” Fleur continued to smile warmly at the man as he moved to sit at the table with Hermione and Harry. “I do not know where you stayed before – but you are welcome to stay ‘ere.”
“Or you can stay in the extra bunk here,” Hermione offered after she’d caught Harry’s eye and he’d nodded his agreement. She’d never agree to allow anyone to stay here without ensuring that Harry was okay with it first since this was their home and frankly it contained a ton of information that could put them at risk. But clearly, he’d concluded the same thing that she had – it would be safer to keep Nasir closer than not.
“They’re not the most comfortable – but it’s warm and dry,” Harry added with a small smile.
Nasir stared at them for a quiet moment, his dark eyes shifting between them until he finally spoke in his low rich voice. “That will be unnecessary – but your offer is appreciated.”
“So where will you stay?” Hermione asked him as she took a bite of the breakfast hash Fleur had brought them.
“You two are not the first to make use of packable lodgings,” Nasir said as he picked up his fork. It almost sounded like dry humor and Hermione felt her lip twitch as she glanced to Harry then back to the man at her side. He always seemed to show them more emotion than everyone else in the Order, but dry amusement was a new side of him, or certainly not one that he’d shown them before.
“You have a tent too?” Harry asked, his brow quirked with interest. It was hard to imagine this man living somewhere and somehow a mobile set-up like a tent made sense. Surely the man moved around on a regular basis and he didn’t strike them as the type to purchase a home or settle in any one location. It was too dangerous and made one too easy to find.
Nasir nodded and took a bite of the hash.
“Are you going to set it up here?” Hermione asked him as she scooped another bite.
Nasir’s eyes shifted back to Fleur and his fork paused halfway to his plate. “If that is acceptable to you?”
“Of course.” Fleur’s face lit up once more as her eyes flicked around the table at the strange dynamic before her. It looked so normal and domestic and it seemed to make her want to squeal with repressed joy at the sight of a calm Hermione and Harry having breakfast with a placid Nasir. Yet she’d never allow herself to do it and instead just continued to smile broadly at them. “You may set up your tent wherever you like – and please join us for dinner, we usually sit down around 6 pm.”
Out of everyone in the Order, Hermione thought as she smiled at Fleur, said goodbye and watched the woman leave the tent to return to the cottage. She is the most likely to truly accept us in the end, aside from Luna.
After eating Nasir left their tent to go set up his own. They followed him out into the drizzle mostly to make sure that no one from the cottage came out to bother him but also to see if he needed any help. He didn’t. Even with his missing hand and almost unnoticeable limp he was entirely competent in every way and refused any numbing charms or pain medication that she offered him. So, she and Harry simply gathered driftwood for training in their still waterlogged clothing while he selected a dune to the North-West of theirs and quickly set up his tent. It was small like theirs, but she didn’t doubt that the inside was expansive.
He told them that he had things to work on but would join them for dinner at the cottage and would also meet them first thing in the morning for training and to discuss the questions that they had on some of his journal entries. So, they left him alone for the remainder of the day and retreated to their own tent to change, discuss his return, continue their research on Horcruxes and revisit their plans to break into Gringotts. Hermione could feel Nasir’s slow steady heartbeat in her head as she ducked into their tent with a smile – it was reassuring. But the second she walked through the threshold into the kitchen and inside the safety of their silencing charm Harry grabbed Hermione’s arm firmly.
“Hermione.” Harry’s voice was serious, and his gaze met hers with an intensity that she rarely saw him direct at her. He kept his grip on her arm tight as he stepped towards her, backing her up to the pole in the center of the tent until she could no longer move and then he closed the distance between them. “I’m happy that Nasir is back – genuinely. Especially after what he did for Arthur, Remus, and Ava – but I know you. And I know what you’re going to do if you haven’t already done it – so I want to be perfectly clear about this and set some boundaries. We are not making deals with that man. If he wants to help us win the war – great. I will take everything that he can give us. I will let him help us until the very end and learn whatever he is willing to share. But I’m not going to have this turn into a ‘who can strike the better deal’ competition while we both try to ensure each other’s safety.”
Hermione felt herself stiffen as Harry took yet another step closer and gripped her hip firmly with his free hand.
“I’m not stupid, Hermione – I know that you’ve already thought it.” Harry lowered his voice as he eyed her almost suspiciously. “What were you two talking about while I set up the tent?”
“I asked him how he came back,” Hermione said truthfully, and she kept her face calm, impassive – sincere. “I asked him if he’d used a Horcrux – he said he’d expected me to ask that which makes me think he probably knows quite a lot about them.”
“Did he use one?” Harry asked her, unable to keep his interest at bay through what she could only describe as a mild if not loving interrogation of her intentions. She’d felt his stress levels elevate slightly the second that he asked her about their conversation and she knew he was concerned.
“No – he said that Horcruxes were a rather ‘crude’ approach. He didn’t seem to think very highly of them and apparently he used something else – but he refused to tell me what,” she said, as she continued to meet his eyes.
She could feel irritation growing in the pit of her stomach and she could see something similar coming to life in Harry’s eyes. She would never lie to Harry, but she would not tell him that she’d already made a deal. She’d simply omit the truth.
“He refused to tell you?” Harry repeated and she nodded. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” she let out a sincere sigh and ran her hand through her hair in frustration before lightly grabbing his wet sweater and looking up at him in defeat. “He said I’d probably be unable to do it, that it required certain qualifications I was lacking and that it came with heavy consequences that he wouldn’t wish on us or anyone else. But he said that he would teach us other things to help us win.”
“So, you didn’t try to make a deal with him?” Harry asked her quietly, his eyes burning as he stared at her intently.
Hermione fought to keep her face defeated as her heart rate spiked and her internal irritation flared once more. She was happy that she’d not given Harry’s tag the capability to read vitals because otherwise he would have instantly known that she had.
“No,” Hermione said quietly, and she let her face fall, though she knew that she probably looked a bit angry as well. It wasn’t technically a lie – she’d not tried anything. She’d been successful, and she had struck a deal with him. She let her voice drop to a grumble as she dropped her eyes to his chest in irritation. “I didn’t have enough time.”
“Good,” Harry said firmly before he trailed his hand up her side and gripped her chin lightly, tilting her head back so she was looking up at him. “Don’t.”
“That’s not your decision to make, Harry,” Hermione said stiffly as she looked at him defiantly.
“Hermione, please,” he whispered as he brought his face closer to hers and she saw his eyes soften a fraction. “Please don’t. I don’t even want to imagine what he’d ask for in return. Please don’t make a deal with him for my sake – please.”
“Then you can’t either,” she snapped back as she met his eyes firmly and she let her irritation out. “You can’t tell me not to and then go do it yourself – so you can’t make a deal with him for my sake either.”
Harry stared at her for a long moment. “Fine – I won’t.”
“Good,” she said angrily.
“Say you won’t,” his eyes narrowed at her.
“I won’t,” she said flatly, and her eyes narrowed as well.
“Good.”
“Good,” she repeated, and she saw his jaw clench.
They both stared at each other angrily until Harry bent his head and captured her lips in an angry kiss. Hermione inhaled sharply at the contact and her hand twisted into his sweater.
“I’m not going to let you sell your soul to save my life,” he murmured harshly against her lips as he pushed himself against her.
“I already said I wouldn’t,” she breathed and crushed her lips against his once more.
She could feel every inch of him against her and it was sparking a bizarre and angry heat within her body. She hated herself for essentially lying to Harry, but she also hated that he thought he had some sort of control in what she decided to do. They needed to do what was necessary and they both knew that his life was more important than hers in this war. She understood how he felt because she felt the same way and she didn’t want him to make any deals either – but that didn’t make the irritation and desperation she felt any less agitating.
“Good,” he groaned against her as his hand snaked its way into her hair and his grip on her hip tightened. “Because I would never forgive myself or him if you did – I can’t live without you, Hermione.”
Hermione groaned as his thigh pressed between her legs and she tugged at the hem of his wet sweater to pull it over his head.
“I can’t live without you,” she moaned against his lips as his leg pressed hard against her center. She tangled her hand into his hair and pulled away to glare at him hard. “I’ll never forgive you if you try to sacrifice yourself for me.”
Harry stared at her hard, his breath coming in pants from the intensity of their kiss.
“I know,” he breathed.
Then their lips crashed together once more as they poured out their fear, irritation and desperate need to protect the other. Her sweater dropped to the floor by her feet, landing next to Harry’s only a second before Harry tugged down her shorts and she ripped off his pajama bottoms. She could feel his hard length pressing against her abdomen before he tugged her hair, tilted her head back and kissed her so deeply she almost couldn’t breathe. She knew her nails were digging into him and yet she didn’t even question it or the heated intensity between them as she groaned into his mouth and arched her back against the pole.
Her heart was hammering in her chest – this was unlike anything she’d ever experienced as her hands roamed over his back and shoulders and he pressed her into the pole. She felt his hand skim down her leg, dipping behind her knee and lifting it so he could center himself between her legs before he pushed into her and a deep groan left their lips. It was tight, and yet she was so wet he’d slipped into her channel without any resistance. He groaned against her neck, his lips moving down her skin to her shoulder while she gripped his hair tighter and tilted her hips up to him.
It felt like a rush, like someone had just dumped a barrel of gasoline of the fire in her center that she didn’t even realize was burning. Just like the war – the desperate heat between them was growing, the intensity was mounting, and things were becoming harder, rougher and more wild each time they were intimate. It felt like years ago now that he’d pushed into her so gently and so slowly that first time in the Forest of Dean, and now, he was pumping in and out of her with practiced ease while she wrapped her leg around him and vulgar poured from her lips.
Gone was the naivety that they both once had, replaced with hardened reality and burdens heavier than most should ever have to bear. Yet somehow this made the weight seem lighter, it made everything seem easier as they both escaped and lost themselves to baser urges that at one point – she’d thought were immature. She’d thought these desires had somehow made her less responsible, less serious and less herself and they’d made her almost embarrassed to succumb to them.
Fuck how wrong was I, she thought as she rolled her hips up to meet Harry’s thrust and bit his shoulder hard to stifle her moan.
This was a release; this was what she needed, and it was growing more intense and serious just like the two of them.
“Harder,” she groaned as she dug her fingers into his back and let her head fall against the pole.
A chill of excitement swept down her spine with a shiver as his grip on her tightened and he drove into her harder. His lips crashed against her fiercely once more and she hissed when he lightly nipped her bottom lip. She knew that a part of him was still holding back, she knew that even when he let go, he was still being careful – he was still treating her with care.
“Fuck Harry,” she panted as she knotted her hands into his hair once more. She wanted him to fully let go, she wanted him to know that rough was okay when they both needed it. She tugged his hair and gripped him tighter. “Ungh – god – harder Harry, give it to me.”
It was like her words flicked a switch and suddenly she was consumed by him. His hands traced over her body, it felt like they were everywhere all at once while his mouth left hers to kiss and bite at her neck while he pushed into her so hard her back thumped against the pole. She gasped then groaned and gripped him tightly as a wave of pleasure built within her like a storm. Each time her back hit the pole and his hard length hit the bundle of nerves deep within her she thought she would break. His breath was hot on her neck, his hands made her tremble and his deep groans at her touch was making her head spin as she fought to keep herself upright as her legs began to shake.
“Hermione,” he groaned as his lips moved over her ear and he pushed into her body harder. “Fuck Hermione – I’m going to come – but not before you.”
She shivered at his words and a moan seeped through her lips as her head rolled back.
“I want you to come while I’m inside you,” he groaned against her as her back hit the pole once more and another incoherent groan left her lips. “Come for me Hermione – I know your close.”
A second intense shiver of pleasure rolled down her spine and her entire body trembled in his arms. She could hardly think, she could hardly breathe, she was losing control of her limbs as the orgasm that had been building inside her finally snapped free at the sound of his deep raspy voice echoing a string of dirty words in her ear. Her mouth fell open as her eyes shut tight and a deep throaty groan poured from her mouth as he pushed into her hard over and over.
She didn’t realize how tightly she was gripping his hair; she didn’t even realize that her legs had given out and he was entirely holding her up, her mind was lost to intense bliss. She barely even registered the sound of a deep groan leaving his mouth as he came hard and jerked against her. His lips devoured hers and she moaned nonsensically as he braced himself against the pole and pressed up against her hard to prevent her from crumbling to the ground.
“Hermione,” he murmured, and her hazy eyes fluttered open to look up at him. “Are you okay? Was I too rough?”
A drunken smile cut across her lips as she looked at him, he was so god damn perfect her brain didn’t seem able to process the sweaty handsome figure before her. All she could do as smile like a love-struck idiot at his perfectly dishevelled hair and hazy eyes.
“I think you broke my brain.” She grinned wider when he snorted, and a smile broke across his face. “I can’t stop thinking about how beautiful you are.”
She saw him blush and that only made her smile wider.
“You’re the beautiful one,” Harry muttered as he pushed some of the hair stuck to her forehead aside. “Perfect – but really, was that okay? I know it got a little bit intense there and I–“
“It was perfect Harry,” she whispered and tilted her head to kiss him gently. “It was exactly what I wanted and exactly what we needed.”
“Good.” His breath ghosted across her lips, his body now completely relaxed and void of the tension that’d been there during their heated conversation. “Because I liked it. Let’s go shower.”
“Okay.” She grinned at him as he carefully pulled himself out from her and she stood unsteady on her feet before him.
She summoned fresh clothes from the open purse on the table and followed Harry toward the bathroom. She decided to bury the guilt she felt for lying to him and instead to just enjoyed the calm between them as they both stepped into the shower and cleaned themselves off. It didn’t take long for them to shower and dress and refocus their newly cleared minds on Horcruxes, Gringotts, banding, and Harry’s side project.
In fact, they’d gotten so caught up in their work that they forgot to eat lunch and entirely lost track of time. If not for the soft chime of the alarm at 5:50 pm that she’d set as a reminder they would have likely missed dinner too. She felt content as she quickly packed up their notes and list of questions for Nasir before following Harry outside to head to the cottage. They decided to leave their tent in place this time, since everything that they needed was in the purse anyways and so they slowly made their way towards Nasir’s tent with the purse in hand. He stepped out before they got within twenty feet of his tent, he must have set several wards as they had, and he joined them in their stroll toward the cottage. She eyed him from the corner of her vision as he walked on her left like he’d done countless times before.
With the masking charm in place his injuries would be completely unnoticeable to anyone who didn’t know him – which meant everyone except for her and Harry. She fought the urge to smile like an idiot once more as she intertwined her fingers with Harry’s and felt a warmth flood her heart.
This felt right.
This felt like hope.
She didn’t care what Nasir asked from her and she wasn’t afraid. She knew deep within her tarnished soul that somehow; things were finally going to be okay. When they reached the cottage they slowed and Harry dropped her hand to move toward the door. Before he could enter and before she followed him inside Hermione turned around to look up at Nasir once more and smiled.
“Thank you for coming back,” she said quietly, though she knew that Harry would be able to hear her as he stood with one hand on the door handle. “I know you didn’t have to; you could have gone anywhere, and I would have understood that even if I spent years thinking you were dead and by chance ran into you later. But I’m glad you decided to come back to us – I hope you know that you’ll always have a place here and that we’ll always welcome you.”
Nasir’s lip twitched as he looked down at her and his dark eyes glinted.
“I appreciate that, Hermione,” he said slowly before taking a small step toward her. “I know you would never ask it. So perhaps my clarifying it now will ease some of the stress that you carry – I will follow you and Harry until this is over.”
Hermione felt her heart swell and without thinking she closed the distance between them and hugged the man for the second time that day.
“Thank you,” she murmured into his chest as she gripped him tightly and heard Harry thank the man from behind her. She felt his right arm circle around her body and pat her back twice before his deep voice rumbled above her.
“I believe everyone is waiting for us,” Nasir said quietly and Hermione nodded and stepped away.
“Alight,” she said and she ran a finger under her eye to brush away the single tear that threatened to fall. She turned back to Harry and smiled at the soft look he was giving her. “Let’s get this over with. We still have training at 7 pm – it’s going to be a long night.”
Entering the cottage with Nasir behind them felt much like how it did when she and Harry had returned from the barn with Fleur on Monday. The entire kitchen went quiet and all eyes darted to the tall man who lingered behind them and waited to follow their lead. Hermione’s eyes scanned the large crowd – from Fred, George and Liza’s curious expressions, to Shacklebolt’s smile, to Fleur’s beaming grin, to Bill and Ron’s tired smiles and Luna’s gentle one, to Dean’s wariness, to Mrs. Weasley’s cautious yet sympathetic eyes, and finally to Remus who stood from his seat along with Arthur and Ava. Everyone was there and everyone looked like they wanted to say something.
But Arthur spoke first.
“Nasir,” Arthur said sincerely as he moved away from the table and crossed the room towards them. “I owe you an apology – and a thank you.”
“That is unnecessary,” Nasir said evenly as Arthur came to a stop just two feet before him.
“On the contrary.” Arthur’s brow pinched in pain and he shook his head. “You saved my life – you saved Remus and Ava and without you we never would have rescued Liza or the others. And I did not treat you with the decency that you deserved. For that I’m sorry. I’ll never be able to repay you for what you did.”
“Really, Arthur,” Nasir said quietly and for the first time ever the man displayed a hint of discomfort as his eyes shifted to Hermione’s briefly before moving back to Arthur’s. He usually blended into the shadows when around the other Order members and had certainly never looked for attention – he didn’t seem to like it getting it. “Don’t worry about it.”
Arthur exhaled hard and shook his head before lowering his voice. “Well, regardless of what you think, I think we owe you – hugely for what you did. Please know that you’ve more than earned yourself a place in the Order and we will be here if you should ever need anything.”
Arthur extended his left hand, clearly remembering that Nasir was missing his right one. The tall dark man stared at it for a long second before slowing extending his to take Arthur’s and giving it a firm shake. Then the room behind them exploded with chatter once more as Fleur tried to direct the attention back to the food and asked who wanted what. Hermione, Harry and Nasir made their way to the table behind Arthur. Hermione and Harry both took their usual seats at the end of the table and watched as Remus made his way over to Nasir before the man could sit down, Remus muttered something quietly and shook Nasir’s hand much like Arthur had.
The entire time Ava remained standing before her chair watching the exchange until Nasir’s gaze finally shifted to hers and he gave her a small nod. The woman’s eyes welled instantly, and she nearly knocked over her chair as she made her way over to him. She paused in front of him only briefly before she grabbed him in a tight hug and Hermione smiled as she watched the awkward scene unfold – Nasir stood stiff as a statue under her hold as she hugged him and thanked him for saving her life. It lasted for ten long awkward seconds until Ava finally pulled back and began wiping away her fresh tears. She naturally lifted her left arm to wipe her eyes and then groaned out adorably when she realized that her hand was missing.
“Ugh I keep forgetting about it,” Ava laughed awkwardly as she used her right hand to finish brushing away the tears as she looked up to Nasir.
Her eyes travelled over his tall frame down to his obviously missing right hand. He’d not bothered to hide it and the silver scar on his stump was clearly visible since it stuck out of the buttoned cuff of his black dress shirt.
“Look.” Ava smiled teary-eyed and held up her left arm. The fabric of her sweater had been rolled up and sewn shut an inch or two below where her arm now ended. A small laugh left her lips as she grinned at him. “We match – together we have one full set.”
Hermione smiled and she felt Harry touch her leg gently beneath the table – and unbelievably, Nasir’s lips twitched into a small smile as he looked at the woman before him.
“Well, I should let you eat.” Ava blushed as she moved away from him. “But after dinner I want you to meet my son – after all, without you who knows what would have happened to him.”
She left him to return to her seat next to Remus and Nasir finally managed to take his own chair after Shacklebolt made his way over and they exchanged muttered words. Hermione could hear Liza whispering to Fred and George on her right, asking who the ‘tall man’ was while Fleur and Mrs. Weasley began passing bowls.
Dinner was noisy and boisterous as seemed to be the norm now and a part of Hermione wished that she could just eat outside with Nasir and Harry like how they used to after training – but she forced that thought from her head because she knew that this was good for her even if it was a bit painful.
After dinner Ava, true to her word, held up a nervous-looking Charlie before Nasir and introduced the two. Charlie waved at him and Nasir nodded – which earned him a small nervous smile from Charlie. Then Hermione introduced him to Fred and George, and the twin’s curiosity was immediately piqued by the mysterious man. They asked him a barrage of questions and did not seem in the least bit deterred that Nasir simply stared at them and didn’t answer the majority of their queries – if anything it only seemed to fuel their fire more.
Eventually Bill made his way over to tell Nasir that he was going to add him to the wards and he shooed the twins away. Hermione saw Luna introduce herself to Nasir after Bill went to help Harry summon the sticks that they’d gathered earlier that day to set-up for training outside since the rain had stopped and Hermione was pleased to see that Nasir shook the small witches extended hand without hesitation. He also shook Dean’s when Luna introduced the two – though Dean seemed far less okay with it than Luna had been.
Mrs. Weasley was last to make her way over to the tall man and she brought an excited and nervous-looking Liza with her. Nasir politely greeted both of them and Liza even thanked him for helping with the rescue. Fleur murmured to Hermione in the kitchen that they’d decided not to tell Liza about her family today given the late-night evacuation and apparition fiasco – but that she would tell the girl the following day. Hermione felt her heart sink at that, but she knew it was something that needed to be done and the longer they left it the harder it would be.
It didn’t take long for Nasir to weave his way outside and away from the crowd. Though his escape went unnoticed and for several long moments it seemed like no one even realized that he’d left. Hermione fought back a knowing grin as she finished helping Fleur and Ron in the kitchen – reviewing the potions that they’d started that day and catching up on what had happened with Colin and Shacklebolt at the barn before heading outside. Ava, Liza and Charlie went back upstairs to their room to play games and everyone else marched their way outside to practice.
Hermione immediately spotted Nasir leaned against the wall of the cottage in his usual fashion – though she wasn’t sure if anyone else knew he was there. It seemed like he was quite done with socializing and was happy to be back on the sidelines and away from curious glances. She and Harry quickly split the group into two and began running their usual drills. They didn’t bother teaching anything new since everyone was tired from the supply run the night before, the evacuation in the morning and people seemed distracted in their own minds with everything that had happened.
So when it started to grow dark just after 9:30 pm they called it a day and sent everyone home to get a good night’s rest. They were going to need it – especially since Arthur, Remus, Liza, and Ava would all be transforming Saturday night.
On the walk back to their tents, Hermione held Harry’s hand once more, the content and calm feeling still filling her chest as she played the events of that day through her mind. Harry’s firm grip and Nasir’s presence at her side made it feel like she didn’t have a rune on her chest at all. They all said goodnight before they split toward their own tents and Hermione found that sleep began to hit her before she even got to their bunk. It took everything that she had to brush her teeth and wash her face before climbing in and snuggling into Harry’s side. She didn’t even remember him turning out the lights before she fell into a deep, calm, and natural slumber for the first time in months as she listened to the calm and steady heartbeats of everyone in her head.
-x-x-
Harry laid there staring at the ceiling. He could tell from Hermione’s deep slow breathing that she was fast asleep. Her arm was draped over his chest like a reassuring weight and the warmth from her small body made his heart ache with what he was about to do.
He’d been lying there for an hour – waiting until he knew that she was deep enough into her sleep cycle that she would not wake if he moved. He’d learned over the last few months from trying to sneak out of bed to go to the washroom that if she was in her usual light sleep she would wake up at any movement he made – and on the rare occasion she actually fell into a deep sleep, she’d be dead to the world about a hour in.
He shifted his head and looked toward the mess of curls on the pillow beside him and his heart only ached harder.
He’d made a promise.
He’d swore to himself that he’d never lie to her.
Yet here it was nearly midnight, and he was sneaking out of bed to go do the very thing that he’d promised her he wouldn’t do, along with something else he felt like he needed to do now that Nasir was here once more. He carefully slid out from under her arm, creeping off the end of the bed instead of trying to crawl over her, which he’d also learned in the past was a mistake, and silently transfigured his pajama pants to jeans while he summoned a sweater and tugged it on. One minute later he had his boots on and was trudging his way across the sand towards Nasir’s tent.
A small voice in the back of his head told him to turn around and just go back to bed, but he ignored it. The truth was – he didn’t trust Hermione and he didn’t trust Nasir.
Harry trusted her with nearly everything.
He trusted her with his life. He unquestionably trusted that she loved him and had no interest in that man or anyone else – but he did not trust that she would keep her promise.
He knew that she would seek Nasir out for help. It was only a matter of time, and with Nasir’s interest in her, it was deeply concerning. The man’s bizarre fascination with Hermione had always made him uneasy, but now Harry was deeply worried about what the man might ask for if she tried to strike a deal. Harry had ignored and dropped the topic before because – well because the man had died – but now that he was back, Harry wanted to know what it was that Nasir wanted from them. More specifically, from Hermione.
The man had said that he would follow them until this was over – though Harry knew that what Nasir really meant was that he’d follow Hermione. He’d included Harry’s name to throw him a bone in an effort to make his interest seem more balanced. But Harry wasn’t stupid, he knew where he ranked and he knew Nasir’s interest was focused on Hermione.
What he wanted to know, needed to know – was what would happen after the war?
What happened when this was done – what would Nasir ask for or try to take?
He’d never had the opportunity to ask the mysterious man anything in private before, and now, he was sitting less than 200 feet away. Harry had to go to him. He needed to know the man’s intentions and he needed to be the one to break the promise first. He needed to make sure that he was the one to strike the deal to ensure her safety and not the other way around because deep down he knew that at the very end – it would be him.
It was always going to be him, and he felt like he’d known it his whole life but repressed it deep down. Thought it wasn’t until recently that he finally felt like he might understand why it had to be him, and it had been eating away at the back of his mind like an itch he couldn’t scratch.
Killing Ariel with Avada Kedavra the day before had been what made his concerns leech back up to the surface with new gravity when the weight of her death dropped on his chest like a boulder. He’d not told Hermione this – but casting the spell had felt familiar, as did the weight that collided with his heart.
He’d never known it before, he’d never been able to identify where or what the inexplicable hollow empty misery that riddled his body for years had stemmed from. He’d always just assumed that it must be normal or that it was a lingering side effect from his scar – that was, at least – until he cast the killing curse and felt the additional crushing weight added to his chest.
It was heavier than the others that were already there – but they were unmistakably the same.
And now he thought he understood why. It was a detail that he planned to keep to himself until he was absolutely sure, but even then, he knew he probably still wouldn’t tell her. If his suspicion was correct – he knew what it meant. He knew what had to happen, and he knew that Hermione would never accept it. He’d always known it was going to be him and denying it and hoping for a life outside of this war had apparently been a fantasy.
So, the only thing that he could do now was ensure her safety. Yet he was also very aware that this could go terribly – so he knew that he had to be careful in his approach. The last thing he wanted to do was chase away their newly returned mentor.
He made his way silently through the darkness until he crossed through what must have been a set of Nasir’s wards because suddenly, he heard the crackle of a fire and saw the glow of a faint light on the far side of the tent. His steps slowed, and he forced his heart rate to remain steady as he moved across the short distance and made his way around the tent toward the warm glow. He stopped completely when a small campfire came into view and he saw Nasir sitting on the ground beside it, burning what looked to be small leaves and placing the ashes into tiny vials.
“Hello Harry.” Nasir’s low rich baritone filled the air, though he didn’t bother to look up at him. Harry wouldn’t be surprised if the man had charmed their tent to know when they came and left but he didn’t let himself think about that now and he stayed focused on his task.
“Hello Nasir,” Harry said quietly as he took a few more slow steps toward the fire.
“Can’t sleep?” Nasir’s eyes flicked up to him before returning to what must have been some kind of ingredient prep.
“Something like that,” Harry muttered as he came to stand before the fire just a few feet to Nasir’s left.
“Take a seat,” Nasir said evenly.
Harry got the distinct impression that it wasn’t a command, and that if he wanted to, he could turn around and walk away and Nasir would never bring up his presence or mention his midnight stroll to anyone. At least that was a promising start – but he didn’t want to walk away. He had questions and he needed answers.
So Harry sat, taking a seat in the dry sand three feet to Nasir’s left and watching quietly as the man burned another leaf and dropped the ashes into the vial. The wind rustled his hair as he thought of how to start and Nasir remained focused on the task before him – seemingly completely comfortable or indifferent to his presence regardless of whether or not Harry decided to speak. Finally, after three more leaves, Harry decided to try opening with something neutral.
“You turned your arm into a wand,” Harry said quietly, his eyes fixed on the man’s precise motions as he worked.
“You read my journal,” Nasir said as he continued to work.
“Not all of it yet, but we got to that entry,” Harry replied. “But the runes on your arm suggest that you might have implanted two cores – yet your research didn’t hint that a rune carving would be required for such a procedure.”
Nasir’s motions paused, and his eyes shifted to Harry. Even with the flickering glow from the fire Harry could tell that he’d sparked the man’s interest, and he could make out the unique shine that seemed to radiate from the man’s eyes when you’d captured his attention.
“And what makes you think those runes are related to wand cores?” Nasir asked him, his hand still holding an unburned leaf.
“Not just the placement, but the runes themselves,” Harry said, and he twisted to face Nasir fully. “They’re based on partnership and union – you chose Ehwaz and Gibo – was that because two wand cores cannot exist within one body at the same time?”
“They cannot.” Nasir’s eyes darkened, and Harry watched as he set the small leaf on fire and dropped the ashes into the vial. He sealed the vial, then twisted to face Harry fully, apparently done with ingredient prep and instead ready to engage in conversation as he spoke again in his familiar low rumble. “But I wanted two.”
“Why?” Harry asked.
Nasir’s head cocked to the side as he looked at Harry and his lips twitched as if the question was amusing.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Nasir said. “Surely you know that certain wand cores are better suited for certain types of magic, Harry.”
“Yes – and that makes sense.” Harry nodded as the cool breeze from the water ruffled his hair once more. “What two cores did you pick?”
“I believe that Hermione can confirm that one is a phoenix feather,” Nasir said with a small dark smile. “The other – well, why don’t you tell me what you think it might be.”
Harry stared at him for a long moment, his mind circling through the wand lore information he’d read about that afternoon before he smiled at the man before him. “A dragon heartstring.”
“Good answer.” Nasir picked up the vials from the sand and wordlessly sent them toward the tent entrance.
“My original wand was broken,” Harry said, his eyes drifting to the fire as the cold breeze ate through his sweater. “It was a phoenix feather – I want to insert it in my wand arm.”
“A wise choice given what you’re planning to do.”
Harry’s eyes darted back to the man and he saw that Nasir was looking at him somewhat intently.
“It would be unwise for you to get within a mile of that man without a wand suited to your magic, Harry,” he said quietly. “In that scenario, you will unquestionably lose.”
“Are there any scenarios where I don’t?” Harry asked him almost dryly, a tone of dark acceptance and seriousness lacing his voice.
“Perhaps.” Nasir’s eyes traced over his frame and Harry felt like the man was staring into his soul. Like he could read every thought and every concern that Harry had about the war and what was to come. Like the man before him knew exactly why he was here and exactly what he was concerned about.
Silence stretched between them, and suddenly the words fell from his mouth without him even realizing that he’d said it.
“What's your interest in Hermione.” Harry’s voice was low, serious, and he saw Nasir visibly shift on the sand before him. Something new was glinting in his eyes, but Harry wasn’t really sure how to categorize it – all he knew was that it suddenly felt impossibly quiet and something in the air had shifted between them.
“To protect her,” Nasir said quietly. “Nothing else – I assure you, Harry.
“Why?”
“Does that matter?”
“It does to me,” Harry whispered firmly. It felt like if he spoke any louder he would be screaming into the vacuum that had enclosed around them. “She loves you, you know – in the same way that she loves everyone else in that cottage. You’re a part of this group now. She'll protect you. She'll put herself in harms way for you, and she’s going to offer you anything and everything that she has to get you to help her save me – and I'm not going to lose her in this. No matter what happens, no matter what I have to do – she's going to make it out in one piece one way or another. And I can’t risk any uncertainty because the situation we’re in is bad enough. The odds are already stacked against us. And as much as I appreciate your help, Nasir, in some ways, even after pledging to stick with us, you're still an uncertainty. I won’t let you take anything from her, even if she offers it. So I want to know why – I need to understand why, so I can know whether or not you’re going to use her later.”
Nasir stared at him intently, still as stone, and for a terrifying moment, Harry thought he might have just signed his own death note. But then Nasir’s shoulders relaxed a fraction and his eyes shifted back to the flames on his right. When he spoke, Harry felt his breath hitch in disbelief.
“She reminds me of me – from a long time ago. What feels like several lifetimes ago now,” he said quietly, a half-smile crept across his lips as his eyes shifted back to Harry. It was the nearest thing to sincere Harry had ever seen the man display. “She has the capacity to become the greatest magical being the world has seen in a long time – even better than you, Harry.”
Harry nodded, not trusting himself to speak and wanting Nasir to continue. Besides – it was true. He knew it and so did anyone else with half a brain who looked at the girl. She was a genius, but it wasn’t all book smarts. She had the discipline to train and focus even in the areas that didn’t come naturally to her and as a result she was formidable. Given enough time and resources she might one day outdo the likes of Dumbledore.
“I simply want to ensure she becomes that,” Nasir said quietly. “Without needing to make the same sacrifices that I did, and without becoming a puppet or a tool for someone else.”
Nasir had spoken it so quietly Harry had leaned forward with his elbows on his knees to make sure that he wasn’t imagining the words. But the next ones completely stole his breath and caught him entirely off guard.
“Not all of us are born free, Harry,” Nasir said slowly, his voice holding a hint of hesitancy. “We don’t all make good choices. We don’t all do the right thing when desperate, not all of us are able to protect the ones we love – and some of us make poor decisions after we fail. I’ve decided that I would like her to succeed where I did not.”
Harry stared at the man for a long silent moment while he reminded his body to breath. This was the first time that Nasir had ever said anything that could be categorized as personal and it was not at all what he’d been expecting. It sounded like the man might have been born into slavery, or that at some point he’d found himself in a rather tough situation.
Harry’s mind subconsciously flicked back to the roman numeral tattoo on the base of Nasir’s neck and he felt his stomach lurch as his head swam. These two tiny pieces of information when placed together suddenly seemed to make some of the bizarre aspects about the mysterious man click into logical place.
“Who is Nazira?” Harry whispered.
Nasir shifted on the sand once more and his eyes flicked back to the fire.
“My mother.”
Harry felt his heart clench. “She didn’t make it?”
“No,” he said tonelessly. “None of them did, but I assure you that I will not fail this time.”
“And Arlo,” Harry said slowly. “He–“
“Was much older than you realize and has been protected for decades under Tom's watch completing many similar exploits.”
“So – why didn’t you just assassinate him and leave?”
“Good question,” Nasir said flatly, his eyes still locked to the fire. He didn’t say anything else, and Harry assumed that he either didn’t have an answer or wasn’t willing to share it.
“So you’re going to help with the war?”
Nasir nodded slowly.
“So you can protect Hermione?” Harry asked, his voice sounding somewhat disbelieving.
Nasir looked back to him. “People have done far more for far less.”
Harry looked at him curiously for a moment. He believed everything that Nasir had said, but he still felt like some key details had been glossed over or completely omitted. There had to be some other underlying motivation outside of just wanting to help Hermione. Nasir had been a clear neutral party – apparently for a very long time – and now suddenly decided he wanted to get involved and fight in the war?
“So, when this is all over,” Harry said slowly. “What do you want?”
“Nothing,” Nasir said slowly. His dark eyes were focused on the fire once more and they reflected the flicker of the flames like black glass. “And everything. To be at peace – to start over.”
“What will you want from us?” Harry pushed.
“You mean, what will I want from Hermione.” His eyes shifted back to Harry as his low voice rumbled in the small space between them.
Harry said nothing, and he didn’t bother denying it. They both knew why he was here. There was no point in beating around the bush, so he simply stared back at Nasir in silence until the man continued.
“To see her live. Whether you include me in that in some way or not – is up to you. I'm not a good person, Harry,” Nasir said quietly, almost sadly. “I don’t even possess the capacity to be one, so don’t ever doubt that fact. I've done many terrible things, and I do not regret a single one of them. I would do them all over again – I would do more, take more and give more if I could.”
He paused, watching Harry carefully before he spoke his next words slowly.
“But I will not take her from you, if that's what you are concerned about. I have no interest in her in that way, and I will not accept anything that she offers me.”
Harry remained quiet.
He could feel his heart beating hard in his chest as the cool air nipped at his nose. Today was singlehandedly one of the strangest days he’d ever had in his life. He felt overwhelmed with the information that Nasir had shared with him, baffled that the man had shared it at all, especially with him, and saddened with the realization that Nasir had likely had a terrible life where the large majority of his decisions were made in an effort to save someone he cared about, and yet he’d failed in the end.
While Harry didn’t know the specifics – he didn’t need to.
He understood what desperation to protect someone you loved felt like and he understood just how far it could push someone. He also got the distinct impression that Nasir had lost many others, and that his initial assumption that Nasir was incapable of feeling things might not be far off from the truth. In fact, Harry suspected it was the truth.
He had a million more questions than what he’d originally come over here with, but really there was only one that remained that mattered.
“I think,” Harry paused as he watched Nasir’s dark gaze flick back to meet his. “That if we all make it out of here – she would want you around. At least in some way. In the same way that she needs the others, she needs you. They, you – help keep her grounded, so she doesn’t slip too far.”
Nasir nodded once, his eyes locked to Harry’s intently as if knowing there was something else he wanted to say.
“Nasir,” Harry said slowly.
He could feel his throat constricting as he forced the words he wanted to say out of his mouth. He’d originally been intended to strike a deal, to make an offer, and to ask Nasir to save Hermione in exchange for a price – and yet he found his words shifting into something slightly different. Something more like a confession based heavily on the concern that had started to fester within him after Hermione destroyed the locket and doubled when he’d killed Ariel.
Something that he suspected Nasir might already be aware of, and it was the very reason why he hated the shape of his own fiendfyre with a burning vengeance.
This was less of a deal and more of a request that he hoped Nasir would willingly accept.
“If – if things go wrong, or if there comes a time where – the situation changes.” Harry hesitated with his wording, yet Nasir stared at him knowingly and waited silently and patiently for him to form his words. “You will take her if I ask you to. You will keep her safe, and look after her. The others–“
Harry hesitated again and dropped his eyes to the dark sand before him. He couldn’t believe how hard it was to say this out loud. It wasn’t that asking for help was hard, it was that by saying it out loud he was finally acknowledging something that he’d always known and tried to ignore. It made it real.
He was going to die, and it had never bloody been in his cards to make it out of this war alive. He took a silent breath and continued quietly.
“They don’t understand her the way that I do – the way that I know you do. They won’t be able to help her. They won’t understand everything that she’s been through and they definitely won’t be able to keep her away from danger or stop her when I tell her she needs to leave.” Harry paused and slowly raised his eyes to meet Nasir’s burning ones. The man was stock still and looking at Harry with a serious expression, and Harry looked at him just as intensely. “She won’t be able to let me go when it’s time.”
The flames flickered as a large gust of wind rolled off the water and rippled the tent at their side. Yet Harry remained unmoving as he stared into Nasir’s glinting black eyes and he felt a cold stone drop in the pit of his stomach.
He knew.
“Do I have your word, Nasir?” Harry asked him, his voice dropping low as the shadows of firelight danced across the man’s face.
“You have my word, Harry,” Nasir said, the man’s low baritone making the weight on Harry’s chest lighten even though his heart ached like it was breaking into a million pieces. “When the time comes, I will do whatever you ask of me.”
Hermione had been expecting to see Fleur and Luna there for the morning workout routine. Heck, she’d even been expecting to see Ron standing there somewhat awkwardly – but what she had not been expecting to see was Ava and Liza wearing sweats and t-shirts standing next to a set of rather bright-eyed and bushy-tailed looking twins and a tired-looking Remus.
It was 7 am, so Bill, Arthur and Shacklebolt had already gone into work for the day in the hope of getting as much done as possible to reduce the risk of being called in over the weekend. Mrs. Weasley was already inside the cottage starting a batch of headache potion and pepperup and apparently watching Charlie while everyone else (including Dean) were gathered outside the cottage stretching while they waited for Hermione and Harry to cross the sand towards them.
She’d never seen so many wizards in workout gear and it took effort not to laugh at the strange sight. Most wizards didn’t seem to believe in physical fitness since they had magic and relied on it to complete anything hard or physically demanding. Quidditch players were about the only ones who seemed to recognize the benefit of staying in shape. Though she couldn’t really judge them – she’d be raised in the muggle world where it was promoted, and she’d never taken fitness seriously until just this year.
“Did you know that everyone was coming?” Hermione muttered to Harry as her eyes took in the large crowd before quickly darting to Nasir’s silent tent. She knew that the man was awake based on his heart rate but apparently, he had no interest in partaking in the physical workout routine and likely wouldn’t join them until later.
“Fleur mentioned that she’d tell everyone about it,” Harry muttered back. “But I wasn’t expecting them all to actually come.”
“Well,” Hermione said with a small smile as she glanced over at Harry. “This is a good thing – at least they’re taking things a bit more seriously now.”
Harry grinned back at her as they made their way over the last dune. “True.”
When they got a bit closer Hermione could make out the expressions on everyone’s faces. They ranged widely from sleepy, to excited, to apprehensive to – her eyes locked to Liza’s red puffy ones. Had Fleur told her about her family?
Neither she nor Harry said anything to the girl about it as they approached but their eyes flicked to Fleur’s. The blonde witch gave them both a sad look and a small nod, but she said nothing else so Hermione resolved to ask her about it once they were out of earshot of the girl who was standing between Ava and Fred looking tired, yet determined.
“Good morning,” Hermione said slowly as they came to a stop before the rather large group of misfits.
“Morning,” the twins said in unison with more energy than most of the rest of the group. “We can’t stay as long as everyone else because we need to get back to the shop – but we figured we could start joining in for at least part of it. So, where do we start?”
“That’s great,” Harry gave them a smile before his eyes flicked over the group. “We’re glad that you can come – in fact it would be best if you came to as much as you can. We usually start with a jog around the property. If you can’t keep up that’s okay, don’t push yourself too hard or overdo it. Injuring yourself won’t get you anywhere in the long run.”
“Just do what you can and go at your own pace,” Hermione said as she stood at Harry’s side and gave the group a warm smile. “When you’re done or can’t manage any more laps just come back here and stretch it out. We usually do a small set of exercises afterwards – we’ll show you what they are today so that in the future once you’re done with the run you can get started on the workout routine on your own.”
“Sounds good,” Ava smiled at them as the group nodded and finished up their stretching. She looked excited as she raised her half arm over her head and leaned to the side in a long stretch. “I’ve not been for a run in ages. With Charlie being so young and with no one to watch him it was too hard to get out. But he’s still sleeping right now so Molly offered to leave her uh, what do you call it, patronus watching him for me so I could come join you – I’m excited to get back into it! There are only so many puzzles I can do.”
Fleur smiled at the woman as she tied her long blonde hair into a ponytail. “Just don’t force yourself to keep up with ‘Ermione and ‘Arry or tomorrow you will be more sore zan excited.”
Ava laughed and Luna grinned.
“Yes,” Luna said with a fondness lacing her voice. “And then we will have to bother Mrs. Weasley for more muscle cramp paste – I think we used a whole container between the four of us the last time.”
Even Dean and Ron laughed fondly at this and Remus looked around the group with some apprehension.
“This may have been a mistake,” Remus said with a wary smile. “I’m afraid I’m a touch more out of shape than the rest of you – maybe I should go and see if Molly–“
“Trust me – you don’t want to be anywhere near my mother when she is prepping a potion station, you’re much safer out here,” George gave Remus a firm pat on the back as he stepped up next to the man.
“Besides, Liza here has short legs – surely you can at least keep up with her,” Fred said as he gave the girl a wink and a smile.
The girl blushed as she looked up at him and then her brow furrowed into an adorable look of indignation. “I used to run cross country you know – I could run circles around you.”
“Oh yeah?” Fred challenged as he shucked off his sweater and threw it to the ground with a soft thump. His green t-shirt rippled in the light breeze.
“Yeah,” Liza grinned at him confidently and some of the strain around her eyes disappeared as she lit up at the brewing competition.
“Alright then,” Fred nodded. “If you can match my laps today, I’ll give you another chocolate frog.”
“Two chocolate frogs,” Liza said as she crossed her arms over her chest. “Because I’m going to out lap you.”
Fred raised a brow at her and laughed. “Alright fine – you’ve got a deal. So, are we going or what?”
“We’re going,” Harry fought to keep his face straight at the exchange. “Alright everyone, follow us.”
With that Hermione and Harry turned and ran toward the Northern border of the cottage wards, setting a solid steady pace and glancing backwards to watch the group fall into line behind them. It didn’t take long for the order to naturally rearrange as people either immediately grew tired or decided to fall into their own comfortable pace. Ava, Liza and Fred joined them at the front while Fleur, Luna George and Ron set a reliable pace in the middle. Dean and Remus brought up the rear at a slow but steady pace and the sound of feet colliding with the ground echoed around them with the sound of the waves as they jogged over smaller pieces of driftwood and toward the large beach boulders.
In the end Remus and Dean completed one slow loop then returned to the cottage to sit in the sand and stretch out their muscles. Dean – still thin as a rail – seemed to be taking it easy and Hermione was glad that he had Remus to work with since they seemed much more aligned in terms of their physical fitness levels. She could see the boy nervously speaking to their old professor and in that brief moment she could almost see a shadow of his former confident self. Maybe speaking with Remus would help him – maybe he trusted Remus instinctively because he was a professor and it reminded him of easier and better times.
Fleur, Ron, Luna and George completed three laps at their steady pace before returning to the cottage to join Remus and Dean while Liza and Fred both kept up an impressive pace while throwing polite verbal jabs at each other about how they were going to win. In the end, Liza completed a quarter lap more than Fred and she made her way back to the cottage triumphantly where the redhead summoned his sweater from the ground, fished out two chocolate frogs from the pocket and handed them over to her.
Ava continued to keep up with Hermione and Harry for all three of their slow laps but didn’t join them in their next two double pace laps – instead she finished her fourth final lap at her steady pace and returned to the cottage red-faced and looking rather pleased with herself. She removed her sweater as well, laying back in the cool sand and seeming completely comfortable with having her half arm exposed to the group.
Hermione and Harry returned last, finishing the final several hundred feet in a mad dash that left them both gasping for air and covered in sweat. Hermione internally groaned at her sweater, eyeing the tank tops and t-shirts around her enviously and casting several rapid cooling charms on her clothes in an attempt to cool off. She wasn’t comfortable with stripping down to her tank top in front of the group and she’d not yet learned how to cast a masking charm. She made a mental note during their water break to ask Nasir how to do it later.
After a quick rest they dove headfirst into their usual fitness routine. Harry quickly explained to the group what they usually did and then everyone worked through it at their own pace. As expected, Dean and Remus quit first, but finished strong with a set of push-ups. Both of them looked immensely pleased with themselves as they sat off to the side away from the others and discussed the routine and what they wanted to improve on and Dean asked Remus what he’d been doing since leaving Hogwarts.
The rest of the group all finished at various times, though it was clear that Liza thrived on physical activity. If she’d been involved in cross country growing up Hermione didn’t doubt that she’d played other sports as well and she seemed eager to participate and keep up with the twins and Ava. While the girl was distracted Hermione made her way over to Fleur and lowered her voice to a whisper.
“Did you tell her?” Hermione’s eyes darted to Harry who was too far away to be able to hear them speaking clearly but was watching their conversation carefully.
“Yes,” Fleur murmured back to Hermione. “I was going to wait until zis morning but she asked me after training last night – she knew zat we all ‘ad a meeting after dinner so she wanted an update.”
“She seems,” Hermione paused and looked at the girl high-fiving Fred in-between a set of sit-ups. “Like she’s taken it surprisingly well.”
“No kidding,” Fleur muttered with a saddened small smile. “She cried last night – Ava told me zis morning zat she didn’t sleep well but – zis morning when she came down for breakfast, she had zis spark of determination in ‘er eyes. She said zat she refuses to give up ‘ope or to be sad about it. She said zat since Shacklebolt did not find ze bodies – zere is still a chance zey could be out zere somewhere. I told ‘er it was very unlikely and zat she should not get ‘er ‘opes up but –”
Fleur paused and looked at Liza warmly, the girl’s eyes were still puffy from crying through the night but there was a brightness to them. They shone with life that was pure and innocent and it made Hermione’s heart ache at the loss of her own naivety.
“She said zat she doesn’t care,” Fleur said quietly. “She said zat she knows zey are probably gone, but zat ‘er parents always taught ‘er to believe and stay positive. She is… quite ze kid ‘Ermione. She is very strong for being so young.”
“Well on one hand,” Hermione said slowly as she watched the young girl before them. “I’m glad that she is okay and is handling it well enough right now – but on the other we will need to keep an eye on her to make sure that she’s not repressing it.”
“Yes,” Fleur nodded. “Bill and I thought zat too – we will keep an eye on ‘er and be zere for her as she deals with it. She might just need more time to fully accepted it as I imagine right now, she is grieving on ze inside and is trying to be strong.”
Hermione nodded and carefully made her way back over to Harry and completed her next round of squats before shifting into the final exercise. It didn’t take long for most of the group to collapse completely in the sand panting with exhaustion while Hermione and Harry finished up their routine.
“Alright,” Fred groaned as he rolled on his side and pushed himself up from the ground.
“We gotta get back,” George finished as he followed his brother’s actions. “We’ll see you later for dinner and training.”
“Remember Liza, those frogs will jump away so hang onto them tight,” Fred ruffled the girl’s hair briefly before he stepped away from the group to apparate with his brother.
“I will,” Liza grinned at him. “I’ll see you at dinner!”
Several voices chorused out goodbyes while others simply raised their hands in a wave – too tired to say anything else as they continued to lay in the sand.
“Alright,” Hermione said as she pushed herself up from the ground. “Everyone should go get something to eat and rest up. Fleur – you already know the target practice and circle drill routines so if you want to practice them with the group go ahead, it would be a good thing to work on today. Harry and I need to go start the potion batches in our tent then meet with Nasir to train – but we’ll meet back up with you all for dinner.”
“Alright,” Fleur nodded and then looked to Luna. “Luna would you like to run a circle drill with me?”
“Of course,” Luna grinned as she hauled herself up from the ground. “Bye Harry – Hermione!”
“What’s a circle drill?” Hermione heard Liza ask as she walked back towards the tent with Harry. She couldn’t help but smile as she heard Luna start to explain the magical duelling drill to Liza and Ava and then encouraged them to stay outside and watch a few rounds. Once they were reasonably out of earshot Harry spoke.
“So, Liza is handling the news well it seems,” he said quietly as they cut across the sand.
“For the most part,” Hermione sighed and ran a hand through her hair. It was damp with sweat and she quickly tugged it from the braid and shook it out. Her brow creased with concern. “Fleur said she is refusing to give up on her parents because they didn’t find the bodies.”
“That’s concerning.”
“I know – but they’re going to watch her carefully to make sure that she is okay and deals with it. My biggest concern with her right now is that she’ll repress it and break later.”
“Maybe if she speaks to Shacklebolt about it directly – or maybe just given enough time to come around on the idea she’ll stop rejecting it and accept it,” Harry nodded with equal concern. “They say that denial is the first stage of grief – she’s handled everything else incredibly well so far so it seems fair that she is struggling with the death of her parents. Maybe we should talk to Shacklebolt about organizing a proper funeral or at least making some tombstones so she can have some sense of closure.”
“Yeah, that might be a good idea,” Hermione hummed. Her head darted to the right as she saw Nasir exit his tent and make his way toward them, she and Harry both paused to wait for him, and she called out when he’d gotten within earshot. “Good morning, Nasir – you missed the workout.”
His lip twitched and she could see the interest sparking in his eyes as he closed the distance toward them.
“What a shame,” he said flatly as he came to a stop before them. His dark eyes flicked between the two of them, taking them in with a swift glance in a way that still made Hermione’s body want to instinctively shiver. Though the new life that seemed to shine in his eyes had lessened the effect some.
“Yes, you seem really upset about it,” Harry smirked with amusement at the dullness to Nasir’s tone. “So – what’s the plan for training today?”
“We’ll go through the questions that you had on the journal first. Then, Harry – I will train you while Hermione starts the potions. Hermione, I will train you after lunch while Harry finishes them. It is the most efficient way to complete training and get the brewing done that you require based on what Molly told me you are trying to accomplish over the next few weeks.”
“Alright,” Hermione smiled but she also felt her heart rate quicken with nervousness.
Neither she nor Harry had ever trained with Nasir alone or had even really ever been alone with him. Her eyes flicked to Harry and he gave her a serious and meaningful look. He clearly didn’t like the idea of them being separated for training and she knew why. He didn’t trust her not to try and make a deal – but he was smart enough to realize that Nasir was right. Splitting up training based on what potions were brewing and what needed to be done was unquestionably the most efficient way to train going forward if they wanted to be able to restock their potions and get everything else done.
There would be certain potions that didn’t require stirring or intermittent care that would allow them training days together with Nasir, so they would end up with a well-balanced mix of training, brewing and planning. It would also allow them to make better use of their training time so that Nasir could focus on them individually instead of one of them waiting patiently while the other received instruction. They could reserve joint training days for things like medical spells or group duel practice. Dividing up training would also afford them more time to research and it would give Nasir the time he needed to meet with Shacklebolt and do whatever it was that he worked on with the man – which was something that Hermione planned to ask him about later.
It was an incredibly efficient plan that would maximize everyone’s time and keep their best interests at heart, and she knew that Harry knew this – so she was not surprised when he nodded and agreed with Nasir’s proposal.
As they made their way toward the tent Hermione made a mental note that they also needed to find a time when Bill and Griphook were both available so they could set up regular discussions regarding the break-in. She planned to bring it up this weekend and to come up with some sort of organized agenda for the week. To some it might sound a bit absurd to plan each day so ‘by the minute’ – but to her, it was what made sense, it helped keep her calm and it was what was necessary.
Voldemort and his forces were hurting right now – they’d just been dealt a hard blow and now was not the time to sit back and relax. Now was the time to press ahead and keep the upper hand – especially since the Order did not seem to be under any additional scrutiny after the attack. Shacklebolt had mentioned the night previous during their training that they needed to keep pushing forward and develop a plan – and she fully expected that that would be the number one topic of tonight’s meeting. They needed to figure out where else they could attack, what else could be done and how to do it within the next few short weeks before Voldemort and his forces recovered.
So, she wanted to go the meeting tonight prepared with what she and Harry planned to do, and ready to talk about where they would be spending their time and what they could reasonably offer the Order as support. She would obviously help them with everything and anything that she could – but she also needed to be realistic about their priorities and if Shacklebolt wanted to press ahead and potentially launch a full-scale attack on Voldemort and his forces – then Horcruxes were without a question the top priority item.
Otherwise the attack would be fruitless since Voldemort could not die yet.
Thus, she planned to mock-up their schedule for the upcoming week while brewing the potions as Harry trained. She would optimize it, create a timetable and schedule every detail that she could.
She couldn’t lie, she was excited to create the schedule. It was nostalgic and reminded her of when she was at Hogwarts mapping out study guides and review timetables for herself, Harry and Ron. She fought back a smile as they all made their way into their tent and took a seat at the table to get to work.
Yes, she thought as she brought over some water and tea and pulled out her notes and questions. It is very reminiscent of school – except that no one is complaining because this time we are working to save our lives not get good grades.
They spent an hour going through the questions that they had on Nasir’s journal – most of it centered around Harry inserting his phoenix feather wand core into his right arm, and they discussed and finalized the plan to do it. Hermione learned that Nasir had two wand cores – hence the runes on his arms, but that runes would not be required for the procedure on Harry. Nasir said that he would help them with it on Sunday morning after the werewolf transformation was completed since Harry would need to rest and avoid using his arm for 24 hours after the core was implanted. They all agreed and decided to meet at 9 am to complete the procedure – it would be the first item that Hermione worked into their schedule. Then Harry left the tent and headed outside with Nasir to train while Hermione gathered her notes and hauled them into the potions lab.
It felt like ages ago since they’d brewed anything in there and frankly she forgot how good their heat charms were to protect the rest of the tent from the steam and warmth – because after only an hour of brewing she stripped off her outer sweater and transfigured her pants into a pair of shorts. It was boiling, her hair was piled on top of her head to keep it out of her face and off her neck, and she could feel a bead of sweat trickling down her back even with her cooling charms in place.
She sat there perched on the edge of her stool, quill twirling between her fingers as she re-reviewed the schedule she’d created for a third time.
“I think that’s everything,” she muttered as her eyes tracked down the page. She’d managed to schedule every potion that they wanted to make offset from what Mrs. Weasley was brewing so that they would have a better mix of potions available at all times. She’d scheduled in their hour and a half long workout first thing in the morning – but she bumped the start time up to 6:30 am so she and Harry could drill with knives. She determined their training schedule with Nasir – altering between individual training three times a week and group training twice, she had figured out proposed meeting times with Bill and Griphook for this upcoming weekend and the following Wednesday night. And she’d even managed to allocate time for dinner, lunch, and research – she paused when she got to the bottom of her schedule and her eyes flicked over the ‘additional notes’ section that she’d added.
The next full moon was May 16th.
They would run out of food supplies on May 18th.
The majority of their potions would be brewed by April 28th as they only had so many ingredients to work with and they were currently running four sets of cauldrons – two here in the tent and two at the cottage by Mrs. Weasley – so their production rates were rather efficient.
And they were already approaching a week post den infiltration.
She frowned.
She wanted more time to prepare and more time to teach the Order how to defend and protect themselves so they would be stronger and better prepared. But it was a fine balance between that, resources and allowing Voldemort time to recover. Realistically they needed get this done within the next three to four weeks if they wanted to maintain the upper hand and have the best shot at winning and avoiding further risk. She and Harry had to find the remaining Horcruxes and destroy them.
They already knew that Nagini was likely the last one that they would face but there were still two others that they needed to get their hands on – and that was assuming that Voldemort hadn’t gone and decided to make more than the six that Harry had learned about through Slughorn’s memory. Based on the memory that Harry had seen and discussed with Dumbledore, Voldemort had asked Slughorn about splitting his soul into seven pieces – which they’d interpreted as six Horcruxes and one piece of soul for him to keep.
But there was no guarantee that there were only six. After all, he’d been resurrected from something hadn’t he?
Was his current body made from the piece that was attached to Quirrell? Had Wormtail found it creeping about and created a body for it? Was the piece of soul that Quirrell carried from Voldemort’s original body? Was it leftover from the night that he’d tried to kill Harry? Or had he created yet another Horcrux that Quirrell had collected?
For all they knew he could have made eight, or nine – or any number of them.
Harry had told her that Dumbledore was confident that it was just the six Horcruxes: the diary, the ring, the locket, the snake, and then the two other unknowns. But if Hermione was being honest, she was skeptical about whatever Dumbledore might have guaranteed Harry at this point because so far Dumbledore had left them with nothing – no supplies, no direction, and he’d done shit all to actually help them. Why he’d not told her anything before he died, or why he’d not left them some kind of note or letter – even an encoded one – was beyond her.
Surely the man had known that she could be trusted, right? He’d left her his book after all – didn’t that mean that he knew that she would help Harry until the very end?
Apparently not, she thought bitterly.
She’d not said it outright to Harry because she didn’t intend it as an insult to him or his relationship with Dumbledore – but she was insulted that Dumbledore had, evidently, not deemed her trustworthy. After all these years, after everything she’d done, the countless times she’d stuck by Harry when no one else would and the ridiculous number of times that she’d risked her life for him – Dumbledore hadn’t told her shit.
He obviously hadn’t trusted her enough to totally involve her and it hurt. Not only did it hurt – it had royally screwed them over and Dumbledore hadn’t treated Harry any better. He’d told Harry almost nothing and even Harry recognized that – they’d talked about it the day before.
In a lot of ways – it sort of made her mad and it made her question what in Merlin’s name the old wizard was thinking.
But regardless of this they knew that one of the remaining two unknow Horcruxes was either in Bellatrix’s vault or that her vault contained something that would lead them to where the Horcrux was. Yet it still felt like they were on a wild goose chase after all this time and it was tiresome.
And she hadn’t even gotten to the additional note she’d captured about the Deathly Hallows based on what Xenophilius had said. If the man wasn’t lying, and she didn’t think that he was based on what Mr. Ollivander had said, Voldemort now had the Death Stick and either had, or was looking for, the resurrection stone as well. He was on his way to becoming the Master of Death and the only small advantage that they had was that they were pretty sure they might have the invisibility cloak from the Hallows. She wasn’t sure – they’d talked about it the day before but neither one of them knew if there were other cloaks out there or if his was the real deal. It seemed odd that Ron had recognized it in first year and known that it was an invisibility cloak if it was one-third of the secret Deathly Hallows.
Then again – one could buy ‘invisibility cloaks’ in Diagon alley for a hefty price – they were fabric charmed with disillusionment charms and they tended to fade out and stop working over time. Perhaps that’s what Ron thought it was, she’d seen them for sale before too so it made sense that as a small kid he would have drawn that conclusion or know what they were.
Maybe that was what it was.
Neither she nor Harry had any expertise on the subject, and it turned out that researching invisibility cloaks the day before had been a complete bust. There wasn’t much information in the books that she’d packed, and they couldn’t exactly go to a book store.
She groaned and wiped sweat from her forehead as she quickly stirred the potions, reset her mental timer and then pushed the schedule aside. She was done with the first draft, there was nothing else to add or adjust at this point. She needed to review it with Harry and then cross-check it with Shacklebolt, Arthur, Bill and Nasir tonight.
She reached for her journal and began finalizing the calculations for the project that she and Harry had been interested in implementing for a long time now – a band that would allow them to communicate with each other by pushing thoughts through a stable bond via occlumency while allowing vital signals to flow through. She wanted to carefully design it so that control was limited and bound strictly to each end of the bond – i.e. Harry could control what information he sent but could not extract anything from her and vice versa. Not that she didn’t trust Harry in her mind – she did – but after seeing what Arlo had done she was painfully aware of how important it was to not abuse magical bonds and to keep them peaceful, safe and consensual.
She sighed as she looked over the page, but her mind went back to pondering her original thought regarding timing and the mess they were in. Yes, she wanted more time. But no, they really couldn’t afford it. The schedule was packed already and each day that ticked by was another day of innocent people suffering at Voldemort’s hands while his power grew.
Surely Voldemort knew when a Horcrux was destroyed – he must have felt it, or he must have kept tabs on them or tracked them or traced them in some way – it was only logical. She couldn’t imagine that anyone could be so arrogant as to create Horcruxes and then hide them away thinking they’d be safe unmonitored – she paused mid-thought and her brow quirked – then again… Voldemort might be exactly the type of arrogant, egotistical wizard to do such a thing. He essentially paraded himself around like a god. She wasn’t sure that he was afraid or felt threatened by anyone – and maybe that was his weakness. Maybe that was how they won – by exploiting his own arrogance.
Yet even then, even if he didn’t know they were killing pieces of him yet he was bound to find out soon enough – and then what was to stop him from taking the remaining ones and hiding them away more securely.
Or making more.
No, she thought as her brow furrowed.
As much as it terrified her, as much as she hated it – they had to push forward, and it needed to be swift and perfectly executed. They needed to take advantage of his arrogance and catch him off guard. They needed to get into Gringotts as quickly as it was reasonably safe to do so. Then they needed to try and find the last Horcrux as quickly as possible. She pinched her brow as she made another adjustment to the calculation before her and pulled her lose fitting tank from her body to fan away some of the heat. Maybe they should just ask Nasir about it – it was possible he might know where one was or maybe how to find one. Then again – even if he did know he might not tell her.
She let out a sigh.
She treasured the man; she truly did. And yet even she could not properly articulate why or how the feelings had even come to form in her heart. Especially when she couldn’t deny that she wished he would just tell them more and often found his silence a bit deflating if not outright disappointing. She accepted him yes, but it was still frustrating at times.
She always felt like he knew more than anyone else in the room but chose to say nothing.
A part of her wondered if it was by choice and a part of her wondered if it wasn’t. She’d seen the runes on his neck – Nauthiz, Ansuz, Isa – she knew what they represented. Resistance, communication and stillness or obstruction of flow. Runes always had multiple interpretations and meanings which was why so many wizards stayed away from the subject and struggled to understand them or their purpose – but even within the multiple meanings they all had a similar theme. And the ones on Nasir’s neck suggested a controlled blockage. It suggested that he might literally be incapable of speaking certain things. The question was, how much of what he didn’t say was locked away versus how much was just him intentionally keeping it at bay.
She had a feeling that she would never know and oddly – she accepted that too. Maybe some things were better left unknown.
The truth was that regardless of him being flawed and nowhere near perfect – he was still exactly what they, at this moment, needed to win this war. Shacklebolt knew it too – which was probably why he’d brought the man in to help in the first place and it was why Shacklebolt had welcomed Nasir back to the group after the den infiltration. Nasir was part of the Order now because Shacklebolt and Arthur said so – even without Hermione and Harry vouching for him the Order intended to keep him around for as long as he’d stay. The irony wasn’t lost on her that some of the Order members now trusted the man more than she and Harry did when less than a week ago they wanted him gone.
But even though she considered the man her friend, ally and mentor – he was still a complete mystery who she wasn’t entirely sure she could trust in every facet of the word. It was a strange dynamic to have with someone who had become so integral to their life. But even while knowing this she and Harry continued to do what they’d done since the very first day they’d met him – they consciously chose to look past his flaws and take whatever he would give them, all well being perfectly aware that it could still bite them in the ass.
It was an odd feeling to trust someone and care for someone even when you didn’t fully know who they were or what might happen in the end – even when a part of you knew that they might hurt you later.
Perhaps it was a testament to just how committed and ready she was to sacrifice everything for this war to ensure that everyone else stood a chance at a better life free from Voldemort and the hatred that he bred. No, she didn’t want to die, and yes, she hoped that she and Harry would live through this – she would fight for that with every essence of her being.
She wanted to move into Grimmauld Place with him after the war. She wanted to clean up the house with him, she wanted to plant a garden, she wanted to finish her NEWTS – to build a life, figure out who she was outside of all this, with him, and she wanted to allow herself to think about all the hopes and dreams that she’d buried down the instant that she grabbed Harry and Ron’s hand at the wedding and apparated them away – but she was also ready to accept whatever would come and she understood that war had sacrifices. Or, maybe being able to both trust and not trust while caring about someone was just a clear indication that she’d developed some deep phycological issues in the last year.
She snorted and dragged her rune textbook across the potion lab workbench to double-check if she should swap out Eihwaz for something else for the third time – she wanted to be sure that the bond was successful after all.
“Who knows,” she muttered under her breath as she pushed the useless thoughts out of her head. Dwelling on them wouldn’t get her anywhere – she’d already made her decision to do whatever was necessary and to accept help where it was offered. All she could do now was push forward, stay focused on the task, work hard, help train the others, continue to prepare and hope for the best while bearing the weight of the burdens that she carried.
“I think you know.”
“Fuck!” Hermione cursed and jumped at the low deep rumble that sounded behind her. She nearly fell off the edge of her stool as she twisted around to see Nasir standing less than a foot behind her, she hadn’t heard him come in – she hadn’t even heard her ward go off. Which made her wonder if he’d bypassed them somehow or if she’d simply been so distracted with her work and thoughts that she’d not noticed it. His eyes watched her reaction with interest. “You scared me – you’re lucky I didn’t attack you.”
His lip twitched at her words and he took a step closer, coming to a stop directly at her side before the workbench and tapping his finger on her current calculations. “This is fine, and you know it – you’re doubting yourself.”
“I’m not doubting myself,” Hermione said as she twisted back around on her stool to look at the calculations with him. She tried to dampen the defensiveness that naturally leaked into her voice. “I’m cautiously and due diligently re-checking my work. You saw first-hand what can happen if bonds are either abused or created unbalanced – and I’m sure as hell not going to band Harry with something like that.”
“And what did your due diligence check show?” Nasir asked her, his dark eyes shifting back to hers.
“That it’s fine,” Hermione muttered as she dropped her quill on the table.
“Then stop wasting time on it – besides, if you want to do a true due diligence check you need a peer review. Self-check only goes so far.”
“True – did someone peer check your journal and the experiments and research that you did?” Hermione asked him, happy to take the opening that he’d created to try and learn more about him.
“On occasion,” he said evenly, his eyes raking slowly over her face as if he was trying to search for something. Maybe he was looking for an ulterior motive.
“Who?”
“Does that matter?” he asked her in his usual deflective way that she’d come to anticipate.
“No,” Hermione said flatly. Even though she knew it was coming she wasn’t entirely able to avoid feeling some disappointment at getting shot down. “I was just curious who you would trust to check your work.”
Nasir stared at her for a long quite second.
“An old colleague,” he said finally, and Hermione felt her heart quicken with excitement over him choosing to share something with her.
“Really?” she arched a brow curiously. “From the Ministry? Do you still keep in touch?”
“No – they’re dead.”
“Oh,” Hermione said slowly. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Nasir said evenly, his face entirely indifferent. “I was the one that did it.”
“Oh,” Hermione said again, and she felt the heat of the room growing tighter around her. It wasn’t like she didn’t know that he was capable of killing someone, she’d seen him kill people – but the complete detachment on his face suggested that he didn’t feel an inkling of emotion toward the subject. Toward a colleague that he’d killed. It made her wonder just how many lives he’d taken, just how many must weigh on his soul for him to feel nothing towards it. She had killed people too yes, but she felt something toward it – constantly – it haunted her. And she found herself wondering how many more she would take and if it too would eventually leave her just as indifferent. Her mouth opened on its own accord and her next word fell out quietly. “Why?”
Nasir didn’t say anything, he simply stared at her and she felt her earlier thought bubble back up to the surface as she watched his dark expression.
“It’s because of the runes on your neck,” the words were out of her mouth before she could stop them, and she saw his eyes darken further. “Arthur said that you used to be an Unspeakable – they sealed things, didn’t they? Those runes prevent you from speaking about certain things don’t they?”
“Indeed, they do Hermione,” Nasir said quietly as he stared at her intently. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck bristle. “Though in that situation, I can say that it was not without cause.”
As quick as the intensity had filled his eyes, the glint fell away and Nasir stepped back and moved toward the wards of the makeshift potion lab.
“Harry has returned with lunch,” Nasir said as he waited for her just outside the lab. “We can eat and then I will train you.”
“Alright,” Hermione nodded and slipped off her stool as she pushed away her curiosity and the lingering thoughts on body counts. She didn’t like thinking about it for long – because the truth was, she’d already lost count of her own.
She paused to close her journal and to give the two brewing potions one last counter-clockwise stir as her mental timer went off before she transfigured her shorts back into pants and grabbed her sweater off the workbench. Pulling it on over her head she followed Nasir toward the door of the tent.
“It is rather warm out there today,” Nasir said as he glanced at the thick sweater she’d just pulled on and ducked out of the tent.
“I know,” Hermione practically groaned as she walked into the hot afternoon sun behind him.
She was comfortable with her scars and she was comfortable with Harry and Nasir seeing them – heck she’d probably even be okay with Fleur seeing them since the girl had already seen a few of them after Malfoy Manor. But she was not comfortable with anyone else seeing them. Not because she was ashamed of them or embarrassed in any way – she’d long since gotten over that – but because she simply didn’t want to answer questions, get unnecessary sympathy or deal with curious lingering eyes.
And as a result, she was going to sweat buckets today, but even knowing that she smiled and waved to an exhausted-looking Harry who was coming back from the cottage with three plates of food floating in front of him. He grinned at her and waved back – he wasn’t covered in burns or singe marks so she wondered what they might have been working on all morning. She’d have to ask him later – especially since he looked rather pleased despite being worn out.
“Today we are going to push your fiendfyre until it takes shape,” Nasir turned to look at her fully as they stopped on a dune and waited for Harry. “It is only going to get hotter – if you’re wearing that sweater simply to hide your scars, don’t – Harry and I warded this half of the beach before training this morning to avoid unnecessary concern. No one can see in. If you wear that sweater, you’re going to get heatstroke and lose time that could be spent learning – take it off.”
It wasn’t a suggestion; she could tell from the way that he was looking at her that it was an instruction. And if she was going to be spending the afternoon casting fiendfyre today – he wasn’t wrong. She’d end up passing out.
“Really? You warded the whole half?” Hermione grinned as Nasir nodded at her and she felt relief and a strange sort of excitement flood her body. “Oh, thank Merlin.”
Hermione happily stripped off her sweater once more, dropping it to the sand unceremoniously and transfiguring her lose tank into a comfortable light-weight t-shirt. It felt weird to be standing outside in the open with her mudblood and neck scars fully exposed for the world to see. Except that no one could see them – and that thought made her shoulders drop as she took in a deep breath and let out a sigh.
This feels nice, she thought as she smiled and revelled in the feel of fresh air moving over the bare skin of her arms. She felt like some of the weight on her chest had lightened as she stood freely outside for the first time in weeks and she could see Harry grinning broadly at her now as he approached in his damp sweat-soaked t-shirt. He looked excited to see that Nasir had told her what they’d done and that she’d finally rid herself of the sweater – she wondered if it was his idea after their workout this morning.
“Nasir,” she turned back to look at the tall man once more and he caught her eye. She liked that his gaze never once swept over the marks on her body. “Can you teach me how to cast a masking charm?”
“I can,” he said quietly, nodding in understanding. She didn’t doubt that he both understood and appreciated why she’d asked. “I’ll teach you after we get your fiendfyre to take shape today.”
-x-x-
"Argg! Dammit!" Hermione groaned out in frustration as she cut off the fire before her and dropped her wand to her side.
She felt like crying. She felt like throwing something or giving up and going back to the tent in defeat. No matter how hard she tried, her fiendfyre simply was not taking shape and she was starting to feel like a failure. She could see Nasir standing off to the left watching her and she felt like he was wasting his time trying to teach her. Sweat dripped down her back, neck, chest, and arms – literally every part of her body was dripping, and her hand and forearm were red with heat burn from casting the spell more than a dozen times.
"It's not working," she panted and shook her head before glancing over to Nasir’s motionless frame. "I can’t get it to shift – I don’t understand. I can control it; I can get it to do anything that I want it to do and I can switch it on and off in an instant without issue now – but I cannot get it large enough or hot enough to shift and take form."
Nasir stared at her for a moment before slowly making his way over.
"You understand what fiendfyre is and what makes it so dangerous, right Hermione?" Nasir asked her when he came to a stop just a few feet away.
"Yes,” she said through clenched teeth as she fought back the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose in frustration and let out a string of curse words. She knew she wasn’t frustrated with him; she was frustrated with herself, but she was starting to struggle with keeping her disappointment and annoyance in check. "It’s dangerous because it’s chaotic and hard to control."
"Exactly." Nasir looked at her with a slight tilt to his head. "And what did you say just before that.”
“I said that I could control it and get it to do anything that I wanted.” Hermione looked at him with a quirked brow. She wasn’t sure where he was going with this yet, but based on their previous lessons, she knew he was leading her somewhere. “But that I can’t get it large enough to shift.”
“So, what part of the definition of fiendfyre is missing from what you just described?” Nasir watched intently, his dark eyes taking in the shift across her features as his words sunk in.
She stared at him for a moment in disbelief.
It couldn’t possibly be that simple.
“The chaos,” she said quietly, and she felt her shoulders sag as some of the frustration left her body. “There is absolutely no chaos.”
“Exactly,” he said more quietly this time. His eyes had darkened, and they were glinting with interest as he watched her almost curiously. “To be honest, Hermione, the fact that you can cast and control it so well but cannot let it grow is quite astonishing. I’ve never seen anything like that before. Fiendfyre is inherently dangerous because it is largely born out of chaos and lack of control – that’s the very essence of it, and it’s what makes it nearly impossible for most wizards to control. Casting it is easy – but it becomes the death of many since it immediately grows, takes on a life of its own, and spreads out of control. For you control is not the issue. But it is the problem.”
“You’re saying I'm too controlling when casting it.” Hermione watched as he shifted another step closer. “I'm not allowing any natural chaos in.”
“Precisely,” he said slowly, and a small smile began to form on his lips. She got the distinct impression that he was fascinated that this was an issue for her. “Casting fiendfyre, properly, and maintaining complete control of a large blaze requires you, the caster, to be in a perfect state between chaos and control. It is incredibly difficult to master and impossible for most. That's why people don’t use it – because they can’t. That's why Harry struggles to turn his off at times – he is not as controlled as you are and is much more likely to lose his control. That’s why today I started to teach him something else that might be a bit better suited to him but is equally as effective in battle. But if one can master fiendfyre – it can become a tool more useful and dangerous than most realize, and it is a doorway to many other possibilities.”
“And you think that it’s suited to me?” she asked him skeptically.
“Yes.” His voice was even and low and there wasn’t a hint of doubt in it as he continued to watch her.
“Alright – okay,” Hermione breathed and let out a sigh. She pushed the loose curls that had broken free from her braid away from her face. “So then how do I allow more chaos in?”
“Let go,” Nasir said quietly, his low rumble filling the space between them. “But not too much. Think of it almost like a tap that you are turning on and off. Right now, yours is almost entirely closed by your control – but you need to crack it open. The best way to start is by letting it all out for a split second and then immediately cutting it off again so that you can feel the difference – so you can establish 100% and zero. Then you work to find a balance. That heat that you feel at your core when you’re casting it – that’s it. Let that out for a fraction of a second.”
“Okay.” Hermione swallowed and nodded nervously. She shifted back into the uncommon duelling stance and raised her wand. She knew exactly the feeling that he meant, and it was exactly what she’d been controlling and keeping locked inside since the first day he’d taught it to her. She took a deep breath and stared at the open dunes before her. “Okay, let it out – just let it out. I’ll try it.”
“Don’t be afraid of it,” Nasir said as he shifted a few feet back to give her room. “You already know that you can control it. You already know that you can turn it off – you've already accomplished what everyone else struggles to do. So, when it happens – you don’t need to panic.”
Hermione nodded again; her eyes lost on the scorched sand dune before her as his words echoed reassuringly in her mind. Theoretically, she knew what she needed to do and, logically, she knew that he was right – she knew she could turn it off. But that didn’t stifle the fear that naturally grew in her chest as she focused her mind and prepared to cast again.
That feeling that he wanted her to let loose was terrifying.
It was like the embodiment of terror, fear, and chaos in her chest and it scared her. In fact, casting it now scared her more than it had before since she’d seen it – she knew what it could become and she knew how easily it could obliterate anything in its path. She felt like previously, she’d not fully appreciated the destructive nature of it as it started to build within her whenever she’d spoken the words – and a part of her was almost paralyzed with fear.
Afraid to let it out and afraid to see just what might happen when she did.
She was afraid that she might not be able to regain control if she loosened her hold.
She’d been in awe when she’d seen Nasir’s fire burn the den to the ground. The roar of it, the heat, the intensity – she could still feel the energy coursing through the air when she thought back to it. His blaze was on a totally different scale than the small insignificant fireballs that she and Harry had been producing over the last few weeks. His left nothing behind – it’d been so hot that the bodies he’d burned hadn’t even become ash. And the idea of generating something that massive and destructive, of controlling something that lethal and catastrophic, was both magnificent and terrifying to her.
Yet she forced herself to breathe, pushed the panic from her mind, and cast the spell – quickly letting out the raging storm within her and then clamping back down on it almost instantaneously. The wave of heat that washed over her body was overwhelming as the fire grew three times larger and she thought she saw something - some sort of shape forming before she cut the flames off in panic and stood there panting.
“Did you see that?!” She turned shakily to look at Nasir with nervous excitement. “I think saw something – but I – I couldn’t make it out. It still didn’t fully form.”
Nasir looked at her curiously once more. His eyes swept over her body once before she saw him nod to himself and move towards her. “I think I know what part of the problem is.”
“What?” she asked him as he stopped just a foot before her.
“Take the stance again,” he said evenly, and Hermione shifted back into the form that he’d taught her.
He eyed her carefully, slowly circling her stance and examining her posture. She could feel her pulse quicken with anxious anticipation as she tried to figure out what the problem might be. She was one hundred percent certain that she was in the correct form he’d shown her previously.
“What is it?” she asked him again as he came to a stop before her. “Is my form wrong – I thought I had it right but–“
“May I touch you?” he asked evenly, his hand and blunt arm poised before him as he waited for her consent.
“Yes.” She nodded, maintaining her stance and watching him curiously as he shifted closer to her once more.
He gently nudged her left foot another half-inch forward in the sand with his boot, widening her stance and angling the toes of her foot more outwards. Then he circled around her body and she felt his warm forearm press into the center of her back as his opposite gripped her left shoulder firmly. He pushed forward into her spine, pressing her chest out further while he simultaneously pulled her shoulders back and down. She kept them there as his hand moved to her head and he tilted it upwards a fraction.
“I think,” she heard his low rumble behind her. “I know what shape your fiendfyre is going to take, and in your case – it needs a slightly different starting position and it needs to come from here.”
His hand left her head and wrapped around her body to tap the space just below her diaphragm gently. He kept his blunt forearm pressed into her back and then pushed two fingers gently into her abdomen.
“Look straight ahead and memorize the feel of this stance,” Nasir said quietly behind her. “Because this is where you need to start. Once it’s cast, you can move around, but until then, this is your center.”
“Okay,” she whispered.
She resisted the urge to nod and kept her body perfectly still. She memorized the feel of every muscles in her body, the strain on her shoulders and the tilt of her neck as she stared straight out at the place where the sky met the sand – her eyes much higher than where she’d had them before. Her breath came deeper and easier with her chest pushed out, and she could feel him pressing his fingers into what might possibly be the middle of that chaotic feeling that built within her each time she used fiendfyre.
“Take a full breath, and let it build here before you let it out.” His words echoed by her ear and he increased the pressure of the two fingers on her abdomen so she could focus on it. “Try it again.”
“Okay,” she whispered as she fought back the instinctive nervousness building in her body at his instruction.
It’s going to be fine, she swallowed and forced her hand to remain steady as she prepared herself to say the words. The area is warded. He’s right here. You can cut it off. It’s going to be fine.
“Hermione.”
“Yes?”
“Stop doubting yourself,” Nasir said quietly. “You can do this. Take a breath.”
Hermione inhaled deeply on his command and let the air out slowly.
“Again,” Nasir instructed, and Hermione complied, taking a breath without hesitation. “Now cast it – but this time, don’t cut it off until I say so.”
Hermione took one last deep breath, her grip on her wand tightening as she looked at the horizon and uttered the words that she’d been saying over and over for the last hour. She felt the magic erupting to life in her center, right where his fingers were pressing as flames poured from the end of her wand. She watched them dance across the dunes and scorch the sand in a single tight controlled tendril – fully constrained by her control as the storm of chaos built within her core.
Then, when it had grown into a raging heated chaotic storm, she let it out.
Harry held back a sigh of exhaustion as he approached the one person at the cottage that he particularly did not want to speak to. Aside from the odd small split-second interaction here and there Harry had managed to all but entirely avoid the redheaded elephant and he’d wanted to keep it that way for as long as possible. He didn’t want to talk to Ron, and he didn’t want to lose his temper and explode on him again or punch the idiot in the face – not because it was undeserved, but because Harry had simply decided that Ron was not worth his time. He’d written Ron off a long time ago; he had no feelings towards him aside from general disdain and he had no interest in wasting any additional energy on him. But it seemed that life did not work that way and he found himself in the position of needing to speak to Ron about the fact that he was now untethered.
The truth was, he’d almost entirely forgotten about them – though obviously Ron had figured out what he’d done during their last altercation because the redhead had told Bill that he could not apparate away from the cottage during the evac without them first being removed. Harry held back a snort, what a mess that would have been had Ron not figured it out and tried to leave. He could only imagine trying to explain that to Arthur and Mrs. Weasley – it probably would not have gone over well and he was sure they would have been rather upset. Yet he found the thought almost morbidly amusing – and he wasn’t sure what that said about him or who he’d become over the last year.
Either way though, thankfully he did not have to explain the death of the youngest male Weasley to the Weasley family, nor had they needed to fully evacuate and torch Shell Cottage, so the situation had turned out okay from all angles in the end. Except for the aftermath – his current situation of needing to go and actually interact with Ron.
In all honesty Harry didn’t mind Ron being around the cottage anymore because both he and Hermione ignored him for the most part. He didn’t even mind that his ex-best friend had been showing up to training because at the end of the day it was good for him and it had been what the guy needed all along. His lack of training was the very reason why they’d ended up inside Malfoy Manor and it was the reason why Hermione had nearly died and then lost her arm. If they could prevent something similar from happening in the future by training Ron and everyone else, then he and Hermione would do it with no question or complaint. Preparing everyone and protecting everyone took priority over everything else and thus he’d swallow down his dislike and train him.
Besides, Ron had proven to be not entirely useless in the last week. He’d had one good idea regarding supply collection, and he’d been doing a good job at making Ava, Liza and Charlie feel welcomed and included – which was important given that they would be spending the remainder of their lives in the wizarding community. And based on Hermione’s last assessment of them that looked like it would be a long time. Both Ava and Liza seemed to respond well to magic and magical treatments so hypothetically, if they healed any outstanding injuries after each transformation both girls would live a long and healthy life now that the damaging stasis charm had been removed. Colin was still up in the air, he responded to magic as well, but the results were not as favourable. He would likely live for many more years to come but it was unclear if the lingering damage from the transformations would compound and cut his life short at some point.
But Ron being less unbearable didn’t mean that Harry liked Ron – he simply tolerated the redhead’s existence. He certainly had no interest in having a conversation with Ron again or rekindling any bonds of friendship. Ron was all but dead to him, he was just another warm body in the cottage that took up space, ate the food and added the odd helpful suggestion. He felt like a stranger, and his odd recent behaviour was only making that feeling grow more and more.
Over the last week Ron’s demeanour had shifted. Harry had noted that Ron watched them closely now – well, he’d always watched them closely since his return but now it was different. Instead of hatred, disgust and an unwarranted vibe of betrayal flashing in his eyes Harry saw curiosity, interest and something that looked almost like respect. Yet he found that one hard to believe. Regardless though, it didn’t matter – what mattered was that Ron was still a liability. He was untethered and held at Shell Cottage only by the wards which Bill controlled.
Harry trusted Bill to keep Ron contained but he also didn’t want to rely solely on the wards or Bill because the truth was Harry didn’t really completely trust anything anymore – except Hermione, and even that came with a caveat when it dealt with his own life and making arrangements to preserve it. And he’d known that Hermione felt the same way even before they’d discussed the situation. The truth was Ron was still an incredibly dangerous risk to them and their mission and shy of having Nasir remove a substantial collection of memories from Ron’s head he would continue to be a hazard until the war finally ended because they could not trust him to stay.
So, as per his discussion with Hermione prior to dinner they were going to go address the redheaded elephant in the room one final time before they started training the Order and before Ron’s cowardly streak could get the better of him. And this was the only reason why Harry was currently shifting around the table towards the redhead who was standing at the kitchen counter putting way leftovers from dinner. He could feel Hermione trailing along behind him and he was thankful for the commotion in the kitchen since it helped to keep people distracted from the upcoming encounter. Everyone, aside from Nasir, always seemed to tense instinctively whenever the trio got within ten feet of each other – which made sense given that the hostility between the trio was known throughout the entire Order now and everyone was cautious about them interacting outside of training.
Though Colin’s attendance to dinner had certainly been a helpful distraction and was still keeping people’s attention. The last of the muggle werewolves was sitting at the table looking both reluctant and incredibly unsure.
Apparently Shacklebolt, who had taken over his care from Hermione and Harry, had spoken at length with the man about his limited options due to his lycanthropy infection. To say that Colin was unhappy would be an understatement, and frankly Harry could not blame him for being upset or for distrusting them and wanting little to do with them. Yet something that Shacklebolt said must have broken through the man’s unresponsive and angry denial of the situation because he’d agreed to come to dinner and meet the Order. He was still very obviously upset, watching everyone nervously, curiously and the disdain in his eyes was obvious – but layered underneath that Harry thought he could see rational thought for the first time since he’d met the man.
It was a start.
He suspected that Colin would never be thankful or accepting like Liza and Ava – which again he didn’t fault the man. If he was being truthful, he found Ava and Liza’s reactions to be somewhat surprising all things considered. Whereas Colin’s was much more along the lines of what he’d been expecting to see. The man had every right to hate them and every right to be angry. Though Harry was still glad to see that Colin was making some progress, even if it was slow and painful.
Introductions before dinner had been awkward but polite. People respectfully gave the quiet man space and even the twins didn’t joke around with him or pester him with questions like they had with Nasir. They left him alone and passed things to him by hand, only floating food to Liza when she requested.
Harry glanced back to the table once more as he walked with Hermione toward Ron. Everyone still seemed distracted.
Colin was silently watching Liza and Ava as they helped Mrs. Weasley gather the dishes. George and Fred had already gone outside to help Bill set-up for training, Nasir was lingering against the wall likely invisible to most who looked his way and Luna was playing with Charlie while the others members of the Order talked and shifted around the busy kitchen. Both Arthur and Shacklebolt had managed to get caught up on their workload so apart from any new emergencies coming up it looked like they would be able to have an uninterrupted weekend – which was good because Arthur would be transforming in just over 24 hours.
Even without knowing the full moon calendar they could feel the shift in the air and see the tension drawing across Arthur’s face. It was the same tight expression that had washed over Remus, Ava and Liza – like they could all feel something coming but couldn’t quite describe it. Remus seemed the most comfortable and calm about it, but the rest seemed tense. Harry found it hard to say that Colin looked any different because he’d only ever seen the man look tense and agitated – but regardless he knew the feeling was affecting them all.
Which brought up the other topic that he and Hermione knew they needed to address tonight – did anyone want to try the banding, and should they really try it at all? Both he and Hermione were a bit skeptical about experimenting on their friends when they had yet to finalize the control mechanisms of the bond.
Harry bit back a quiet sigh. There was just so much going on and even when things were going well it still felt like the Order couldn’t catch a break. He glanced back to Hermione and gave her a soft smile because he knew that she was thinking the same thing. He knew that she didn’t want to go speak to Ron but that she would because like everything else in this war – she did it because it needed to be done. The only thing they could do now was take it one step at a time and systematically work through the impossibly long list of impossibly challenging tasks to complete.
And this was the first thing on the list for the night.
Ron noticed their approach the second they shifted past Luna and Charlie. He, like many others in the room, had probably assumed that they were going to go speak to the calm blonde witch instead of him. Harry could see the slight widening of the redhead’s eyes as his hands slowed while he finished fastening a lid on the last container of food and his eyes locked to the pair of them as they came to a stop only four feet away.
“Hey,” Ron said quietly as he twisted around fully to look at them. Harry could hear the nervous apprehension in his voice, and he could see the tension forming in his shoulders. Over the last week Ron had become oddly calmer around them so Harry figured that he must have been expecting this encounter to happen, it had clearly been on his mind since yesterday morning.
“Mind if we have a word before training starts?” Harry asked quietly, his eyes shifted back to the rest of the room. There were a few people watching them now, their gaze tense and lingering as they obviously worried that things might escalate to another round of face-punching. Harry fought the urge to roll his eyes and turned back to Ron, he had no interest in punching Ron again and he wanted to remain as indifferent as possible, but if he was going to speak to the him, he’d rather do it without an audience. “Maybe upstairs?”
“Yeah – alright,” Ron nodded and put the final container away, wiping his hands on a small dish towel before leading the way out of the kitchen, past the curious glances and upstairs to his room.
Harry felt Hermione follow along behind him, ignoring the eyes that trailed them as they moved. Both of them were hoping to make this conversation quick and painless so they could move on to the next item on their list. He cast a silencing charm the second that the door to Ron’s room shut and Hermione leaned back against the surface and let Harry take the lead. She’d asked him to. She had even less interest in talking to Ron than he did.
Yet despite the tension and nervousness that riddled Ron’s body he was still looking at them calmly. He’d even given them a small awkward smile when the door shut. It was the same sort of thing that he’d been doing all week and Harry didn’t miss the frown that crossed Hermione’s face at the sight of it. She found his odd new behaviour confusing and frustrating and even Harry had to admit he wasn’t sure what was going on with the redhead or what the hell he meant by it.
He could feel an eerie tight tension creeping over the room as he stared at the boy before him. It had been a long time since they’d all been alone together in a small space. A long time since they’d faced each other after Malfoy Manor and experienced the explosion on the beach where Harry had nearly killed him. And it was quite possibly the very first time that the trio was about to have a very serious discussion in which it seemed that all parties understood just how severe the stakes were.
“This is about the tethers – isn’t it?” Ron asked quietly, his eyes flicking between the duo.
“Yes,” Harry said, his voice low and even. He had no interest in escalating things and planned to remain as calm as humanly possible. “It’s about the tethers. Ron we–“
“You can put them back on,” Ron said quietly, his eyes had softened in a way that Harry had never seen, and his interruption caught him entirely off guard.
“What?” Harry couldn’t help it as the word escaped him and his brow knitted in confusion.
“You can put them back on if it makes you both feel safer,” Ron said a little more loudly so Harry wouldn’t doubt his words though his voice was still calm and even. “I – I understand why you put them on.”
“You do, do you?” Hermione said darkly, her eyes narrowed at Ron with distrust.
“I do,” Ron said firmly, and Harry noted that his fists had clenched at his sides as his jaw became tense. “I’m a liability – I understand that now.”
“Really,” the disdain dripping from Hermione’s voice was like acid and Harry saw Ron visibly wince at the sound of it. She’d not been planning to speak to him but clearly his words had touched a nerve and drawn out a reaction. “Because so far the evidence suggests that you do not.”
“I said I understand now,” Ron said tightly yet there was no anger in his eyes.
If anything, they almost looked saddened, hurt and – Harry’s thoughts paused as he looked at the boy – is that regret?
“I agree that I didn’t understand before and you were right to add the tethers,” Ron continued. “I would have left. I tried to leave and if not for Bill stopping me, I would have attempted to apparate away – and if not for Bill modifying the wards to keep me in here, I would have died plain and simple. I know that and I understand why you did it. I know too much. I know about the Horcruxes and I know all about the both of you. I know your fears, wants, and secrets – and I don’t know occlumency, so I know that if I get caught it would royally fuck everything up, and I know that I was an idiot for not understanding that before.
“And I also know that you two don’t need to talk to me or get my permission to add them back on,” Ron sighed and ran a hand through his hair as his shoulders fell. “You two could do whatever you want to me and I wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing about it. We’re not in the same league anymore, and I see that now. And I doubt that the Order or my parents would give a shit either, because the truth is, they will back everything that you do because they trust you more than me – and they should.”
Harry stared at the redhead before him in disbelief. He felt Hermione go perfectly still at his side as Ron shook his head and looked at them sadly.
“I’ve never done anything to earn their trust, or yours for that matter. In fact, I’ve done exactly the opposite.” Ron’s eyes hardened, and Harry could see a small sheen forming across them. As he spoke his voice started to grow louder with resolve. “I’ve done nothing but make shit decisions for the last I don’t even know how many years, and you two have put up with me despite that. You could have sent me away when I showed up in March, but you didn’t because you knew I wouldn’t go back to Shell Cottage and you knew I’d get caught by a bunch of snatchers. You could have obliviated me to protect yourselves. You could have tied me up somewhere and left me there – you could have killed me and no one would have even found out, but you didn’t. Instead, you gave me a chance. You gave me one simple thing to do – you asked me to stay put and to not go anywhere so that you could keep us all safe.
“And I couldn’t even do that.” Ron’s voice broke and his face crumpled. Anger started to seep into his voice as the room remained deadly silent around them. “And even after all that, I still didn’t get it. I still didn’t understand. I fucking hated you for putting those tethers on me, for treating me like you did, and it wasn’t until my dad was dying that I finally got it!”
Ron looked at them both hard, his face tinted with red patches as he took a deep breath and seemed to force himself to calm down.
“It shouldn’t have gotten to that,” Ron whispered as he shook his head in disgust.
He looked agonized, like everything pouring from his mouth had been building up since they’d arrived bloody and muddy in the cottage Monday morning, and he’d been waiting all this time for his shot to let it out. Like he’d been wanting to tell them everything he’d realized but he wasn’t sure how to approach them because they were no longer friends – and suddenly, his odd behaviours over the week started to make sense.
“It shouldn’t have taken my dad getting mauled by a werewolf for me to understand. It shouldn’t have taken Lupin getting bit, and everyone risking their lives. It shouldn’t have taken you almost dying, Hermione.”
Hermione tensed as Ron’s eyes met hers with a burning intensity that made Harry’s chest constrict.
“I’m sorry,” Ron said painfully, his voice quiet as his eyes welled. “I’m sorry and there isn’t anything that I can ever do to take that back. You almost died. You were tortured because of me. You almost lost your arm and it’s entirely my fault. I should have listened to you – you didn’t ask me for much, you only asked me to wait, and I couldn’t even do that. I’m sorry and you’ll never forgive me, and I don’t even think that you should. I didn’t understand how serious things had gotten. I didn’t understand how violent the war had become or what you two had been through - I didn't even ask – but that’s no excuse for anything that I did or didn’t do. The point is, I fucked up – bad – and there’s no excuse.
“And now that’s something that I have to live with for the rest of my life.” Ron’s hands balled at his sides as his voice dropped to a rough whisper and he shook his head once more. “And that’s nothing compared to what you went through and what you have to deal with for the rest of your life. I know it means nothing to you – I know I mean nothing to you, and I’m not asking you for your forgiveness, but I do want you to know that I’m sorry. For everything. For all of it. And that I’m going to regret these last eight months for the rest of my life. I can’t do anything about what I did in the past and I know I’m probably still going to make mistakes – but I promise you that I’m trying to do better. I’m trying to become more, and I want to help win this war.
“I deserved a hell of a lot more than a punch in the face,” Ron said quietly, his eyes flicking back to Harry’s. “I’m more than willing to be bound by tethers until this is over if it will help. I’m not going to leave – but I understand that I have no ground to stand on to ask you for anything. I’ll do whatever you two or the Order ask of me.”
Harry stared at Ron for a long quiet moment.
He’d not been expecting this conversation to turn into an emotional confession or for Ron to show acceptance of his own faults. Though, from the look on Ron’s face, it was evident that he’d been wanting and waiting to say it – and now he was left with an odd expression of both desperation and relief. He seemed to know and accept that Hermione was not going to give him anything, and he accepted her silence without a single desperate plea or look.
She wasn’t going to speak after that monologue, and she certainly wasn’t going to accept his apology or tell him that everything was fine regardless of how heartfelt his words might have sounded. Though, thankfully, Ron sincerely didn’t seem to be looking for her forgiveness. This genuinely seemed much more like a needed self-confession and a proclamation of his future plans than anything.
Which was a massive improvement from the last time that Ron ‘apologized’ to them when he showed up at the tent and didn’t seem to understand why Hermione was so angry and wouldn’t ‘let it go’.
Harry let out a low deep sigh, his face was still entirely impassive, but his eyes had hardened with seriousness as he looked at the redhead before him.
“When you left your post,” Harry said quietly, his voice echoing in the tight tension that still gripped the air around them. “You didn’t just risk our lives. You endangered the safety of everyone in this cottage – and you risked the safety of several of your peers at Hogwarts. They would have had a list of everyone that has ever supported us – they would have known everything that we’ve done for the last seven years.”
“I know.” Ron nodded, his face tight and his hands still clenched.
“You understand that things are going to get worse before this is over.” Harry looked at him firmly, though his voice remained even.
“Yes,” Ron said quietly.
“You understand that despite all this training, people are likely going to die and that there is little we can do to stop that,” Harry paused, and Ron nodded once more.
“Yes,” he whispered.
“You understand that we very well might lose this war,” Harry said, his voice dropping to a low whisper. “And that everything we’re doing up until our very last breath is calculated, and done with purpose. That we are not doing, nor have we ever done, anything out of spite or because we just bloody well felt like it.”
“I know,” Ron said sadly, his voice soft as his eyes went glassy once more. “I know, Harry.”
Harry looked at him for another long silent minute, his eyes flicking to Hermione to take in her stone-faced expression as she stared at Ron with a complete lack of emotion. Yet despite her slightly icy exterior, Harry knew that her emotions were running high and she was likely stirring like a storm on the inside as millions of thoughts and feelings flooded her body. He wasn’t sure how his next words would be received by her, and frankly, he couldn’t believe he was about to say them – this hadn’t been part of their plan.
“Then you understand that we need as much help as we can possibly get and that despite my concern regarding the integrity of your new-found resolutions, I – we – need your help,” Harry said quietly and he watched as Ron’s face twisted with visible alleviation. “Hermione is making new tags for the group that contain a strong trace charm so that we can locate each other if things go wrong. They will be ready on Monday – and when they are ready, you will wear one.”
“Okay.” Ron nodded, his eyes sincere as his gaze flicked between the two of them again.
“Until then,” Harry continued. “I’ll place one tether on you, but after the tag is applied – I’ll remove it.”
Ron nodded again; his expression resolute as he stood there stiff like a solider before them.
“You will continue training.”
Harry glanced to Hermione, it was her quiet voice that had rung out at his side, and she was watching Ron carefully, calculatingly, as Ron’s eyes flicked back to hers a bit nervously. He’d not expected her to say anything, and her sudden words seemed to make the tension in his shoulders reappear – perhaps he thought she might explode on him.
But Harry instantly knew that this was just a sign that she didn’t object to his alteration of their plan – she just wanted to add a few stipulations of her own.
“Of course.” Ron swallowed and nodded again.
“You will continue to participate in the evening meetings – your idea regarding the portkeys for supply gathering was a good one, so if you have any others, throw them on the table. At this point we’re all grabbing at straws to try and find ways to make this war easier on everyone and to give us an advantage,” Hermione continued. "So anything you can think of might help."
“Okay,” Ron said, somewhat nervous about the compliment given the seriousness of her tone. “I will.”
“And you will continue to interact with Ava and Liza the way that you have been without magic,” Hermione said quietly. “It’s hard for muggles to feel welcome in a magical home. They feel useless when the people around them can do everything with a flick of their wand, so no matter how easy it is to slip back into doing everything with magic – don’t. What you’re doing is important and it’s helping. I’m going to speak with the others about it, too. It makes them feel included and it makes them feel like they matter – and given that they will be a part of this group for a very long time, that is a big deal.”
“I will.” Ron’s expression had shifted from one of nervous apprehensive to one of seriousness.
He seemed to finally pick up on what Harry had already concluded – that Hermione was agreeing with Harry’s compromise and giving him a list of orders to follow as part of the arrangement, and as part of him rejoining the Order. Ron had been the one to say that he would do whatever they asked, so now was his chance to prove himself and his chance to show them that he could walk the talk.
“And,” Hermione said darkly, as she pushed off the wall and took a step toward him. “I want to be explicitly clear that this is your final second chance, Ronald. I don’t want there to be any misunderstandings or any confusion about where you stand or how this is going to work. Once Harry removes your tether on Monday and we tag you, that is it. You will stay here at this cottage unless you are specifically instructed to leave to assist with a task by myself or Harry – I don’t care what anyone else in the Order says – they don’t fully understand the devastation it would cause if you were to be captured because they don’t know the same information that we do. So, you are not to go anywhere else. I don’t trust you, but as Harry said, we need people, and we need help. But when things go wrong, and they will, or when things get bad – and I can guarantee you that they will – if you abandon us again – if you leave and fuck off somewhere–”
Hermione paused and stared at Ron hard as she took another step towards him and dropping her voice to a low deadly tone.
“I will follow your trace the second you disappear and I will kill you on spot.”
“I know,” Ron breathed, his jaw tight as he nodded once firmly.
Harry watched the exchange silently; it was so similar to the exchange that they’d had in the tent when Ron first returned and yet it was entirely different. Hermione was just as cold and ruthless as she’d been back then, but Ron had changed. His expression was serious, his eyes were sad, glossy and hurt, but they were accepting of her words in a way that Harry had not seen the redhead display before as Hermione stared him down.
“Good,” Hermione said quietly before she finally took a step back and turned to look at Harry. “Tether his heart to the cottage – then we need to get back so we can start training.”
-x-x-
Hermione led the way down the stairs, her head was spinning from the interaction with Ron and she found herself looking around at her surroundings in disbelief. She couldn’t believe what he’d said. She couldn’t believe that the sincere glossy-eyed yet serious looking redhead upstairs was Ronald Weasley. She felt like she was meeting some other Weasley brother that Bill and Fleur had been hiding at the cottage – because whoever that was had certainly not been Ron. At one point during his monologue of confessions she’d been tempted to slap him with a stunning spell and then check his diagnostics to make sure that he was actually Ron – but she knew that it was him, it was just hard to accept, and frankly, she wasn’t sure if she ever would.
She doubted that she would ever trust him again. She doubted that they would ever rekindle their friendship – how could they when she felt nothing but empty hollow nothingness that borderlined on hatred when she looked at him? Yet despite this, a very, very, very, small part of her was happy to see that he might have, against all odds, grown as a person.
Not because she cared – far from it – but because it was for the benefit of everyone else. The harder he trained, the more serious he became, and the more understanding he grew of the situation they were in meant that the other Order members were safer and less at risk of dying or getting injured as a result of his old habitual stupidity. So as far as she was concerned, new Ron could stick around for as long as he wanted, provided that he continued to be useful and continued to not threaten the safety of the Order members and took this war seriously.
Hermione let out a silent breath as she took the last step and turned the corner back into the kitchen.
She could feel eyes on her again, but that seemed to be the norm every time she entered a room now after something happened, so she ignored it. In a strange way, she was starting to get used to it, even though she didn’t like it. Besides, in today’s case, she knew they were all just looking to see if the complete trio returned downstairs or if Ron had mysteriously gone missing.
Most of the Order members weren’t stupid – they knew what was going on and they knew that Hermione and Harry would not hesitate to permanently silence Ron if it meant the safety of the Order. Which was a curious thought… in the span of less than a year she and Harry had gone from being told that they were too young to officially be members of the Order to being so high up the chain of command they could do almost anything without most members questioning it. Though she knew the repercussions of such actions would be devastating to the Order.
It was an odd realization, and one that she often buried in the back of her mind. That sort of power and reverence made her nervous – it was how people like Voldemort started. It was how people like Dumbledore had gathered his own followers over the years, a collection of souls willing to lay down and die for the man because they were unquestionably loyal. She much preferred the Nasir approach – powerful, yet silent, and hiding in the shadows. Less chance of abusing those around you whether intentional or not.
She could practically hear the sigh of relief in the kitchen as all three of them came into view and she made her way toward the table.
“Hermione – Harry,” Arthur called to them as he got up from his seat at the table and walked around to meet them. “Before training I wanted to talk to you about tomorrow.”
“Of course,” Hermione gave him a small smile as she stopped behind her usual chair and took in the people still gathered in the room.
Bill and the twins were outside. Shacklebolt was talking with Mrs. Weasley and Fleur in the kitchen, Ava was sitting with Charlie on her lap next to Luna while Liza coloured a picture and Colin was still stiff and silent in his seat holding a cup of coffee. Remus was stirring his coffee and chatting quietly with Dean – who seemed to be the most relieved out of everyone that all three of them had come back down the stairs in one piece. Hermione felt her heart ache painfully for the boy, he’d not reacted well to their outside altercation and he was so traumatized from Malfoy Manor that he was displaying symptoms of PTSD and didn’t handle any hint of conflict well anymore. Though talking with Remus seemed to be helping.
She let out a small sigh and turned back to Arthur. “About the transformations?”
“Yes.” Arthur nodded, and Hermione noted that the other werewolves’ attention suddenly locked to them. Liza’s hand paused over the paper before her and her eyes watched them with an interest that rivalled Ava’s. Even Colin was looking at them now. “I want to try the banding.”
“You’re sure?” Hermione asked Arthur as Fleur brought Harry and Ron a coffee then placed a mug on the table for her. “There is a possibility that it might not work, Arthur – I’ve run a few different cases but the bonds are still not–“
“They will work,” Nasir’s deep baritone echoed from the far wall and Hermione turned to look at him along with most of the rest of the room. She arched a brow at the man and Nasir simply stared at her, his lip twitching a fraction before he added. “I reviewed your calculations while you and Harry were speaking before dinner.”
She deadpanned as she looked at him, raising her brow further as if to say ‘really? Next time ask’.
She almost thought she saw his lip twist more as he made a tiny imperceptible shrug, but the movement was so small it was impossible to tell for sure. He was still so incredibly difficult to read. But to be fair, she had left her journal open to that page in the lab – Nasir had offered to finish and bottle the potions so that she could shower after practicing fiendfyre then speak to Harry about Ron before dinner.
She wasn’t sure that she could call it snooping when it was left out in plain sight – especially when she knew based on their interaction that morning, that he clearly had no objection to reading over her shoulder. She’d also been debating asking him about the bonds anyway and she could hardly scold him when she’d have done the exact same thing. Still though, she’d need to make sure that she tucked away anything that she did want to keep private and she should probably talk to him about what was off-limits. She’d always known that his moral compass was a bit skewed, so it was her own fault for leaving research out in the open.
“Yes, I know they work, Nasir – what I mean is that I’m not sure that the bond is safe from a control standpoint,” Hermione let out a sigh and picked up the coffee that Fleur had given her. She gave the blonde a tired smile and held the cup before her as she looked back to Arthur sincerely. “I haven’t finished securing the constraints around the control authority yet – meaning that whoever you’re bonded to could, technically, get you to do anything. Some constraints are in place to make certain things more difficult, but it’s not finished yet. I’ve not had enough time to finalize it yet.”
“But the bond itself is safe, correct?” Arthur asked her.
“Well, yes – the bond is safe.” Hermione nodded. “But you’re still relinquishing your control for the entire time you’re wearing the band.”
“But the band doesn’t harm the people wearing it who are bound by it?” Arthur pressed.
“No – no the bond doesn’t cause any harm. It’s perfectly safe from that perspective,” Hermione confirmed. “And it doesn’t use a stasis charm or anything like that, so it has no impact on your transformation or wellbeing. In essence the band simply provides a bond between two people and allows one to direct or control the other in a single direction flow. It’s just the control constraints part that I’ve not yet finalized.”
“Have you created them yet?” Arthur asked her curiously.
“Er – yes,” Hermione hesitated and glanced to Harry.
“We’ve created a few test sets,” Harry said as his eyes flicked hesitantly between Arthur and the three people watching them closely from the table. “Ideally we need to get our hands on better materials, we used transfigured galleons as a test. But as Hermione said – the safety on the control needs more work.”
“Well I’m not worried about that.” Arthur smiled at them. “I’d like to try it.”
“Arthur – you’ll be giving up control of your free will until myself or Harry remove the bands. You should be worried about that, this is a dangerous slope.” Hermione looked at the man before her sincerely but he only smiled warmly.
“Well I’m not,” he said firmly. “Because I’ll be banded to you.”
“What?” Hermione nearly choked on the small sip of coffee she’d tried to take as she set the cup back down on the table and looked up at her surrogate father in disbelief. She’d anticipated that he’d want to be banded to Mrs. Weasley, not her. “Are you sure that–“
“Hermione,” Arthur said gently as he took a step forward and lowered his voice. “I trust you with my life and I will happily place it in your hands once more for a single evening. Yours or Harry’s – I trust you both to keep me safe and to not abuse your control. Besides, it’s just a test run. Worst case it doesn’t work at all and when I transform back you can remove the band and no harm done. Best case you will get some important data that can be used to improve the bands, but in both cases, it’s just temporary. As you said at the last meeting, we’ll put them on tomorrow just before nightfall, and we’ll remove them right afterwards. You and Harry shall remain in control of the bands and the process – we’ll keep this within the Order and we’ll keep this quiet until you’re sure it’s safe. But you will need to try it eventually and I can’t think of a better time than now.”
Hermione stared at the man for a long moment.
“You’re sure about this?” she asked quietly.
“Positive,” he said firmly and gave her shoulder a firm squeeze.
“I would like to try it too,” Ava’s voice rang out and Hermione turned to look at her. “I don’t like the idea of banding – but I also don’t like the idea of being a danger or a threat to you, myself, Charlie or anyone else here simply because I don’t have any control over my actions. Remus told me today a bit more about how it feels when you’re in werewolf form and–“
Ava hesitated and she looked over to Remus with a pained expression. Remus nodded at her gently and so Ava pressed on.
“I don’t want that,” she said quietly. “He said you have no control – no rational thought or human instincts to know friend from enemy or right from wrong during the full moon. Yet you remember it all the next day when you’re human again. It’s rather cruel really – that you can lose yourself completely but be forced to live with the consequences afterwards when you had no say. I don’t want to wake up and regret something that I’ve done, even though it’s an accident I won’t be able to forgive myself. I don’t want to hurt anyone – I can already feel a pull here.”
Ava tapped the center of her chest with her stumped hand and Hermione saw her expression grow grim.
“It’s… wild, powerful and,” she hesitated again as she seemed to realize that the entire room was looking at her and her voice dropped lower. “It’s unnerving. I don’t like it; it makes me feel like I’m losing my control already and it’s not even the full moon yet. You’ve saved my life once already and kept me alive this long – you’ve all been open with me about everything going on and what’s going to happen. So, whether it’s stupid or not, I trust you enough to try the band for one night so long as I’m banded to one of you two.”
“Me too,” Liza said quietly, and Hermione could see the tight tension that laced the little girl’s face. It was clear that she felt the same thing that Ava had described and that it frightened her. Her initial fascination with being a werewolf, meeting Remus, and becoming almost excited seemed to have worn off as the day progressed and the pull grew stronger. She was scared.
They were all scared.
Scared of losing control.
The previous transformation that Liza and Colin had experienced was forced, it likely occurred while heavily influenced under drugs and magic, and they’d not experienced the natural pull of the moon like what Remus went through every month. This was brand new territory for them, and they were all looking for some sort of safety net so they could feel normal and secure. To them the banding was a lower risk and a less terrifying idea than going through the transformation without wolfsbane potion.
“Alright,” Hermione heard Harry say quietly from her side. She turned and gave him a wary glance, but he simply let out a deep sigh and gave her a tired if not slightly apprehensive look. “We’ll prepare three sets of bands.”
“Make it four.”
Hermione’s eyes darted to Colin – she didn’t know him well enough to recognize his voice, and if not for the fact that he was looking directly at them, she would have wondered who had spoken.
“I don’t want to be left out of this,” Colin said quietly his fingers gripping his mug tightly. “I don’t want to be banded either, but – if everyone else is going to do it – I will do it too. They used to let some of the new transformations loose in a small pit in the back of the den to battle it out for money. I was put in there once while un-banded – and I don’t ever want to feel like that again.”
“Okay,” Hermione breathed out and picked up her coffee once more. “Fine – we’ll trial the banding tomorrow. Everyone finish your coffee – tonight Harry and I are going to teach you something new.”
-x-x-
Hermione felt her stomach knot with nerves as she stared down at the purse hanging from her hand and tried not to think too much on the fact that she and Harry were both about to become responsible for and in control of two additional lives each. She’d woken early that morning to finish the bands with Harry, then she’d gotten Nasir to help her with checking over the final design while Harry meticulously brewed another batch of dittany and reviewed through her arithmancy calculations for their bond. She’d also asked Nasir if he’d looked at anything else in her journal – he’d confirmed that he hadn’t, and that he’d only looked at the page it was open to. Whether it was true or not was another story – but she was glad that they’d come to an agreement that anything left open was fair game but anything she closed was not to be opened.
Afterwards they’d completed their exercise routine with a particularly large group – everyone showed up to workout and she suspected it was because people were getting antsy about the full moon. During the run she could practically see the tension in the air around the werewolves as they made their way around the perimeter, their bodies tense and tight as strain showed on their faces. They’d trained briefly with Nasir after lunch but cut the lesson short in order to eat an early dinner so they could pack everything up and prepare to go to the farm. Nasir had left the cottage early to ‘go run errands’ and planned to meet them at the farm later that evening before the transformations started since Shacklebolt gave him access to the farm grounds. He’d agreed to come to the farm with them so that they had an extra set of hands to manage the situation if it got out of control.
That was nearly impossible given the extent of the wards that Shacklebolt had put up – but even then housing five werewolves together was dangerous. If the bands proved ineffective Remus had noted that it was common for werewolves to brawl with each other and it could very quickly turn violent – especially for those experiencing their first change.
Hermione frowned as she thought over some of the other information that Remus had shared with them. It was going to be a long and painful night for the group. They would be sore, tired and exhausted the following day for upwards of a week. She just hoped that Arthur would be okay so he could function properly at work and not use any sick time – for surely it would draw unwanted attention.
Long fingers laced around the hand she was staring at and jerked her from her thoughts.
“Hey,” Harry said quietly, giving her a soft smile as she reflexively curled her fingers around his. “Are you ready?”
“Yeah,” Hermione nodded and smiled back at him. “Did you get everything from Mrs. Weasley?”
“Yup,” Harry raised the small bag he was carrying in his opposite hand. He’d darted ahead into the cottage to get supplies while Hermione waited outside. “A bunch of food and drinks – we’re all set for an all-nighter now.”
Hermione snorted and shook her head. “You’re making it sound like this is a party – or like we’re going to have fun tonight.”
“Maybe we will,” Harry squeezed her hand. “Who knows, maybe these bands will make a huge difference – maybe someday werewolves will be able to transform at home and coexist with their families during the change instead of being sent outside or locked alone in a room while being terrified that they might hurt someone.”
“Maybe,” Hermione said quietly. “That is definitely a long-term goal.”
“Remember that this is just the start,” Harry said reassuringly. “This is just a test – if it doesn’t go perfectly that’s okay. The main goal tonight is just to get through it safely.”
“Yeah,” Hermione sighed and tightened her hold on him. She knew that it was her perfectionist personality that ran the risk of ruining the trial with the banding and less so the banding itself. Harry was right – tonight was just a test as Arthur had said. They would try it and make notes, then they would try it again. “Alright – let’s get to it.”
With that Hermione apparated them to the farm. Fleur and Bill had already brought Liza, Ava and Colin to the farm – they’d gone early so that they could rearrange the layout of the barn. Hermione hadn’t seen it yet, but Fleur had told her her ideas for the barn after their morning run. She wanted to remove the existing separate rooms, box in the supplies to a separate corner section of the barn to protect them and add a new access door outside. She then wanted to split the barn and pasture into two distinct areas since they planned to keep Remus separate from the rest of the group during the entirety of the night.
Since Remus had successfully taken his wolfsbane potion he would already be calm and docile. If the banding went poorly and if he was in the same pen as the others he would be in for a rough night. Remus had told her to just leave it alone and that he would simply use the smaller side of the barn that had no paddock but Fleur had refused. She seemed set that he should have access to the outdoors and told him the changes were minor since she was planning to add smaller walls for privacy so that each person had a place to transform anyways.
In the end Remus had stopped arguing with her and Fleur had smiled triumphantly – saying that she and Bill would take care of it.
Hermione knew that the older werewolf would already be there, working with Arthur and Shacklebolt to add additional wards on the new walls while completing a final check of the paddock. But what she hadn’t been expecting was for all the changes to already be done by the time that they got there. As she walked into the barn, she felt her eyes widen as she took it all in. It was completely renovated, and people were mostly just milling about adding final touches.
Except for Colin, who sat silently on a chair. Ava on the other hand appeared to be outside picking more flowers with Liza.
The air in the barn was both tense and calm – everyone was clearly stressed and anxious, and yet everyone was trying to remain positive and optimistic that the night would go well. Hermione grinned as Fleur spotted them and made her way towards them – she would be heading back to the cottage to help Mrs. Weasley with Charlie soon while no doubt anxiously awaiting updates. Hermione knew that the girl wanted to be there tonight – everyone did – but Shacklebolt didn’t want to endanger people unnecessarily and so only himself, Bill and Harry, Hermione and Nasir would be staying throughout the night. Hermione had to agree with him, and frankly she thought that even the current headcount felt a bit excessive. But she understood why each person was there and she knew that they might need the additional help if things got out of control.
“Good Evening.” Fleur smiled at them as she came to a spot just a few feet before them. She was grinning proudly; her hair was messy – tossed in a ponytail that looked like it had worked itself loose during intense hard work and her sweater was tied haphazardly around her waist. Yet somehow, she still looked incredibly gorgeous. They’d clearly been busting their asses for the last several hours – it was likely that Fleur had shown up right after their workout to get all this done.
“Good evening.” Hermione smiled at Fleur as Harry greeted her. “This looks incredible Fleur – you and Bill really outdid yourselves.”
“That’s what I said.” Remus gave a tight smile as he lowered his wand from inspecting a ward and turned to make his way over to them from the far side of the room.
Hermione could see the tension in his shoulders and the exhausted look on his face. He was struggling, but at least he knew what to expect. It made her glad that Liza and Ava had each other and Remus to be there with them when they went through this for the first time. She just hoped that Colin might try to give the others a chance too.
“This is pretty much a five-star hotel as far as werewolf dens go,” Remus said with a mixture of amusement and disbelief as he looked around the barn and shook his head. “I’ve certainly never gone through a full moon somewhere like this before. I tried to tell Fleur that the chairs, the rugs and the small cots are unnecessary – they’ll probably be ruined.”
“Pft – zey will not,” Fleur scoffed and waved her hand at the man, but Hermione could see the warm smile in her eyes as she looked at him. “If zey do – who cares. I can easily repair zem. But you should ‘ave some faith Remus – with ze banding it is possible zat you will all be much more aware and will want a comfortable blanket to lay on. Zis floor is awfully cold without zem.”
Remus chuckled and shook his head. “Well – it’s appreciated Fleur, thank you.”
“Do not thank me Remus,” Fleur placed a gentle hand on his shoulder and smiled once more. “It is ze very least I can do. You deserve a safe place.”
Fleur sighed and looked back to Harry and Hermione.
“Well – since you are ‘ere now I should probably ‘ead back. I know zat Molly will be anxious for an update aside from single words through ze tags,” she grinned again as she gestured to her arm. “And I told Luna we could stay up and practice dueling as we wait for news. I think zat Fred and George plan to drop by as well – zis is rather exciting and everyone wants to know if ze bands work. ‘Arry – ‘Ermione – if at any point you need anything through ze night just let me know. We will be awake.”
“Thanks Fleur,” Harry said sincerely as he nodded to the woman. “We will keep you posted.”
They waved goodbye and watched as Fleur made her way out into the paddock to say goodbye to everyone else. Hermione couldn’t help the smile that formed on her lips as she watched Liza give the bundle of new flowers to Fleur to take home for her before she hugged the woman goodbye.
“So, are you ready for this?” Harry asked Remus, his brow arched in question as the greying man lingered by their side and watched the interaction as well.
“I’m never ready for it, Harry,” Remus said softly as he turned to look at the pair of them. “But this time – it doesn’t feel quite so horrible.”
-x-x-
“Right arm,” Liza said nervously when Hermione asked her what hand she wanted banded. “It doesn’t matter right? Like, I’ll have a paw so… I won’t be able to use it like normal anyways, but I am right-handed. You know what, I don’t like watches on my right wrist, so I changed my mind – let’s go with the left just to be safe.”
Hermione grinned at the girl before her. She was sitting on one of the chairs that Fleur had brought to the barn while Hermione kneeled before her on the concrete. Harry was on the other side currently banding Colin – but the man seemed far less thoughtful about where to place the band compared to Liza.
“Left wrist sounds perfect,” Hermione said. She kept her voice calm. She’d instantly noticed that the girl was stressed the second she got within twenty feet of her and so she was determined to keep things as relaxed as possible. “Just hold it out and I’ll put it on.”
“It won’t hurt right?” Liza looked at her nervously. “I forgot to ask that the other day when I said I’d do it.”
“It won’t hurt, no. I promise.” Hermione carefully opened the band on her knee and then pushed the girl’s sleeve up her arm out of the way.
“Because even though I don’t remember the other one much, I do remember it hurting.” Liza’s eyes were sharp, watching Hermione’s every movement both curiously and cautiously. Almost like a frightened animal debating whether or not to flee – yet she seemed pretty controlled despite her young age and was forcing herself to remain seated despite her fear and apprehension.
“It won’t hurt Liza, I promise you,” Hermione said quietly as she looked up at the girl. She was still holding the band and had not moved to place it on the girl’s wrist yet. “That man who did that to you – he was a bad person and he didn’t care about your safety or comfort. This is not the same band, I promise. This is an entirely different one. If you want, you can watch Harry band Colin first so that you can see how it works.”
Liza’s eyes flicked to the opposite side of the room and Hermione could tell the girl was watching what was happening. But then her eyes darted back to Hermione and she shook her head.
“No, it’s okay, I trust you,” Liza said quietly, and she nodded her head. “You can put it on.”
“Okay,” Hermione carefully reached for her arm again and began to place the band. Clipping it on was easy enough – for the most part – but she needed to link the band to Liza and then link her own with a final carved rune once it was set. It required a decent amount of precision, but not as much as a rune carving would and it thankfully involved no blood draw.
“Do you think I’ll remember what happens tonight after?” Liza asked her quietly as Hermione worked.
“I do – Remus said that he remembers every transformation,” Hermione said as she continued to focus on her work.
“But I don’t remember much from the last time.”
“Well,” Hermione said thoughtfully. “It’s likely that they had you under the influence of something while they did it. I suspect that they used either magic or drugs to keep you calm or slightly sedated since the transformation was unnatural – it might not have worn off before we rescued you.”
“That makes sense.” Liza nodded then went silent for a moment, a saddened look crossing over her face. “Do you – do you think I will ever see my family again?”
Hermione’s hands stalled and her eyes lifted to see the girl looking down at her. She’d not been expecting her to say that and she’d not planned on what to say if the topic of her parent’s death came up. As far as she knew Liza was still in a bit of denial and Hermione wasn’t sure that she was the one who should be having this conversation with the girl – she’d long since lost her emotional sensitivity and she didn’t want to mess this up by saying something too harsh or blunt.
“Liza,” Hermione said slowly, her voice cautious and wary. “You know that–“
“I don’t mean my parents,” Liza cut her off and dropped her eyes to her knees. Hermione still held the girl’s outstretched arm as her shoulders slumped a fraction and her voice grew lower. “I know they’re dead – I’m not stupid. I don’t remember much, but – but I do remember enough to know that they died. Fleur thinks I’m in denial, but I’m not. I know they’re gone – I just–“
She hesitated and Hermione saw her swallow hard.
“I’m not a kid like some of them think I am. I understand what death is – I lost my grandfather when I was eight, I watched the news growing up with my parents, so I know that bad things happen in the world. And I know that they’re gone. I just–“ she paused as she swallowed again, her voice was so quiet Hermione didn’t dare breathe. “It’s just nicer to imagine that maybe they got away – to think that maybe they’re safe living in a small cottage somewhere, happily, like we are, even when I know it’s not true. ”
Hermione felt her face falter as she looked at the girl before her.
She’s only twelve, Hermione thought as she stared at her.
So young. It was so easy to forget that she was only twelve because she spoke like an adult and acted like one half of the time – even now in this stressful moment she was acting well beyond her years. But in reality, she was still just a kid despite what she thought. She’d just been placed in a situation that made her mature faster – she’d likely always been mature for her age, but this had no doubt compounded it.
Still, Hermione thought. She shouldn’t have to go through this at all let alone by herself without her family.
It struck Hermione that this was the same age she’d been when the Chamber of Secrets had been opened. The same age she’d been when she’d seen a basilisk and been petrified. The same age she’d been when she was told that she’d be hunted down for being a muggleborn, killed simply because she existed and because some ancient long-dead Slytherin apparently hated her and wanted her and people like her dead. It was the same age she’d been when she truly realized that the world was a harsh and cruel place.
We were too young, she thought as she looked up at the girl before her. The magical world is dangerous enough for muggleborn witches and wizards – let alone a muggle who cannot defend themselves.
Hermione let out a slow breath as she thought over Liza’s words.
“I think,” Hermione said slowly as she gave Liza’s arm a light squeeze. “That as long as you know the truth and accept it, it is okay to think that they are happy somewhere – because it is certainly a much nicer thought.”
Liza’s lip twitched and a small smile formed on her lips. “Thank you – for not thinking it’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid.” Hermione shook her head and she could physically feel her heart aching with pain as the rune grew heavier on her chest. “It’s not stupid at all. You want to see your grandmother and your aunt then?”
“Yes – well,” Liza hesitated and gave Hermione a sheepish look. “Just my grandmother. I don’t really like my aunt if I’m being honest.”
Hermione smiled. “I don’t like my one aunt either – it’s okay. We don’t pick the family we’re born into, but you can pick the family with who you build bonds with. Did Shacklebolt say anything else to you about them?”
“Not really,” Liza said quietly. “He said because of my condition it would be impossible for me to go back to the non-magical world and I know that – but I–“
“You just want to see her one last time,” Hermione finished for the girl when she struggled to speak.
“Yeah,” Liza nodded and bit her lip. “I want to say goodbye and I want to know that she is okay. I want her to know that I’m okay – even if she forgets me after.”
Hermione hadn’t realized that the girl’s arm had shifted and that her thin fingers were now intertwined with her own – but she squeezed the girl’s hand back when she felt her grip tightening.
“I’ll talk to him,” Hermione said quietly, and she could see visible relief washing over the girl’s body. “I’m sure we can arrange that without issue. Let’s get through tonight though, okay? Strong and safe. Then we can set something up.”
“Okay,” Liza sniffed and nodded, her eyes refocusing into their usual calm as she looked at Hermione with resolve. “Let’s do this.”
-x-x-
“Alright,” Hermione said more loudly than she usually would have so that everyone in the barn could hear her. “The banding is finished – everything is set from our end and we have one hour until the moon is up.”
“Excellent.” Shacklebolt nodded and flicked his wand at the windows that lined the top of the barn. The shutters opened and the night sky became visible. “I want the focus tonight to be safety – nothing else is more important than keeping each other safe and ensuring that no one is injured. For that reason, we will spend the next hour outside the paddock waiting for the moon and once the transformations start everyone is to cast an individual shield charm as backup. The wards will not fail – but I am not taking any chances.
“In the unlikely occasion that something goes wrong, we will be using stunners and tethers to regain control and to herd everyone back into the barn.” Shacklebolt motioned to the door. “At which point we will ward and lock the door and you will remain in the barn until the moon sets. All doors will be locked once we head outside and Remus – you will be locked on your side for the entirety of the night. Does everyone understand?”
A chorus of agreement echoed throughout the barn and then people began to shift. Remus made his way through the small door to his side of the barn while Shacklebolt warded him in. Colin remained on his chair within his privacy walls while Ava and Liza took a seat together on a small cot. They smiled nervously at Remus before the door shut then looked to Bill, Hermione and Harry with visible apprehension.
“I’ll see you on the other side,” Ava said quietly, her eyes nervous as she tried to stay strong and sure for both Liza and her own sake.
“We will be right here the entire time,” Harry said quietly as Bill made his way outside.
“We won’t let anything happen to either of you,” Hermione gave them a reassuring smile. “And once this is over, we can all relax.”
“Once this is over, I want another chocolate frog,” Liza said almost absently as she stared at her hands which were twisting together before her. The thin golden band on her wrist shone in the dim light every time she twisted her hands over. The closer it got to the change the more antsy she’d become.
“That we can definitely arrange,” Harry chuckled and smiled at the girl. “I’ll send a message to Fred and tell him to get some ready – maybe he can even bring you some fireworks, too.”
Liza’s eyes shot up. “Are they magical fireworks?”
“They are.” Harry nodded.
“Yes.” Liza nodded firmly; her hands still knotted tightly. “I would like that very much.”
“Deal.”
Hermione pulled out some of the water and food that Mrs. Weasley had prepared and left it on the small table in the barn. They would be able to eat it now or in werewolf form later – either way, she was sure it would all be gone by morning.
“Ready?” Shacklebolt called as he made his way over from sealing in Remus.
“Ready,” Harry and Hermione both nodded.
“Alright – outside,” Shacklebolt herded them toward the barn door and out into the paddock. “I just felt the wards go so Nasir is right on time – it looks like everything has gone to plan so far.”
“Let’s hope it stays that way,” Hermione said quietly as she cut across the grass and hopped the fence with Harry. She could feel the cold ripple of the wards wash over her body before she landed on the other side.
It was unsettling, like the tension growing up her spine as the light in the sky began to shift and the wind whispered through the long grass around them. She could see Nasir’s dark silhouette approaching from the drive as Bill conjured up some chairs for them to sit in.
It was going to be a long, tense evening – but she didn’t think that staying awake would be an issue, because her adrenaline was already starting to pump and she felt wide awake as the first slivers of moonlight began to creep through the air.
Harry looked down at the two thin gold bands wrapped securely around his right wrist, only one of the three runes were visible since Hermione had marked the other two beforehand on the inside of the band. Gibo, the third rune, which finalized the bond was marked on the outer surface once the linked bands had been secured in place on both parties. It looked like a small black x against the glinting golden surface as Harry looked down at them nervously, his grip on the paddock fence tight as he waited silently with the others while the first few rays of moonlight began to peek through the clouds.
The chairs that Bill had brought for them were set up behind them but it seemed that at this point everyone was too nervous and antsy to use them. Harry doubted that they would sit down at all for the next few hours – or at least not until the change had taken place and they’d determined that the bands were functional and safe.
He’d already caught Shacklebolt, who currently stood on his right, glancing to the bands a few times now. The older man’s eyes seemed to shift to them naturally, like he couldn’t help himself from looking at them – like he thought he might get to see them working when the time came. Harry couldn’t blame him; everyone was nervous and it made him wonder just how much the man and the others trusted him and Hermione to do this right – to create a solution that could potentially help hundreds of people in the future. It was a daunting thought to have so many people looking to them for a solution and it made his insides twist. As if being responsible for ending the war with the destruction of Horcruxes wasn’t enough he and Hermione had once again picked up yet another task in which they felt responsible for.
But he’d have it no other way. Maybe it was his hero complex that made him incapable of doing nothing or staying away from problems, but he would help and do everything that he could whenever he could, and he knew that Hermione felt the same.
They would always help.
They would always fight to make things right regardless of how much else they had on their plate.
They were both hopeful that tonight would be a success. Nasir had said that the bands would work which was reassuring and they all agreed that they would – the question was just how much would they work? And would it be worth it in the end to pursue finalizing the bands or would this end up being a lost cause and a massive waste of time? After all wolfsbane potion worked and despite it being difficult to brew it was readily available.
Harry held back a sigh as his eyes traced over the web of thin silver-white scars that now covered his right hand and ran under the dark sleeve of his sweater. They went all the way up his forearm to his elbow like the branches of a tree – a new addition he’d acquired after training with Nasir the day before and learning a new spell which he’d initially failed to control. It was nothing like fiendfyre and it had been much more difficult to cast. As a result, Harry had pushed a bit too hard to make it happen and while in the end he’d been successful at casting it, the massive size of the spell had caught him entirely off guard. The result had been this injury – he could still feel the tingling in the tips of his fingers and the dull ache in his muscles from when his body had gone impossibly tense from the overload of energy. If not for Nasir being there by his side, he’d probably have died. The experience had once again given him an appreciation and deep respect for dark magic – and he completely understood why so many wizards stayed entirely away from it.
Harry’s eyes flicked to Shacklebolt once more and he noticed that the man’s gaze seemed to be locked to his hand and less so to the golden bands – perhaps he’d been incorrect and had overthought the meaning behind Shacklebolt’s glances. It was possible that the man was just eyeing the scar pattern – maybe he even knew what it was from?
Either way Harry was glad that the wizard chose to remain silent on the issue if he did. Harry was sure that he would get looks in the future unless he learned a masking charm like Hermione had because as with all dark magic, the Lichtenberg figures would never go away. But he had no interest in getting into another discussion over his use of dark magic with fellow Order members – though he heavily suspected that Shacklebolt toed the line on what was ‘acceptable magic’ much more often than Arthur did and wouldn’t question his or Hermione’s intentions. In fact, based on their limited conversations and Shacklebolt’s history with Nasir, Harry fully suspected that Shacklebolt had a few dark spells up his sleeves as well.
Which oddly, made him feel better – it made his confidence in the Order grow to know that someone else on their team was willing to do whatever it took.
Either way he didn’t mind the scars and it was incredibly unlikely that he’d get any more of them now that he understood how to cast the black lightning and what was required to keep it away from his own body. Turned out that his shield charm was rather effective at keeping the lightning at bay which gave him a safety buffer in case he messed up – unlike fiendfyre, who’s heat could suffocate a person regardless of them having a shield in place. They’d not tested the effectiveness of the shield against direct flames yet, but Harry had a suspicion that the shield would not hold for long.
Besides, Harry thought as his mind wandered back to the scarring. The markings were barely noticeable during the day. It seemed that they became more apparent in the evening because the burned and damaged skin reflected light almost with a glow and it contrasted much more considerably once it was dark.
Harry let out a breath as the wind rustled past the group and made the taller grass in the paddock shift. The two fluttering heartbeats he could feel in his mind from Colin and Ava made him anxious and it made him wonder how the hell Hermione had managed to deal with all the vital signals she felt through the tags. He ignored Shacklebolt’s curious gaze and dropped his eyes down to his own hand once more, tracing the thickest line that ran up his index finger, down the middle of his hand and disappeared beneath his sweater. Hermione had said the markings looked ‘beautiful in a way’ once she’d seen them and she’d been quite fascinated by the pattern that had been created.
It was hard not to smile when he thought of her and the way that she seemed so fascinated by everything. The way that she’d pushed his sleeve up to examine the marks while asking questions about the new spell and how it worked had been nothing short of adorable and endearing.
Not once did she berate him for getting injured during practice. Not once did she doubt him or say that it was too dangerous or that he wouldn’t be capable of managing the magic. Not once did she tell him to stop – instead she encouraged him, praised him for working so hard and offered a few suggestions at how to stay safer after discussing the spell with him and Nasir. Nor did she flinch or look at the scars with distaste. Just like how Harry believed in her, had faith in her abilities, accepted everything about her and all her markings – she accepted him entirely too. She believed in him wholly and that, above everything else, was his main source of conviction.
She loved him and she trusted him. She knew that he could do this just like how he knew she could too and it made the weight that he carried on his soul feel a bit lighter when he thought about it.
Harry couldn’t help but smile faintly. He could feel the warmth of her against his left side, the way she was naturally leaning into him slightly as the quiet tension of the night continued to grow tighter. He heard her murmur something to Nasir on her left low enough so the others would not hear – she was asking him more questions about the wand core procedure they’d planned for the following morning. Nasir murmured back a low response loud enough for only her and Harry to hear but his voice cut short as the first scream from the barn broke through the night.
“It would seem it has started,” Nasir said slightly louder so that everyone could hear his rich baritone voice.
Five heads had turned sharply to look at the barn and Harry could literally see Shacklebolt and Bill’s grips on the wooden paddock fence tighten as a shriek that was unmistakably Liza’s broke through the air. He could feel his heart rate increasing as he looked to Hermione with a tight expression and she nodded, both of them getting ready for what was about to come. They’d seen Remus transform once, they knew it was painful and they knew that it wouldn’t take long. In less than a minute there would be five werewolves within the barn
“Alright let’s do this,” Hermione breathed, and she leaned forward on the fence looking at the barn determinedly. “We’ll stick to the original agreed to plan – start with calm commands then ask them to come out into the yard once their heart rate levels around 200 beats per minute.”
“Right,” Harry nodded, keeping his voice calm despite the beginnings of snarling he could hear from inside the barn. He started counting the beats. “If that works then we’ll try some other commands.”
Harry focused his mind on the bond that he could feel through the bands. He could already hear the heartbeats racing their way well above normal human rates. He could feel the confused, conflicted, angry and turbulently violent emotions that radiated out from the other side of the bond. Neither he nor Hermione were entirely sure how to use the bands but based on the calculations and what Hermione had gathered from reverse-engineering the bands Arlo created it seemed like it was all about clear, concise thoughts being directed at the connection.
It was an entirely mental exercise – and the bonded pairs that they’d heard barking orders verbally were doing it simply because saying it out loud made it easier to maintain focus and give specific direction. But it hadn’t been necessary. Everything could be communicated silently.
Calm, Harry thought firmly as the heartrates in his head levelled out to above 200 beats per minute – yet they remained erratic and panicked. The transformation was complete – so he forced his mind to carefully focus on the connection while he forced the thoughts through like commands to the other side. Calm. Peace. Do not attack.
Almost instantly he could feel the two erratic heart rates on the other side of the bond calming down to a steady even rate as he repeated the thoughts concisely in his head and pushed them over the bond. Already he felt a tension headache forming at the front of his mind and he wondered just how much headache relief potion the snatchers must have been drinking – or perhaps you grew used to it over time. Then again, Arlo’s bands had been designed differently. They were based solely on control; they oppressed and subdued the werewolves entirely and made them mindless shells incapable of having any thought at all, so it was likely that controlling them took less effort with his bands.
The sound of snarling went silent and an eerie calm filled the air. Once he felt the confused anger almost entirely dissipate and the barn had remained silent for several long seconds, he decided to give the first order outwardly so that everyone could follow what was going on.
“Leave the barn, walk to the center of the paddock and sit,” Harry said calmly as he pushed the command through the bond. It wasn’t a suggestion, he sent it as an order, and he could feel the others watching him and Hermione tensely as she gave the exact same direction.
No one breathed as they watched the large open door of the barn and waited for something to happen. The seconds ticked by painfully slow and Harry felt his chest constrict in nervous apprehension until finally, four crouched figures appeared in the doorway. His hands unconsciously tightened on the wooden fence as he watched almost disbelievingly as four werewolves made their way out into the center of the paddock in a calm single line. They slowed to a halt in the middle of the field and then – against all doubts he’d had – they sat.
Harry heard both Shacklebolt and Bill let out an audible sigh of relief. Bill dropping his head into his hands fully, muttering ‘oh thank Merlin’ under his breath as he shook his head in relief. Even Harry couldn’t help but let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding as Hermione turned and gave him a hopeful and nervous smile.
The werewolves sat there awkwardly in the middle of the field, sniffing at the grass before them but not moving an inch as they looked toward the fence where everyone was standing. Harry could feel a brief wave of violent anger flaring on the other side of the bonds when they initially saw the collection of humans, but when he repeated the order of calm it settled quickly once more. It seemed that seeing humans invoked a fresh wave of instincts to attack – but that it could indeed be countered by a command that ordered peace.
“Well I think it’s obvious which one is Liza,” Shacklebolt said with a grin as he pointed out into the paddock at the smallest werewolf.
She was a bit smaller than a normal wolf, her coat a mixed colouration of fur. She looked like an adorable patchwork of different colours; her ears dark brown while her face was a lighter tan. The rest of her fur was mostly grey and black but spotted with sections of brown, copper and white – and Harry couldn’t help but grin with the rest as they looked her over. She was actually adorable (since she wasn’t trying to bite anyone’s face off). He realized that until tonight he’d never truly looked at a werewolf before. He’d never had the chance – he was usually running away, trying to escape or beheading them to save his own neck.
But when they weren’t snarling and blindly attacking with rage, they actually looked rather brilliant. Much larger than normal wolves with slightly shorter snouts, tufted tails and apparently much more varied in colour. Their eyes looked almost human as well now that he could see them properly and they weren’t enraged and rolling with the command or instinct to kill.
“I think so,” Harry smiled. “I didn’t know their coats could look like that – we’ll have to ask Remus if that’s because she’s still a kid or if it will stay that way.”
“I’ll make a note of it. Liza – take three steps forward,” Hermione said calmly, and she watched as Liza stood from her seated position and moved toward the fence by exactly three steps. It was obvious that she was watching them curiously, her bright blue eyes carefully taking in their movements. It was also clear that she was itching to do more than what she was currently being instructed to do. “Sit.”
Liza made an annoyed yowl but sat down, her ears perked as she continued to watch them anxiously.
“Well it’s working,” Harry said in disbelief as he turned to Hermione. “Did you feel a second wave of desire to attack once they came out.”
“Yeah,” Hermione nodded, biting her bottom lip as her brow furrowed in thought. “It seems like seeing humans invokes a stronger wave of basic instincts – which makes sense. Werewolves are almost entirely peaceful with every other species but humans. It’s well documented that they actually seek humans out to attack them. We might need to add another rune just to help compensate for that – I’d anticipated it and I knew that they would be violent, I just didn’t realize the desire to attack would be this strong. I didn’t properly account for it – we’ll need to address it on the next round because repeating peace and calm every few minutes through the bond is a bit inconvenient and poses a risk.”
“Might I suggest adding wunjo tied to ansuz for that,” Nasir said quietly. His dark eyes were fixated on the werewolves and they were glinting with interest as he watched them sit motionless in the paddock. “That combination should give you a good balance of harmony and inner peace and reduce the need to instruct it.”
“Yeah that’s a good idea,” Hermione nodded as she pulled her notebook and pen from her purse. While she began documenting their observations and questions and noting down Nasir’s suggestions Harry turned to look at Bill as the redhead spoke.
“I assume the red looking one is my father?” Bill asked, a small smile playing on his lips as he looked at the largest werewolf of the bunch.
If they were going based purely on sizes Harry assumed that he was correct – though he found it curious which traits seemed to directly translate through and which ones didn’t. Liza had kept her blue eyes, but her mixed coat was entirely different from her normal black hair. If the large red-ish looking werewolf was indeed Arthur, his eyes had remained blue and his coat had stuck fairly true to his natural hair colour. That would make the second-largest grey werewolf Colin – which made sense given the size and hair colour, but his eyes had shifted to yellow instead of their normal brown. And most curious was the medium-sized jet-black sleek looking one which was obviously Ava because it was a tripod. Her normal brown eyes had shifted into a colour that he could only describe as silver and her coat didn’t match her typical dark brown.
“I think so,” Harry said slowly, his eyes scanning over the two largest werewolves once more. “Colin, move to the left six paces.”
The grey werewolf slowly stood and shifted to the left, standing there rather unenthusiastically and staring at the fence line with an expression that looked hauntingly similar to one that Colin would actually make.
“Yeah the red one is definitely Arthur,” Harry smiled at Bill. He wondered if they had any human thoughts going through their minds with the bond in place, perhaps that was why their expressions seemed so… thoughtful. It was yet another thing that they needed to ask once the night was over.
“Their coat colouring is fascinating,” Hermione muttered. Harry could see her taking down a description of each creature before them and making a guess at their size and weight. “I wonder what it’s based on – or if it pulls from recessive genes.”
“I’m not sure,” Shacklebolt said as he leaned on the fence and looked at the group. “Unfortunately, the werewolf community has not been studied – at least not properly and certainly not from any other perspective than calling them beasts or with the angle of trying to exploit them in some way. As a result, the communities are rather secretive or people who are infected try to remain anonymous and hide within society. Most of them stay single and avoid having friends in order to make hiding easier.”
“When this is over, we should fix that,” Hermione said quietly, her eyes still watching the rather peaceful looking creatures before them.
“I agree,” Shacklebolt said firmly, his jaw clenching tight as he nodded. “There are a lot of things that haven’t been done right in the past – and it needs to change. We’ll never truly move past this war unless we start addressing the issues that have been plaguing our world for generations. It’s the reason why nothing changed after the first war.”
Shacklebolt took a low deep breath and Harry saw a look of determined resolve pass over his eyes.
“We failed your generation,” the tall man said quietly before he turned to look at both Harry and Hermione. “There’s no other way to say it and no point in making excuses. When this is over – I will help you fix this. I will help you make real change happen.”
-x-x-
Hermione glanced over the notes that she’d jotted down over the course of the last several hours. She’d documented each werewolf’s form, their defining features and their estimated height and weight. She’d documented the commands they’d tested and the extent at which they were followed including everything from sit, lay down, roll over to getting the group to run from one side of the paddock to the other and stop instantly on command. They’d monitored how long the calm command lasted and it turned out that after the second wave of anger at the sight of humans had faded it took approximately one full hour for them to become agitated and aggressive once more.
This told her that they needed to solidify the bond’s foundation in peace and calm more thoroughly. She’d anticipated them being violent and designed the bonds for it – she’d just not anticipated them being this violent and aggressive. Frankly, even though she disagreed with the intent of the approach – she now understood why Arlo had used such controlling runes in his bond. He’d completely shut down their ability to be independent creatures because he’d viewed the risk as too great and he was using them as tools. She, on the other hand, was trying to find a suitable balance of command vs natural instinct. All documentation showed that werewolves were capable of being peaceful when surrounded by other creatures – the problem was their reaction to humans and that was what she was trying to address. She didn’t want to turn them into mindless lumps of flesh that could be ordered around or abused if tied to the wrong person.
At one point during the night Hermione and Harry both instructed the werewolves to relax, which had resulted in Colin moving off to the side and napping in a corner while Arthur wandered the paddock in a slow circle sniffing at the different plants and trees. Liza ate the grass, pawed at the ground and dug a small hole while Ava laid down in a cozy-looking patch of moss in the moonlight. Thus, making it abundantly clear that Liza had enormous amounts of energy compared to the rest of the group if that was what she considered relaxing. A short while later they’d almost run into trouble when they’d instructed the group to play in order to let them burn off some energy.
Liza had run after Colin at full speed, darting around the older werewolf and trying to grab his tail. Colin, who had not seemed interested in playing had nipped at her as she managed to get a grip on his tail – which had resulted in Ava and Arthur running over on their own accord when Liza yelped in pain. In the end Hermione and Harry quickly gained control of the situation by telling them all to freeze, then they slowly moved them all away from each other and calmed them down once more. After that Liza seemed to keep her distance from Colin and tended to follow Ava around – though she didn’t dare try to grab anyone else’s tail but her own for the rest of the night.
In the end they concluded that the best commands were the straightforward ones that couldn’t be left up to interpretation: be calm, freeze, sit, do not attack anything, and relax worked best to keep the group safe and minding their own business – except for Liza who seemed determined to be near another werewolf or approach the fence line regardless of how hard they tried to keep her away. She would listen to their spacing instructions for a maximum of fifteen minutes then they’d catch her slowly inching her way closer. One time she did it while pretending to be laying down, but Hermione had caught her scooching forward to the fence when her heart rate had picked up in excitement. Thankfully, both Ava and Arthur seemed to tolerate her rather well so they didn’t have any issues when Liza approached them or trailed behind the two other werewolves.
Halfway through the night Bill floated more food into the pen and they all got to eat and drink. Nasir suggested a third rune which could be added that might help give them the ability to hear their own human consciousness while transformed. Shacklebolt kept the Order members at Shell Cottage up to date through the tags, and everyone seemed rather thrilled with the results and eager to see the experiment continue and improve in the future. They checked on Remus a few times during the night, but the older greying werewolf had been asleep each time on one of the fluffy blankets that Fleur had left so they didn’t disturb him.
An hour before the werewolves reverted back to their human form Shacklebolt allowed Mrs. Weasley to apparate to the barn and stand at the fence line with them to see how it impacted the werewolves when a new human was added within sight – it certainly affected them, but again the bonds held firm and Hermione and Harry were able to control them with a quick order to sit and an instruction to remain calm.
Mrs. Weasley had nearly cried when Hermione let Arthur slowly come within ten feet of the wards and sit down. It had been fascinating to watch. The large red werewolf had sat there staring directly at Mrs. Weasley and only at Mrs. Weasley – and the woman was convinced that her husband’s mind was present and that he knew that it was her.
They’d know soon enough when they spoke to them in the next hour after they shifted back into human form, but it certainly raised the question of whether or not control through the bands would even be necessary in the future. It was a well-known fact that lycanthropes lost their ability to think or rationalize like a human being during a full moon – and yet they recalled everything that had happened and everything that they did once returned to their human state.
It suggested that their human consciousness was still functional to some degree within the recesses of their mind when in werewolf form. And it suggested that both forms had access to the full brain since the memories were shared so if they could pull the human consciousness forward through a band while simultaneously repressing the aggressive werewolf instincts arguably one could maintain their human mind during a change and they wouldn’t need a guardian at all. One could be individually banded and be safe to be around others.
But they were still a long way off from that. Hermione made note of it to continue her research in that direction, but she knew it would take time and a lot more trials before they ever removed the control factor of the bond since it was a safety feature.
Finally, about twenty minutes before the end of the night, after Liza had tried to approach the fence for the umpteenth time and yowled in annoyance when they sent her away – they agreed to let her approach fully. As far as Hermione could tell there was no anger or violence through the bond when she tried to come near and the only thing that she felt was a sense of curiosity. So, everyone at the fence line calmly drew their wands just in case and Hermione instructed Liza to not attack anything and to relax freely. The results were instantaneous, she trotted over to the fence, pausing every few feet as if she was expecting to be turned away and then finally once she realized no one was stopping her she ran towards it at full speed – but she didn’t attack.
She simply came to a stop right at the edge, her bright eyes taking them all in one at a time as her nose twitched excitedly. Even Hermione had to admit she understood what Mrs. Weasley had meant when she spoke about Arthur – because when Liza looked directly at her, Hermione couldn’t help but feel like there was some sort of recognition behind her eyes.
She’d seen countless werewolves before, she fought them, killed them, been mauled and nearly killed by them and in each case when you looked in their eyes, they all looked the same – empty. Void of any thought or emotion aside from rage, anger and an insatiable urge to kill humans. Aside from the shape and display of emotion there was absolutely nothing human or reasonable in their gaze and as much as it pained Hermione to admit it – people had every right to fear them. When not under the control of wolfsbane potion werewolves were dangerous, incredibly so, and they were a threat to most average wizards.
But how the wizarding world had chosen to deal with them and treat them was unacceptable – it was like no one had ever really bothered to try and understand lycanthropy, how the infection worked or why it worked the way that it did. No one had ever tried to help them or cure them – save for the inventor of the wolfsbane potion. Instead werewolves were written off as beasts and ostracized from civilization.
But this, Hermione thought as she looked into Liza’s humanlike eyes and inched closer to the fence. Liza’s mouth was hanging open, and she was panting from running around, her ears were still alert as she ducked her head in a fashion similar to something that Hermione had seen dogs do before their owners. This is a real start. This could change everything.
“Ten minutes until sunrise,” Bill said as he eyed the first glimpses of light that shone over the horizon. The moon was barely visible now and Hermione could see the nervous anxiety beginning to affect the werewolves once more. “I have to say – this went a hell of a lot better than I’d expected.”
“No kidding,” Shacklebolt grinned and patted Harry firmly on the shoulder as he gave Hermione a warm look. “This is a game-changer.”
“It’s a start,” Hermione smiled at him and let out a sigh. “Okay, Liza – back to the barn.”
The patchwork werewolf gave her typical yowl of irritation but turned and trotted back to the barn with the others.
“Once the transformation is done, we’ll all have breakfast,” Mrs. Weasley said warmly as she leaned on the fence and watched her husband disappear from sight. “Fleur and Luna have been cooking up a storm. I was helping them with it before I came here.”
“Did no one at the cottage sleep?” Hermione asked, raising a brow as she fought back a yawn. It was the first hint of exhaustion that had come over her body since the night began. She’d been too interested in their findings and too hopped up on adrenaline to feel the weariness until now. But as the red glow of morning lit up the paddock, she realized just how tired she was and leaned heavy against the railing between Harry and Nasir.
“No,” Mrs. Weasley smiled broadly. “Just Charlie – everyone else was far too nervous. Too excited – Shacklebolt’s updates every few minutes had the cottage buzzing all night. Fred and George showed up just after 3 am with some snacks and games and they’ve made a night of it. At one point the exploding snap got so loud I had to cast another silencing charm on Charlie’s room. Thank goodness tomorrow is Sunday or we’d be a right mess.”
Hermione snorted and couldn’t help but smile as she leaned comfortably against Harry’s shoulder while letting her hands dangle into the paddock as her elbows braced on the fence. She was glad that Mrs. Weasley had let everyone at the cottage deal with this the way that they needed too and that she hadn’t tried to force everyone to go to bed. “They probably needed it – after everything that’s happened.”
“I think so too,” Mrs. Weasley gave her a warm smile over Harry’s head and Hermione could tell the woman was getting emotional. “Thank you – for agreeing to try these. I know they had a risk and you were both hesitant about it. I know you think the bands are still far from perfect – but these really have made a difference. I’ve seen Remus during his transformations while on wolfsbane potion a few times because I dropped off supplies to Tonks – and this is nothing that like. He was always sleepy and drowsy while on that stuff. Wolfsbane potion might keep them nonviolent, but it’s like a drug that makes them spacey and exhausted. I’ve never seen this – clear eyes and completely aware of their surroundings. This is something to be proud of.”
Hermione nodded awkwardly and let her eyes trail back to the barn.
“Yeah, I checked on Remus part way through the night and it’s as you said,” Hermione said quietly. “He’s harmless but not really aware of what’s going on around him. He slept most of the night. I’d never seen wolfsbane potion in effect until tonight, but I’d read about it. It works but – it seems to take a toll afterwards and leaves the user exhausted for a few days.”
“I’m curious to see how they feel after this,” Harry said quietly.
The group fell silent when the sound of whimpers and howls started. Hermione could only grit her teeth as the heart rates in her head soared once more before rapidly dropping down to human levels. She could tell that they were in pain even without the sounds just by looking at their vitals. The transformations in and of themselves were violent and brutal and she made a mental note to look into that in the future as well even though she doubted there was much that could be done.
They all remained silent and motionless until Hermione felt the heartbeats in her head level out to a normal human rate. She waited an additional minute just to be sure before she nodded to Harry and pulled herself over the fence.
“The transformations are complete,” Hermione said to the group though she kept her wand out and her shield in place regardless. “Harry and I will go make sure everything is okay first since our shields are still active. Once it is secure you can come back into the paddock.”
The group nodded – it was the plan that they had discussed and agreed to previously. But she could tell that they were anxious to know how everyone was so she and Harry made their way quickly across the paddock toward the barn.
“They’re stressed,” Harry said quietly as they approached the large door.
“I know,” Hermione nodded sadly, she could feel the vitals flaring with pain in her head. “Let’s just hope the injuries are minimal.”
“Arthur?” Hermione said hesitantly as they reached the large open door. “Ava? Liza? Colin?”
“Present!” Liza's raspy voice rang out like she was answering an attendance call in class. Hermione grinned as she heard the hollow and pained chuckle of the others echoing through the barn and she felt Harry let out a sigh of relief next to her before they both shared a warm smile.
“Ha aha – ugh, Liza don’t,” Ava groaned as she clearly tried not to laugh. “I think some of my ribs are broken – please don’t make me laugh.”
“Sorry,” Liza said somewhat sheepishly, her voice coming from her individual walled in space.
Hermione turned back to the paddock, giving a quick thumbs up to the others at the fence line before she and Harry got back to work. She heard the pop of Shacklebolt apparating away per plan as he returned to Shell Cottage to update the remaining Order members in person. She could hear Mrs. Weasley clambering over the paddock fence to come check on Arthur while both Bill and Nasir went to inspect and repair the damage in the paddock.
“Is it okay if I come in?” Hermione called out to Ava as she moved through the barn toward the individual corners. There were claw marks on some of the walls and a hole was torn clean through Colin's privacy wall but all in all the damage seemed rather minor.
“Yeah, it's okay,” Ava answered as Hermione approached.
She left Harry to tend to the males and was surprised when Liza popped into view just outside of her individual walled in area. The girl looked tired, dark circles lined under her eyes and she looked a bit shaky on her feet – but overall, she seemed perfectly fine and she’d even had the energy to re-dress herself.
“I'm okay,” Liza said with a smile as if reading the brief look of concern that brushed across Hermione’s face.
“Okay,” Hermione smiled at the girl, but she didn’t miss the way she was favouring her right leg where Colin had bit her. “I’ll fix your leg up in just a second okay – let me just make sure that Ava hasn't punctured anything.”
Liza nodded and took a seat in one of the chairs that Fleur had set out around the barn. Surprisingly, most of those were intact too and it seemed that the damage had been mainly contained to their individual areas – which made sense since that was where the transformations had taken place.
When Hermione rounded the corner to Ava's area, she saw the muggle woman wearing the robe that Fleur had left for her. The blonde witch had figured that if they took off their clothes first in the privacy of their individual areas before transforming it could save them some ruined outfits. She'd also left them all soft robes to put on after the transformation since both Tonks and Remus had said that if the transformations went poorly one could be so stiff and sore that re-dressing was an impossible task.
And it was clear that Ava was in pain, she was slouched against the barn wall covered in sweat and clutching her side tightly.
“I can still breathe,” she gave a pained smile. “So, I don’t think it's too bad.”
“Well let's take a quick look,” Hermione kept her voice reassuring as she quickly cast a diagnostic charm.
The bubbles appeared over the muggle woman’s head and Hermione examined them carefully. Sure enough two ribs were broken on her right side from when her rib cage had expanded then collapsed. They’d not properly healed post change but the breaks were clean and easy – and there was no other lingering damage.
“You’re right,” Hermione smiled genuinely at the woman before her. “Clean breaks – easy enough to fix and a relatively painless spell. Just hold still and I'll heal them up.”
Ava nodded and waited patiently while Hermione knelt by her side and cast a quick episkey. She grunted as an audible crack came from her side and the ribs realigned and mended but her expression softened as the pain from the break faded away and it no longer hurt to breathe.
“Nothing else?” Ava asked her, eyeing the diagnostic that floated above her head with curious eyes.
“No,” Hermione smiled, but she paused as she watched Ava’s eyes tracing the bubbles with interest and she felt her brow furrow with thought. There was no reason why a muggle couldn’t be taught to read the charm even if they couldn't cast it.
Why didn’t I think of that? she inwardly berated herself for not realizing that Ava might be curious to learn magic even if she couldn’t use it. It seemed stupid in hindsight that she’d not considered it before.
“Ava,” Hermione said curiously as she helped the woman to her feet. “Would you like to learn how to read the diagnostic charm?”
Ava froze, her eyes meeting Hermione’s carefully and curiously. She’d been reaching for her sweater off the chair near her cot, but her attention was now entirely diverted.
“Is – would that be okay? Are you allowed to teach people like me how to read magic?” Ava asked quietly, her voice a bit unsure. “Because I would like to if you can – even though I can’t ever cast it, it seems useful – it seems like a good skill to have, and maybe it might make me a bit more useful in emergencies.”
“Of course,” Hermione said firmly. “You're part of this world Ava, it’s perfectly fine for you to learn. There is no rule or law that says that you can’t teach muggles who already know about the magical world how to understand magic – the laws simply forbid witches and wizards from announcing the magical world to the mass muggle public. The point is to limit exposure but there are muggles out there who know about us either because they’re in situations like yours or because they have muggleborn witches and wizards in the family. They’re bound to secrecy, yes, but there isn’t anything in place to stop them from learning about magic. That said – even if there was a law that said I couldn't teach you I'd do it anyway. You're going to be spending your life with us – Charlie is going to grow up in this. There is no valid reason why you can’t be taught to understand certain spells or even how to brew potions that don’t require the use of magic to complete so long as you’re supervised and understand the risk. It’s no different than working with chemicals as the muggles do – we just need to do it safely.”
Ava’s face crumpled in reaction and she swallowed hard and nodded as she looked at Hermione sincerely.
“Thank you,” Ava said quietly. “Thank you, Hermione – that means more thank you think.”
“I should have thought of it earlier,” Hermione shook her head. “It was a massive oversight of mine.”
Ava laughed and grimaced as her sore muscles ached. “You have had other things to worry about ahead of teaching me magic. You've all done lots already to make me feel welcomed as it is.”
“Do you need help getting dressed?” Hermione asked the woman.
“No, I think I can manage – but do you have anything for this general pain I'm feeling pretty much everywhere in my body?” Ava said with a small laugh. “Because it really sucks.”
Hermione smiled and pulled a flask from her purse.
“Calming draught,” she handed the entire small bottle to the woman. “Drink the whole thing. It will relax your muscles and reduce the tightness. If it still hurts after that we can add some muggle ibuprofen – but we’ll start with this.”
“Thanks,” Ava took the bottle and bit the stopper out, downing the whole thing without a moment’s hesitation. “I'll be out in a second.”
Hermione took her leave and returned to Liza who was patiently waiting on the chair just around the corner.
“Hermione?” Liza asked quietly as she watched the witch kneel to examine her leg. She’d already rolled up her pant leg in advance to show a large deep bruise and only two small puncture wounds.
“Yes?” Hermione asked as she worked, quickly casting a diagnostic bubble and confirming that the injuries were minor. These could be fixed quickly with bruise paste and a small amount of dittany. All of Liza’s bones though had returned to their normal shape and aside from the general soreness that everyone would be feeling – there were no lingering injuries from her transformation.
“Can you teach me too?”
Hermione’s eyes darted up to the girl.
“Yes, of course Liza,” she said softly. “I'll teach you everything that I can.”
“Thank you,” Liza gave her a tired smile as she leaned back against the chair and lazily watched Hermione pour dittany over the small scratches and two punctures. She didn’t even flinch as the green smoke billowed and hissed while the skin reformed.
“I knew it was you,” she said in a tired raspy voice. “At the fence line, that's why I wanted to come over.”
Hermione’s hands froze and she felt her heart well with hope.
“You did?” Hermione said almost breathlessly as her heart began to race with excitement. She could practically feel the weight of her runes floating away as her mind began working to figure out what else they could do to improve these bands.
“Yeah, it wasn’t perfectly clear – but I recognized you all and I knew that I knew you. I remember wanting to bite you when I first saw you but the calmer I became the more I remembered knowing what was happening when it was happening,” Liza said thoughtfully. “Some parts are like watching a movie that I don’t remember being a part of, like the memories are there in my head but I don’t remember being present when it actually happened. But – most of them are just regular memories. I remember being there, I remember thinking that you all looked nervous – I remember most of it as actually being there.”
Hermione heard a noise to her right and she turned to see Harry standing there with a look on his face that perfectly emulated how she felt in the moment. Disbelief, hope, excitement – a bizarre saddened happiness that she couldn’t articulate.
“Arthur said something very similar,” Harry said quietly and then his face broke out into a full grin. “And so did Colin.”
It took them another twenty minutes to de-band everyone, clean them up with a scourgify and pack everything up. Remus joined them partway through looking dazed, exhausted and groggy just like what Mrs. Weasley had described. Apparently, he'd slept most of the night, but you wouldn't know it by looking at him.
He looked worse off than the others.
Nasir and Bill offered to help apparate everyone back to the cottage but before letting everyone go Hermione completed a final diagnostic check with Harry to confirm there was no lingering damage and she quietly asked each werewolf if they were up for a big Weasley style breakfast. She knew that everyone at the cottage meant well but she also knew that the werewolves were exhausted from their night and might want to be alone. She wanted to give them an out without them feeling pressured to join in because she couldn’t blame them if they weren't feeling up to it. She offered them the chance to sleep the soreness from the night off under dreamless sleeping draught in the safety of the barn or in their rooms at the cottage. Everyone refused except for Colin who quickly took her up on the offer but requested to stay at the cottage in the room that he'd shared with Mr. Ollivander the night before. Hermione agreed and had Bill bring the man to the cottage separately.
Mrs. Weasley apparated Arthur and Nasir took Remus while Harry and Hermione took Ava and Liza each. Despite the fact that it was now after 7 am and no one had slept a wink – the group was buzzing with a bizarre amount of energy and Ava was antsy to see Charlie again.
They agreed to eat, visit, briefly discuss everything that had happened with the group and then go right to bed as per Hermione and Harry's instruction. She wanted them all to recover as quickly as possible, so she made them all promise to sleep for a solid 4 hours, get up to eat a late lunch, keep their activities to a minimum and then have an early dinner and go straight to bed by no later than 8 pm. They seemed lively now – but Hermione delayed the full debriefing and questioning regarding the effectiveness of the bands until later Sunday afternoon because she knew that once they ate, they’d crash.
And she was right.
Their initial arrival at the Cottage was received with loud voices, excitement, hugs, and triumph like they’d come back from battle. Ava and Liza smiled brightly as they chatted with the table, happily ate food and answered questions about what it was like to be a werewolf. Ava held Charlie firmly on her lap throughout the entire meal and spoke quietly to a rather groggy looking Remus once the initial wave of excitement had died down. Fred, George and Luna fawned over Hermione’s description of how adorable Liza had looked and behaved – the girl blushed and took the three chocolate frogs that Fred gave to her with a huge smile. Her eyes shone with excitement when Fred told her that he’d brought her fireworks too as per Harrys request, but she seemed disappointed that she’d have to wait to use them until later.
Arthur watched the commotion in the kitchen from the head of the table with a tired yet peaceful look after he personally thanked both Harry and Hermione for keeping him safe throughout the night. Fleur beamed when Remus said the blankets were indeed rather comfortable and Bill lovingly held her hand throughout the entire meal as he fought back yawns of exhaustion. Nasir remained silent, sitting quietly at Hermione’s side and watching the commotion with no hint of interest – but Hermione knew better. She knew that he was listening to every single conversation just like he always was, even the quiet one that Ron was having with Dean at the far end.
Shacklebolt declared that the last twenty-four hours had been a game-changer and that once the war was over, and once key personnel had been strategically removed from the Ministry, he would personally take the initiative to both fund and direct massive changes regarding werewolf legislation. He gave them a condensed version of how he planned to make the changes within the Ministry to better werewolf rights and care – and it became abundantly clear to anyone in the room who knew anything about the inner workings of the Ministry that this was something that the man had been developing for a long time. Apparently, since he’d first met Remus and these bands were the final piece of the puzzle. They were the catalyst that could affect the major changes that he’d been lining up in the wings with Remus’ input and sway those who doubted the change.
He asked Hermione and Harry to consider working with him on the project after the war and he even said that he would file the paperwork required to have them both exempt from completing seventh year at Hogwarts. Instead he’d have them both listed as viable candidates to write a condensed NEWT test. He made it clear that it was their choice – that he would respect whatever they chose to do and would wait for them if they wanted to finish their final year. But he also made it clear that he believed them returning to Hogwarts would be a waste of time since he seemed to think that there was nothing that the traditional seventh year curriculum would teach them that they didn’t already know. He thought that their time would be better spent either working, enrolled in a post-Hogwarts apprenticeship education program or pursuing research.
Neither Hermione nor Harry knew what to say in that moment – they themselves had yet to figure out what they would do after the war and they were grateful that he didn’t pressure them. He just told them to think about it and they agreed that they would.
Shortly after that the crash happened almost like clockwork and people’s eyes began to droop. The werewolves were quickly sent to bed and Fleur and Bill shooed everyone else home or to their rooms to nap – they point blank refused to let anyone help them clean up the kitchen. After being shooed for a second time by Fleur, Hermione finally conceded and left the cottage with Harry, Nasir and the twins. She was excited to catch a brief few minutes of sleep before completing the wand core insertion with Nasir and her mind was already racing once more when the twins interrupted her thoughts.
“Oh hey – Harry, Hermione,” George said as he approached them. “I forgot about this.”
“About what?” Hermione asked curiously as she watched him rummage around through his pockets while she leaned tiredly against Harry’s side. She noticed that Nasir had continued walking back to his tent. “I really don’t need any chocolate frogs – but I appreciate you offering earlier.”
“No,” George snorted as he continued digging around. “Not chocolate frogs.”
“A letter,” Fred said as he pulled an envelope from his pocket. “Geez, George – you really are tired. I was the one that packed it.”
George let out a sigh, a look of exhaustion covering his face as he rubbed his brow. It was a rare sight to see the twins outwardly tired and weary.
“Yeah,” George said quietly. “It’s been a long night. We just found it yesterday but with everything going on I almost forgot.”
“Here,” Fred held out the letter and Hermione took it curiously. When she flipped it over in her hands, she saw the words ‘for Harry and Hermione ONLY – I’m not fucking around, I mean it!’ written on the front. The writing looked familiar and yet she couldn’t place it.
“Who’s it from?” Hermione asked, her eyes shifting back up to look at the twins as her brow furrowed.
“Ginny,” George said. “At least we’re 99.98% sure it’s from her – we examined it thoroughly and I’d know her delayed bat bogey hex anywhere – and I have no intentions of fucking around with it.”
“It’s been sealed to only open for you two anyways – not sure where she learned how to do that,” Fred said with a hint of a smile on his lips. “But we wouldn’t have been able to open it even if we wanted to.”
“The writing is hers too, and we traced the envelope – no one else but her and us have touched it,” George said tiredly. “We wouldn’t have given it to you two otherwise, but it’s extremely unlikely that it’s a trap.”
“Might want to toss a shield on just in case before you open it though,” Fred added with a nod. “Looks like the hex goes off if someone tries to tamper with it – but just in case, you don’t want to get hit with that.”
“No kidding,” Harry said quietly as Hermione passed him the letter to examine. “Thank you – for passing this through.”
“No problem,” George nodded.
“How did you get it?” Hermione asked him.
“It was hidden in with the supply request we got from them on Thursday,” Fred said, his face still sporting his rare serious expression. “We didn’t notice it right away because she hid it so damn well – it’s almost like she didn’t want anyone else in the DA to know that she stuck it in there, or for Aberforth to find it.”
“It’s actually lucky we found it at all,” George said quietly. “I dropped the container and it cracked – that’s why I found it.”
“Strange,” Hermione said quietly, eyeing the envelope that Harry was holding.
“I know,” George said seriously. “We genuinely do think it’s safe – but – be careful with it.”
“We will,” Harry nodded. “Thank you for checking it out first – really – that means a lot.”
“Well we can’t have our chosen one dying can we,” Fred winked before he turned back to look at his twin. “Alright – I need to leave before I reach the point that it’s unsafe for me to apparate. Besides they need their rest too.”
Hermione and Harry both said goodbye, watching the twins disappear with a small pop before slowly making their way across the sand to their tent.
“Open it now or later?” Hermione asked, dropping her voice low as she moved next to Harry.
“Now,” Harry said quietly. “This could be very serious.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Hermione nodded and cast a heavy silencing charm around them. “We’ll do it fifty feet from the tent to the South – shields on and wands out.”
Harry nodded and they carefully made their way South past the wards and out of sight before stopping just a few feet shy of the water’s edge. They both cast their shields and quickly examined the letter themselves – but as the twins said, there was absolutely nothing suspicious about it besides the delayed bat bogey hex and antitampering charm.
Hermione kept her wand trained on the letter while Harry very carefully and very slowly opened it. She could feel her chest tightening with fear as he broke the seal and began to turn back the fold – but nothing happened. Her grip tightened on her wand as she watched him slowly pull out the folded piece of parchment from the envelope – but nothing happened. Her heart was racing nervously as he unfolded it and paused as if expecting the paper to ignite or for a curse to be released.
But again – nothing happened.
She watched as his eyes shifted across the paper, his brow furrowing as he read what was very clearly just a letter until the silence became unbearable and she couldn’t take it.
“Harry,” Hermione said as she cautiously took a step forward. “What is it?”
“It’s a letter,” Harry said slowly, his head shaking as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just read. “From Ginny she – she wrote this to us because she worried that some of her memories would be obliviated soon and she thought that they were important. She wanted to make sure that we knew.”
“That we knew what?” Hermione asked, her heart rate not dropping in the least as Harry’s confusion turned to a look that she’d seen many times before.
“Susan punched Snape in the face,” Harry said in disbelief, his brow creasing as the letter dropped to his side and he looked Hermione dead in the eyes. “And he let her.”
"What?"
Warnings:
This chapter contains: implied torture
******************************************
Hermione drummed her fingers on the table. Her eyes boring a hole into the letter that sat on the worn surface between her and Harry. She felt dumbfounded – positively dumbfounded by the contents and after reading it over multiple times and discussing it at length with Harry for the last forty-five minutes she still couldn’t really swallow the information.
How could this be possible – and better yet, why would Snape have allowed it?
According to Ginny’s letter Susan had run into Snape only moments after finding out that her parents had been murdered. Like – literally run into him. She’d full speed ploughed directly into the man and nearly knocked him to the ground. However, that piece of information was nothing in comparison to the details that followed because according to Ginny, Susan had cursed at the man, screamed in his face and then punched him directly in the nose. Yet Snape had stood there and done nothing; and had allegedly allowed the girl to beat the ever-loving crap out of him until she broke something, and then he finally stopped her.
Ginny recounted that he’d called her Susan. He’d told her to ‘calm down’. He’d held her up as she fell apart before him while screaming at him that she hated him before he gently sat her on a window ledge and then obliviated her with no repercussions for her actions.
Allegedly.
It was so uncharacteristically Snape that even she had a hard time believing that the events documented in the letter were real. Both she and Harry knew it was possible that the letter was a fake even if their detection charms revealed nothing. They both knew that it was possible someone had either forced Ginny to write the letter or had posed as her and written it themselves. But that made no sense either. For what purpose would this fake letter serve aside from frustrating them and wasting their time? Why on earth would anyone expend that much energy and go to those lengths to try and convince them that this had happened and misdirect them with information about Professor Snape?
On that premise alone both she and Harry fully agreed that the letter had to be from Ginny. Adding on top of that the fact that the handwriting was unmistakably hers, the composition and word choice was her style, no one else had touched the envelopes, and Ginny had used a phrase within the letter that she and Harry had agreed upon a year ago to use in their communications the letter was undeniably from Ginny.
Sure, someone could have learned all that through legilimency but then they were back to the original question of why on earth would someone fake this? Why would anyone go through the effort of interrogating Ginny and hiding this letter for the twins to find?
What the hell for and to gain what?
That option, as shocking and uncomfortable as it was to admit it, made even less sense than Snape allowing Susan to punch him. Which left them exactly where they’d started: believing that the letter was indeed real and then trying to understand why. This just left Hermione feeling tired and weary as a rather formidable headache began to form at the front of her skull as she tried to force her tired mind to use logic and come up with a reasonable explanation.
She and Harry had stopped talking about five minutes ago, both of them just staring at the letter in silence as they sat with the only conclusion that both of them could come to: there was more to the story of Severus Snape and clearly neither of them had all the information. Clearly the man was either working with someone other than Voldemort, working for himself, or – unbelievably – he was still trying to assist the Order. Those were the only three plausible explanations but no matter how they cut the cake they just could not rationalize that Snape could be working 100% for Voldemort and allow Susan to get away with such behaviour – not when they factored in the return of Hermione’s wand and the previous discussion that they’d had about the tall intimidating potions master. Not when they both knew that he could have killed Harry last year when fleeing the castle after Dumbledore’s death, or that he could have captured Harry and taken him to Voldemort but hadn’t.
No, Hermione thought as her eyes shifted to Harry’s tight expression. Something else is going on here.
The only question that remained was what?
They’d both agreed to continue on as per their already agreed to plan since the new information, while interesting and a bit mind-boggling, really didn’t change anything. They were still going to keep Snape alive and they were still going to take him in for questioning when the opportunity came because their biggest concern right now was the possibility of another threat after Voldemort. They needed to talk to the man, and they needed to be sure that they didn’t just swap out one power-hungry demon for another that could be lurking in the shadows.
Yet acknowledging the small possibility that Snape could still, maybe, possibly be on their side was hard for Harry – and she knew this.
She could see it on his face. She could see him struggling with his hatred toward the man as he fought to keep his mind focused on facts and follow logic. She knew that he hated this – he hated the idea that he might have been wrong and that someone as horrible and cruel as Professor Snape could potentially be an ally. It was pretty much like grating Harry’s emotions against a cheese grater and asking him to abandon everything that he’d known to be true for the last seven years. He’d struggled to process the idea the last time it came up and he was struggling again.
It was hard and it didn’t help that neither one of them had slept in over 24 hours. They’d had a long night with the werewolves, and this was another layer on a complicated cake they’d not wanted. Life was asking a lot of them and right now they both needed a break.
“Harry,” Hermione said quietly when she could no longer take the deafening silence that rang out between them. She instinctually reached across the table and took his hand but before she could say anything else, he cut her off.
“I just wish we could talk to him,” Harry said tightly as he squeezed her hand and met her eyes with an exhausted look. “I wish we could break into Hogwarts, corner him in his office and then ask him what the hell is going on.”
“I know,” Hermione said sadly. “But that would be incredibly dangerous Harry – we can’t go anywhere near Hogwarts until we get rid of these Horcruxes and gain an upper hand.”
“It wouldn’t matter anyway,” Harry said with a hint of annoyance in his voice. “There’s no way in hell that man would talk to me or tell us anything. He fucking hates me – even if he is still helping us it doesn’t change the fact that he’s a dick and he spent his life tormenting us at school.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” Hermione frowned as she thought back to the incident in fourth year where her teeth grew painfully large and Snape did absolutely nothing about it. “Which is why this is all the more unbelievable – but I still don’t see how or why this could be fake.”
“I know,” Harry groaned and rubbed his forehead with his opposite hand before giving her a defeated look. “I know the letter is real, I’m just much more inclined to believe that Snape is in this for himself – or is helping someone else in the shadows. If he was helping us why hasn’t he said something? After Dumbledore died – after the werewolves were created and everything else going on at the Ministry and Hogwarts – if he was still helping us why wouldn’t he reach out to us? Why wouldn’t he let us know? You said you thought you saw him at the Manor before we left – which means he would have seen what we did. Surely he knows that if we were to see him now we’d kill him on spot. Wouldn’t he want to tell us if he was helping?”
“You would think so,” Hermione nodded and gave Harry a small smile. “But maybe he thinks we’re a risk. He knew about your connection to You know Who, Harry – maybe he thinks he can’t tell us.”
“Maybe,” Harry nodded slowly. “Or maybe he plans to try and take the snake’s role once he’s dead, maybe he’s just waiting in the wings – he’s a powerful man I’ll admit to that, he could do it if he wanted to. Or maybe he’s helping someone else.”
“Maybe,” Hermione nodded and squeezed Harry’s hand tighter. “But he’s such a secretive and solitary man – which only makes it harder. I doubt anyone knows what’s going on. It’s not like he has any friends or acquaintances that we can go interrogate more easily than breaking into Hogwarts.”
“Well,” Harry said slowly as the chimes surrounding their tent dinged softly. “That’s not entirely true.”
Hermione raised a brow at him before turning to look at the entrance just in time to see Nasir enter the quiet tent. Harry was looking at the tall mysterious man quite intently and Hermione already knew exactly what was going through her partner’s head. Nasir took three steps into the tent and froze, he gave them a long look, his eyes flicking over their tired frames before he spoke in his low deep baritone.
“You didn’t sleep,” he stated it. It wasn’t a question – he knew they’d been up.
“No,” Harry said flatly as he leaned back in his chair and dropped his hold on Hermione’s hand. His eyes dropped to the letter on the table as if trying to direct Nasir’s gaze to it. “Been preoccupied.”
“I see,” Nasir said slowly. His eyes flicked briefly to the letter on the table then back to the two of them – he asked no questions and showed no interest in its contents. “Maybe some coffee before we get started.”
“Professor Snape taught you legilimency correct?” Hermione asked the tall man as she watched him moving towards their kitchen.
“I believe he is currently the Headmaster,” Nasir said with a bored tone as he grabbed the kettle and began to fill it with water.
“Indeed, he is,” Harry said quietly.
His voice was almost unnaturally calm, and Hermione’s eyes flicked back to him. Harry was staring at her intently, his eyes flicking between her and the letter as he raised a brow and nodded toward the tall man currently making coffee in their kitchen. His message was clear – but Hermione sincerely doubted that trying to interrogate Nasir about the potions master was going to get them anywhere.
She gave him a look indicating her doubt and hesitation, but Harry simply shrugged and gave her a look back that read ‘what have we got to lose’. He wasn’t wrong, so Hermione let out a quiet sigh and gave him a small smile. It was their only option aside from trying to break into the school and question the man directly.
“My question still stands,” Hermione said slowly. She took the letter from the table, turned back to look at the man in their kitchen, and unfolded herself from her chair. Harry had shifted in his seat, turning to look at Nasir directly as Hermione began her approach. “Did Headmaster Snape teach you legilimency?”
“He did,” Nasir said flatly, returning the kettle to the counter before flicking his new fake wand at it.
Hermione watched him as he pulled three cups out of the cupboard – she’d never told him where they were stored. He must have remembered from that one time when she’d gotten mugs out while he was here.
“Did you know him well?” Hermione asked as she slowly closed the distance towards the tall man.
She kept her voice level and innocent, just a hint of curiosity audible as she took in his tall form. Nasir’s crisp white dress shirt was a stark contrast to his black pants and similar to the basic clothes that Snape seemed to wear constantly under his robes. Though Nasir had evidently left his outer robes at his tent, either not wanting them or knowing that they would only get in the way. He was very practical, calculating, quiet – in fact, in many ways he was very similar to Snape.
“Hard to say,” Nasir said slowly. His response was a good sign, he’d not yet closed down and refused to speak all together. “He was always a difficult man to read – for most people.”
“But not for you,” Hermione said slowly, and to her surprise, Nasir turned around to look at her directly.
“Is there something that you want to ask me, Hermione,” Nasir said darkly.
A familiar glint was sparking in his eyes and it made Hermione’s stomach twist as he watched her like a hawk. He seemed to take in every aspect of her movement as she grew closer and clutched the letter tight in her hand. She could hear Harry getting up from his chair and shifting around the table to lean against the edge nearest to them.
“You’ve met with him. He’s taught you,” Hermione said as she held the letter out to him. His eyes glanced down to the parchment and she saw him scan it quickly before looking back to meet her gaze. She lowered her voice and levelled him with a serious look. “I think you know him better than most – and I want to know if you know what this is.”
“It would appear to be a letter from the youngest Weasley – Ginny, I believe. She is your friend, is she not?” Nasir said quietly.
“She is,” Hermione said carefully, but she felt her muscles flex with irritation. Yes, she should have phrased that better, but the man was obviously set to avoid the question he knew she was asking. “I know what it is – I want to know if you think this is possible.”
“I’m not sure why you think I’d have knowledge about the possible behaviours of seventeen-year-old females,” Nasir said dryly though his eyes were now shining with amusement. “I really can’t say if Miss Bones would be the type to punch a Headmaster in the face.”
“You’re evading the question like you always do,” Hermione said flatly, her brow rising in challenge as she stepped forward and all but pressed the letter into his chest. He took it from her, but his eyes didn’t leave her face as she crossed her arms over her chest. “Never once have I tried to make you answer something that you didn’t want to. If you don’t want to answer this question now, fine, but don’t act stupid. It’s unbecoming of you and it plainly doesn’t work. If you don’t want to tell me about your relationship with Snape, how you met him, or what you know about him, then fine, just don’t answer it.”
Nasir stared at her for a long quiet second, his eyes flicking over to Harry before his gaze narrowed a fraction and he looked back to Hermione. There was a shift in his features, a blatant knowing look behind his eyes as he stared at her seriously – and it made her think that he indeed did know Snape.
That he knew FAR more than he’d let on.
“Alright,” Nasir said slowly. His glinting eyes met her challenging ones as he took a step towards her and closed the distance to a foot. His eyes glanced down at the letter he was now holding for a second time, then he looked at her evenly and lowered his voice to a steady and serious tone. “What is your question, Hermione?”
“Is this real?” Hermione said, jerking her head at the letter as she fought to keep herself calm. She hadn’t been expecting him to jerk her around like he had, but she’d definitely not been expecting this – for him to look like he might actually give them some answers. She could feel hope mixed with nervousness expanding in her chest like a balloon as she spoke her next words carefully. “You know him – I know you do. Or at least you knew him at some point, and I think you knew him better than anyone else. We need to know if this could have actually happened?”
“You’re asking me if I believe that Headmaster Snape allowed a seventeen-year-old girl to punch him in the face and smack him around repeatedly – then obliviated her and let her go without consequences to cover it up?” Nasir asked. His gaze was intense, and she could hear Harry shift behind her in anticipation.
“Yes,” Hermione said firmly. She could feel her heart racing at the possibilities of answers. “That’s exactly what I’m asking. Because if he did – well, I’m sure you understand what that means.”
“I do,” Nasir said darkly, his eyes practically burning as he stared at her. “It’s hard to say.”
Hermione waited, watching him tensely, desperate for him to respond. For him to add something else to those four simple words, but he continued to remain silent, and she felt the bubble of hope and anxiety that had been building in her chest pop in disappointment.
He wouldn’t tell them anything.
She could practically feel Harry’s defeat as his shoulders fell and she let out a deep breath and pinched the bridge of her nose. This was a waste of time. She knew this would happen. She didn’t know why she had allowed herself to get her hopes up and think for a second that he would share anything.
She gave Harry a quiet look. If they truly wanted answers they would need to get into the school and get their hands on the man themselves. Harry gave her a small nod and turned to make his way back to his seat, but just as the thought of breaking into the school had crossed her mind and she was about to head back to the table, Nasir’s deep voice sounded again and she froze on spot. Both of them holding their breath and watching the tall man tensely as he spoke once more.
“But IF it did happen,” Nasir said slowly as he fixed them both with an intense stare. She felt a chill run down her spine, he was looking at them as if he knew what they had been thinking. “He would have good cause to keep that fact secret, and your friend would not only not remember it, there wouldn’t even be a hint of that event left lingering in her mind. It would already be completely erased, and I would suggest that you don’t try to contact her about it. In fact–“
Nasir’s voice dropped lower, and his gaze somehow became more intensified. Hermione felt like she was being sucked into it as her skin prickled and her body went cold. This was the most serious she’d seen the man before her since he’d made her promise to leave him if he told her to – and that was significant.
“If this did happen – it would be prudent for you to keep this information entirely confidential,” Nasir said, his eyes flicking to Harry as he slowly held the letter out toward them. “If there is one thing that I can tell you about Headmaster Snape – it is that he is a dedicated, logical, and calculating man who does not do anything without cause. Surely, you’ve both realized the weight that this letter holds and that it would be catastrophic for all those still at Hogwarts if this information were to come to light, because I can assure you, Tom, is not a forgiving man.”
Hermione felt the hairs prickle at the base of her skull – the message was clear as crystal.
Nasir would never clarify how he knew Snape or how well he knew Snape. He would never clarify if Snape was on their side, or if the man was working for himself or perhaps working with himself or someone else – but he’d just made it clear as day and glaringly obvious that Snape was not working entirely for Voldemort. In fact, he was probably not working for Voldemort at all.
There was something else going on just as she and Harry had suspected, and this information was dangerous. The ramifications of it getting out were likely beyond their capacity to fully anticipate or prepare for. Whatever was going on was clearly dangerous, and it risked the lives of many including their friends at Hogwarts.
Hermione heard the wooden floorboards of the tent squeak and her head twisted to watch as Harry silently crossed the room into the kitchen. He paused a few feet short of Nasir, the tall man eyed him with interest as Harry reached out and took the letter from his hand. Then, to Hermione’s surprise, Harry set the paper alight between his fingers with a perfectly controlled incendio.
“So – coffee first, then the procedure,” Harry said calmly, though Hermione could see the tension in his jaw.
Nasir’s choice words had been both specific and explicit – he’d said Snape was dedicated and he’d just all but outright confirmed their suspicion that the potions master was still helping. Or at least that that option was the most likely of the three that they’d come up with, and Harry was no doubt struggling internally to process it. It was hard for him to accept that Snape would allow Susan to punch him let alone go to such lengths to protect the girl and the other students in the school by hiding it. It raised the question of what other things had happened that they didn’t know about?
Had Snape given Hermione’s wand to Nasir and asked him to return it? It was unbelievable and harder to swallow than Polyjuice potion, but no matter how much Harry doubted it and how hard it was for him to come to terms with it, he would never risk the safety of their peers at Hogwarts by keeping such a damming piece of evidence.
Harry let the ashes of the letter fall to the ground before he nonchalantly returned to the table and took his seat once more. “Sounds like a good plan to me – I could use some caffeine.”
The kettle had started to whistle behind Nasir, matching the breaking point of tension within the tent perfectly as she tried to relax her shoulders and keep her mind from spinning with a million other questions. She watched the last piece of ash float to the ground and crumple into a tiny pile of soot and she found herself nodding in subconscious agreement to Harry’s stance.
They would carry on, and they would keep this secret.
“I’ll start locking my journal and coding our research notes,” Hermione said quietly as she turned her eyes back to Nasir. His dark piercing gaze was practically gleaming as he looked at her and nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Smart girl,” his deep voice rumbled, then he turned and made his way toward the kettle.
-x-x-
April 13, 1998
Hogwarts, 8:47 pm
Rain pounded against the windows of Hogwarts, the heavy thudding filling the halls with racket and leaving an almost unnatural chill in the air for the month of April. The students were all hiding within their dormitories and house common rooms, all too happy to be inside and safely away from the Carrows after a long and stressful day. It’d been like this all day, as if the entire United Kingdom was being drenched and preyed upon by an unnatural storm that covered the small islands. Yet Snape hardly noticed it as he laid motionless on his large bed and dead to the world around him.
He’d hardly noticed it when he’d arrived at the castle either after apparating from his home in Cokesworth to the Headmaster's office. He’d landed just after noon with an abnormally loud crack, still covered in small flecks of mud from the Malfoy’s drive and hunched over in agony. He’d not bothered responding to Dumbledore’s voice as it called out to him with desperate concern. He’d not had the energy to hear the annoying man speak so he’d entirely ignored the dead Headmaster’s words – not even looking toward the man as he limped painfully toward his quarters, his mind focused solely on the silence and solitude that awaited him inside.
He’d wanted to be alone. He’d wanted to be alone and he’d wanted to go back to sleep.
Waking up with Narcissa at his side had been oddly comforting – and yet it had also unsettled him, made him uncomfortable and had added to his ever-growing list of concerns. He’d not wanted anyone to witness what happened. He’d not wanted anyone to see him weakened or for anyone to know that he’d made a deal that involved dark magic. Sure – Narcissa didn’t know the particulars of what the deal was, but she was a smart witch and Snape had no doubt that she had her suspicions. She was a Black after all, and her family’s history was tangled tightly with the use of runes and blood binding magic.
She was both the best and worst person that could have found him lying there unconscious. The best because he trusted her to keep quiet about what happened, she didn’t truly support the Dark Lord and she wasn’t a risk because she kept her mind locked tight. But the worst because of the way that she’d looked at him. She trusted him, and she’d somehow come to care – and Snape could not afford to have people care about him.
Caring led people to make poor, rash and stupid decisions. It made people skip past the logical and act emotionally. It made people vulnerable and made them ask questions that he didn’t want to answer. It made people want to get involved in things that they should stay away from – and Narcissa Malfoy needed to stay away from him because he was a fucking mess and was already one foot in the grave.
How she’d come to care about him at all was beyond him and he was still struggling to wrap his head around the way that she’d looked at him and held his hand. He was there to support her and not the other way around – and he was only doing it because despite what people thought she wasn’t a cold-hearted monster. She deserved the chance to start over and make choices for herself instead of getting lumped in with her idiot husband. It was bad enough that she had to clean up his fucking mess.
But if she tried to get tangled in his web of deceit it would only lead to misery and more death – she had no idea the extent of everything going on and what could happen if she got involved. He knew his role in this war, he knew what he needed to do, and he knew that he needed to do it alone. He was already condemned. He was married to this cause and bound by his life – there was no room for involving other people.
So as much as he’d appreciated her help and, in some way, owed the woman his life – he would push her away like he did with everyone else and he would fight this war on his own until his very last breath.
The apparition back to the castle had been a hard blow to his already injured body and it’d left him ragged. It’d felt like he’d fallen down a set of stairs, collided with a wall and then had his head bashed in – he would know, that’d happened before.
It’d left him weakened. It’d made it hard to breathe and he’d barely had the energy to walk across the office to his quarters while ignoring the portraits almost as if in a daze of pain. He’d only barely heard Phineas as the man mentioned something about the werewolf den and the operation being a success. It had registered in the dark recesses of Snape’s mind that the information was important and that he should care more about it and yet he’d been unable to bring himself to do anything other than nod to Phineas in acknowledgement before ripping open the door to his quarters and throwing it closed behind him.
The headache potion that Narcissa had given him had helped at the time but the apparition had all but undone the effects and he’d found it hard to concentrate or function after landing in the office.
He’d silently summoned a new bottle and some calming draught from his stores and downed both vials entirely – full well knowing that they would do little to help him. The massive majority of his pain wasn’t something that could be treated by any known magic or potion. He’d already tried casting a numbing charm on his entire body, he’d already tried occluding it away and it'd hardly done anything to help. There was no way to ease the pain of having a fractured piece of one’s soul ripped out. As much as every muscle in his body hurt, as much as it was physical – it wasn’t. It ached and hurt in a way that he wasn’t able to describe because the English language simply had no word to define the feeling.
How did one capture the raw agony of losing a piece of yourself? How did one describe the feeling of being torn apart on a molecular and spiritual level?
You didn’t.
It just fucking hurt.
Like a heartbreaking agony that’d left him feeling worse than he’d ever felt before in his life – it was made worse by the fact that he could not rest and heal like he needed to. He should have stayed in Cokesworth. He shouldn’t have apparated. He shouldn’t have moved for at least twenty-four hours after it’d happened, but he’d had no choice because life was cruel and unfair – and that was his lot, that was what he deserved.
He’d had to force his body to turn on the shower, force his muscles to move as he stripped off the remains of his clothes and stepped under the steaming stream of fresh water to wash the lingering bits of mud from his hair. Narcissa had done a pretty good job of healing him and there was no visible scar on his forehead which meant that he thankfully wouldn’t need to lie to the Dark Lord and come up with an excuse in the near future. But she’d missed the small cuts on his hands from where her nails had sunk into him like claws when Peter had been skinned alive.
Peter, Snape’s eyes had shut tight as thoughts of the man filled his head and he’d had to lean against the wall of the shower as his breath became low rasping gulps for air. He’d tried to fight back the wave of nausea that hit him. Peter had been a good man. A helpful man. The kind of man that needed to be remembered and the kind of man that any decent person would be proud to know. His death felt like a lifetime ago even though it had just happened that morning and Snape had felt his insides twisting as images began to haunt his mind one after the other.
He’d tried to push it down like he always did. He’d tried to compartmentalize it and lock it away like he did with everything else. He’d tried, Merlin he’d tried so hard but in his broken state he’d simply been unable to keep his emotions disciplined and it had spun out of control – compounding until it became so unbearable that he could no longer handle it and he’d thrown up and started to physically shake and tremble.
“Get it together,” he’d breathed as he forced his thin frame to steady under the hot water and he threaded his hands tightly into his hair. He’d known that he needed to regulate his breathing and that he needed to go to bed and sleep this off. He couldn’t afford to fall apart like this even if it was in the confines of his own shower.
So that was exactly what he’d done.
He’d washed the sick down the drain and forced his limbs to carry himself back into his bedroom. Two quick-drying charms later and he was partially clothed and entirely passed out across the surface of his bed. He’d not even managed to pull back the covers or do anything other than collapse and drift off into a deep sleep of the dead. He’d stirred only briefly when dreams of his childhood surfaced, something that hadn't happened in decades and that he blamed on the trauma to his mind after having a part of his soul ripped out – but he forgot about it quickly as he drifted back to sleep and became completely detached from the world once more.
Void of emotion or thought as his chest rose low and slow and his weary thin frame lay like a pile of broken bones in a mess of sheets. Dead to the world. Dead to the demands that people constantly placed on him and dead to the storm that continued to rage outside – at least, that was, until an agonizing pain shot through his left arm, woke him from his slumber and his mind came plummeting back into his skull like a bludger.
“Ughh fuck,” Snape groaned as he forced his failing body to roll out of bed. He stumbled hard and had to grab the wall to prop himself up as he grit his teeth in pain. “FUCK.”
He could not do this right now – not in the state that he was in and that left him with only one option – to put yet another nail in his coffin.
He rapidly made his way over to his private potion stores, opening the secret cabinet and biting back a moan of pain as he fished out a small bottle that sat beside the odd vial that Nasir had given him. Without hesitating he ripped out the stopper and downed the entire thing. The effects were instantaneous as they always were and he groaned out in agony as his heat rate skyrocketed, his body grew warm and his muscles came back to life.
“Fu-uucckkkk,” he practically wailed as he forced himself back to his feet and summoned a shirt and clean outer robes.
He’d managed to put pants on before passing out but nothing else – the thought of fully dressing after his shower had been too much. But now with his heart racing and adrenaline pumping at beyond maximum capacity it was nothing. He dressed and had his boots on in less than five seconds – taking extra care to double-check his appearance before his wandered out into the office. He looked normal, except for his pupils which were massively dilated – he looked high.
“Well let’s call it what it is – you are fucking high,” he muttered to his reflection as he grabbed his wand off the small nightside table and made his way toward the door of his office. He would cast a glamour charm he’d learned ages ago to hide that once he got to the Manor, and so he wrenched the door open and sped into his office.
“Severus!” Dumbledore’s voice rang out immediately as he entered the room. It was panicked and laced with concern. “Severus – what happened!? Are you okay!? Why were you–“
The dead Headmaster’s voice cut short for a split second as Snape glanced to the portrait. He saw the old man’s eyes narrow and when he spoke again, this time it was laced with anger and disgust.
“You took that stuff again, didn’t you?!” Dumbledore raged at him as he shifted in his frame. He looked like a caged tiger, moving back and forth in agitation but unable to actually do anything.
“Oh, is it that obvious?” Snape said snidely as he grabbed a few items off his desk and stuffed them in the pockets of his robes. His left arm and chest had gone numb, which wasn’t a good sign, but he ignored it and instead gave the old wizard before him an annoyed look. “What gave it away?”
“That stuff is going to kill you, Severus!” Dumbledore’s voice was dark and angry. “How many times do I have to tell you not to use those potions – you cannot be reliant on them and use them like that. You’re acting like a junkie. They’re destroying your body!”
“Well unfortunately,” Snape said flatly as he bit back a hiss of pain as the Dark Lord’s call intensified. “I’m being summoned – I don’t have a choice, not all of us are as fortunate as you to have others to do our bidding. I actually have to get my fucking hands dirty – something that you will never understand. Phineas–“
Snape turned to look at the concerned looking portrait as he tucked away the last item and prepared to apparate.
“Give me a five second summary on the den.”
“The den was obliterated, Arthur was bitten, Remus was injured, they rescued eleven muggles – but everyone is safe except Nasir who they believe died in the explosion,” Phineas said rapidly as his eyes searched over Snape’s form. He was clearly looking for injury and was concerned about Snape’s 180 change between now and 8 hours ago when he’d arrived half dead.
“I seriously doubt that,” Snape said as he turned and made his way to the center of the room. The odds of Nasir being dead were so low it was almost laughable. He paused for a brief second and looked back at the tight expression on Phineas’ face. “I’m fine Phineas – good work today, keep an eye and we’ll debrief later.”
With that Snape apparated for the second time post-injury and gritted his teeth as he landed hard on the wet muddy laneway of Malfoy Manor.
Fuck I hate this place, he growled internally as he quickly made his way up the path. When he got within a hundred yards of the door he cast a rapid glamour to hide the fact that his pupils were the size of his entire iris and he silently vanished the sweat that was naturally forming along his spine from his racing heart while his body worked in overdrive and his metabolism soared. Tomorrow would be painful – but for now he needed to get through this day from hell and somehow appear calm.
Upon entering the Manor, he was immediately greeted by Narcissa, who seemed to have been lingering by the door if not outright waiting for him. She gave him a careful look and he didn’t miss the pain behind her gaze as she stared at his eyes knowingly – as if she knew what he’d taken, as if she knew what he was hiding and that he was there on borrowed energy. Yet her concern quickly vanished behind a mask of impassive and well-practiced stone.
“Upstairs in the dinning room,” she said quietly, and Snape turned toward the stairs.
But she didn’t move to follow him, and he found himself naturally and unconsciously hesitating as he looked back towards her and continued to ignore the burn in his arm. Her expression was tight despite her impassiveness and the stress lines around her eyes were more pronounced.
“It’s not good,” Narcissa said barely above a whisper and he noticed that her hands tightened into balls at her side. “Bella failed – I’ve been sent to get the veritaserum among other things but – you should be okay.”
Snape nodded a strange feeling overcoming his body as her voice grew softer and she appeared almost relieved when she spoke the last words.
“I’ll see you in there soon,” Snape said quietly, and he turned and began making his way quickly up the stairs.
He wasn’t sure what to expect when he entered the dining room, but he wasn’t surprised to see Bellatrix kneeling on the floor as blood dripped from her head into a puddle on the floor. He could put two and two together – the werewolf den was obliterated; the Dark Lord had just been informed and he was evidently livid. A part of him wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d outright killed Bellatrix on spot just for delivering the news – but the logical part of his brain knew that the Dark Lord suspected something else. Bellatrix would be punished yes, she would be questioned and broken – but she would live because the Dark Lord had another target. Another person that he could blame for the failure.
“My Lord.” Snape bowed low as he came to a stop inside the doorway. There was no one else in the room which was also not surprising. The Dark Lord would not want details regarding such a hard blow to his forces coming to light before he had a recovery plan in the works. It would make him appear weak and it would make his followers question his power – which was not something he would tolerate. This would be kept under wraps and handled as quietly as possible and was yet another reason why Bellatrix would make it through the night in mostly one piece.
The witch twitched at the sound of Snape’s voice, but she didn’t dare look up towards him. Which Snape interpreted as a sign that she’d been here for longer than a few minutes. She’d already been injured, as clear by the pool of blood at her knees and she’d already been knocked down several notches from her typical proud and obnoxious demeanour. From the faint tremble that wracked her body he suspected that she’d already been tortured with the cruciatus as well. Yet he felt absolutely no sympathy for the woman. She was a monster – a deranged, twisted devil that had not a single ounce of humanity left in her. He could care less if she was in pain and when this war was over, she was the first of the Dark Lord’s followers that he hoped would be executed because trying to contain her was both nearly impossible and a vast waste of time and energy.
She would never change, no matter what the Dark Lord did to her she would stay loyal at his side and forever uphold the values that he’d preached. Keeping her alive after she’d tortured Alice and Frank Longbottom to insanity during the last war had been a mistake – and because of that mistake she’d been able to kill and torture more people. She’d implemented this werewolf experiment and indirectly killed countless muggles in the process. She needed to go – and if he could manage it, he’d do it himself before he took his last breath.
“Ssseverus.” The Dark Lord nodded his head in acknowledgement as he stood barefoot just a few feet before Bellatrix.
Nagini was nowhere in sight, likely hiding in a safe location since the Dark Lord felt threatened by the news of the den. Snape’s keen eyes immediately took in the demon’s tight grip on his wand, the blood on his feet and the bizarre calm that seemed to linger on his face. The Dark Lord was known to have catastrophic temper tantrums at times when things went wrong – for two reasons: one, because he was insane and unstable and two, to show off his power and breed fear within the ranks. But there was no audience here today and he was controlled – and that was almost more terrifying because it meant that the man was lucid, calculating and beyond enraged.
The Dark Lord was itching to kill something and let out his anger – but he was purposely containing it. Snape could use this. So long as he didn’t become the target of his animosity, he could spin this where he needed it – he could sew doubt perhaps even in Bellatrix’s capabilities.
“How may I be of service, my Lord,” Snape asked as he righted himself from his bow. He kept his eyes locked to the Dark Lord’s red ones and didn’t spare even a glance at Bellatrix. As far as anyone in this room knew he didn’t know a thing – and his typical reaction to Bellatrix was to not react or give her attention at all – so he needed to maintain that.
“It would seem,” the Dark Lord said slowly as he took a step forward into the pool of blood and his eyes dropped to look at Bellatrix’s cowering form. “That we have a problem.”
Bellatrix trembled at his words, but she still kept her face downturn to the floor as blood continued to drip from her head to the ground.
“What do you know of the werewolf experimentation project?” Voldemort said smoothly, his eyes shifting back to lock Snape’s in a tight stare. He could feel the man poking at his mind with a wordless legilimency and he freely let him in. He never ever gave resistance when the Dark Lord came snooping.
“Nothing,” Snape said slowly, his typical drawl matching the indifference on his face. “Bellatrix kept it top secret – she made it clear that I was not to be involved.”
He held the Dark Lord’s terrifying gaze and continued to allow him to poke around his head despite the agony it caused until finally – the doors to the room opened and the Dark Lord’s eyes shifted to Narcissa as she entered the room.
“Perfect timing.” Voldemort gave her a disturbing half-smile before his eyes shifted back to Snape once more. “Severus – you have served me for a long time and have not once failed me. But I’m afraid the circumstances have changed and we both know your occlumency is sound – surely you wouldn’t mind a nightcap before we continue?”
It wasn’t a question.
“Of course,” Snape said without batting an eye as he accepted the small vial that Narcissa held out to him. He uncorked the bottle and downed the entire thing in one rapid motion. His eyes never leaving the Dark Lord’s as he swallowed the contents and handed Narcissa back the vile. “You know I only serve you, my Lord.”
“Indeed.” Voldemort’s red eyes dilated as he waited three seconds for the veritaserum to kick in. Snape could feel it coursing through his veins and tugged at his mind as it mixed horribly with the potion he’d already taken. He could feel his insides twisting in agony, but he forced his face to remain impassive as he stood stock-still.
“What do you wish to know, my Lord,” Snape asked after the appropriate amount of time had passed.
“What do you know about the werewolf experiment?” Voldemort repeated as he drew another step closer.
“Nothing of substance, my Lord,” Snape said robotically, allowing the words to flow like they would if the potion had actually affected him. “Bellatrix was placed in charge of the experiment approximately one year ago. I was curious to know the details and asked her about it – but she refused to tell me anything significant. She only said that it would change the war and guaranteed our success.”
“It would have,” Voldemort said darkly as rage flashed in his eyes.
In one swift motion he grabbed Bellatrix’s hair and ripped her head back. The woman groaned in pain the source of the blood being revealed in the process. Her eye – the one that Potter and Granger had removed during their visit here, was once again missing. The Dark Lord had replaced it a week ago as a reward for her success and devotion. But now – well now a long scar ran across her face from forehead to jawbone and her empty eye socket look mangled and bloodied like he’d carved it out clumsily with a blunt knife. Yet Snape knew every single mark on her face had been deliberate.
He watched silently as the Dark Lord took the second vial from Narcissa, tugged Bellatrix’s head back harder and dumped the contents down her throat as it naturally opened from the rough movement. She choked, her sputtering completely ignored as the Dark Lord continued to hold her head at the awkward angle that made it difficult to breathe as his eyes returned to Snape’s once more.
“It would seem the issue we discussed this morning has become a problem faster than I anticipated,” Voldemort spat, his anger starting to seep through as his grip on the woman’s hair tightened. Snape continued to ignore her as she groaned in pain and her body trembled. “The den was obliterated sometime between 8 pm last night and 8 pm tonight – the entire operation is gone and there is nothing left.”
“My Lord.” Snape pretended to hesitate, pretended that this was new and shocking information. “You don’t think that he–“
“No, I don’t think!” the Dark Lord snapped viciously as he looked back to Bellatrix. “I went there myself after Bella delivered the news – there is no way that anyone within the Order would be capable of such outright destruction. No, no Severus – I don’t think anything, I know – tell him why I know dear Bella – tell him where you thought it was a good idea to place my den.”
“M-my Lord I-I –“ Bellatrix fell to the ground screaming in pain, her body twitching as the Dark Lord hit her with a silent round of cruciatus. Snape watched motionless, his heart racing dangerously fast as her cries filled the room and the Dark Lord watched with nothing but cold disgust on his face. Narcissa stood motionless a few feet away and Snape noted that the woman didn’t even flinch. Either she’d become more detached since the ordeal that morning, or she cared a lot less about Bellatrix than people thought. When Voldemort finally stopped Bellatrix was lying on the ground and shaking all over, her breath was coming in short quick rasps and she kept gagging and whimpering in pain.
“Give her the potion,” Voldemort said, his eyes never leaving her twitching form as Narcissa stepped forward.
“Yes, my Lord.” Narcissa pulled a familiar looking bottle from her pocket – a weaker dose of the potion that he’d consumed only minutes ago at the castle. Clearly Narcissa was hoarding the good stuff and rationing the rest as she poured only half of the bottle in Bellatrix’s mouth before she stood and moved away once more.
“Get up,” Voldemort hissed, his gleaming eyes raking over her form as she struggled to push herself to her knees with the newfound energy the potion gave her. She likely would have fallen over if not for the Dark Lord grabbing her by the hair once more and jerking her head violently. “Tell. Him. Now.”
“At the old Bartley building,” Bellatrix whispered, her voice like broken glass though her single eye was still glaring at Snape with hate.
Snape felt his brow furrow at her words. This was his opening.
He already known where the den was, but at the time he’d not really given much thought to its location or why Voldemort was so angry about it now in hindsight. At the time he’d discovered the location he’d not thought of how it would be significant to Nasir, a wizard gifted in the dark arts on a scale that would rival the Dark Lord’s because he’d not initially anticipated Voldemort becoming aware of Nasir’s presence. He’d not considered Nasir as a pawn in this game and what it could mean or the angle it gave him – but he could see the picture forming clear within his mind now despite it being exhausted, weary and hopped up on potions.
He could see his chance to gain a clear upper hand on Bellatrix, kick her while she was down and secure his position more firmly with the Dark Lord. He could buy the Order even more time by playing on the fear the Dark Lord had revealed to him that morning and he could entirely misdirect the man by playing on his already well-established paranoia. His new delusion that Nasir was out to get him was perfect – it would draw all the fire away from the school and away from the Order.
This was a blatant wild goose chase that could give them a huge advantage because the Dark Lord would never believe that there was a connection between Nasir and the Order. He could leak information to the Order through Nasir and the Order would literally be able to systematically disassemble the Dark Lord’s forces without repercussion or suspicion because all the blame would be placed directly on Nasir.
This was perfect.
This was exactly what he’d hoped to do after discussing Nasir with the Dark Lord this morning – it’d just come to fruition a lot faster. And right now, because Snape was allegedly under the influence of veritaserum – he could speak more bluntly, and it would look perfectly natural.
“You set up the werewolf operation at the old Bartley building,” Snape said, twisting his face into one of disbelief as Bellatrix’s glare narrowed. “Where Rodolphus – where your husband used to keep and torture mudbloods and muggles for years?”
It disgusted him to use the word, but he ignored the pull he felt in the pit of his stomach to vomit and pushed on.
“Did you not think about the consequences of that? Did you not even bother to try finding literally any other location? That building is drenched in dark magic, Bellatrix,” Snape said coldly, allowing disgust at her ignorance to show on his face as he looked at her like she was the stupidest witch on the planet. He needed Voldemort to know that he agreed with him, he needed Voldemort to blame Bellatrix entirely and suspect only Nasir, so he added an additional snarky blow. “You might as well have put up a sign advertising to Nasir that–”
“I didn’t know he was back!” Bellatrix snarled at him, but the Dark Lord’s face only grew more disgusted and he yanked her head back once more and she immediately fell silent.
“Even if he wasn’t – the incompetent imbeciles in the Order could have found that place,” Voldemort snarled at her and glared down at her hard. “That building was a festering hot spot and you didn’t even bother to add wards to contain the leeching. You were sloppy – you rolled out a welcome mat! Nasir could have located that place from miles away – you had one task, Bellatrix.”
Voldemort’s voice had dropped to a low and dangerous tone and fear was started to shine in Bellatrix’s eye as she began to mumble apologies and plead her devotion.
“One. Job,” Voldemort said darkly, and Snape saw the woman’s mouth fall open in a silent scream as the Dark Lord looked at her with nothing but hatred and revulsion. He’d done something, cast something – but it wasn’t crucio because her body wasn’t twitching. Yet she was clearly in pain. “And it will be the last job that I ever give you. You are lucky that I am a merciful Lord – lucky that I will spare you – because of you I have lost hundreds of my forces and we have lost months of progress and valuable research. You will pay for this Bella – but I want you to remember this day.”
Voldemort’s voice had dropped to a low whisper and he’d leaned down toward her, his face mere inches from the bloody mess before him. Bellatrix’s eye was watering, and she inhaled a sharp and ragged breath as he released whatever spell he’d cast.
“This is the day where I chose to spare your life,” Voldemort whispered. “Because I am merciful – because I am a compassionate Lord.”
None of that is true, Snape thought. The only reason she was still alive was because he could not afford to lose any more bodies today and even he knew that – he’d let his anger out on the innocent. Other people would pay the price for this failure.
“But it will be the only time I spare you,” Voldemort continued in his low mesmerizing hiss that made Snape’s blood run cold. “Fail me again – disappoint me once more – and I will split you open and feed you to the few dogs you have left while I keep you alive so that you can feel every second of it.”
“Yes, my Lord,” Bellatrix whispered, her whole body shaking now.
Voldemort dropped her to the floor, her limp body collapsed in her own blood with a heavy thud. Then his glaring red gaze turned back to Snape and the rage he’d kept at bay was plainly evident.
“Go to the den. Track him down – and find out what he’s doing. I want to know what he is planning,” Voldemort hissed as he stalked towards Snape and leaned down in his face. The rank stench of death filled Snape’s nostrils, and he had to fight not to gag as he nodded to the Dark Lord’s words. “This takes priority over everything else. I need him eliminated before he takes out any more of our forces. I don’t care how long it takes you, I don’t care what you need to get it done it – find Nasir, and if the opportunity presents itself – Bring. Me. His. Head.”
Voldemort’s white boney fingers had curled into the front of Snape’s robes and Snape could feel himself being lifted up onto his toes as the Dark Lord glared down at him like a raging demon from hell.
“Have I made myself clear?” Voldemort’s deadly voice made a shudder run through his body – but he didn’t try to hide it. He knew it was what the Dark Lord wanted and if he was being honest, he doubted he could have contained it if he’d wanted to.
“Yes, my Lord.” Snape nodded, his voice hoarse and his muscles tense.
“Good.” Voldemort was less than an inch away from his face now, his gleaming eyes and reek of death unbearable to the senses as Snape fought to keep himself in control. “You are to report to me every two days with your findings. Do not fail me Sseverus.”
With that Voldemort dropped his hold on Snape and quickly and smoothly shifted his way across the floor toward Bellatrix. He moved almost as unnaturally as Nasir – yet somehow, he was worse.
“Get out,” he snarled as he grabbed Bellatrix by the hair once more and lifted her from the ground with unnatural ease. “Bella and I still have much to talk about.”
“Yes, my Lord,” Snape said as he bowed and began backing away. He heard the same sentiment being murmured by Narcissa before they both left the room.
The door had barely shut behind them when Bellatrix’s screams began to slice through the air. Snape could see the visible tension in the woman beside him as they made their way down the stairs toward the exit and Snape was somewhat surprised when Narcissa followed him outside the Manor and shut the door tightly behind her – the echoing cries of pain being instantly silenced behind the thick oak doors. She leaned back against its surface, her face somehow whiter than its usual pale and her body somewhat hunched as her eyes stared at the ground between them and her breath came in short rasps. Without thinking much on it, Snape cast a thick silencing charm around them, and her eyes immediately darted up to his.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
He kept his face impassive, but he scanned her over once more. She was still very clearly distraught from the events of the day – but he couldn’t blame her. She’d watched a man get skinned alive. She’d heard him have his soul ripped out. She’d seen him thrashing on the ground in agony. She’d saved him without knowing if he’d live or die. She’d seen his rune, she’d watched her sister get tortured and now she had to listen to it.
It had, quite possibly, just been the worst day of her existence.
Narcissa snorted, her pale face crumpling as a deranged sort of laugh left her lips and she pushed a loose strand of hair that the wind had blown across her face behind her ear. This was the second time that she’d let him see her with her defences entirely down, and he wasn’t sure what to make of that. The rain was still falling, and he could see it soaking through her outer robes – they were the same ones from the morning, but they’d been pristinely cleaned.
Smart woman, Snape thought.
She’d clearly known that changing outfits would draw unwanted attention and she must have snuck home, cleaned her robes to remove the mud, and returned them to their original condition from when the Dark Lord had seen her that morning to avoid suspicion. But it was the look in her eyes that concerned him. She looked genuinely amused, but not in a good way, in a sad, hopeless and somewhat deranged way.
“Am I okay?” she breathed and closed her eyes tight before taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. She pinched the bridge of her nose and began shaking her head as her lip twitched. When she opened them again her eyes were glossy, but she was smiling, and Snape only felt his concern grow further. “No, Severus – I am not okay. But of course you would ask me that question. Am I okay? Merlin – you are an unbelievable man. You know that, right?”
Snape couldn’t help it as his brow twitched a fraction and she only shook her head once more.
“You don’t even get it,” she whispered, and she gave him a strange look that he couldn’t quite decipher. He’d never seen her make it before and it made him uncomfortable. It didn’t help that he felt like his insides were scrambled from the mix of potions that he’d taken, and a dull sickening ache still riddled his body and mind. “You don’t even understand how absurd it is for you to ask me that question. How many potions did you take to be able to stand up on two legs to be here tonight, Severus? Can you even feel your limbs at this point? Have any of your organs shut down on you yet? How many, Severus – how many?”
“Narcissa,” he said slowly as he took a slow step forward.
He wasn’t sure what to do or say. She was very clearly not okay, but he couldn’t answer her questions. He needed to leave to go inspect the den and come up with a plan, but he also could not leave the witch if she was on the verge of breaking down – not with the information that she knew about him now. He trusted her to keep it safe when she was of sound mind, but everyone had a breaking point and today had been more than most could handle. He needed to make sure that she was okay enough to be left alone because he could not count on Lucius to give her any emotional support because that man was in shambles himself.
“Don’t bother coming up with a lie to try and make me feel better,” Narcissa sighed as she pushed herself off the door and forced herself to stand fully. She was tall, but she was still several inches shorter than him even with her day heels on. She looked at him sadly, and her voice dropped to a low whisper. “I already know you won’t answer those question – just like I already know that you’re going to reject my offer for help once more. So I’ll just say this–“
She moved a step closer to him and looked up at him through the rain. He could feel his pulse quicken – but this time it had nothing to do with the potion.
“Please be careful,” she all but whispered as she blinked the rain from her perfectly blue eyes. “Things are getting worse – and I know that you’re worried about trusting me, but I promise you that I will never betray you, Severus. I owe you that much. You’ve kept me and my family safe for years and it is the very least I can do since you’ll never let me do anything else to help you and you’ll never ask for a damn thing. But please–“
He felt her hand press against his chest, and he stiffened from head to toe.
“Please keep yourself safe.” Her low voice was barely audible in the rain that poured over them. “Save something for after the war. There is more to life than this, and I’m afraid that you’re going to lose yourself in the bloodshed. I didn’t realize how much you were bearing all on your own, and that’s my fault – but you are worth something, Severus.”
It was too much.
Her words were too much and she was entirely wrong. He wasn’t worth anything and he could feel himself automatically shutting down as he occluded his emotions and locked everything away into tight little corners of his mind.
“You deserve a life after this.” Narcissa’s grip on his robes tightened. “You are more than a tool of war here to take care of those around you.”
He took a step back. He had to, and he saw her face fall. Her eyes watched him sadly as he retreated but she didn’t try to stop him. Her grip on his robes fell away and the creases around her eyes deepened.
“Get some rest,” Snape said quietly as he took a final step backward and felt a cold silence fill the space between them. She’d clearly been thinking about everything that had happened since she left his house in Cokesworth, and she’d clearly been putting some puzzle pieces together. This was even more dangerous than he’d expected, and he was scared at the possibility of how much she might now know. “Half a bottle of calming draught should help.”
Narcissa nodded, but she didn’t move from her place on the front stoop. She stood there in the rain, still as a statue as she watched Severus turn and make his way down the drive.
He didn’t know it, but she stood there even after he’d disappeared from sight, and she didn’t move until the faint pop of his apparition was heard and the wards buzzed to signal that he was truly gone.
-x-x-
April 18, 1998
Hogwarts, 7:03 pm
Snape slowly made his way back from the Great Hall. Attending dinner had been yet another waste of his time and he’d once again eaten nothing. The redhead and her gang of annoying brats had glared at him from their table – which was good. It made him hopeful that she’d not done anything to recall the events of last week and clearly Longbottom and the others were just as unaware. He’d found a swamp in the Slytherin corridor on Wednesday as well, which showed that they were still causing trouble – but besides that the week had been quiet at Hogwarts. Which was a miracle and something that he’d desperately needed as he tried to balance his healing with his massive list of responsibilities.
After leaving Malfoy Manor on Monday he’d taken advantage of his potion induced state to apparate to the werewolf den and freely inspect the ruins. He’d spent nearly an hour wandering the ashes and conducting several tracing charms. He’d been surprised to see that the Order had left no trace. Everything had been covered up except for the heavy footprint of dark magic that poisoned the area like a plague. It was clear to Snape that whoever burned this place to the ground did it with fiendfyre – which meant that Nasir had done it and that Arthur and the others had not had much involvement in the fire.
There’d been nothing left.
Not an ounce of life or hint of there ever having been any. He’d not even been able to find a single bone in the ash and it was no wonder why the Dark Lord was livid beyond belief, becoming irrationally paranoid and obsessed with the idea that Nasir was out to get him. Had Snape not spoken to Phineas after his visit to the den to hear his recount on what he’d managed to hear from Granger’s purse – even Snape would not believe that the Order had been involved in the operation.
It was simply too vicious and too violent. There wasn’t a soul on their team capable of creating such a deathly blaze and frankly, he was a bit surprised that they’d allowed the man to cast that blaze – at least he had been until Phineas told him what happened during the operation.
While he didn’t have all the information because Potter and Granger never kept the purse open for very long at any given moment, it was clear that a small team had gone in to perform a rescue and destroy the research notes. Unbelievably, they’d managed to save some of the muggles using port keys, but predictably, things had gone wrong and Nasir had to pull the team out with Potter and Granger entering the den to provide support. Allegedly Nasir burnt the place to the ground while still inside it and they’d believed him to be dead and part of the ash, but Snape knew better. The timing of his ‘death’ was all too convenient and he found himself both suitably impressed at Nasir’s plan and also annoyed with himself that he’d not realized it earlier.
He’d been Nasir’s backup plan. He’d guaranteed that the man could call on his new life force at any point when he ‘died’ to prevent him from actually dying. It was rather brilliant really and far superior to a Horcrux because he got to keep his own body and was able to get back to being functional quite quickly. The only downside Snape could see was living with the side effects of having someone else’s soul – which he imagined were lightly similar to a magical blood transfusion. He’d not been in the least bit surprised when Phineas raced into his portrait early Thursday morning to alert him that Nasir had indeed returned to Shell Cottage in one piece.
Snape sighed as he reached the statue before the staircase to his office and muttered out the password. He’d met with the Dark Lord twice already this week, and both times, he’d lied. He’d told the truth about what he’d found at the den. He’d told the Dark Lord what he thought happened and his plan for tracking down Nasir – but he could only drag that out for so long before he’d need to add more detail.
Eventually, he would need to find Nasir, or he’d have to give the Dark Lord some kind of results to satisfy his bloodlust and rampant rage. And ironically to do that – he needed to find Nasir and speak to the man to figure out how to proceed. The absolute last thing he wanted to do was piss off the Dark Lord by not giving good enough information but he also had no intentions of pissing of Nasir by giving the Dark Lord too good of information.
It was a tough balance and one he needed to work out soon.
He opened the door to his office, closing it quickly and warding it behind him as he let out a sigh. His body was still sore from Monday, it’d been four days since and he still wasn’t back to full health. But thankfully with the Dark Lord distracted and the Order focused on their new pack of werewolves he would get a night off and could rest all day Sunday.
“Severus.” Phineas’ voice caught his attention and he turned to look up at the portrait. “They’re at the farmhouse and waiting for the moon. So far everything looks good.”
“Good.” Snape nodded as he made his way toward his desk. “Keep watch Phineas and let me know if anything goes wrong. There isn’t much we can do, but I could always go ward the nearby area to keep them in if things get truly out of hand.”
“Of course.” Phineas nodded firmly. “I don’t think it will be needed based on some of what I heard Hermione say – and Potter has taught the group tethers, so everyone there is capable of restraining the beasts if necessary. But I will keep you posted.”
“Thank you,” Snape said tiredly as he took a seat in the large chair behind his desk and pinched his brow.
“Severus,” Phineas’ voice was hesitant, and Snape cracked an eye and tilted his head to look at him. “Make sure you eat something before bed – you’ve been looking thinner than usual.”
“He’s right – you are thinner,” a deep voice rumbled before him and Snape jerked up in his seat. He’d drawn his wand and already had it pointed with a spell on the tip of his tongue before his brain recognized the tall figure before him and he froze.
“Fuck,” Snape let out a breath as he lowered his wand and fought against the urge to clutch his chest. With the heavy weight that sat on his heart, he thought the poor organ might actually give out from the stress of his surprise appearance. His eyes darted to the closed window and back to the tall man standing just feet before him. “I nearly took your head off – how the bloody hell did you get in here? The window is closed.”
Nasir’s eyes glinted, but he didn’t say anything, he simply moved forward across the room and closed the distance between them.
“Do you have a few minutes?” Nasir asked in his low baritone as his eyes flicked to Phineas and he nodded at the portrait. Phineas looked slightly taken aback by the gesture, but he awkwardly returned the nod while gripping the edge of his frame tightly and looking like he didn’t want to be there. “Or were you going to eat?”
“Severus.” Dumbledore had ‘woken’ from his fake sleep, and his voice held it’s usual dark tone of warning.
“I have a few minutes,” Snape said quickly as he pushed himself up from the desk and turned toward the door to his quarters. He glared at Dumbledore as he walked past the portrait.
“Nasir,” Dumbledore’s voice cut through the air like acid. “I’ve already told you – you are not welcome here. Haven’t you taken enough already?!”
“On the contrary,” Nasir said with a glint in his eyes. “This school seems to have no issues with my presence. Besides, I was unaware that dead Headmasters had any say.”
“You look here–“ Dumbledore started but Snape turned on his heel and cut the man off.
“For the love of fucking Merlin – SHUT UP!” Snape snarled at the old man as his glare turned to one of hatred. “This has nothing to do with you. Phineas – go check on Potter and Granger, I’ll be out later.”
Without giving the old portrait another second to retort, Snape ripped open the door to his quarters and swiftly moved inside. Nasir followed him easily, shutting the door behind him and moving toward the glowing fireplace as Snape stiffly sat in one of the armchairs and watched the unnatural man slowly lower himself into the opposite one.
“You’re alive,” Nasir said calmly, a small twitch played on his lips as he looked Snape up and down before sitting back further in his chair.
The man looked the same, mostly, except that he was missing his right hand, and his eyes looked less cold. There was something eerie and familiar about him.
“For the most part,” Snape said somewhat bitterly as he watched the flames flicker across the man’s face. “I could say the same about you.”
“And I would give the same response,” Nasir said quietly, his eyes still glinting.
“Why are you here?” Snape asked. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a little bit nervous. The last time this Revenant had come to Hogwarts, he’d taken part of his soul, but he’d also said that he would not ask him for anything else. So as convenient as it was that the man had shown up, he wasn’t sure why.
“There are things we need to discuss,” Nasir said evenly, though he made no motion to add anything else to the statement. Snape waited for another several quiet seconds before he concluded that Nasir must intend for him to speak first. It wasn’t surprising, he often got the impression that the man could tell what people were thinking and he clearly knew that Snape had his own subject to address.
“The Dark Lord thinks you blew up his werewolf operation,” Snape said bluntly, his eyes locked to the man before him.
“I did blow up his werewolf operation,” Nasir said indifferently.
“I know you did.” Snape let out a quiet sigh and fixed the man with a level stare. “You're the only one capable of burning something like that to the ground so thoroughly. The point is – he’s now obsessed with the idea that you’re out to eliminate his forces and take his place. He thinks you’re working alone or with some other small faction in the shadows since he doesn’t believe that you would ever team up with the Order.”
“Well, he isn’t entirely wrong.” Nasir’s lip twitched, and his eyes darkened.
Snape raised a brow in question, and he felt his heart grow weak in his chest. “You have your own forces?”
“No.” Nasir gave him a dark smile. “I didn’t team up with the Order. I am simply helping Hermione and Harry.”
Snape rolled his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose as the tension in his chest fell away in relief. “You find this amusing, don’t you?”
“It’s hard not to,” Nasir said quietly, still impossibly still in his chair across the small table between them. “The man was always paranoid, even from a young age.”
Snape tilted his head, folding his arms over his chest as he raised a brow in curiosity. “You knew him?”
“I knew him before he became ‘the Dark Lord’,” Nasir said quietly. “He came to me looking for information years ago.”
“And did you give it to him?” Snape could feel his stomach churning at the thought. If Nasir had trained the Dark Lord, then this war had just become even worse than he’d initially understood it.
“No.” A dark and twisted smile cut across his lips. “But I gave him something else. You should ask him about it sometime, if you ever get the chance.”
Snape stared at the man in disbelief. He was entirely unsure of where to go from here or what to say. The man before him was so characteristically Nasir and yet so entirely different.
He was blatantly showing amusement. He was talking openly, and he was chatty like that first time he’d dropped by and yet he felt more human than before. He tried to ignore the fact that he knew it was because a piece of himself was currently residing within the man. It was strange to think of it, it was almost like he was looking at a piece of himself and it only made his skin crawl, so he decided to ignore it.
“I sincerely doubt that the opportunity for such a conversation will arise,” Snape finally replied as he tried to ignore the subtle shifts in Nasir’s behaviour. “But none the less, I'll stow that piece of information away. The point is–“
“He asked you to find me.” Nasir cut him off as his face grew instantly serious and the amusement faded from his eyes.
“Yes,” Snape said quietly.
“And you didn't tell him where I am or that we've already been in touch, I gather.”
Snape scowled outwardly, his face twisting into a frown as his eyes hardened and he glared at the man across from him.
“Aside from the fact that I don’t have a fucking clue where you're staying – no – I didn’t tell him that we've been 'in touch', Nasir. I've already made it abundantly clear what side of this war I'm on. I would have thought that you’d have believed me after I gave you a piece of my fucking soul. Which, by the way-” Snape’s voice became laced with sarcasm. “How is it? Is it comfortable? Do you find that it’s suiting you well?”
“I find that the sardonic, angry amusement gets tiresome at times,” Nasir said flatly, but he shifted his shoulders and relaxed his stance; his voice became a fraction softer. “And your difficult emotions are tedious – it was just a question, Severus. You don’t need to get defensive.”
“No, I didn’t tell him,” Snape said tightly, trying to ignore the way Nasir’s tone resembled that of an adult speaking to an upset child. “I've not told him anything. He’s still trying to determine where the losses put him overall in the war while developing plans for recovery and upping security in other areas. But that will only keep him busy for a short time.”
“How long do we have? Nasir asked him plainly. “Before he kills you or gets someone else to try and find me?”
Snape sighed and rubbed his forehead as he sunk deeper into his chair.
“I don’t know – as you said, he's paranoid. And it’s always hard to tell with him, but,” Snape exhaled deeply. “If I had to guess, I’d say we have two solid weeks with no issue where he won’t push too hard, a third week where I'm going to need to lie a lot, and in the fourth week he’s going to flip biscuits and either interrogate me, execute me for failing my task, or go out on his own to find you and rip the country apart in the process.”
Snape paused.
“Or all three,” Snape added dryly. “He is – extremely livid and dangerously volatile right now. He will undoubtedly openly lead the war straight through Britain – both muggle and wizarding alike if he doesn’t get your head on a platter within a few weeks. The loss of the den has snapped something inside him – I think this is the first time he’s felt genuinely threatened by something in decades and he’s not handling it well.”
“So not much time.” Nasir nodded as his eyes glinted calculatingly.
“No,” Snape said tightly. “Not much at all before this turns into a full-scale war. Our days of shadow work, sabotage, and guerrilla tactics are numbered.”
“The Order won’t be ready,” Nasir said quietly.
“They’ll never be ready,” Snape said flatly, his eyes hardening with annoyance. “That’s precisely why I’ve been fighting to keep this all below-board while giving Potter and Granger a chance to try and end things quietly. The Order isn’t willing to do what it takes to win – honestly, I'm not sure what they will do when the fighting inevitably breaks out. I’m not even sure what their plan was for the den. If not for you burning it down, I don’t see how they could have possibly been successful in dismantling it.”
“Modified muggle explosives,” Nasir said quietly.
“What?!” Snape sat forward in his chair and gripped the armrests tightly.
This is so typical of the Order, Snape’s mind raged at the new information. The group was a bunch of fucking morons and they never thought anything through. Had none of them opened a bloody book on warfare or the dark arts for that matter? If not for Nasir they’d all be dead right now.
“The Dark Lord would have figured that out! He would have been able to determine that with minimal effort and a few basic god damn spells because that explosion never would have gotten hot enough to destroy the evidence! Why not just send him a letter directly that says ‘Arthur Weasley blew up your den’ – fucking hell!” Snape spat as he ran a hand through his hair. “How stupid are they? The only reason why he doesn’t suspect them now is because the ground is oozing with dark magic from the fire and–“
Snape paused as he glanced at the man before him and looked at him curiously. His impassive expression, calm demeanour, and that glint in his eyes… the look of someone who had a pocket full of information and a plan all along.
“You already knew that,” Snape said slowly, and suddenly he started to see the events in a new light. “You were part of the den infiltration planning. You knew that a modified muggle bomb would be detectable. You knew it would lead him right to the Order and you planned to blow it up yourself from the start so it would put the attention on you. You bloody knew this from the start.”
Nasir simply stated at him and said nothing as the warm fire cast a creepy glow across his face.
“Why?” Snape asked before he could stop himself. He was leaning forward in his chair now – staring at the mysterious man in disbelief. It didn’t make any sense. “Why are you willing to put a target on your back for them. He’s become a lot stronger since you knew him.”
“I'm aware,” Nasir said indifferently. “But he’s still an arrogant boy with warped delusions on what equates to power. His time and way of life are over; he just doesn’t know it yet. Besides, I didn’t do it for the Order – I did it for them. To quote your words – I’ve already made it abundantly clear what side of this war I’m on.”
“You did that for Granger and Potter,” Snape said in disbelief as Nasir simply stared at him. “You seriously expect me to believe that? What are they giving you out of this? Did you barter for part or their souls, too? Or better yet – once the Dark Lord falls, then what? Do you plan to take his place?”
Nasir’s eyes instantly darkened, his body somehow became more rigid and the air grew cold and tight around them like death. Snape watched frozen with fear as Nasir unfolded himself from his chair, and slowly closed the distance between them like a predator stalking its prey. He stopped but a foot away and leaned down to look Snape directly in the eyes.
“Do not – ever,” Nasir said slowly. “Compare me to that man. What I do and why I do it is none of your business. I don’t expect you to believe anything, nor do I need to justify my actions to you.”
Snape swallowed. He could feel his heart racing despite his best efforts to remain calm as the man encroached on his space much like he had that day they’d met in the woods. He could feel his cold breath against his face, and it made his skin crawl with discomfort.
“Are we clear?” Nasir’s voice was deadly, and Snape found himself nodding.
“Crystal,” Snape said quietly, his back tense as he forced himself to remain where he was and not to lean away.
Evidently – Nasir didn’t like the Dark Lord, and he was not as passive and uncaring as Dumbledore had let on. Whether he’d always been that way and hidden it, or whether his own soul living inside the man was altering his behaviour – Snape would never know. The man was and would remain entirely unpredictable and a complete mystery.
“Good,” Nasir said darkly before he stood to his full height once more. The pressure in the room seemed to lessen and the disturbing darkness that had radiated from his eyes was gone with a blink. “Drag it out for as long as you can. Tell him I appear to be working alone and next week tell him that you traced me back to Ireland. In the meantime, I will do what I can to have the Order ready to end this within three weeks.”
“It’s not just about the Order,” Snape said tightly, his grip on the armchair still iron as he looked at the man standing before him. He’d never mentioned anything about the Horcruxes to Nasir before, and if he was being honest, he wasn’t sure that he wanted to. “There are – other things at play.”
“I’m aware,” Nasir said evenly as he turned and made his way toward the center of Snape’s quarters. “The timeline still stands.”
“And what if they’re not ready by then?” Snape asked as he forced himself to stand from his chair. “What do I tell the Dark Lord then?”
“If they’re not ready by then, I’ll come see you,” Nasir said flatly, but his eyes locked to Snape’s. “But in that case, it is likely that you will die. Which – if I recall correctly – was part of your plan anyway.”
Snape's jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed to a glare. “Not until I’ve finished my job and not until I know that demon will fall.”
“Well,” Nasir said quietly, his eyes glinting with amusement once more. “I guess we have our work cut out for us then.”
Snape watched as the tall man continued to stare at him for a moment longer, before he shifted and spoke once more.
“How stocked are your potion reserves?” Nasir asked him.
“They’re stocked,” Snape said tightly. “Why?”
“How much do you have left of experimental batch #47?” Nasir ignored his question.
Snape’s brow quirked in surprise. “You’re familiar with it?”
“Narcissa Malfoy gave it to Hermione at the Manor – but I believe, that you are much more familiar with it than I am, having been the one to create it and use it somewhat regularly.”
“I have a dozen more vials,” Snape said, his eyes narrowing at the man. “Why?”
“Make more,” Nasir said. “Make more strength potions too – and if you’re serious about wanting to end this within the next few weeks, give me the brewing instructions for anything else you’ve created that might be useful.”
“What are you going to do?” Snape scoffed, unable to contain disdain and amusement as sarcasm began to drip back into his voice. “Dope everyone in the Order to give them an edge?”
Nasir didn’t say anything, he simply stared back silently, and Snape felt his body grow stiff.
“You’re serious,” Snape said quietly as he took in the man’s expression. “You’d dose the Order with experimental potions that have known negative side effects to win this war?”
“Yes,” Nasir said as he met Snape’s gaze with a merciless and serious stare. “Without hesitation.”
Snape felt a chill run down his spine. This was the first time that he’d spoken to someone that seemed to understand the seriousness of this war and what they needed to do to win. Dumbledore would never allow such methods to be used, and that was exactly why they were in this precarious situation in the first place – it was exactly why they’d been losing for so fucking long. He felt his heart flutter with both hope and a nervous warning, if Nasir was truly aiding them and if he didn’t have ulterior motives – they might actually win this. If he was willing to push the Order to aid the Potter brat and that know-it-all Granger – the Order might actually stand a chance.
He wasn’t really sure how to feel as his insides twisted uncomfortably. Was this what hope felt like? Or were his instincts simply telling him that keeping Nasir involved was a bad idea? How much did he trust this man over Dumbledore?
“I’ll come back in a week,” Nasir said. “Make as much as you can of anything that could be useful.”
With that Nasir turned on his heel and with a small almost inaudible pop he disapparated from sight.
Disapparated, Snape’s brain stalled. He fucking disapparated.
Suddenly it felt like the weight on his chest had just grown three times heavier as the additional repercussions of having given away part of his soul became glaringly obvious. Snape stared at the empty space the center of his quarters as his heart began to race in his chest.
“Fuck.”
WARNINGS
This chapter contains: some descriptions of surgery (blood, cutting, the process...)
*******************************************
“When I tell you to, you will keep the incision open using these.”
“Okay – wait, these look like retractors – did you get them from a muggle hospital?”
“I did.”
“Oh – neat. Most wizards don’t take much stock in muggle inventions, but they are quite useful.”
“They are,” Nasir nodded once in confirmation before his tone dropped flat. “I’m not sure I’m what you could call most wizards.”
“True,” Hermione smiled at him as she gripped the devices before Harry. Nasir hadn’t looked upset or offended by her comment, if anything – to Harry, it seemed like more dry humour. “Your journal didn’t document how the procedure went for you – did you do this to yourself?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“It was complicated.”
Harry watched Hermione’s lips twitch in the familiar way they did when she was slightly annoyed with Nasir’s evasive nature, and he held back an amused snort. She wouldn’t push him too hard for answers today, not after the earlier conversation and what he’d exposed about Snape – so he wasn’t surprised when she quickly let out an exhale and refocused on the task.
“So, I’ll hold it open and you’ll insert the wand core?” Hermione confirmed.
“Yes,” Nasir nodded, but Harry’s mind had started to wander.
Snape, Harry thought, his mind flooding with a mix of emotions as thoughts of his old potions professor filled his head. He didn’t know what to think about the letter, about Ginny, about Susan – about what Nasir had said. He’d been trying to bury it down since he burned the letter. He was about to have his arm cut open and the last thing he wanted was to be distracted, but it was hard to focus with everything racing through his head. They’d been over the procedure already at a high level the day previous and he already knew that it was his job to stay as still as possible and drink blood replenishing potion when instructed with his only free arm because Hermione would be busy with all hands on deck helping Nasir with the insertion. The tethers that Hermione had placed on him would help to keep him still, leaving him with a barely functional left arm. And – Nasir had made it perfectly clear that the procedure was going to be agonizingly painful.
“I need you to keep the incision open on both ends so the implant is clean. There cannot be any bends in the core – much like in a wand it needs to be straight,” Nasir said evenly as he began laying a collection of different items out on the table. Harry wasn’t sure where he’d gotten them from since he’d not worn his regular robes to the tent and regretfully, he’d not been fully paying attention.
In fact, he was finding it hard to make himself care about the impending pain at the moment. He wasn’t nervous or afraid, and he wasn’t worried that the pain would be unbearable because he knew it would be nothing in comparison to getting a rune. Being in pain for a few minutes and losing one day to healing seemed like pretty small potatoes in comparison to the bulk of the horrors within the war that they’d endured so far. Besides, it was a small price to pay for regaining his wand core and it felt a hell of a lot easier to accept than the fact that Snape – the asshole who had tormented him for years – might, and in fact likely was, still helping them.
That somehow seemed more painful than anything that was about to happen.
“Okay,” Hermione nodded, and Harry’s stomach rolled as he continued to be distracted by his thoughts.
He watched Hermione pull out his broken wand and lay it gently on the freshly sanitized table. How was this possible? How could that man be helping – but more importantly why? Harry already knew how he could be helping them – he knew Snape was powerful enough to help – he just couldn’t wrap his head around why.
How could someone so vile be on their side? How, after killing Dumbledore, was the man still an ally? Harry fought back a frown at the thought and he tried to keep his face impassive as Hermione and Nasir bustled around him and set-up the table. After everything he and Hermione had been through, after everything that they’d seen and learned about the war, about Voldemort and Dumbledore – he knew better than to think that killing someone made you inherently evil. He wasn’t naïve and innocent like he used to be. He knew that war was complicated, he understood the complexity and nuances it involved and he knew the sacrifice that came with it. The truth was he knew that Snape could’ve killed Dumbledore while still being on their side.
In fact, Harry was starting to suspect that perhaps Dumbledore had known about it – that maybe Dumbledore had ordered it. As much as he hated to admit it, Hermione was right and the more he thought back to sixth year the more none of it made sense at all and the more nauseous he felt about what had happened that night on the astronomy tower.
He felt like he was looking back on his life through a different lens and seeing things clearly for the first time – even more clearly than the last few times his world had been shattered after Rita’s book and Hermione’s wand mysteriously returning.
Dumbledore had been weakened from their trip to the cave that night, yes – but he could have apparated away. He could have done something to defend himself. Surely the old wizard knew a shielding spell or literally anything else that could have prevented his death. Harry had seen the old man duel Voldemort at the Department of Mysteries the year prior – he’d used powerful magic like nothing Harry had ever seen and yet the old man had stood there and done nothing when Snape raised his wand. He’d not even tried.
It didn’t make sense, and neither did the fact that Snape let him go after he’d chased him. When he thought back on it now, he had to bite his tongue and fight not to roll his eyes at his former childish nature. He’d been so blinded by rage and hatred that he’d not thought about what he was doing, and he’d run after the very man who had just killed one of the greatest wizards of all time. What had he been thinking?
Stupid, Harry thought bitterly as he watched Nasir start to carefully extract his phoenix feather core from his broken wand. He hadn’t been thinking back then, and once again, Hermione was right. If Snape was truly working for Voldemort at the time, he’d have been dead on spot. Snape would have killed him right then and there on the grounds of the school instead of screaming at him enraged after Harry had called him a coward. Or Snape would have captured him or let Bellatrix take him in for that matter. But he hadn’t, he’d let him go. That fact had always sat uncomfortably in the back of Harry’s mind, but he’d chosen to ignore it. After Hermione’s wand was returned and they’d discussed Snape the first time he’d settled on suspecting that Snape must be in it for himself or working with someone else behind the scenes.
But now? Harry visibly frowned as his eyes shifted down to his right arm which was tethered flat against the table palm up. Now, begrudgingly, he couldn’t see how either of those options fit any longer.
If Snape was working for someone other than Voldemort who had some kind of nefarious plot to gain power – he wouldn’t care about Susan or Ginny. He wouldn’t care about anyone within the Order aside from those who could aide him in some way or that could be used later to his benefit. And the only person who fit that description was Shacklebolt, two young schoolgirls didn’t fit that bill. And if Snape was working only for himself – well, same thing – why would he care about Susan? Her family had been entirely eradicated by the Death Eaters, to Snape she was just some kid who held no value. It sounded cold to say it because she was his friend and Harry cared about her and wanted to keep her safe along with everyone else, but the truth was that from a war perspective – Susan served no purpose and held no value. Snape had nothing to gain by keeping her alive, so why would he risk himself to keep her safe? Why would he give a shit and go to the effort to remove her memories?
He wouldn’t, Harry thought painfully as a shiver ran down his spine. He would have let her die, or he would have used her as a demonstration to show his power, which leaves us with only one remaining option.
But he couldn’t even make himself think the words.
Snape was still an ally. He had to be – it was the only logical conclusion and he knew that Hermione had already come to the same one, though she was likely cutting him some slack by not stating it so bluntly. She would probably leave the ‘Snape working for himself’ or the ‘working with someone else’ options on the table as a means to make the information more palatable. Which he appreciated because he hadn’t yet managed to swallow Nasir’s words or come to terms with them.
In the meantime, he’d burned the letter to keep his friends safe and they would continue with their plan to keep Snape alive. He would work with Hermione to find the remaining Horcruxes and they would focus on ending the war. But when this was over, if he somehow managed to live through until the very end, he planned to have a long conversation with both the potions master and Dumbledore’s portrait – and he would not accept anything but the truth.
He’d had enough of lies, hidden pasts and conveniently left out information. He hated knowing that he was following the orders of a dead man without fully understanding all the pieces moving in the war. He hated that ultimately if he was being honest with himself, he’d never truly known Dumbledore and his confidence in the man was shaken. Between Rita’s book, Nasir’s tidbits of information, the werewolf den, Snape, discovering that the Order had been floundering with no supplies or direction before their arrival, the fact that Dumbledore had not told him directly about the Hallows, that the old man had not told Hermione anything and that he’d not told Harry where to even begin looking for the only thing that could defeat Voldemort – Harry was done with bullshit and he simply would not tolerate it anymore.
But first, Harry thought.
“Harry?”
Harry’s eyes darted up to meet Hermione’s concerned gaze. “Yes?”
“Are you ready?” she was eyeing him carefully. She likely suspected what was on his mind but thankfully she didn’t bring it up and instead just placed her hand on his shoulder in a comforting way before dropping her voice lower. “Nasir has the core prepared; it’s been sealed so it won’t deteriorate or be rejected by your body.”
“I’m ready,” Harry gave her a small smile and she nodded.
First, I need to get through this, and then get through the war, Harry concluded firmly as he took the blood replenishing potion that Nasir handed him and listened to the man’s instructions. He pushed the thoughts of Snape and Ginny’s letter from his mind as Hermione moved to sit on his left, two retractors held tight in her grasp as she intently followed Nasir’s instruction. She was calm, focused and warm at his side and he felt the tension in his body naturally start to fall away despite what was about to happen.
“This is going to hurt,” Nasir’s voice was level and void of any concern that might have laced the voice of a normal person as he moved to stand at Harry’s right side. But Harry found it oddly comforting that he was so straightforward and blunt about what was going to happen, as he pulled his silver dagger from its holster. He’d not once tried to sugar coat anything or make it seem like the procedure was quick and easy. “When the wand core is inserted, it will feel like it is burning and itching, that is normal and to be expected because of the casing spell. Once I close the wound Hermione will give you dreamless sleeping draught, drink all of it, it will knock you out for the worst part of the healing process. When you wake up in a few hours it might still hurt and you’ll need to remain mostly in bed as we discussed, but so long as your arm is tethered to your side you can move around a little. But try not to unless it is necessary. In twenty-four hours, it will be fully functional and tomorrow we will resume training and you can test it out.”
“Okay,” Harry nodded in understanding. He already knew that he couldn’t be under the effect of any potions during the surgery and he’d have to just grit his teeth and bear it. Hermione had placed an additional silencing charm on the tent just in case things got noisy – but Harry was hoping to try and keep his mouth shut as much as possible. He knew how hard it was on him emotionally to hold Hermione down when she’d gotten her rune – he didn’t want to do that to her, and he was going to do everything he could to keep his pain in check and not scream or thrash. He gave Hermione a quick smile before he turned back to Nasir and nodded firmly. “Let’s do this.”
-x-x-
“Unngghhh,” a low painful groan poured from Harry’s mouth as he dropped his head to the table and his entire body tensed. A sheen of sweat had started to form on his forehead and down the back of his neck, the nails of his left hand bit into the surface of the table as he inhaled tightly and clenched his jaw.
“I’m sorry Harry,” Hermione said tightly as she held the retractor open. She tried not to think about the pain he must be in as she split his arm open wider and a pool of blood began to collect on the table. He’d not made a peep when Nasir carefully sliced a long thin incision down his forearm from wrist to elbow with his dagger. He’d not even flinched as Nasir used a muttered spell to carefully shift his tendons and veins to the side and if not for the intense look in his eyes and incredibly tight jaw Hermione would have assumed that he’d not felt it. But the feel of two retractors being jammed into his arm and prying it open was evidently just above his threshold of quiet containment.
“Wider,” Nasir said in his emotionless tone, his eyes flicking from Harry to the open wound before moving back to the phoenix feather that he was carefully lifting off the table.
Hermione grimaced, her heart aching at the second sharp intake of breath Harry made at Nasir’s words.
“Just do it,” Harry grit out, his forehead pressed hard into the table as his body shuddered softly in pain.
“We’re almost done Harry,” Hermione set her jaw in determination and forced her hands to open the retractors wider.
“Unnghh Fu-uucckk,” Harry groaned out and his left fist thumped hard against the table as a shudder ran through his body once more. More sweat began to form across his body as it fidgeted against the tethers that kept him in place.
“Good,” Nasir nodded to Hermione as she carefully kept the gap sustained and silently vanished the blood every few seconds so Nasir could see what he was doing. Harry had drunk the replenishing potion just moments after they cut open his arm, so his body was heated and replacing the blood at a steady rate. They had a second bottle on hand just in case, but he shouldn’t need it and there was essentially zero risk of him bleeding out. “Just don’t move the retractors, keep them steady and add the final tethers.”
“Okay,” Hermione kept her hands steady and silently added two more tethers to Harry’s body so he could no longer move at all. She didn’t bother asking him if he wanted to stay in his current position, head pressed into the table versus sitting up and opted to just get this done as quickly as possible. Besides, his jaw was clenched so tightly shut she doubted he’d want to discuss things right now. “They’re added – Harry you won’t be able to move now.”
Harry grunted in acknowledgment as his nails continued to curl into the wood.
“Alright,” Nasir shifted and started to lower the wand core into the incision. It was bewildering how adept he was at working with only one hand. “This is going to burn Harry, remember to breathe.”
“Jesus FUCK!” Harry spat out in a clipped voice the second the feather was inserted into the incision and his whole body started to shake against the tethers. “Urghhh!”
The pained groan that came from his lips made Hermione’s heart race and she eyed the diagnostic bubbles floating above his head warily. He was in pain, a lot of pain, his vitals were flaring and his stress levels had soared but yet he remained coherent and was fighting to stay quiet. She knew he was doing it for her benefit, but she wished she could just hold him or touch him in some comforting way – but she was leaning over him at an awkward angle and fighting to keep her exhausted arms as steady as possible. She needed to keep the incision perfectly open as Nasir carefully and meticulously tucked the feather inside his arm.
She tried not to think about the fact that it was Harry’s arm. That it was his blood, his muscles, his tendons and his bone she could see exposed. She did her best to ignore his struggle, fight back the sickness in her stomach and instead place all on her energy and focus on the task – she knew he would be okay and she knew that this needed to be done if they were to stand a chance. Much like her rune, it was just an unfortunate fact of their lives now and as she watched the procedure unfold the thought that had been tickling the back of her mind shifted to the forefront. The procedure, while painful and massively unpleasant to watch – was actually low risk, and looked like a good idea.
She focused her attention on Nasir’s careful movements while glancing at the diagnostic bubble every so often and vanished the blood that continued to leak from his arm as Harry fought through the pain. He was doing remarkably well until about halfway through when his breath started coming in short shallow gasps and his left hand gripped the table so tightly he cracked two of his nails up to the cuticle. His leg was shaking at her side and it made her stomach twist in agony as he let out another pained groan and his body flinched when Nasir adjusted the tip of the feather to align with the absolute center of his wrist. His jaw was clenched so tightly now she was worried the muscles might seize and she made a mental note to have some calming draught on hand for when he woke up – she’d also rub some muscle cramp paste into his skin once he was asleep to try and ease the pain. For the time being though, all she could do was try to comfort him with her words.
“You’re doing well Harry,” Hermione murmured as her eyes flicked between Nasir, Harry and the diagnostics. “Really well – we’re almost done.”
“Alright, it’s in place,” Nasir said evenly after a long tense moment of him fussing with the feather. “You can release the retractors.”
“Okay,” Hermione let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding, slowly closing the retractors and carefully drawing them out from Harry’s arm. Her arms were aching, her left one trembling slightly and threatening to begin to shake violently any second – it was a good thing Nasir had finished when he did because she wasn’t sure she’d have been able to keep steady much longer. But despite her slow and careful movements, Harry hissed out in pain as she removed the retractors, a low groan being cut off as he thumped his forehead against the table with the small amount of slack he had in the tethers. She could see a trail of tears escaping the corner of his one eye despite his best efforts to ignore the pain. “I’m sorry Harry – we’re so close – almost done.”
Once the retractors were removed she let Nasir take over and she wiped some sweat from the back of Harry’s neck, her opposite hand rubbing smooth circles down his spine as she watched Nasir shift the veins and tendons back into place before he began closing up the wound. A year ago, she would have thought this was absurd. A year ago, she would have seen Nasir’s journal and wonder what kind of sick person would go through this kind of self-mutilation simply for the sake of it.
But that felt like a lifetime ago, and now, she hadn’t even thought twice about doing the procedure once Nasir had confirmed there were no runes involved and it was, for the most part, safe. Once Harry said he was on board she’d been completely supportive. She felt herself frown at the thought and she wondered what that said about her – about Harry. How much their standards had changed over the year and what they were willing to go through to better their odds of surviving and winning the war. She’d just held the cut on Harry’s arm wide open, she was soothing him gently while she watched a man they barely knew carefully sealing the incision while Harry sweated and groaned and twitched against the tethers that she had cast to keep him in place. It made her stomach twist uncomfortably, especially since after discussing the procedure at length and now seeing it in person she was going to request having it done next.
They weren’t totally lost to the war yet, but they’d both definitely been deeply affected by it. It had undoubtedly claimed the last of their innocence and dulled them to pain and horrors that they shouldn’t have ever known.
As Nasir slowly dragged his finger across the cut she watched it close into a thin silver line and gripped Harry’s left hand tightly while summoning the dreamless sleeping potion with her free hand. It must be getting more painful because now he wasn’t able to stop squirming and his groans were becoming louder.
“Harry,” Hermione said quietly as he hit his head against the table for a second time. She left the potion on the table and opted instead to grab his head and tilt it towards her before shortening the tether so he wouldn’t be able to thunk it against the surface for a third time. His eyes were pinched shut and tears were leaking from his eyes still. “Harry – it’s okay, we’re almost done I promise. We’re so close – so close Harry and then you can sleep.”
“s-okay,” he grit out, his eyes cracking open a fraction and meeting hers with determination. “I-I’m ok-ay.”
“I know,” she whispered as she brushed damp hair from his forehead. She felt her heart ache in her chest as she gripped him tighter and leaned down closer to his face. The rune on her shoulder was getting heavy with every passing moment she watched him in pain. “I know you are – I know you’re okay. We’re almost done, just another few seconds and then–“
“Done,” Nasir’s deep baritone echoed the tent as Harry’s body trembled. “Give him the potion – now that it’s closed it’s going to get worse until his body adjusts.”
“Okay,” Hermione breathed in relief as she grabbed the potion from the table and quickly released two of the tethers on Harry’s upper half. He jerked up immediately, twisting in pain before doubling over once more as his entire right arm vibrated violently against the table.
“Ughh – fuck,” he hissed before glaring up at Nasir, sweat and tears covering his face as he panted for breath. “It feels – like it’s trying to c-claw itself out!”
“I know,” Nasir said calmly, and Hermione nearly did a double-take at the strange expression on the man’s face. He looked almost sympathetic as he reached out and grabbed Harry’s shoulder, steadying his upper half so Hermione could bring the potion to his lips. “Breathe, Harry.”
Harry sucked in a deep breath between his clenched teeth before Hermione brought the flask to his lips and he swallowed the entire contents in one large gulp. He twitched for another moment before his motions slowed and his body began to grow limp. Hermione rapidly dropped her hold on his arm and tossed the empty flask back on the table, intending to move so she could hold him up before he passed out entirely but was surprised when Nasir stepped behind Harry and let his limp form collapse against his chest.
“You did well,” Nasir said quietly, his dark eyes shifting to Hermione.
“Thank you,” Hermione said quietly as she eyed the man next to her. That strange look was still present on his face and Hermione wondered if perhaps he was showing more emotion because he was tired. They’d all been up for well over twenty-four hours and they’d just completed a rather tense and precise surgery. Maybe his impassive shield of indifference was starting to slip? Which raised the question to the forefront of her mind – did he normally feel and just hide it? She and Harry had sort of assumed he was incapable of it.
“Both of you did well,” Nasir’s eyes flicked down to Harry, who was unconscious and limp against his chest. “Clean him up and then you need to tether him to the bunk – if he rolls over before the core is set, he’ll mess up the alignment and we’ll have to do this all over again.”
“Alright,” Hermione nodded, choosing not to comment on the strange shift in Nasir’s demeanour and instead shifting her attention back to Harry.
She knew it was possible she was just projecting onto him – she was beyond exhausted after all and maybe her mind was just looking for kindness in places that it didn’t exist. She vanished the blood and sweat from Harry with a few cleaning charms, taking the time to carefully heal the cracked nails on his left hand while Nasir stood there motionless behind Harry – solid like a brick wall of support. She could feel Nasir’s eyes following her movements as she worked, a comfortable silence forming between them as she double-checked over Harry to ensure that he was healed, safe and not left with any remaining injuries or scars aside from the thin line on his arm.
“Thank you, Nasir – for helping us, for doing this for Harry,” Hermione finally said after she had finished removing the last bit of blood from Harry’s hand and she turned to look up at the tall man once more. “Doing this procedure alone, even with your notes, would have been difficult.”
Nasir nodded but remained silent, either he had nothing to say or – her eyes narrowed a fraction as she looked at the almost imperceptible lines that were barely visible around his intense dark eyes – was he tired?
She gave him a small smile and quickly levitated Harry to their bunk. She took her time getting him settled, making sure that Harry was comfortable and that his arm was tethered to his side while his body was tethered to the bed. She did not want him to go through the procedure again and she definitely was not going to have it be required because the wand core didn’t set right. It took her a few minutes until she was satisfied and then she brushed the hair from Harry’s peaceful looking face and kissed his forehead lightly.
I’ll be right back, she thought fondly as she smiled down at his sleeping form. She felt better now that the surgery was over – now that she was sure he was safe and that he was sleeping peacefully. She didn’t often get time to just look at Harry, because lately, it seemed like they were always busy – always researching, working, brewing, training, and helping the Order. And once again she found herself slightly flustered by just how handsome he was as she looked at him. Entirely different from the gangly, awkward and scrawny boy she’d met in first year.
She fought back a sigh as something painfully sentimental thudded in her chest. A part of her missed the days where it was just the two of them alone in the tent in the middle of nowhere snuggled up for warmth and doing nothing but reading and training. Those months had been brutal in their own right, but there was something special about it she would never forget, something intimate that resonated deep within her soul. She couldn’t help but miss the winter when it was just them – but deep down she knew being around other people again was good for them. And as much as it was difficult to be at Shell Cottage at times, she truly was thankful to be around other human beings once more. She snorted softly, her smile widening. They’d changed so much – but also not at all. She’d still do anything for him, and she still loved him more than anything.
Even though Harry was confined to bed because of an injury she planned to make the most of their day off and just enjoy the quiet, sitting at his side while he healed. With one final look, Hermione made her way back to the table to help Nasir finish cleaning and packing up his tools. He’d gotten most of it done while she’d been fussing with Harry, but she helped him sanitize everything and then cleaned the table while he shrunk everything to fit in the small black bag he’d pulled from his pant’s pocket before they’d started the procedure.
“Will it be just as effective as what his wand was before?” Hermione asked quietly, her eyes flicking to Nasir’s rigid frame as he began packing away the now miniaturized tools. The silence between them had been comfortable as usual, but she couldn’t help herself from breaking it. She rarely allowed opportunities to get more information to pass her by.
“Yes. It should be around the same as having his old wand. Possibly a fraction better, possibly a fraction worse – but certainly better than the wand he is currently using,” Nasir said calmly as he finished packing up his supplies. “Make sure you wait until he wakes up on his own, that he eats something after and avoid letting him out of bed unless it is absolutely necessary until tomorrow morning.”
“I will,” Hermione nodded as Nasir fixed her with a firm quiet stare. Silence filled the space between them once more and Hermione shifted in wait. He was looking at her like he was either thinking about saying something else or was evaluating her, yet he stood motionless and silent on the opposite side of the table with his packed bag before him. She waited to see if he’d speak further, but he didn’t, he simply stared for another long second before finally nodding and picking up his bag and turning on his heel to leave.
“Did you know?” Hermione asked, the words inexplicably falling from her mouth before she could stop herself.
She felt torn. On one hand, she wanted Nasir to leave because she was exhausted. She desperately needed sleep and she suspected he did too. She could feel the headache between her temples from using the bonding commands compounding and growing even worse, her body was starting to fail her once more from being overworked and she just wanted (more than anything) to sit quietly next to Harry while napping and keeping an eye on him. But on the other hand, and it was a struggle that she was growing more and more familiar with, she felt a tug of desire to spend time with another person and interact with them. It was the same conflicting feeling she got towards Fleur and Luna and Arthur – except with Nasir she felt slightly more comfortable – and the nagging feeling was constantly at odds with her desire to be alone with Harry.
It made her want to sigh in frustration as her own body and mind seemed to be constantly at odds with itself lately as she continued to try and adapt to life around other people. Like she was trying to rescue pieces of her former self all while knowing she’d never fully return and thus was left stranded somewhere on an awkward middle ground.
It didn’t help her any that she had a bunch of questions for the tall mysterious man and her mind was racing at the idea of completing the procedure on herself. She’d already pushed Nasir for answers today and she didn’t want to push him too hard – but she also didn’t want him to leave just yet before asking. She had a million things to say, she constantly felt like she never had enough time to work through everything that she wanted to and needed to. If she was going to do this procedure it needed to be done within the next few days because they didn’t have time and they never knew what might happen next.
Besides, she didn’t often get time alone with the man aside from training. But those moments were spent intently training and they never left much room for questioning or general discussion. So, despite the slight shaking in her legs and the tremor that had started to vibrate in her left arm from fatigue she found herself taking a step towards him as she spoke.
“Did you know that Harry wasn’t using his own wand?”
“I suspected it,” Nasir said in his familiar rich baritone, his eyes flicking over to Harry’s sleeping form. His movements had halted immediately at the sound of her voice and he stood perfectly still just a few feet before her. She’d not missed the way his typically unnoticeably limp had looked more prominent when he’d shifted around the table, the last night must have gotten to him in some degree. “The magic he performed with the wand was subpar compared to the wandless magic he conducted – so it wasn’t difficult to guess why.”
“I see,” Hermione shifted, her eyes flicking back to Harry once more as a familiar heaviness fell over her heart. The weight of love mixed with agony and a strong desire to protect him. She hesitated before looking back to Nasir, unable to stop herself from outwardly asking the question that had been festering in the back of her mind. There was no point in delaying it anyways, she was sure Nasir already knew she was thinking about it and she suspected that was why he’d stopped trying to leave – he always seemed to know these things. “Do you think it’s smarter to implant the core directly compared to keeping a traditional wand?”
Nasir shifted, his eyes moving back to hers as he stared at her silently again.
“I do,” he said finally. His deep voice was flat, but his impassive expression seemed to almost soften as he let out a low sigh before continuing in a firm voice. “But I would not suggest breaking your wand, Hermione – it is perfectly functional as is.”
“Is that why you implanted your wand cores – because your wand was damaged?”
“No,” Nasir said slowly and to her surprise, his shoulders dropped a fraction in one of his rare displays of lowered defences. Then something shifted across his face and she felt her chest grow tight. It was no longer a suspicion; it was now written all over his face. For the first time since she’d met the man – he looked visibly tired. Even after he’d walked to Shell Cottage injured, he’d maintained his composure and appeared completely unphased, but for some reason now he was allowing her to see him in full and it felt weird to see such exhaustion radiating from his body. “I did it because I wanted to – I snapped my own wand and pulled out the core. Then I got a second one and did the same.”
“But you’re saying I shouldn’t,” Hermione said quietly, she’d never seen him look like this. His eyes were still dark, intense and piercing, but there was strain showing around them, and a crease between his brow as he looked at her with a mix of exhaustion and concern.
“You shouldn’t,” he confirmed in the same stern voice he’d used when he’d informed her that he would not tell her how he returned from the dead. “Not unless it is necessary because your wand has been damaged.”
“Why?”
“Because it is additional trauma to your body that you don’t need,” he said firmly.
Hermione frowned; this hadn’t been what she was expecting. It was in fact the entire opposite of what she thought he’d say.
“But you did it to Harry,” she said flatly.
“Harry’s wand was already broken Hermione,” Nasir’s tone had not lightened and if anything it had grown sterner. “He needs a functional wand suited to him.”
“Even though his wandless magic is above average and with his temporary wand he can still cast everything you’ve taught him?” Hermione said raising a brow. She crossed her arms over her chest in an attempt to both hide and dampen the tremors that were radiating from her shoulder. She was struggling to accept his words – how could Nasir, who was so ready to complete these experiments on himself and help Harry with them, draw the line at her? Nasir watched her movement, his eyes locked to her left arm before he met her gaze once more and he raised his own brow in a gesture she’d not seen him make before.
“Do you want me to say it bluntly, Hermione?” Nasir’s voice dropped a fraction, his dark eyes narrowing ever so slightly as his head tilted to the side. “Harry’s body has more room for trauma than yours – you’ve been through enough.”
“What?” Hermione couldn’t help but feel insulted and her voice became tense. “You’re saying I’m too damaged for the implant?”
“I’m saying it’s unnecessary,” Nasir said firmly as he placed his small black bag back on the table and took a step towards her. Apparently, he no longer intended to leave and was committed to having this conversation in full.
“But it’s a one-time thing, Nasir,” Hermione retorted, her brow furrowing in frustration as her general nervousness towards the man completely fell away and was replaced with irritation and anger. She could not believe this; she could not believe he was actually telling her no after telling her that having the wand core implanted was superior to carrying a wand. She couldn’t believe he would do it to Harry but not to her and she couldn’t believe that she was arguing with him over this. “It’s a brief few moments of pain and then I never have to worry about losing my wand or having it broken! It’s clearly superior!”
“You can permanently tether your wand to your body so that you never lose it and I can add a charm to your wand to protect it from physical damage – there is no need for you to break it and implant the core unless you have no other choice,” Nasir’s eyes were glinting now and he was looking at her intently, almost with a hint of anger. It was a bizarrely familiar expression and yet it looked nothing like him. “You don’t need to go through that when you have other options – especially with your wandless capabilities.”
“You did it,” Hermione said stubbornly, keeping her tone low and dark. “Because you clearly saw the benefit.”
“I did it,” Nasir said darkly as he leaned down to look at her. “Because I didn’t care about the consequences, I only cared about the benefits and I had nothing to lose. You have everything to lose and your body does not need to endure any additional unnecessary trauma.”
“My body is fine,” Hermione said darkly through clenched teeth as her arms tensed around her body. She wished the stupid arm would stop shaking, but it only seemed to get worse as her anger grew and her temper flared.
“Your body is already permanently damaged from your torture,” Nasir’s voice turned sharp, he moved so quick she didn’t have a chance to react before he gripped her left arm and tugged it away from her body. He held her wrist firmly and pulled her shaking arm before her, raising it between them in clear view. Her entire arm vibrated in his grasp, her fingers twitching and proving his remark to be true. “This – will never go away, Hermione.”
“I know that it shakes!” Hermione tugged on her arm, but he refused to let go. A rush of conflicting emotions was pouring through her body as she tried to argue, tried to regain control of her arm and tried to rationally understand how the conversation had twisted to this. The only thing that she could conclude was that they were both immensely tired and that there had to be some other reason why he was refusing to do the procedure on her. “I don’t see what my arm shaking when I’m tired has to do with implanting a wand core! I wa–“
“It has everything to do with it!” Nasir snapped, cutting her off. “The body can only handle so much Hermione, there is a reason why wizards use wands and the majority wouldn’t even consider implanting the core – it permanently stresses the body. Just like there is a reason why the cruciatus curse is considered unforgivable and why most wizards don’t dabble in body modifications or long-term blatant changes. It wears on the body – and yours has already been permanently damaged and worn down. It can’t handle additional stressors that serve no purpose!”
Hermione stilled completely as the tremble of her arm continued to radiate into his hand. She didn’t try to pull away as a cold ball formed in the pit of her stomach at his words. She knew she was damaged. She knew this was permanent. But somehow hearing it stated so bluntly, so matter-of-factly and in a way that made it seem like it was a handicap or like she was somehow limited in her future because of her past injury – well, it hurt. And she was too fucking tired to just swallow it down.
She couldn’t stop her face from faltering at the harshness of his words as her eyes narrowed to a glare and the cold ball in her stomach started to ache. Never once had he ever hinted that he thought she was damaged or that her injury would impact her performance. He’d never coddled her or taken it easy on her or done anything to suggest it was limiting. Never once had he spoken to her so harshly or looked at her with such a strange expression – and never once had he denied her something that he’d given or taught to Harry.
She’d never pegged Nasir as a particularly nice man, but somehow his cold delivery seemed so… unlike him – he was usually detached and calm in every situation. Even when he was intense and deadly, he’d never seemed, for lack of a better word, mean – and yet now he was standing before her agitated, and arguing as if he’d always had some level of hidden anger that was only now just being exposed.
She swallowed hard. She didn’t like it.
But as quick as the thought entered her head, she saw the harshness in his eyes waiver before they softened a fraction as his shoulders slumped once more. His grip loosened on her wrist but he still held her arm between them as he let out a deep sigh and Hermione watched transfixed and bewildered as he met her gaze once more with an even emotionless stare.
“I’m sorry,” his familiar calm deep baritone sounded like a low whisper. He shifted and she felt like she could literally see him coming back to himself, back to his familiar calm collected form. “I –“
Nasir hesitated, his jaw clenching momentarily before he seemed to determine what it was that he wanted to say and Hermione stood there silent, brow furrowed in confusion and anger until he spoke again.
“I had to make some – changes, to be able to come back after the den,” Nasir said quietly, and she watched as he resumed his more typical posture. “I’m still getting used to it. Similar to your arm, it gets worse when I’m tired and unfortunately, I’ve not had the time to sleep for the last several days.”
“What changes?” Hermione said quietly, she didn’t move and she continued to watch him with an unsure frown.
“I had to borrow something,” Nasir said after a long pause. Hermione felt her eyes narrow further as she watched him. Was it possible he felt guilty for practically snapping at her and this was why he was sharing the information? She’d not pegged him for a man who felt guilt – let alone anything. Then again, she had noticed that he appeared slightly different from the moment he returned.
“What did you borrow?” she asked him quietly, her eyes tracing over his impassive face.
“Took – I should say,” Nasir said slowly, and he released his hold on her trembling arm and took a slow step back. “Since there is no way to ever give it back.”
“What did you take?” Hermione rephrased quietly as she let her shaking arm fall to her side.
“Does it matter?” Nasir said flatly, his dark glinting eyes entirely void of the emotions they’d displayed but a second ago.
“You tell me,” Hermione whispered, and she noticed the way his body became more still. “You’ve been different since you returned. Not everyone has noticed because it’s not a huge change and it’s not always apparent – but I noticed it. Harry noticed it. You are different.”
“I am,” Nasir said slowly, not denying or correcting her statement.
“Something is impacting your personality,” she said quietly, stating it like it was a fact. It had only been a suspicion, but Nasir didn’t deny it and instead he simply inclined his head. “Does it impact anything else?”
He remained silent for a long while until he finally spoke in a low voice. “It impacts emotions.”
“I see,” Hermione said slowly, her brow arching once more. “I’d always been unsure if you could feel things – based on your reactions.”
“I do – now,” he said slowly before staring at her for a long quiet moment. “It’s been a long time Hermione and I am, regretfully, not used to it yet. I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that. I’ve not yet mastered regulating this and I did not mean to imply that your injury was in any way – limiting.”
“It’s okay,” Hermione felt her expression soften and her lips twitched into a small smile. “I accept the apology – even if you won’t tell me the details around what it was you did to yourself to come back. I know that my arm is still a problem, permanently, even though you fixed it. I don’t know why it still bothers me so much to admit it.”
Hermione paused, her shoulders dropping a fraction before she continued in a low almost insecure voice.
“Maybe it’s because it just makes me feel weaker,” she whispered. Hermione gave him a pathetic shrug and swallowed hard. She’d not admitted that to anyone else – people had seen her outwardly frustrated at her arm, they’d seen it shake and they’d seen her scowl at it. But she’d never actually admitted how it made her feel weak and pathetic every time her arm gave out. The truth was, she hated it – and it did bother her even though she’d accepted it. “Like somehow I’m less capable now because of it.”
“Hermione,” Nasir said slowly, his deep voice had become softer and it naturally drew her eyes to meet his gaze. She saw him looking at her with a hint of emotion dancing behind his eyes once more as he took a slow step forward. “Your arm isn’t a problem. In any normal situation, it would be fully functional – the problem is that this war is not a normal situation and it is demanding an unfair amount from both you and Harry. You’ve been without sleep for over twenty-four hours, you’re exhausted and yet you’re asking me about implanting your wand core into your arm voluntarily because you think it might help. Absolutely nothing about that is normal.
“Your arm is shaking yes – but it’s not because you’re damaged,” Nasir said evenly. “It’s because too much has been placed on your shoulders already. That procedure, while not inherently dangerous to complete, will leave a permanent stressor on Harry’s body for the rest of his life. Think of your body like an empty container. Over the course of your life things are added to it day by day – general wear and tear, lingering damage from dark magic, irreparable damage or pain from bones that have been healed one too many times and just aren’t the same anymore. They all add up. And your jar, after what happened to you, has more in it than most people’s and it is exceptionally full for someone your age. Your arm doesn’t limit you. You are not damaged. I’m just trying to make sure that you’re left with enough room to handle the war, and so that there is something left for when this war is over, that you still have space for the normal weights and burdens that will be added naturally as you grow older.”
Hermione felt her shoulders drop completely as she looked up at the man before her and something painful started to ache in her heart. This… was not what she had been expecting at all. It had hurt to have her request for the procedure denied, it had hurt to think that Nasir thought she was too damaged or that she couldn’t handle the surgery. That rejection had stung – but somehow, knowing that his reason behind the refusal was because he was looking out for her, being cautious of her future and that he must care for her in some way hurt even more. He was looking at her intently now and she saw another flicker of emotion cross his gaze.
“Believe me when I say that you do not want to fill that container,” Nasir said quietly. “You do not want to even come close to filling it – it will undoubtedly lead you down a path that you cannot return from.”
Her face faltered once more, and the weight from her rune grew heavy again. Maybe it was because she was overtired, or maybe it was because she was exhausted and her body was minutes away from giving up entirely – but the anger and irritation that had flooded her a moment ago were replaced with nothing but a heavy sadness, and a dull ache in her heart as his words sunk in. She didn’t need to be a genius to know that Nasir’s words were based on experience – this was a warning.
“Did you fill your container?” Hermione whispered; her eyes locked to his as her arm continued to tremble hard against her side.
“Yes,” Nasir said quietly, his low deep baritone sending a shiver down her spine as it echoed around the silent tent. She’d known the answer before asking it but hearing him say it with that unnatural intensity just made it hit that much harder.
“Okay,” Hermione said quietly, her head nodding as she swallowed hard. “If – if you don’t think it’s a good idea – then I won’t do the procedure.”
Nasir nodded, his eyes still intently watching her face.
“Will you teach me the charm work required to protect my wand?” Hermione asked him before quickly adding. “Not today – tomorrow, I think – I think we could both use some sleep.”
“I will,” Nasir nodded again and shifted to pick up his small black bag. Hermione watched as he moved, an uncomfortable feeling growing in the pit of her stomach once more as an awkward silence fell between them. She’d never been great at dealing with emotions or confrontations – she’d become even worse at it after everything that had happened, and she knew that her overtired state was only making everything worse. She knew it was possible that she was overthinking things, but she couldn’t help but feel bad about how the conversation had gone, about how she had reacted and the uncomfortable ambiance they were left with after what was their first argument.
She felt like she understood the man before her more clearly than ever before and she didn’t want to leave things like this.
It was like pieces were starting to make sense and hold entirely new meaning when she paired his words and behaviour just now with the journal entries that she’d read and everything else that she’d learned about him. There’d been a shift that had happened in his note-taking and a distinct detachment and coldness had appeared in the 1940s. She still wasn’t sure exactly what he’d been through, or what he’d done to come back after the den, but a suspicion was beginning to form in the depths of her mind. And she was pretty confident that he’d gone from being an empty shell driven by instinct or desire to a somewhat functional human being with partial emotions within a single day.
Surely, at least some part of him was feeling uncomfortable with what had just transpired too.
“Nasir – wait,” she stepped toward him as he’d turned to leave once more.
He froze just like the last time, his eyes shifting back to hers as he waited for her to speak again.
“I’m sorry,” Hermione said quietly, her hand twisting in the hem of her shirt as she tried to formulate her words in her tired and weary mind. Sure, a part of her still feared the man, he was still unnatural and could easily make your skin crawl – but a much larger part of her felt for him, cared for him and was starting to see him as a sort of oddly permanent fixture in her life.
Regardless of not knowing the true details of his life before, there was one thing of which she was certain – Nasir was alone in the world.
He didn’t have anyone like how she had Harry and he was trying to navigate interacting and communicating with people after regaining emotions he’d likely been void of for half a century. It was not only heart wrenching to think of, but it was also remarkable that he’d done so well with it up to this point. She couldn’t imagine what must have been going through his mind over the last few days or how he must be feeling now after his brief outburst – so she wanted to clear the air and make sure he knew they were okay.
“I didn’t understand the reason behind why you said no to the procedure,” Hermione said slowly as she met his gaze sincerely. “I couldn’t wrap my head around why you’d do it for Harry and not for me, I didn’t understand what you were getting at when you brought up my injury and I got defensive.”
“Hermione,” Nasir said quietly. “You have nothing to apologize for.”
“Well that’s just not true,” Hermione scoffed, a small smile crossing her lips as she felt some of the unease in the pit of her stomach fall away. “I definitely have things I need to apologize for once this is over.”
“I doubt that,” Nasir said, the corner of his lips twitching a fraction. “And you should never apologize for doing what you need to to survive.”
“Maybe that’s true. Maybe it’s not, but either way – I don’t regret anything that I’ve done,” Hermione said softly. “I hope you know that I appreciate you being here, Nasir – I wouldn’t have gotten this far without you – none of us would have. You are, unquestionably, the best mentor that I have ever had, and I will never be able to repay you for everything that you’ve given me. Thank you – for staying with us, and for agreeing to help when you didn’t have to. I’ll never be able to thank you or repay you for that.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Nasir said quietly, and she didn’t miss the slight discomfort that passed over his body much like it had when Arthur complimented and thanked him.
“I know you don’t want to tell me anything about what you did to come back – and that’s fine,” Hermione said slowly. “I understand that you must have a good reason for not wanting to share it. But can you at least tell me if there is anything else I should know? If any other part of you has been affected – is there anything you want to tell me? Or something that might make things easier or help me to understand if I’m aware of it now?”
“Nothing else,” Nasir said quietly. “Just the physical injuries which you are already familiar with.”
“Okay,” Hermione nodded and gave him another small smile. He seemed calmer somehow – or maybe she was just projecting it because she felt better about what had happened. She hesitated a moment before she closed the distance between them and wrapped her arms around his middle like she had the day he’d returned, and she smiled when he didn’t move or pull away. “Thank you.”
“It’s nothing,” Nasir’s low voice rumbled from his chest.
He didn’t flinch this time when she squeezed him tight and to her surprise, she felt both of his arms slowly wrap carefully around her small frame. The black bag he’d been holding pressed into her spine along with the blunt end of his right arm as her left arm shook somewhat violently against him and she gripped the fabric of his shirt tightly.
“You know,” Hermione said into his chest. “I said it once and I’ll say it again – you are part of this team Nasir, you’re not alone. If you ever need Harry or I – we’re both here for you too and I plan to ensure that there is something left of you after the war as well, just like everyone else.”
Nasir didn’t say anything, but he didn’t move as she hugged him for a few seconds longer and then finally stepped away.
“Make sure you sleep,” Nasir’s rich deep baritone filled the tent and she saw the corner of his lips twitch once more as he shifted toward the door. “I have many new things to teach you both tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Hermione smiled as she continued to watch him move. “Good night Nasir, sleep well.”
He paused at her final words, so similar to how he had in the rain the day of the den attack – but this time he spoke.
“Good night, Hermione,” Nasir said over his shoulder. “Don’t forget to use the muscles cramp paste on Harry – I’m sure tomorrow he will be very sore.”
“I won’t,” Hermione said quietly, watching as the mysterious man exited their tent. Feeling less weary and with the heavy weight on her chest significantly lighter, Hermione made her way back to Harry and summoned the jar of muscles cramp paste that Mrs. Weasley had given her.
-x-x-
A low groan had sounded from the bunk as Hermione hurriedly threw a tea bag into the steaming mug of hot water before her. Without hesitating Hermione abandoned the mug and made her way back to their bunk – sitting gently on the edge of the bed and leaning down toward Harry as he groaned for a second time.
“Harry?”
Hermione brushed some of the hair off his damp forehead. He’d been sweating all day and his hair kept getting stuck on his skin. When she moved the last piece of hair his eyes fluttered open and they locked to hers.
“Hey,” Hermione whispered, a grin splitting across her lips as she looked down at him. “How are you feeling? Does anything hurt?”
“Everything hurts,” Harry murmured as the focus slowly began to return to his eyes. A small smile twisted across his lips. “But it could be worse. What time is it, Hermione?”
“It’s 7:30 pm – still Sunday. You’ve been asleep all day,” Hermione gently stroked his face and quickly checked the diagnostics that were still floating above his head. “Your arm healed clean – everything went well. Is it still burning?”
“No,” Harry’s voice sounded a bit rough. “It’s fine – it just feels a little weird. Almost like there’s something hot inside my arm.”
“Okay, Hermione nodded. “If it starts to feel like it’s burning again let me know and I’ll get Nasir, but it sounds like it should be okay.”
“Good,” Harry smiled at her fully. He made to reach up to touch her face with his left hand, but it stopped short because of the tethers and a small laugh escaped his lips. “How many did you add – I swear I can feel fifteen of them.”
“Sixteen,” Hermione grinned again and tried not to laugh as Harry snorted.
“Sixteen?”
“Well, it started as ten,” Hermione wordlessly lengthened the tether on his left arm and leaned into his touch as he stroked his thumb across her cheek. “But you kept trying to roll, so I had to add a few more.”
“Sorry about that,” Harry said softly, his eyes flicking over her face. “Did you sleep at all – please tell me you at least got a little sleep and you weren’t sitting here all day watching over me.”
“I slept – once I was sure you weren’t moving, I napped for most of the afternoon.”
“Good,” Harry smiled softly. “You needed some rest.”
“I think we all did,” Hermione agreed.
“Did you put muscle cramp paste on my jaw?” Harry’s brow raised suddenly as he shifted his jaw around and opened it once or twice. “It hurts way less – well it doesn’t really hurt at all. I thought for sure it was going to ache like a bitch.”
“Yeah,” Hermione nodded and threaded her fingers with Harry’s hand as he dropped his hand back to his chest. “I thought it would help – you were clenching your jaw pretty hard.”
“Thank you,” Harry breathed out as he closed his eyes and gripped her hand tighter.
“Of course Harry,” Hermione said softly. “Nasir said you could sit-up – and you’re supposed to eat. Are you feeling up to it?”
“Yeah I think so – it’s probably a good idea even if I’m not,” Harry gave her a warm smile.
She undid a few of the tethers, carefully repositioning Harry into a slightly inclined position while being careful not to move his arm unnecessarily. It took a couple of minutes, but she got him comfortable, re-tethered him and then went to go reheat her tea and make him a cup. It felt weird to be lazily bustling around the tent with no deadlines, no emergencies and no one waiting for them or needing them. Hermione had messaged Arthur before snuggling up to Harry earlier that morning and they’d both agreed to push the afternoon debrief and questioning regarding the effectiveness of the bands until Monday night. Everyone at the cottage was still exhausted and Nasir’s orders regarding Harry’s rest had been strict. She had an entire month until the next full moon to make the changes to the bands, and as much as she was anxious to sit down with everyone and hear more about their experience throughout the change she knew that they had plenty of time and the problem wasn’t going anywhere. So, the Order decided to take the night off to rest and recoup – and she and Harry had their first legitimate evening off in what felt like ages.
And it was weird – nice, but weird.
She brought Harry a small meal, they ate and drank their tea mostly in content silence, neither one of them addressing the Snape topic any further since they both knew there was nothing constructive left to say. She let him get up to use the washroom briefly after cleaning up their dinner, only for her to quickly tether him back down to the bunk upon his return and double-check his arm to make sure that it was okay.
By 8:15 pm Hermione was confident that Harry’s arm would be perfectly fine, and she managed to finally relax – sort of. Her mind had fixated on the conversation they’d had with Shacklebolt earlier that morning regarding their future. The discussion had gotten lost in the storm of thoughts that circled her head, between Snape and the surgery she’d almost entirely forgotten about it. Except that she never forgot anything – ever – and it always floated to the surface sooner or later, and now that an odd quiet and calm had encapsulated the tent, she found her mind wandering. And she found herself entirely lost as to what to think about it.
At the time she’d been too tired, too overwhelmed and too busy thinking about the war and everything left that they had to do to put any time, attention or effort into considering Shacklebolt’s proposal. If she was being honest, at the time she’d all but dismissed it – writing it off as a future thing that she may or may not have the luxury to even consider. Yet as she looked at Harry, with his dishevelled mess of hair leaning comfortably back against his pillows and flipping through a book on advanced arithmancy he’d asked her to grab for him – she could not help but think about it. It was the first night since Harry had asked her to move in with him that she’d allowed herself to really think about their future. Sure the odd thought had popped up here and there, but for the most part, she’d all but entirely snuffed those out because she only had so much capacity and worrying or thinking about something that may never come and was so far off in the future seemed like a waste of time and resources.
But now – they had time.
“Hey Harry,” Hermione said softly as she padded towards his bunk with their second cups of tea. The wind from the water was softly rattling the tent, and the familiar and comforting sounds of the material rippling was oddly relaxing and normal. Which made bringing up the topic of their future feel like the most natural thing in the world.
“Yes?” his eyes immediately flicked away from the open textbook to meet hers as she made her way over.
She couldn’t help but smile at his reaction to her voice, he always gave her his undivided attention. Just like she always gave it to him. She could see him searching her face, already locked on to the question circling her mind before she even asked it. They’d become so incredibly in tune with each other – automatically finding the other and instinctively knowing what they were thinking before they even said it. They were tangled.
Completely and utterly tangled up in each other – so much so that they'd become just one giant web and she could no longer see the original threads of who they once were before they came together. The threads were still there, nestled deep within the web they’d formed together, and they were still important and they still gave them each a solid backbone on which to stand individually. But so much had been layered on top of it. They’d grown so close that she found it impossible to picture life without him and extremely difficult to picture their life being any different than it currently was.
As exhausting as the war was and as much as she wanted it over the idea of it ending sort of terrified her. It had become such a huge part of who they were, their fundamental identity and their motivation to exist – it sort of felt like their entire life even before going off and living in a tent had been dedicated to the war, preparing for this to happen. This was partly why she’d struggled and not allowed herself to think about Shacklebolt’s words to any substantial extent.
What would they do after the war?
The question was daunting. Like asking someone to explain the purpose of life or what existed before the universe. Nonetheless, it had been festering in her mind since Harry had drifted into a deep sleep, and naturally, like she did when she was stuck on any other topic, she wanted to talk to Harry about it. It was festering like a stressor, Shacklebolt had made the idea of a post-war world plausible and real and she didn’t know what to do with it – but she knew she couldn’t keep it to herself. It was hard enough knowing she was keeping her deal with Nasir secret from him – she didn’t want to hide anything else, she couldn’t.
Wherever life went after this war, she knew Harry would be a part of it. So even though it was a topic that they generally avoided because it often turned into something tense about keeping each other alive, she decided to bring it up since they finally had the time to discuss it properly. She gently climbed onto the bunk, passing him his new tea before curling up beside him. She was careful not to bump his arm but also didn’t leave any space between them.
“I've been thinking about what Shacklebolt said,” Hermione said quietly, leaning back against the pillows and resting gently on his left side.
“Mhmm,” he hummed as he took a sip of the tea then let Hermione float it back to the small nightstand by their bunk so he wouldn’t have to hold it.
“Have you thought about it at all?” she asked him, raising a brow in question.
“I have,” Harry gave her a soft smile as he breathed out a low sigh. “But I'm still not sure what to think about it.”
“Me either,” she said quietly. “What do you want to do when this is over – would you want to work with him and skip seventh year?”
Harry sat quietly for a long moment his fingers tracing small circles against her wrist in the way that he always did when they sat together and he was thinking. It was such a natural position for them that she didn’t even always think about the fact that he was doing it. The truth was, they’d become so busy and their relationship was such a solid fixture in her life that she didn’t consciously think about it as much anymore – until now. Until Shacklebolt had proposed a potential future. Until Shacklebolt had given her an idea of something that could be possible after the war – a potential project that could change the face of the wizarding world and help hundreds if not thousands of people. It was a real tangible future, something that mattered and a real life that they could have. She felt the weight on her chest grow heavy as her stomach clenched with a thousand racing thoughts.
She couldn’t imagine changing from what they had now. She couldn't imagine going back to Hogwarts and being surrounded by that many people to finish seventh year – the idea of it was so overwhelming it was almost nauseating. Perhaps it was unhealthy, but she couldn’t even sleep without Harry. If she was being honest – that tangled web they had wasn’t even a web anymore. It’d turned to solid stone ages ago and they both knew it. She was so entirely dependent on it, on him – and she knew he was on the same page.
Maybe someday in the future, she would look back at this time and think it was foolish and potentially harmful to become so fixated on a single person and borderline co- dependent. But right now, she would tell any person who questioned it to fuck off because she simply didn’t care. Right now they were surviving – and they would do whatever they had to to make it through this alive.
She knew she couldn’t go back to the girls’ dorm. She couldn’t sleep in a room with strangers and without Harry at her side. Even if she and Harry somehow made arrangements to live at Grimmauld Place and commute to school each day – she still wasn’t sure she could manage sitting in class, doing homework and being around that many people. Not after everything they’d been through – not after how they’d changed.
Yes, she was working on things and she wanted to get better at dealing with her emotions and controlling her anxiety in large groups – she wanted to reconnect – but they would never go back to how things were.
“I think,” Harry said slowly, pulling her from her rapid spiral of thoughts as she’d waited patiently for his answer. His eyes stared distantly off at the opposite wall while his fingers continued to trace the skin around her wrist. “I like the idea of working with him to make a difference.”
Before Hermione could nod or react to his words Harry let out a small snort and turned to give her a soft almost saddened smile.
“The idea of going back to doing homework and writing essays – it just seems a bit ridiculous after all this – doesn’t it?” Harry said quietly. She could see a hint of sadness in his eyes and she felt her heart clench. He’d just perfectly captured how she felt in a few small words.
“It does,” Hermione nodded as she gave him an equally sad smile.
“Not that I don’t see the value in finishing school – I do,” Harry said firmly before his gaze dropped to the scar that was peeking out of her loose tank top. It was the first time that he had looked at it since she’d gotten the scar and she saw pain cloud his eyes before he returned his eyes to meet her gaze. “I learned the importance of hard work and studying the hard way. I know how important it is to take things seriously and to not cut corners. But I don’t think I can sit in a room full of people. I don’t think I could write an essay outlining why snakeweed is more potent diced than grated when we both already know shredding it works the best. I can’t finish a seventh year DA class when we’ve already learned and mastered every spell that they’d teach us. I already know it's better to avoid using the Hydra rune where possible and that most scripts are up to interpretation and heavily influences by the decade in which they were written.
“That said, I'm not entirely sure Shacklebolt was right that there is nothing we could learn from Hogwarts anymore. I know there are still topics we’re weak on and there are things the professors could teach us – I’m just not sure how to go back to Hogwarts after all this,” Harry’s voice had dropped to a quiet tone. “I'm honestly not sure I want to. It feels like a lifetime ago. It feels like a step backwards.”
“I agree,” Hermione murmured as she absently traced her hand along his forearm.
She’d been watching him speak intently, watching the emotion behind his eyes as he’d seemed to say everything that she was feeling and outlined the somewhat ridiculous idea of returning to a school after everything that they’d endured. They’d never fit in, even if they ‘got better’ and properly dealt with the trauma they’d been through – it would never be the same. And even if it could go back to the same – she wasn’t sure she wanted it to. The past wasn’t some perfect ideal world either and she’d changed – so had Harry.
“The idea of returning to normal feels a bit like a joke, doesn’t it? I feel old Harry,” Hermione said with a soft laugh and she smiled when he chuckled at her side. “I know I'm not really – not biologically at least – but I feel it here.”
Her voice dropped to a low tone, her smile fading from her lips as she gently touched her chest just above her heart and below her rune. She could see Harry’s smile fade at the instant she said it and his eyes became serious once more as he nodded in understanding.
She knew he felt it too. The burden. The weight that they each carried after everything that they’d done – the lives that they’d taken and the dark magic that they’d cast. She bit back a snort as she thought back to Nasir’s words – their containers were full, at least nearly. She felt like she’d aged ten years in eight months. And as much as she knew Mrs. Weasley and Arthur would try to argue that things could be normal again – deep down she knew they never would.
“I’m not the same person I was,” Hermione said quietly. “I don’t know if I could go back. I don’t know if I could be around all those people and locked in small classrooms for over nine hours a day while I pretend to care about house points and the Quidditch cup. Not after all this. Not after what we’ve seen – not after seeing Liza and Ava and talking to Griphook.
“There’s so much broken Harry,” she whispered, her grip on his arm tightening. “So much that I feel like if I went back to school, I'd just be wasting time that I could have spent making a real difference. In some ways – I’ve started to realize that we’ve been lying to ourselves – everyone has. We keep acting like when the ‘war’ is over and we kill You Know Who suddenly things will be better and the war will be over. But in reality, that’s not the case at all.”
Hermione frowned, her eyes dropping to look at Harry’s arm as she traced her fingers over his skin once more. She could feel him watching her intently, his gaze taking in every detail of her movement as she let herself finally empty everything that had been collecting at the back of her mind.
“He gained that power and he grew his following for a reason,” Hermione looked up to meet Harry’s serious gaze once more. “And it’s just going to happen again and again unless we systematically implement massive changes. When he dies – this isn’t over.”
“I know,” Harry said quietly, his grip on her tightening as he gave her a knowing smile. “But?”
Hermione snorted, he knew her so well.
“But,” Hermione’s voice lightened a fraction as she grinned at him. “I don’t want to skip school either. I don’t want a free ride or special treatment. I want to rightfully earn everything that I get and I want to fully complete my education and I want my full NEWTS.”
“I know,” Harry grinned and squeezed her wrist.
“What do you want?” Hermione asked him, as she took a sip of her tea.
“To be honest, I don’t know,” Harry sighed, his expression becoming worn and tired once more. “A part of me wants to finish this war and walk away from it all. Just like – take a fucking break because if I’m being truthful – I’m tired, Hermione. I'm tired of always having to be the one to do things or being lied to by people pulling the strings from the sidelines. I'm tired of always dragging you into my nightmare, I’m tired of us being in the middle of this and I'm tired of fighting. I'm tired of this war.”
“But?” Hermione said giving him the same knowing smile that he’d given her a moment ago. He snorted and shifted to snake his left arm around her body, pulling her into his side with a light squeeze.
“But,” he said giving her an amused look. “You and I both know I can’t do that. No matter how bad it gets I can’t just walk away. As you said – not after everything, not when I've seen this much. Not after losing the people we already have – not when we both know the war won’t be over when he dies. There is still so much fallout that has to be sorted – so many people whose lives have been devastated and so many things that need to be addressed. There are huge issues in the Ministry, with the laws and with the teachings in the wizarding world. I want to make a difference and Shacklebolt’s plan is a solid place to jump off of.”
“What if we do both,” Hermione said quietly, and she twisted her head to look at him fully. “What if after the war is done and You Know Who falls we take a small break – just a week or two, a month max. We’ll move into Grimmauld Place, get the house organized and set-up our lives and just – do nothing, for a little while. Take a small break from life before we go back to reality and deal with the fallout.”
“I like that idea,” Harry nodded, he leaned in and placed a soft kiss on her temple, and she felt her heart flutter. “But it’s us Hermione – I don’t think we could do nothing for a week let alone a month.”
“I know,” she grinned at him. “But we could try. I’m sure we could find things to keep us busy.”
“We could study?” Harry said raising a brow at her in question and making her laugh and shake her head.
“I’ve turned you into me.”
“Not yet,” Harry winked at her and let his hand gently bush the skin around her waist. “But as you said – maybe we could comprise. Maybe we can ask McGonagall to help us create a study guide for the NEWTs. Perhaps she would even let us come to the school to discuss topics with the professors and prep for the exams. Then we could ask Shacklebolt if he could organize a full NEWT examination session – I’m pretty sure passing your NEWTs counts as passing seventh year. The whole point of seventh year is to prepare you for the exam anyway – we could skip returning to school and just prep on our own before helping Shacklebolt.”
Hermione nodded. “I like that idea. I'm sure McGonagall would be willing to help us prep and by doing it that way, it's not a free ride. The NEWTs are standardized, as you said they’re the seventh-year equivalency test – so as long as we pass our education is considered completed by wizarding law and as per the current regulations Hogwarts would actually be required to list us as graduates.”
“It sounds perfect,” Harry was smiling at her again, but this time his eyes were soft and shone with that blatant love that made Hermione’s stomach flip flop. “I love you – you know that right.”
“Of course I do,” Hermione leaned into him and kissed him gently. She felt a shiver run down her spine as his tongue gently traced across her lip and she had to resist the urge to take things further. He wasn’t allowed to – he was strictly under bed rest and as much as she wanted more, she wouldn’t chance it. Letting out a slightly frustrated sigh she pulled back from him and bit her lip at the amused smile on his face as he continued to gently brush his thumb over her hip. “You know I love you, Harry.”
“I know,” Harry’s grip on her waist tightened and then he hesitated. “Thank you, for loving me – for staying through all of this with me.”
“Always, Harry,” Hermione looked at him sincerely and sent her tea to the nightstand so she could curl deeper into his side and tangle her fingers into the front of his dark cotton shirt. “I’ll always be here with you.”
They sat like that for a long quiet moment, something deep and unspoken passing between them as Hermione leaned her head on his shoulder and traced circles across his chest. She felt better. Knowing that Harry’s stance on the future was largely aligned with her own and that once this was over – they both knew it would never really end. There was a large scale clean up that needed to happen, and they planned to be there frontline and center with their brooms after closing the door on their education. She had no idea when the war would be over – but she didn’t doubt that she and Harry would be able to wrap up their NEWT prep within a few short months.
“How’s the arm?” Hermione murmured after the tent had started to grow dimmer.
“Good,” Harry’s low rumble echoed beside her and she couldn’t help but smile. “Actually – comparatively speaking – it wasn’t that bad. It was honestly nothing in comparison to the other things that we’ve been through. I think the lightning burn was worse. I can’t even feel it now, It’s just like a dull warm hum in the center of my arm. It’s sort of nice actually – I kind of like it.”
Harry paused.
“That or I’m slowly turning into a masochist,” he stated bluntly before both he and Hermione broke out into full laughter.
“Maybe,” Hermione grinned up at him. “But I’m much more inclined to believe it just went really well.”
“Me too,” Harry grinned down at her and kissed her forehead gently. “So, are you going to do yours too now that you’ve seen it? I figured you were interested in it and now that we know it’s pretty straight forward and honestly not that painful – relatively speaking – I figured you’ve probably already asked him about it.”
Hermione forced herself to keep the smile on her face as Harry jerked his head towards where Nasir’s tent was. She’d yet to tell him about what had happened between her and Nasir earlier that day – she planned to; she’d just not gotten to it yet.
“No,” Hermione said softly, her eyes dropping to his chest before she let out a sigh. “You’re right – I did talk to him – and we discussed it alright. But–“
Hermione hesitated, not sure how to really describe what had transpired and not sure if she wanted to get into it just now. She was enjoying sitting at his side and discussing them and their future. She was enjoying not thinking about anyone else or talking shop and discussing their war plans. So, she opted to gloss over it for now and circle back around to it later – it was already growing late and if they wanted to correct their sleep schedule they needed to go back to sleep soon.
“Nasir didn’t seem to think that it would be a good idea since my wand is fully functional as is – and because of the impact it would have on my body given everything I’ve been through. He offered to charm my wand though to help protect it against physical damage and I’m going to use a permanent tether so I can’t lose it,” Hermione looked up and gave him a forced smile. Perhaps it was the tension that had seeped back into her body, or maybe her displeasure in the outcome was just obviously written across her face – but regardless of how he knew, it was clear Harry knew she wasn’t exactly happy about Nasir’s response.
“That sounds like a good compromise,” Harry said warmly, before pulling her even closer and nudging her head with his own. “We can talk about it tomorrow with breakfast – what do you say we finish these teas and then go to bed early – get a head start on tomorrow.”
“That sounds really nice,” Hermione breathed, appreciation showing on her face as she let out a sigh. “Thank you, Harry.”
She felt a warmth spreading through her body as he leaned down and kissed her once more, another slow and languished kiss that made her heart feel lighter and her mind feel hopeful. Even though they couldn’t be together physically, and even though they were still in the middle of a war with an incredibly uncertain outcome – she felt fine. She felt more than fine – she felt perfect. She felt closer to him, she’d needed this – a moment alone with him to just be themselves with their guard down, to talk and discuss like they always used to and to just be ‘Harry and Hermione’ outside of the war that surrounded them.
After putting away their teacups and letting Harry up from the bed one last time, she curled up next to his left side once more. Locking her fingers with his, her face buried in his shoulder and her lungs full of his scent – she flicked her thumb to turn off the lights, and she drifted off into the best sleep she’d had in months.
Sweat poured in his eyes, his breath came in ragged short gasps as his sore and pulled muscles tensed. Everything hurt – he couldn’t even imagine how he would have felt today if Hermione had not applied muscle cramp paste the night before. The second he’d woken Monday morning and Nasir had finished inspecting his arm and deemed him entirely healed the training had resumed at full force – and Nasir was not cutting him any slack. They trained with knives as a group until lunch so Nasir could ensure that Harry still had all his muscle functionality while the remainder of the Order members completed their fitness routine and watched them from the corner of their eyes any time they dodged outside of the warded area he and Nasir had created.
Even with his damaged leg, Nasir had still been incredibly difficult to hit – but both Hermione and Harry had improved since their training started, and they’d managed to land a few blows while only getting knocked down a handful of times. There was nothing quite like getting your face slammed repeatedly into the sand and your body nicked with a blade to wake you up in the morning – it rapidly shattered the false peace he’d felt the day before while relaxing with Hermione in bed, bringing him and his aching body back to their dark and desperate reality.
After eating a quick lunch prepared by Mrs. Weasley Harry had gone for one on one training with Nasir while Hermione went to work with the group for some additional training. Harry could see her over by the cottage seated on the ground next to Ava and Liza, but he had no idea what they were working on. He’d hardly had a moment to watch her as he focused on casting magic using nothing but his arm. It was different than using a wand – not challenging exactly, just different.
Nasir had given him a fake wand before they started, stating that it was easier to do it the first time when holding a ‘wand’ or at least a wand-shaped item because it was more familiar. It seemed he carried a few spare prop wands in his tent just in case his broke and so he’d given Harry one to use during training. He’d also suggested that Harry create a few spares for himself by transfiguring some driftwood and to keep them on hand – as it wouldn’t be a good idea to advertise the fact that he had his wand core implanted. Not only was the procedure unknown to most witches and wizards and it would undoubtedly raise a lot of questions that he didn’t want to answer, but it would also give him an advantage in battle if it was kept a secret.
So he’d committed to making a collection of spares later that night – but now, well he’d long since holstered the fake wand and was working to cast magic directly from his palms and fingers. And the hardest part about it was that there was absolutely no distance between him and the spells that he cast, he didn’t have the 11” buffer that his wand had provided him previously and thus he had to be careful how he cast, he had to channel it out of his palm, or fingers and he needed to almost mentally add the buffer in when he did it and it felt like trying to relearn magic all over again.
They’d started with simple magic, and Harry had successfully raised several stones from the beach and repaired a broken bottle. But the first time he’d cast incendio he’d burnt the skin off his hand. Then it happened again the second time, the third time, the fourth time and the fifth time and so on until he lost feeling in his fingers and finally figured out how to create some space. Nasir had healed him after each incident, carefully repairing the skin and checking the nerve damage – but he’d not let Harry stop. The man had made it perfectly clear that improving was just a matter of doing it over and over again until it became his new normal.
He’d used a wand for the last six years, he had to retrain his brain and his reflexes, and the reality was he didn’t have forever to do it. He needed to master this as quickly as possible – so as much as it hurt and as tired as he was, he would not stop.
Besides, even if Harry had wanted to take a break he got the distinct impression that Nasir wasn’t going to let him. It was almost as if the mysterious man was pushing Harry intentionally as if he knew they were running out of time and something was coming. Harry couldn’t explain the feeling he got as he looked at the tall dark man that stood before him. It was a bizarre sort of inspiration, fear and tension that riddled his body as he fought to keep up and took in every piece of advice the man offered. He was relentless and demanding, he was calm and collected – and yet underneath that lingered a sense of urgency that Harry couldn’t so much see as he could feel. His white shirt was stained with Harry’s blood, his sleeves rolled up to the elbows and his posture immobile as the familiar words sounded in his low baritone once more.
“Again, Harry.”
Harry nodded, his hands on his knees shook as he sucked in a breath and forced his back to straighten once more. He turned back to face the dunes away from Nasir and lifted his hand before him, steadying his arm and biting back a groan of pain at the dull ache that ran through his body. His muscles were weary, exhausted and utterly spent. But he had no time to pay them any mind and he forced his brain to focus on the task – on the warmth in the middle of his forearm and the spell he was about to cast.
As awful as this was, relearning how to cast magic, and as tired as he was – at least it kept his mind off Hermione and the conversation that they’d had the night before.
He felt his heart twist painfully as the thought surfaced to the forefront of his mind once more despite his best efforts to keep it locked down. It had taken all of his inner strength not to crumple while talking to her about the future. It had taken everything that he had to ignore the painful tug across his heart as he told Hermione what he wanted to do when the war was over and how they would study for their NEWTS and make a difference in the world.
Everything he’d said had been true.
And yet – it had simultaneously been a lie. He knew he wouldn’t be making it through this war.
He knew he had to die if his suspicions were correct and he was indeed a Horcrux that Voldemort had somehow created. He’d thought he’d dealt with the realization when he’d spoken to Nasir and made the man promise to take care of Hermione once he was gone – yet talking to Hemione about the future had made it hurt more. It had hit him like a wave, a fresh round of pain that stung through his bones and made his heart feeling like it was breaking into a million tiny little pieces. It had been agony to sit there calmly, looking at her – the one and only person he felt he could spend the rest of his life with while he pretended like they actually had a shot together in the future. Because no matter how he looked at it, even if they did somehow manage to find and destroy the rest of the Horcruxes and kill Voldemort – he’d still needed to die. For as long as he lived, the tiny piece of Voldemort’s soul lurking inside him would live and there would be a risk of the cursed demon rising once more. But knowing that was like an axe right in the middle of his chest.
He felt his jaw clench as he fought to maintain his control and he forced the thoughts out of his head. He couldn’t allow himself to think about it, it wouldn’t get him anywhere and it served no purpose. He couldn’t allow himself to fall into despair and he absolutely could not allow Hermione to know what he feared was true – because she’d put herself at risk to save him. She’d sell her soul and everything she had left to keep him alive, and he couldn’t allow that to happen.
He knew that she would risk keeping him alive after Voldemort’s defeat so she could try to find some way of removing the soul fragment while saving his own. But the truth was, not only did Harry think it was highly unlikely that it was possible to do that, he very much doubted you could un-Horcrux a Horcrux – but he also didn’t think it was safe to do it. Voldemort had already proved capable of infiltrating his mind and influencing him in the past – and the last time it happened he’d lost his godfather. What would happen when he was the only remaining Horcrux? How long could he exist before the wrong people found out or until Voldemort took hold of him?
No, Harry thought firmly as he let out a breath. He needed her to live on without that burden. He needed to know that she would be safe, and he wouldn’t risk Voldemort rising again for a third fucking time just to selfishly spare his own life – not after everything they’d sacrificed and after everything they’d been through. He planned to try and sneak out to speak to Nasir again one of these nights to see if he could learn more about Horcruxes in general, but unless the tall man told him there was a sure-fire way to remove the fragmented soul piece from his body – his decision was made.
He would die, and Hermione would live along with everyone else that they could save.
Harry sucked in a deep breath of air, squared his shoulders and directed his two fingers toward the scorched and blackened dune.
“Orcus tempestas,” he spoke clearly, his voice rough as he felt the sharp tingle of magic sparking from the tips of his fingers. He fought to keep his back straight and his arm steady as black lightning shot across the ground before him.
-x-x-
“What about this one?” Hermione asked, her eyes flicking between Ava and Liza who sat cross-legged on the sand before her.
She’d offered to sit inside with them, so they had a table, but the weather outside was beautiful and neither of the two females seemed interested in being cooped up inside. Hermione suspected that their desire to be outdoors might have something to do with the on-going potion brewing – the cottage was almost a hundred degrees in the kitchen and the headache relief potion that Mrs. Weasley was brewing with Fleur had a distinctly unpleasant smell. Hence why Ava and Liza had very quickly requested to sit outside to learn about the diagnostic charm while Charlie took his afternoon nap upstairs under the ever-watchful eye of Mrs. Weasley’s patronus while safely shielded from the heat and stench by several wards Bill had installed to keep the upstairs of the cottage cool and quiet.
They were both staring at the charm before them and referencing the notebooks open in their laps. It was rather reminiscent of school and Hermione found, to her surprise, that she was actually enjoying teaching the girls. She’d given them each a fresh notebook to use though she’d not really anticipated that the girls would truly use them since she knew that not everyone took studying and documentation as seriously as she did – but boy had she been wrong.
Ava and Liza were like machines, like greedy little nifflers eager for knowledge and they wrote down every little tidbit of information that she gave them like it might contain the answer to all life’s questions. Ava had even started to sketch out a colour coded diagram of the charm using the pens that Hermione had given them – turns out she was a rather talented artist but she never had time to draw because she was always busy taking care of Charlie and working as a nurse at the muggle hospital near her home.
In some ways, finding out that Ava was a nurse made her reactions to things make much more sense. After all, she’d been far less traumatized by the injuries that she’d seen in the den than Colin had, she’d managed to keep her wits about her and assist Remus in the thick of it when he was injured and if Hermione was being honest the woman had handled the ordeal better than even some of the Order members had. It turned out it was largely because Ava had worked in the trauma department of the hospital before switching to the pediatric unit. When Hermione asked her about her job the woman had gladly told her about it and Hermione quickly realized that this woman had seen things – stabbings, car accidents and burn victims – and she seemed to have a natural ability to remain calm in an emergency.
In fact, she liked working in the trauma unit because she liked to help people and she said it made her feel like she was making an immediate difference by saving lives in critical situations. She was comfortable around blood and injuries, she looked at everything logically, calmly and was quick to adapt and do her best with whatever was thrown at her. She’d only transferred into the pediatric unit because they provided her with a more flexible schedule for caring for Charlie once his father had died. Hermione noted that Ava was very willing to share and talk about herself, her time as a nurse, or about Charlie. She was only 25, she’d been working for just over three years and she didn’t have any family left – but she edged around the topic of Charlie’s father when Liza asked about him.
The only detail she revealed was that they’d been engaged, he’d been in the military – and he’d died while deployed. Hermione got the distinct impression that his unexpected death had been extremely hard on the woman and it was yet another reason why she was so put together. She had had to be. She didn’t have anyone else, she had no one to help her and no one to rely on and she’d had to be strong for Charlie’s sake. It also made Hermione understand why Ava had been so understanding and accepting towards her, Harry and Dean – because see recognized trauma and understood that they were struggling.
Sensing the tension in Ava at the topic of her dead fiancé, Hermione had quickly drawn the discussion back to the lesson – and she hadn’t missed the appreciative glance Ava shot her as she diverted Liza’s attention. Which had been easy since the girl was like a sponge when it came to magic. She had been just as eager as Ava to learn about the medical diagnostic spell and she’d indicated that she too wanted to learn potion identification and how to administer them. The young girl seemed to see magic as a wonderful and fascinating thing. At only twelve she was much more open to the concept than most from the muggle world and she was happy to take anything that Hermione, Harry, Fleur or the twins would give her.
The young girl was tough in her own right. Incredibly resilient and her fascination with magic seemed to go well beyond the academic – it was like Liza was naturally drawn to it, and Hermione was starting to wonder if there might be something else going on. Not only did the girl’s body react to magic well but she also seemed to be able to feel it or sense it in an intuitive way. Which made Hermione suspicious, and she planned to come back to that thought later.
“That’s the blood sugar level,” Ava said confidently, responding to Hermione’s question as her eyes traced over the diagnostic charm that floated next to Hermione. “And the level is normal.”
“Correct,” Hermione smiled and nodded as Liza let out a groan.
“Why couldn’t the charm make that line a different colour? I always confuse it with the blood count level – they’re too similar, like pink and darker pink,” Liza said in irritation as she scratched a note somewhat aggressively onto the open page before her and circled it with a big star.
“I’m not sure,” Hermione couldn’t help but grin at the girl. “To be honest I don’t know who created this spell or how the colours were selected.”
“Well, you’d think it could have like – floating labels or something? Almost like subtitles – it’s magic, isn’t it? Can’t you just add that in?” Liza looked up at her curiously.
Some witches or wizards may have found the comment rude or ignorant but there was nothing of the sort in the tone of her voice. It was just a genuine question and she was asking sincerely. Hermione could see Ava watching her curiously too, interested to learn more about how magic worked fundamentally.
“Sometimes you can do things like that – but magic is a bit finicky. As much as it is magic it still follows rules. Now mind you, the rules are convoluted and sometimes they don’t appear to make sense – but they do in their own right. For example, we have arithmancy which can be used to help predict things, create new spells or even potions – and it follows a fairly strict set of rules, unlike runes which are much more vague and open to interpretation. There is also alchemy which studies composition and structure of magical properties. So as much as it is ‘magic’ and it can be used for many things – there are still limitations and rules that have to be followed,” Hermione explained.
“So – it’s like science,” Liza nodded in understanding.
“Exactly – and the wizarding world is very much like the muggle world,” Hermione nodded. “There are a lot of people who use the spells and charms other people created without fully understanding how they work or how they were created – just like how muggles use telephones or computers, but most muggles couldn’t build a computer or explain how a telephone works. They just learn how to use it. In fact – most witches and wizards will never create a new spell or charm. Spell development is a narrow field and experimental magic often isn’t pursued because it is extremely dangerous, extremely difficult and most people aren’t interested in it.”
“So, it’s exactly like science and technology,” Ava grinned and shook her head in amusement. “Everyone uses the benefits of a small amount of people’s work. They take the medication or they use the tools, but they actually have no idea how or why it works.”
“Exactly,” Hermione confirmed. “They do try to teach the fundamentals at our school, much like how you learn math or basic principles in muggle schools – and it does help to give a fundamental understanding, but the reality is most witches and wizards don’t choose to study it as a career. They forget it after Hogwarts and then carry on using the spells that they know and need to get through life.”
“Have you ever created a spell?” Liza asked her, eyes bright with curiosity.
“Not entirely,” Hermione said slowly, as she thought back to the things that she’d created over the years. “I’ve modified some and sort of – how can I put it, built on the backs of other people’s work or combined things together to get what I need. But – so far I’ve not genuinely created a brand-new spell, I’ve only repurposed and reconstructed.”
“I think you will,” Liza said quietly, her eyes locked to Hermione with a small amount of awe. “Someday – I think that you’ll create something great.”
An odd feeling curled in the pit of Hermione’s stomach and she could feel an unfamiliar heat rising in her face as she looked at the young girl before her. She was so sincere in her statement that it was flustering and her words almost reminded Hermione of being in school and getting praise. Brushing the thought aside Hermione awkwardly cleared her throat.
“Maybe,” Hermione fought back her blush as she directed her eyes to the diagnostic charm floating around her head. “What about this blue line here, Liza – do you remember what this is showing?”
“That you’re still digesting your lunch,” Liza grinned widely. “Which reminds me, Fred said he’d bring me some more chocolate frogs for tonight – but that the fireworks will have to wait until the weekend.”
Hermione grinned. “I forgot about that – I’m sure you’re going to like them. Fred and George’s fireworks are quite spectacular – but I’m glad they’ll be outside this time.”
Liza’s eyes widened and Ava quirked a brow.
“They lit fireworks inside?” Liza asked, looking both surprised and baffled.
“Uh yeah,” Hermione laughed softly as memories of Umbridge screaming and fleeing from the fireworks floated up in her mind. “It’s a long story – you can ask them about it tonight. I’m sure they’d love to tell you all about it – but let’s finish up with this charm so we can get started on potions.”
Both girls nodded and so they continued with the session. They reviewed each colour, shape and line of the diagnostic for another half an hour until they had everything documented in their notebooks and could pick out the key medical stats that would be most important in an emergency. Then Hermione opened her purse and summoned several vials so they could get started on the potions.
“Now it is incredibly important to always be sure of what potion you’re giving someone – which is why properly labelling a potion is the most important thing that you do after you’ve finished brewing it. Most potions kept in a typical home are harmless and drinking the wrong one won’t kill you – but that isn’t always the case,” Hermione said as she laid the potions out before her on the sand. She knew that this part of the lesson was bound to feel more like a lecture – but the reality was that potions were dangerous, and they needed to know that. “You NEVER take a potion from anyone you don’t trust or know to be a certified healer – which is our equivalent to a doctor. So never accept anything from anyone other than myself, Harry, Fleur, Mrs. Weasley or one of the other Order members.
“Never drink a potion that isn’t labelled and never assume that an unlabelled potion is what you think it is because of the way it looks or smells,” Hermione said seriously as she passed the small bottle of dittany she was holding to the girls so they could look at it. “The reality is – only a highly trained potions master can safely identify an unlabelled and unknown potion. There are harmful potions out there that are literally designed to look and smell like helpful ones just to hurt people. Which again – is why labelling is so important and why getting them from a trusted source is crucial. It’s also why some witches and wizards choose to brew themselves over buying.
“The other important thing about potions is how much to give. I want you to think of potions exactly like how you would think of muggle medication, vitamins and supplements – they need to be taken seriously. Some potions can be taken in any amount, while others can only be taken in specific dosages based on your age, weight, height and a whole bunch of other factors,” Hermione continued as she watched Ava hold the small vial up to the light. “So, because I can’t teach you any spells to identify potions or confirm dosage amounts – I’m only going to teach you how to administer a few more crucial and standard ones. Some you can determine the dosage amount off the diagnostic charm we just learned – so even though you can’t cast the charm, you could still prescribe the potion amount if someone else cast the diagnostic. I’ll teach you what a few others are as well and tell you what they’re for so you’re familiar with them – but you won’t be able to administer them. Sound good?”
Both Ava and Liza nodded firmly. Hermione didn’t miss the way that Liza was hesitant about holding the bottle of dittany that Ava had passed her. She hadn’t intended to scare the young girl – but the truth was, it was better for her to be more cautious and nervous towards potions than not.
“The one you’re holding right now is called essence of dittany – it’s a healing potion,” Hermione watched as Liza carefully put the potion on the ground and began taking notes with Ava. “It can be used to heal anything from minor wounds up to moderate ones. So things like cuts, burns, punctures, scrapes and even some muscles and skin regrowth. It does not, however, heal bone. Bone is healed by other magic or can be regrown entirely with a different potion called Skele-grow.
“Dittany is a safe potion,” Hermione continued as she picked up the bottle. “You cannot hurt yourself by taking too much but that said – the potion is very expensive to make, and it is a lifesaver – so we are trying not to waste it and we try to only ever use what we need. A few small drops can heal a rather large wound.”
“So, then why did we use so much of it after the den?” Ava asked her, her head popping up from her notebook with a curious expression.
“Good question. We needed more after the den because injuries caused by werewolves involve dark magic,” Hermione said evenly. “Dark magic doesn’t follow the same rules as regular magic and it requires additional effort than healing regular injuries caused from falling or accidentally cutting yourself on something. Often injuries caused by dark magic cannot be healed at all – if they can, it usually requires more dittany and even when the wounds close it leaves a permanent scar.”
“Like my shoulder,” Ava nodded in understanding. Hermione couldn’t help but once again be impressed by the woman – she seemed neither upset nor resentful about the fact that she had a permanent scar on her shoulder from where she was bitten and instead she was entirely calm and accepting.
“Exactly,” Hermione nodded. “In the case of werewolf injuries specifically – mixing dittany with silver powder gives the wounds a better chance at healing. Without the silver powder the dittany is ineffective and even with it, there is no guarantee.”
“So dittany and silver powder for werewolf wounds,” Liza murmured as she made a note in her book, twirling the pen around her fingers absently as she looked back up to Hermione. She’d been doing it all afternoon, it seemed to be a habit she’d developed likely at a young age while studying or thinking about things critically – much like how Hermione used to catch herself biting her bottom lip, tapping her pen or twirling her hair when she was a kid. “But it might not work. What about other types? Are there other types of dark magic?”
“Yes,” Hermione said with a small sigh. They’d breached into a topic that she’d hoped to avoid as much as possible – but she did not want to ever lie to the girls or downplay the issues within the wizarding world. She’d made a point of being honest with them and the truth was the wizarding world was filled with horrible things. For better or worse this was their world now and they deserved to know. “There are, unfortunately, many dark spells. Dittany might work for some of them and not for others and the list of dark spells and magic is long and disturbing. In general though – always give dittany a try, it might save someone’s life. You both already know that it stings when it’s applied and that it produces green smoke – the only thing you don’t know is that you can drink it to heal internal wounds as well – but I do sincerely hope that you never have to experience that since it is very painful. You’ve both already seen it work though, so we can move onto headache potion – unless you have any other questions?”
They didn’t.
And so Hermione moved on and taught them about headache relief potion, calming draught and even how to measure out pepperup and blood replenisher. Just as she was wrapping up and the sun had shifted lower in the sky, Ron came out of the cottage and began walking over to them. She didn’t miss the curious expression on his face as he eyed the girl’s notebooks when he drew near and saw the potions scattered across the ground. She’d not told anyone aside from Harry that she planned to teach the girls magic and clearly, Ron hadn’t been expecting to stumble into a little study session – but if he had any issues with it, he chose to keep it to himself.
“Hey Ava,” Ron said after politely waiting for Hermione to finish answering the woman’s question on blood replenisher and concluding the lesson. “Charlie just woke up, I told mum I’d come let you know.”
“Oh, thanks!” Ava grinned at him and hauled herself from the sand. She stretched tall with her arms above her head, leaning to the side before brushing off the sand from her jeans and bending to pick up her notebook. “I was going to head in in a minute anyways to help Molly and Fleur with dinner – so I’ll go grab him first.”
“Alright,” Ron smiled at the woman before his eyes shifted back to Hermione with some curiosity. She ignored his look and instead began packing away her potions as Liza finished her final notes. Or at least she would have ignored him, but he lingered on spot and was staring at her with that same curious if not slightly hesitant expression while looking like he wanted to say something but didn’t know where to start. She’d been hoping that he would leave after coming to get Ava. It wasn’t like she was uncomfortable around him or even that she hated him – it was actually the exact opposite.
She didn’t feel anything towards him anymore.
Nothing.
It was just blank.
His apology had been heartfelt, she’d known him long enough to be able to tell that he was being sincere. Ron never admitted fault, he’d never owned up to any of his shortcomings or bullshit during their six years of friendship and so she knew that he’d truly meant it. But she just didn’t have it in her to hate him or care about him anymore. She didn’t have the energy and she’d long since stopped giving a shit about him. How she felt towards Ron was very much in line with how Harry had said he felt about the Dursley’s now – it just was what it was, and she was done expending energy on it.
She and Harry had agreed to allow him to help because they needed everyone they could get and so she had no issue with him being around the cottage or training with them – in fact, Ron training was preferable. It made him more useful to the group and made him less of a risk. She just didn’t want to talk to him, she didn’t want to interact with him – not out of malice, but because she simply had nothing to say. Their dynamic was now purely functional and unemotional. They weren’t friends anymore; she wasn’t the same person she used to be and unless they were talking business or discussing the next Order objective, she didn’t intend to have any sort of relationship with the redhead. He was just a body in the Order who could provide some value and help them win the war.
Except that he kept staring at her, and she could feel a tension growing across her shoulders as his hand twisted nervously around the hem of his t-shirt.
“What?” Hermione asked, her eyes flicking up to him after she stood from the ground. She hadn’t intended to sound snappy, but her voice came out harsh and sharp, and she grimaced in frustration as Liza cringed at the sound. The girl looked between her and Ron almost nervously, her pen poised above her open book.
Hermione bit back a groan. She’d been working on trying to be warmer to everyone in the Order. She’d been working on her people skills, her tone, and trying to force her body to be less uncomfortable and twitchy around groups. But whenever she was emotionless and indifferent her voice returned to a cold detached and heartless sound. She frowned inwardly – maybe that was the problem. So long as she remained entirely indifferent to Ron, she failed to see how she would sound like anything other than a cold-hearted bitch when she spoke to him.
She probably needed to be more careful and considerate about that.
“Oh,” Ron hesitated, his eyes dropping to the ground momentarily. He seemed unsurprised and unaffected by her tone but was a bit caught off guard that she had actually acknowledged him at all outside of an Order meeting. His gaze met hers once more and she noted the lack of resentment in his voice as he spoke. “Are – are you teaching them potions?”
“Yes,” Hermione said flatly, forcing her voice to remain even and calm. Liza had closed her notebook, but she was still sitting on the ground and watching the two of them interact carefully. Hermione arched a brow at Ron, she knew some people in the magical community would definitely have issues with teaching muggles magic but even she would be surprised if Ron felt that way. “Why?”
“It’s a good idea,” Ron said firmly, making his stance clear as he smiled at her cautiously. It was that same smile he’d been giving her all week. “I was just wondering if I might be able to sit in on this – I know you don’t really like teaching big groups but – I thought it would be a good idea. I know the potions we’re using, but I don’t know that diagnostic charm. Or how to properly determine dosages for blood replenisher. Last time I used that potion I was just following your directions. I’m sure Luna and Dean might even be interested.”
“Oh,” Hermione said somewhat surprized, her shoulders relaxing as she held her open purse. She hadn’t been sure what she was expecting him to say, but this was entirely reasonable and so un-Ron. He was right in his observation that she didn’t really like training large groups – but she couldn’t say no. The training was important, and it would save people’s lives. So just like all the other training she’d agreed to provide, she would do it because it was needed. “Yes of course. Tomorrow I’m training with Nasir and Harry is brewing – but we were planning to pick this back up on Wednesday so you can join in with us in the morning. I’ll review the diagnostic charm and the potions again and I can add in some basic medical spells too. I’ll revise our schedule tonight based on the remaining potions we need to brew and training with Harry then I’ll give you each a list on Wednesday of the times that we can meet to review through this stuff.”
“That would be great,” Ron nodded, his hand untangling away from the hem of his shirt. “Thank you, Hermione. You’re a great teacher and I know the others will really appreciate it.”
Hermione stiffened, an awkward feeling sliding down her spine once more. It was much like the sensation she’d gotten when Liza gazed at her in awe and told her that she believed she would invent a new spell – and she knew it was because at this moment Ron was looking at her in a similar way. He was looking up to her instead of at her and it made the old piece of her that longed for praise ruffle uncomfortably. She’d been closing that side of her off for months, but thankfully she was spared from thinking about it further by the sound of Liza’s voice as the girl stood up from the sand.
“I wish I could learn a medical spell to help someone,” Liza muttered as she tucked her notebook under her arm and let out a sigh. “Mrs. Weasley said that tomorrow she would let me help pulverize some valerian roots though – so that will be fun!”
Hermione couldn’t help but smile and she caught Ron trying to keep his face straight. Never once in her life, aside from perhaps her own younger self, had she ever heard someone describe potion ingredient prep as fun and she’d half expected Ron to laugh and tease the girl as he had teased her years ago. But to her surprise – he didn’t. He managed to keep his face straight and then he grinned down at the young girl.
“Yeah it will – just wait till you get into some of the more sticky and squirmy ingredients – then it really gets fun,” Ron said, his voice laced with amusement.
“Ew Ron – that’s gross,” Liza’s nose crinkled as she laughed and the light in her eyes only sparkled brighter as she turned and slowly started to make her way around them toward the Cottage door.
Hermione watched Liza move, her eyes locking to the way the girl was twirling the coloured pen in her hand at her side. She’d been doing the same thing while she sat and took notes during their lesson – but seeing it now while the girl stood and walked Hermione realized with a start – it shouldn’t be physically possible. The pen should have dropped.
“I think I’ll start with the root first,” Liza paused just a few feet from Ron and grinned even wider. “It looks pretty harmless. But maybe you should come help with the squirmy things since you seem to think they’re so fun.”
Hermione watched the pen twirl for the third time, her eyes practically boring into the girl’s hand as she carefully watched her movements – making absolutely sure she’d just seen what she thought she had.
“Oh, well – I wouldn’t want to rob you of the experience,” Ron laughed.
The pen rotated around the back of Liza’s fingers for a fourth time before returning to her grip – it was much too slow for it to stay there with momentum alone. Hermione felt her stomach flutter as her eyes widened a fraction and she looked up at the bright-eyed girl’s face with disbelief – she was entirely unaware of the fact that she was doing something physically impossible for a muggle.
“Yeah sure,” Liza teased, twirling the pen one final time before tucking it behind her ear and pushing her black hair behind with it. She pulled the notebook from under her arm and held it easily before her. “I saw you skirting around the ingredients your mum had out on the table this morning – especially the jars with the squirmy stuff.”
“Hey Liza,” Hermione asked, the words slipping from her mouth before she could stop herself. The girl’s attention quickly shifted, eagerly looking back to Hermione in wait. “You’re twelve, right?”
“Yeah,” she nodded.
“When is your birthday?” Hermione kept her voice level and her face straight.
“April 7th.”
She felt a pain in her heart as Liza stated the date – the girl had had her birthday just shortly before being captured by Arlo’s men and losing her parents. But Hermione pushed her reaction aside and instead focused her mind on the girl before her. She’d had a nagging feeling ever since she met Liza – the girl was too accepting of magic, too in tune with everything going on around her and her werewolf transformation had been debatably smoother that Remus’. The signs were all there and Hermione had been suspicious – but she’d not yet had a moment to address it.
“Did you ever receive a letter?” Hermione hesitated, watching as a curious look formed across both Liza’s and Ron’s faces. But she pushed on and kept her tone light and indifferent. “Like – a strange letter? One on thick parchment paper. It would have been in a cream coloured envelope, with green ink and a red wax seal. Maybe your parents might have taken it or thrown it out – maybe they told you not to worry about it?”
“No,” Liza said slowly, her expression thoughtful. “I don’t think we ever received mail like that. I usually got the mail everyday from the box after school – and I don’t remember ever seeing anything like that. Why?”
“I see – it was just a thought,” Hermione said slowly, still carefully watching the girl before her.
She didn’t know if her suspicion was correct and if she was being honest, she wasn’t even sure how magical capabilities worked or if that topic had ever been properly researched. Was it possible for some people to be more magical than others? Was there a magical threshold that the wizarding world required and that was how they decided who got an invitation to Hogwarts?
Because the few odd times she’d used magic at home her father always seemed more in tune with it than her mother – and she knew that squibs could be born to magical families and that some wizards were more skilled or seemed to have more capability than others. Pairing that with what she’d seen with the werewolf den survivors first-hand: Ariel’s body had rejected magic entirely. Colin’s reluctantly took it but only just. Ava’s accepted it well, she responded to it excellently, but she couldn’t seem to feel it while Liza not only accepted and responded to it well, she was also strangely in tune with it and was very clearly using small amounts of it without even realizing it.
Was it possible that she was magical-ish, that she had some kind of magical capability but not enough to get into Hogwarts? Or – had she been kept off the registration list because she was a muggleborn and Dumbledore didn’t send out those invitations during sixth year because of everything going on? Or, and Hermione knew this was a possibility, was she entirely off the mark?
Maybe Liza’s reaction to magic didn’t mean anything at all and maybe she was wrong about the pen. But Hermione found this option doubtful, she was fairly certain her instincts were correct.
“What kind of a thought?” Liza said curiously, clearly not understanding the reference to a Hogwarts letter. Ron got it though and his eyes quickly darted between the two females, but he thankfully remained silent.
“I was just thinking,” Hermione smiled at the girl, changing her tone to one a little more nonchalant.
She needed to be careful here – she already knew Liza wished she could use magic. She’d just declared it only seconds ago with her desire to learn healing spells. Hermione thought things over quickly, she was hesitant to bluntly state her suspicion. She didn’t want to get Liza overly excited or to get her hopes up only to have them come crashing down when she was unable to actually perform magic.
Unfortunately, the only way to find out if her suspicion was correct was to give the girl a wand and ask her to try something – or to ask her if any weird things had ever happened to her when she was younger. There wasn’t a test that could be performed to see if someone was magical. Magical abilities seemed to show up in all sorts of strange ways in young children. Anything from impossible pen twirling to hair sporadically changing colour. Naturally wizarding families just assumed their children would be magical but even then sometimes it didn’t outright show – hence why Neville’s uncle had tossed him out a window to try and force it to happen.
But with everything she’d seen from the girl so far, Hermione couldn’t help but feel like that nagging feeling in her gut was warranted. It was based on something, grounded in empirical evidence and she felt it was worth investigating. And if she did this right she could find out without disappointing Liza.
“Do you remember having any weird family members growing up? Or seeing any weird things happen as a kid?” Hermione asked, again keeping her voice light as if this was a normal conversation. Liza’s brow furrowed but she seemed to think over the question instead of outright asking why first.
“My dad said my grandpa was a weird man – but he died when I was little and I don’t remember him,” Liza said slowly, a slow blush creeping up the side of her cheeks as her eyes dropped to the sand before her. “Um – once when I was a kid – I –“
She hesitated, her blush deepening and her hands clutching her notebook nervously.
“You what?” Hermione asked softly taking a small step towards her. “If you’re not comfortable telling me you don’t have to – I was just curious.”
“No, it’s okay,” Liza waved her hand but the blush on her face remained and she shifted on her feet. “It’s nothing bad – just that my parents always gave me a hard time about it and my best friend made fun of me for it when I told her because she didn’t believe me. I – uh – I used to have an imaginary friend named Snuffles when I was little. But I was um – like really convinced that it was real. I used to bring it food and ask my mum if it could come in the house to play and at first, I think they thought it was cute but… well then I got older and they started to get mad over it and told me I needed to grow up. And – well it was always sort of a sore topic between us because I – I know this will sound ridiculous, but I was so sure it was real.”
Liza let out a sigh and glanced between Hermione and Ron, clearly embarrassed about sharing this story.
“I used to argue with them about it. Then one day I’d snuck it inside to play – and it accidentally broke a lamp in the living room. My mum came running in at the sound and got really upset because the lamp had been a gift from my grandma,” Liza said awkwardly, and Hermione could see the pain in her eyes as she relived the memory. “She yelled, a lot – my dad came home and well, it was a whole thing and they told me that if I didn’t stop lying about ‘seeing’ it they would take me to the doctor because they thought there was something wrong with me. Snuffles looked upset and scared the whole time, I got upset and yelled back at them and then started crying and ran up to my room. The next day I couldn’t find Snuffles in the garden where he usually was, and I never saw him again after that. I guess I just grew out of it – I told them that I stopped seeing it and that I knew it wasn’t real. I told them that I broke the lamp. They seemed happy about that but – honestly, even now it still feels real. Even though I know it wasn’t – it just – it’s hard to explain and it makes me sound crazy. I used to feed it apples so, it just never sat right with me that I’d watch him eat six apples, they’d be missing from the fridge and yet somehow it wasn’t real.”
Liza hesitated her eyes becoming worried.
“Do you – do you think this has something to do with why my family was attacked?” her eyes were laced with concern as she stared at Hermione intently.
“No,” Hermione shook her head taking another step forward and trying her best to give Liza a warm smile. She inwardly cursed herself, this had not been her intent by asking that question, she’d been looking for a story about Liza inexplicably finding herself on the roof or changing a doll’s hair colour. “No, not at all, Liza – that was just bad luck. Having an imaginary friend has nothing to do with what happened. Your family was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Okay,” Liza nodded, her expression still a bit tight.
“Your friend – Snuffles,” Hermione said slowly. “What did he look like?”
“Uh sort of like a monkey I guess,” Liza said with a weak shrug. Hermione hated that some of the brightness had faded from her eyes and she looked a bit put out. “He was white, had a tail and big eyes.”
“Hermione,” Ron said slowly as his brow furrowed. “That sounds like a–“
“A demiguise,” Hermione nodded at him, cutting him off as Liza stared between the two in confusion.
“Wait,” Ron hesitated, and Hermione could see the realization forming behind his eyes. “You don’t think that she–“
“She might Ron,” Hermione cut him off again and gave him a look. “But let’s not plant that idea just yet.”
“R-Right,” Ron nodded his eyes flicking back to Liza.
“Wait a what?” Liza asked as she looked between the two of them. The embarrassment from sharing her story seemed to be disappearing and her curiosity was once again starting to flare. “What’s a demi – demi-guys?”
“Demiguise,” Hermione smiled at the girl and pulled her wand from the holster on her calf. “Liza, I need you to do me a favour real quick – okay?”
“Uh,” Liza’s eyes flicked between the two of them once more as utter confusion crept across her face. “Okay but what–“
“It will just take a second – give Ron your notebook to hold,” Hermione said as she held her wand out in front of her. “Lumos.”
“Okay,” Liza said, her voice unsure as she handed her notebook to Ron who took the book without complaint. He seemed to understand what was about to happen and he was watching Liza with barely contained excitement. The girl’s eyes were now focused on the glow at the end of Hermione’s wand – visible even in the daylight when standing in the small shadow of the cottage.
“Here,” Hermione held her wand out to Liza, passing her the handle. “I just need you to hold this for me for a second because I need both hands.”
“Uh,” Liza reached out for the wand, her hand trembling slightly as she nervously took it and held it uncomfortably before her. She was staring at it warily, a mix of excitement and fear flashing over her face as she frantically glanced back to Hermione. “A-Am I allowed to hold this?”
The light continued to shine from the tip of the wand as Liza held it, which Hermione already knew it would. Back before she’d learned how to cast the blue flames and other light sources that she now regularly used, she used to constantly use her wand as a reading light. She’d light the tip, leave it on her fourposter bed while at school and flip through giant tomes pulled from the library that required both hands to read.
“Yes, you’re fine,” Hermione said warmly, giving the girl a reassuring smile and keeping her voice calm. “Now, I just need you to say nox.”
“Nox?” Liza questioned, her brow furrowing in confusion. But the rest of her question died on the tip of her tongue as her eyes went wide with panic when the light at the end of Hermione’s wand went out. “Oh no! Shoot – what happened? Did I break it? I’m so sorry Hermione – I – I don’t know why it went out. I didn’t move my hand I don’t know–“
“Liza, you didn’t break it,” Hermione cut her off before the girl full-on panicked. She couldn’t stop a huge smile from splitting across her face as Liza’s bright wide eyes looked up to hers in concern. She carefully took the wand back from the girl’s shaking hand and placed a warm hand on her shoulder. “The light went out because you said nox, Liza – nox is the magical spell we use to turn off the light we created with lumos.”
Liza froze, Hermione could feel her muscles stiffening under her hand as the gears turned in her head. She could see the realization forming across her face, disbelief flooding her eyes as her mouth fell open and she stared up at Hermione in astonishment.
“You mean – I – you – I,” Liza was breathless and could not seem to get her words out as her eyes shot to Ron who was also grinning at her widely as he leaned against the cottage.
“Who would have thought,” Ron said quietly, grinning as Liza’s bright blue eyes whipped back to meet Hermione’s gaze.
“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean,” Hermione gave the girl’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. “You turned the light out, Liza. You can perform magic.”
-x-x-
To say that Liza had been excited to find out that she could perform magic and was thus, by definition, magical herself would probably be one of the biggest understatements of the year. The girl was positively ecstatic. She asked to try turning off the light on Hermione’s wand four more times – then asked Ron if she could try it on his to make sure it wasn’t a fluke before she finally seemed to accept that she could indeed, use magic. She let out a squeal of glee as her eyes glistened with tears and she ran into the cottage to tell everyone else.
She was a bit disappointed to learn that the spells she’d seen Hermione use over the last week were much harder than nox and that most of it would be out of her reach for a number of years – but she did not let that discourage her. Not even when Hermione told her magical capabilities ranged and she wasn’t sure how much Liza would be able to do.
The girl didn’t care.
If anything, it only seemed to motivate her more, and it opened a flood gate of questions.
Over the next few days, Liza asked questions about everything. She asked Hermione and Fleur to teach her magic, she asked Mrs. Weasley to let her learn more about potions, she asked Harry how to levitate a rock along the beach, she asked Lupin what he could teach her when he showed up for dinner and Fleur allowed Liza to demonstrate her adept ability to turn off lights by using her wand. She told Fred and George proudly and blushed furiously when they ruffled her hair and asked to see her turn off the light from their wands and she even approached Nasir after dinner one night and quietly told him that she wanted to become as talented as Hermione – and Nasir, who rarely interacted with the others at the cottage, had actually smiled at the girl and told her to ‘train hard’ and she would ‘surely become an excellent witch’.
With Liza being pencilled into the training schedule for basic magic lessons, and the rest of the group being added for potions, healing spells and diagnostic charm review things had started to become hectic. But if Hermione was being honest – she kind of liked it, she actually thrived on it. Schedules and routines had always been her strong suit. It was addicting and somewhat reminiscent of being back in Hogwarts – except that it was a much smaller group and everything that they were doing was practical, purposeful, calculated and directly contributed to their odds of success. The entire Order was operating on a tight schedule, each person performing their roles and throwing themselves wholeheartedly into training any spare minute they could find in between the brewing, training, exercising, duelling, learning, sleeping and debriefs.
It was hard, yes; it was exhausting, yes – but it was refreshing.
It felt like for the first time since she and Harry had shown up at the cottage that everyone was working together, everyone was taking the war seriously and everyone was pulling the cart in the same direction.
Monday night they debriefed about the banding. Hermione took careful notes during the discussion and captured all the feedback from Arthur, Ava, Liza and Colin on how the bands made them feel and how aware they were of their surroundings while in werewolf form. As expected – they were aware of everything that happened but it seemed like they had access to their human thoughts and memories and were able to make basic decisions like deciding where to stand, deciding where to sit and deciding if they wanted to go visit the other werewolves. Where things got cloudy was when human beings came into their line of sight.
Ava described the feeling as a wave of red – like she was being suffocated by a thick violent urge to devour and a rage to kill that she couldn’t push down. She explicitly recalled losing her ability to do anything other than react to the urges at several points throughout the night – but the second Hermione or Harry sent the commands through the bands to calm the urges would be suppressed and they were able to think clearly once more. Both Hermione and Harry were relieved to find out that the bands caused no pain, and the commands they gave were received well – almost like it was a thought that popped into their heads.
All in all, everyone agreed that the experiment was a success and Hermione said she would modify the bands before the next full moon – where they would try again and see how the changes worked. She planned to add the additional runes that Nasir had suggested and to run the design by him and Harry before she finished the second version.
Then she and Harry re-tagged the entire group with the modified tags they’d put together before heading outside for a quick round of shield charm practice. It hadn’t taken them long to finalize the new tags before dinner and the Order seemed pleased with the results. She removed the old ones and quickly explained that the new ones would allow for small sentences of up to ten words to scroll across the paper as she attached them to each person’s arm. She also told them that the tags contained a trace so she could locate them in case they got into trouble – she tagged everyone: Shacklebolt, Mrs. Weasley, Arthur, Bill, Fleur, Remus, Fred and George, Ron, Luna, Dean and even Ava. The woman wouldn’t be able to send any messages, but she could read them, and it would give them a way to communicate with her in the case of an emergency.
Once they were done, she moved to Nasir who was standing in his typical spot in the corner while Harry removed the final tether on Ron as per their agreement. The tall man didn’t speak as she approached and instead held out his right arm to her and watched quietly as she unbuttoned his cuff, pushed up the sleeve and then fastened the second tag to his blunt arm above the original. When she didn’t remove the original tag as she had with everyone else, he raised a brow at her.
“I’m leaving the original set on myself, you and Harry,” Hermione murmured quietly so no one at the table could hear. “In case we need to communicate just between the three of us. I made them different colours so you won’t confuse them – light green is new, the white tag is our private channel.”
“And what is it that you think we need to discuss that the others can’t know?” Nasir said quietly, his low rumble sounding only between them.
“I don’t know yet,” Hermione said, looking up to meet his gaze as she held his forearm between them and smoothed her fingers across the new tag to make sure it was fully sealed to his arm. He was looking at her with that familiar dark expression she’d grown to know but after the conversation they’d had the day before, she knew the small change she saw in his eyes was the addition of emotion. And now, instead of finding it concerning and a bit unnerving, she found it reassuring. She gave him a small smile as she whispered. “But I want to be ready for it.”
-x-x-
On Tuesday Hermione trained with Nasir in the morning while Harry started a batch of blood replenisher and rested his exhausted body. The poor guy was in rough shape, by the time Nasir had finished with him on Monday his body had been so stiff he was forced to use more muscle cramp paste just to be able to move around. Without it, he probably wouldn’t have been able to get out of bed Tuesday morning, and even after coating his body in it the night before he was still groaning in pain when he slipped his shirt over his head before he joined Hermione for breakfast. She’d given him a sympathetic look and kissed him before cleaning up, all the while knowing that she would be in his shoes later that night.
And she wasn’t wrong.
Nasir kicked her ass.
He met her at 6:30 am before the others would be out for their morning exercise routine. He showed her how to charm her wand to be protected against physical damage and then he trained knives with her. But without Harry being there to help take some of his attention and launch coordinated attacks she felt like she was doing nothing but hopping around and narrowly dodging his blows. She had a sneaking suspicion from watching the way he was moving that he’d taken a strength potion before practice and thus fighting him one on one was nearly impossible, especially since she was used to having Harry there. It took her a bit to get back into the groove of being a solo fighter – but during that process, he nicked her arm, her leg, her abdomen twice and at one point, dodged her attack and threw her to the ground with a thud. She bit back a pained groan when she felt the familiar sting of his blade on the back of her neck as his knee drove into her spine to keep her pinned to the ground.
“If you don’t fight me like you mean it – you’re going to get hurt,” his low baritone had echoed near her ear as she tried and failed to get out from underneath him.
The comment had been frustrating because she was trying – but she knew he wasn’t wrong either. Not only was she out of practice fighting him one on one, but she’d not thrown everything that she had at him. She was sure it was related to the fact that she didn’t truly want to hurt him, that she’d been caught off guard by his sudden increase in strength and because she viewed him as her friend and mentor – which made it hard to chase after him with true killing intent. When he finally let her up, she wiped the blood from her split lip across the back of her hand, took a deep breath and forced herself to get her mind back in the game. After that, she did much better, by combining the use of tethers, disillusionments and even some ascension charms she managed to land several blows on him before he called it quits and switched over to spell work.
By 1 pm she was drenched in sweat, her legs were trembling, her back was aching, and her right arm had been burnt up to the elbow by radiant heat three times. Despite this – she was smiling. She’d managed to entirely control her fiendfyre while it was in full form with minimal assistance from Nasir and when Harry came out with some lunch for them she was sitting next to the tall man in the sand, leaning on his side in exhaustion, unable to sit upright on her own, while he patiently healed her arm and repaired the damage to her fingers.
In the afternoon Nasir reviewed several medical spells with the pair of them and had them duel each other silently to give Harry another chance to try out his arm with wordless magic before they ended for the day to go join the others for dinner in the Cottage. All in all, the day went well and as Hermione took her seat next to Harry and Nasir at the table, she was entirely spent and ready for bed – except that she wouldn’t be going to sleep until much later because after dinner she and Harry followed the Order members outside for their regular training.
They practiced the shield charm as a warmup, then they taught several crucial healing spells to the group including the heart restarting charm and how to prevent someone from choking. Near the end of the night, Harry broke them into pairs and watched them duel, taking notes in his journal of each person’s capability so he could better decide which spells to teach them and determine where people needed the most practice. As Harry circled the group with Nasir, giving pointers and adjusting people’s stances Hermione pulled out her own journal and completed another check of the banding charm she’d designed for herself and Harry.
It was completed. She’d checked it a dozen times – but she planned to review it with Nasir before implementing it this weekend. By the time she showered and crawled into bed she didn’t even remember her head hitting the pillow – she just passed out, dead to the world from exhaustion and nestled firmly into Harry’s side.
Wednesday was much the same. After completing a morning exercise routine with the group Hermione started teaching Liza magic. She reviewed potions, how to determine dosages and several healing spells with Ron, Luna, Dean, Ava and Liza – and she was surprised to find that Dean was naturally adept with healing spells, much like Luna. Liza had been able to cast a lumos spell using Peter’s old wand and she’d run inside to show Fleur and Mrs. Weasley once the lesson was done. Hermione told Liza she could use it as her temporary wand until they could get her a proper one, but that she wasn’t allowed to use it unless she was being supervised by either herself or one of the other adults. The girl had quickly agreed, storing the wand in the kitchen potion cabinet outside of training time.
Most surprising of the day was Ron, he actually showed up to the lesson with a notebook and took notes on the diagnostic spell. Where he found the notebook Hermione had no clue – as far as she could remember from their time at Hogwarts he’d never had or used one, and the rare times he did write stuff down it was always on scrap pieces of parchment that he lost shortly afterwards – she’d blinked in surprise when he’d pulled it out and opened it across his lap like the rest of the group. By the end of their session, he’d been able to successfully identify four signals from the charm and could now properly determine blood replenishing dosages. It was odd to watch him walk away muttering the spells to himself as if working to memorizing them – but she decided not to think about it too much.
She spent the afternoon with Fleur and Mrs. Weasley, going through the potion stock and extending and charming several small bags and boxes to use as storage while Harry manned the cauldrons in their tent. After what happened the night of Nasir’s return – they’d quickly realized that storing their potions, ingredients and notes around the cottage in various locations was potentially dangerous as they may not have time in an emergency to collect and grab everything before leaving or burning the Cottage down. So, Fleur decided that she wanted everything stored safely in crates or bags that had been extended and charmed with several featherlight charms – that way everything could be quickly gathered if they needed to leave. It had taken them several hours to complete the task but, in the end, Fleur was extremely pleased with the setup and everything was neatly packed away and organized. With the spare bit of time they had before dinner, Hermione agreed to practice duelling with Luna and Fleur while Mrs. Weasley started cooking.
Thursday and Friday seemed to blur as they approached the weekend. Each day being similar to the last and comprised of nothing but training, teaching and preparation.
Nasir began to teach Hermione and Harry three new spells and continued to push them past their limits. The twins had proven to be rather proficient in just about every spell that they practiced during the Order training sessions, Arthur had seemed to fully overcome his reluctance to use sectumsempra and Mrs. Weasley had finally stopped complaining about the violent and dark nature of the spells being taught. Hermione wasn’t sure if she’d finally let it go on her own or if Arthur or Shacklebolt had spoken to the woman about it – but she no longer muttered under her breath or complained about the training outwardly. In fact, she even allowed Harry to teach her lapis glacierum – the spell Harry had found which froze your target as if they’d been coated in liquid nitrogen.
Oddly enough, the Weasley matron had been rather proficient with it. She’d shattered several large logs before returning to practicing her shield charm and reviewing the diagnostic charm with Ron.
When Saturday morning finally hit, and they were to go to the Cottage to discuss the Gringotts break-in with Nasir, Bill and Griphook, Hermione was feeling hopeful – hopeful that if things continued down this path, the Order might actually stand a chance.
“Are you ready?” Hermione asked as she turned to look at Harry. He’d been tucking a few final scrolls of parchment under his arm in the lab.
“Yes,” he nodded, making his way toward the door of the tent and giving her a small smile. “I’m ready – let’s hope Griphook is too. I’m a bit worried he might back out and change his mind.”
“I know,” Hermione nodded, her mouth drawing into a tight line.
She’d been worried about that too. They’d not spoken much to Griphook since their first conversation because the goblin seemed to prefer keeping to himself upstairs in the cottage and he had absolutely no interest in partaking in the efforts of the Order. She knew there was a possibility that he’d changed his mind since they’d spoken, or that he might refuse to help them all together or make additional demands. But at this point there was nothing that they could do about that, they’d already said that they would give him whatever he wanted in return for his help so they just had to wait and see what happened.
“Well,” Hermione sighed. “Worst case if he flat out refuses – we still have Bill. Bill will be able to get us in; he just can’t get us down to the vault.”
“True,” Harry nodded as they made their way outside. He nodded to Nasir in greeting as they met up with the tall man midway along the sand as they made their way to the cottage through the first few rays of sunlight.
It wasn’t even 6:30 am yet and most of the Cottage residents would still be sound asleep. But Bill had to go into Gringotts at 11 am for a short afternoon shift – so they’d all agreed to meet early and forego the exercise routine. When they reached the cottage and stepped inside Hermione felt the familiar tingle of the additional wards that Bill always added to keep the Order meetings private from the rest of the cottage. She wasn’t surprised to see that he and Griphook were already seated at the table, scrolls of paper covering the surface ready and waiting – three additional coffee cups sat before their typical chairs near the door.
“Good morning,” Hermione said quietly, Harry echoing a similar greeting as she approached her normal seat and began pulling her notes from her purse. Bill greeted them with a tired hello but Griphook did nothing but stare at her, Harry and Nasir as they each took their seats. “Griphook, this is Nasir. You two have not yet met – but he’s agreed to help us with the Gringotts break-in.”
Nasir nodded to the small goblin as he quietly reached for his black coffee before him – clearly Fleur had taken note of how the man took his coffee along with everyone else in the cottage because her cup visibly contained milk and she suspected it would also have some sugar. Griphook nodded back, remaining silent as he continued to stare at Nasir while Harry and Hermione finished pulling out their notes and Bill pulled over a large piece of parchment which they recognized as the map he had of Gringotts.
“So,” Hermione said slowly, opening her notebook and turning to look at Griphook while mentally crossing her fingers that the goblin had not changed his mind. “First, Harry and I would like to once again thank you for agreeing to help us. We’ve already worked with Bill to go over some of the layout of the vaults and to understand the high-level security measures in place, but your input will be invaluable to our success. As we stated before, we need to get into Gringotts – soon – and we need to break into Bellatrix’s vault.”
Bill, who had been nodding along with her words up until this point faltered. His eyebrow shot up and the cup of coffee he’d been bringing to his mouth froze. “To Bellatrix’s vault? Bellatrix Lestrange?”
“Yes,” Harry said slowly, giving the man an apologetic look. Up until now, Griphook was the only person aside from them who knew, they’d never actually told Bill what their plans were once they managed to get inside the bank in all the times that they’d met with him.
“Well shit,” Bill breathed, setting his cup down and running his hands into his hair. Hermione could see the tension forming around his eyes, his mind racing at the new information. “I sort of figured that you two were trying to get into your own vaults since I know you can’t just walk into the bank and no one else could get anywhere near them either without being flagged and taken in for questioning. I didn’t realize–“
Bill faltered again, his eyes locked to the map he’d spread out on the table.
“That is an entirely different story,” Bill murmured, shaking his head. “That’s impossible.”
“That is what I told them,” Griphook said evenly, his eyes flicking between Hermione and Harry.
“Well impossible or not we need to make it happen,” Harry said quietly. “I understand it’s dangerous – Hermione and I are aware of the risks and we are willing to take them. We aren’t asking anyone to accompany us directly to the vault, we just need your help getting in and past security. I know it’s frustrating that we can’t give you any additional details as to why – but if we don’t do this, we will lose this war and all of our other efforts will have been for nothing.”
Silence echoed around the table for a long moment before Griphook shifted and fixed Harry with a level stare.
“While it is rather admirable of you Mr. Potter to say that you are not asking us to accompany you and Miss Granger directly – you are indeed, doing just that,” Griphook said flatly. “Aside from the difficulties you will face whilst sneaking into Gringotts – it is impossible for anyone to open the vaults aside from a Goblin who is registered to Gringotts as an employee – specifically a vault attendant – and in this case, for Miss Lestrange’s vault you will need a level 7 vault attendant. It is, whether you like it or not – impossible for you to open Bellatrix Lestrange’s vault without my direct aid – and that is assuming we get there without first dying or being caught.”
“Okay,” Harry said slowly, nodding at the goblin and keeping his voice level even though Hermione knew he was likely a tad frustrated. Even though Griphook’s response had included some valuable information it was still entirely laced with doubt. It seemed like the goblin had rethought their conversation and either deemed the task truly impossible or he was only willing to help so much. “This is exactly why we need your help Griphook – so we know what to expect and so we know what we need. That said, just because you said that you would help doesn’t mean that I’m going to force you to come with us. If we have to, we will find another level 7 vault attendant and have them open the vault.”
“Really,” Griphook scoffed, his eyes flicking between them with amusement. “None of them would help you.”
“Perhaps not knowingly,” Nasir’s deep baritone filled the room and all eyes flicked to him. Hermione had expected him to remain quiet during the meeting like he did in all the other ones, only speaking when spoken to or when asked to provide input. But he was sitting there calmly holding his coffee and staring at the goblin to his left with his piercing dark gaze. “But there are, of course – ways around that. Though I do believe that Harry is trying to avoid those options. There are also ways into Gringotts, Griphook. There have been robberies before, the bank just does an exceptional job at keeping that quiet.”
“There have,” Griphook said tightly his eyes warily shifting over Nasir before he looked back to Harry. “I never said that I wouldn’t go – I’m simply pointing out that while your intentions may be noble, they are in fact off point. You will need me to open the vault.”
“So you’ll come?” Harry asked him hesitantly.
“Yes,” Griphook said slowly. “On the condition that you do as you and Miss Granger originally promised once this war is over – and that you give me and the goblin race the credit they deserve for aiding in the end of the war. I will not have my species be once again misrepresented in your wizarding history books and all but eradicated and removed from the magical world while being made to serve like house elves.”
“That’s fair,” Harry nodded in agreement.
“And,” Griphook interjected once more before Harry could say anything else. His sharp eyes were serious, and his tone grew low with warning as the air around the table shifted and became thick. “You will take nothing but the single item that you have stated that you need. I will not be made a fool; I will not be an accomplice to theft, and I will not have my reputation ruined over greed. If you touch anything else in that vault, I will leave you there to rot on principle alone.”
“Understood,” Harry said seriously, his eyes meeting Griphook’s intense stare. “You have my word.”
“Alright,” Griphook nodded after a long moment of silence. He shifted on his chair again and pulled the map Bill had unrolled towards the five of them at the end of the table. “Then let’s get to work – I was not exaggerating when I said that this would be impossible.”
And he hadn’t been.
As it turned out, Gringotts was incredibly safe and incredibly difficult to get into. The thing was built like a fortress and designed like a maze – and while they had indeed had a few break-ins over the centuries as Nasir had indicated, Griphook was reluctant to clarify how many or how they’d happened. He did, however, have a plan – their best chance of successfully getting into the bank was to complete the break-in on May 1st.
Griphook informed them that Gringott’s fiscal year-end was the end of April. The goblin staff spent the entire month of April reviewing all account balances and logging bank profits, then on May 1st every year the vault staff was reduced to aid with the final reporting and final review. This was unknown to the public because they kept the desks upfront normally staffed, but behind the scenes, they were short-handed and there were fewer goblins moving through the vaults. It would provide the best chance for not only slipping past security initially but also for moving through the vaults undetected. As for how they were going to do that – well that was where it got complicated.
According to Griphook the carts within the vaults were magically coded to only work when piloted by a goblin who was recognized as a bank employee. He could pilot a cart, but since he was currently designated as ‘missing’ the second he touched one of the small vehicles the security desk would be alerted and someone would be sent to go check it out. Even if they managed to grab a goblin inside the bank and imperio them into piloting a cart – it still wouldn’t work. Bellatrix’s vault was past the Thief’s Downfall which would recognize that Hermione, Harry and Nasir did not have permission to access the lower vaults and they would wind up stuck in an immobile cart while security rushed to investigate.
Griphook indicated that security’s involvement was inevitable once they got to the vault itself, he would still be able to open the door for them, but the second that he touched it security would be alerted and they would have a finite amount of time to grab the object they needed and get out safely before they arrived. It was less than ideal, but it was the only way in – the vaults on the lower level were under extremely tight security and because Bellatrix herself had not come into the bank and requested access, any movement inside her vault outside of a planned and routine goblin inspection would be flagged to security. So even if they had found another goblin inside to open the door and help them – it would still alert security because Bellatrix was not physically present.
No matter what they did, their presence would be known – so what they needed to do was maximize the time they had before their presence was flagged and get to the vault undetected. It was the only way that they stood a chance at getting back out.
As for how they would get to the vault? Well, that would involve a combination of several different things. Getting in through the employee side door would be relatively easy. Gringotts had very little security around the exterior of the main building itself because they were confident in the security within the vault area underground. Hermione, Harry, Nasir and Griphook would be able to slip in behind Bill when he arrived at work for his normal shift undetected through the use of disillusionment spells and Harry’s invisibility cloak. If they did run into anyone, they would obliviate them and remove the memory of their presence. Once inside, they would separate from Bill and make their way toward the maintenance tunnels.
Griphook warned them that the maintenance tunnels were rarely used, they were small and would only get them about a third of the way down. They were relics from the old days before the cart system was installed and it was possible that entire sections of the tunnels might be collapsed or that there might be creatures living within them. Assuming they were able to navigate through them successfully they should come out to a small ledge on the Eastern side of the underground vault area. From there they would somehow need to descend an additional 600 feet while navigating the ledges and rocks and sharp drops until they reached the layer where Bellatrix’s vault was.
“And how are we going to descend 600 ft?” Hermione asked, her eyes flicking from the map that Griphook was adding notes too and latching to the goblin’s beady gaze. Her mind felt like it was spinning as she processed all the information that he’d given them and combined it with what she already knew. “I read that ascension spells and movement spells cannot be used in Gringotts for this exact reason – so people are limited to where the carts can take them. It’s no different than the anti-apparition wards they have, or the illusion removal wards – once we get to that ledge we can’t just jump and use arresto momentum.”
“Indeed,” Griphook said, an almost pleased smile curling across his lips. “I can’t tell you how many times we’ve found witches or wizards splattered along the bottom because they thought they could just lower themselves down to get to the riches below.”
Hermione stared at him, her brow twitching at the obvious sick amusement the goblin had over people dying in the vaults. She already knew he didn’t think highly of witches and wizards – but she’d not fully understood just how much he disliked them until he’d started talking and helping them form the plan. It seemed like he would make snide remarks or distasteful comments any chance he got, and while she understood that he had good reason to feel the way he did – she couldn’t see the satisfaction in people’s death the way that he did. Maybe it was because she knew how it felt to carry the weight of it, or maybe she was just more affected by it than him – but she struggled to find his cruel humour amusing as he mocked those who died – even the ones that had done nothing wrong and had simply misstepped while in the dark unfamiliar territory of the vaults and lost their lives.
“Which is exactly why I’m asking,” Hermione said tightly, keeping her voice level. The goblin had been incredibly helpful thus far and she didn’t want to piss him off, but she could do with a little less of his distasteful comments and blatant disregard for human life. “How do we lower ourselves 600 ft down while navigating the dark, unknown terrain littered with cliffs, the creatures all while trying to avoid falling to our deaths?”
“No idea,” Griphook said, his tone laced with the familiar disdain he used when speaking about wizards. “You’re the witch Miss Granger – you tell me. I have no wand, there isn’t anything I can do to assist you with this part, we don’t have a map of the cave wall faces. I’ll get you through the tunnel and I’ll open the vault, but you and your friends will need to figure out the beginning and the middle of this mission.”
Hermione clenched her jaw, her eyes narrowing as she dropped them to the map, and she began to wrack her brain.
“What about tether spells?” Harry asked slowly, his head was resting in his hand and he was staring at the goblin curiously. “Do tether spells work in the vault area?”
“Tether spells?” Griphook frowned at him. “You mean leashes for animals?”
“Yes those,” Harry nodded sitting up straight once more, and Hermione immediately knew where his train of thought was going. “Do you know if we can use a tether spell?”
“Of course you can use a tether spell,” Griphook said bluntly like it was a stupid question. “We use them all the time on the creatures we bring in for added security.”
“Then we rappel,” Harry said easily, dropping his quill to the table and looking at the group. “We use tethers to lower ourselves to the bottom – like rock climbing.”
“Rock climbing?” Griphook asked as Bill started nodding his head in understanding.
“Yes, it’s a muggle sport but they use ropes and harnesses instead of magic,” Harry said offhandedly to Griphook, ignoring the look of disapproval on the goblin’s face and the way he muttered ‘ridiculous’ under his breath before reaching for his second cup of coffee. Harry turned to look at Hermione. “It would work, wouldn’t it? We could tether, extend, place a second tether and then remove the first and repeat that over and over until we hit the bottom.”
“Yeah,” Hermione nodded, her brain had already started to assess the idea the second he’d spoken the word tether. She grabbed her quill and started scribbling some notes. “The longest extendable tether we’ve made is 30 feet – we’d have to do it twenty times but it’s definitely possible. Balancing on the descent will be tricky, we’ll need to be careful – and it’s high risk. If we mess up, we fall, and we don’t have a back-up plan.”
“Yeah aside from trying to tether into the wall as we fall,” Harry nodded in agreement. “One of us will have to carry Griphook down, but we could permanently tether him to us so he hangs just below–“
“Excuse me,” Griphook looked at Harry sharply as he set his coffee back down. “You’re going to use an animal leash to hang me where?”
“Around our waist,” Harry said quickly, grabbing a piece of scrap parchment and sketching it out. “We’ll need both hands to rappel, balance and navigate the cave wall – and I hardly think it wise to have you try to hold on for the entire descent. If we tether you to one of us it’s the safest way to get down. I could either tether you on my back or so that you hang just off my waist – Bill there’s a cliff to the South isn’t there?”
“There is,” Bill nodded, his eyes shifting over Harry’s sketch with interest. “About 200 yards out – it’s inside the wards but only just.”
“Perfect,” Harry nodded. “We can practice there this weekend and see how it works. I think it’s our best option – unless anyone has any other suggestions for descending 600 ft in total darkness?”
Hermione looked around the table with Harry taking in the small head shakes from Bill and Griphook until her eyes landed on Nasir. The man was sitting silently beside her and had not spoken since his initial words to Griphook.
“Nasir?” Harry asked, leaning forward to look around Hermione at the dark-haired man. “What do you think?”
“I think it is your only option,” Nasir said slowly, his eyes shifting to meet Harry’s. “But you better practice the ascent as well – because once you get what you need, we will need to leave quickly.”
“Alright,” Harry nodded, and Hermione couldn’t help but smile with him in relief now that they actually had a plan.
It felt like they’d made significant progress and for the first time since September they were close to getting another Horcrux. Bill let out a sigh and dropped his head into his hands much like how Harry had been sitting only moments ago, the relief visible on his face as he started measuring out the distance on the map from Bellatrix’s vault to the wall they would be descending. It was nearing 10:30 am and soon Bill would need to leave for work. Their meeting had taken longer than she’d expected, but thankfully Fleur had been prepared and summoned breakfast upstairs for the others so they would not disturb the meeting when they woke.
“How long do we have once you open the door until security shows up?” Hermione asked Griphook, her quill poised over her page.
“That depends on where the nearest cart is,” Griphook said slowly, his eyes thoughtful. “Anywhere from one minute to twenty.”
“And how close is the vault to the wall?” Harry asked Bill, his eyes watching as the man finished his measurement with a frown.
“It’s about 300 yards,” Bill said quietly, his eyes flicking to Harry. “You’ll need at least 30 to 40 seconds to cover that span at a full sprint.”
Hermione closed her eyes and let out a quiet breath.
“That’s a very small window.”
-x-x-
We have finally reached what I fondly like to think of as: the final third of the story. First third being H&HR alone training and struggling in the woods from campsite to campsite. The second third being the return of Ron and the Order, dealing with the werewolf den, training and preparation. And the final third being the actual war where we will be breaking into Gringotts, working through the battle of Hogwarts and tying up all the loose ends of the story.
Ultimately, we have reached a turning point and the pace is about to change.
The plot is going to explode, and a lot of things are going to start happening all at once – we’ve triggered a landslide and the chapters to come are going to be non-stop with no break or lulls for the characters, so I suggest that everyone buckle up. For those of you already seated with your seatbelts on – I’m looking forward to finishing this story with you.
<3 Tori
Warnings:
This chapter contains: explicit smut (you can skip the smut if you like, but during the scene there is an important moment between Harry and Hermione that better outlines how the bond works between them. So in this case I suggest you skim it as opposed to outright skipping it)
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Liza’s screams shot through the air, the sound of her bare feet running desperately across the sand thudding like a drum as she ran up the beach towards the cottage – a bright crackling ball of light rushing along the sand behind her. The bright ball was blazing, a stream of colours trailing behind it inches above the ground as it grew closer and closer to her heels. At the last second, right before the blazing ball reached her legs it jolted to the right, rushing above the water then up over a hundred feet into the air before bursting into a collection of vibrant colours with a loud pop. Streams of crackling glitter and flickers of light trailed from the sky, dancing and twirling and twisting with vigour. Liza’s laughter cut through the air like music, a wide smile splitting across her face as she skidded to a stop and stared up at the glorious explosion, her eyes blazing with wonder and joy at the display before her. Then as the colours started to fade, she turned back to the twins who had been running along the sand behind her in amazement.
“That was incredible!” Liza shouted, her eyes wide with infectious joy. Her hair was still damp from swimming in the ocean before coaxing Fred and George into setting off one firework before dinner. They had told her when they arrived that they were waiting until it got dark to start the show, but they’d not been able to resist the girl’s prodding after they’d spent the last few hours frolicking around on the beach and playing in the water.
Ava was holding Charlie on her hip, her hair damp as well from joining the others in their fun and playing a game of catch in the waves. Although the weather was beautiful, and the sun was hot – it was still far too unreasonably cold to swim in the ocean waters. But Liza’s offhanded comment that she’d always wanted to swim in the ocean had quickly changed that – the twins had declared that it could be done, casting a plethora of warming charms over the girl while Fleur transfigured a bathing suit to fit.
Within minutes of her screaming and laughing and running into the waves with the twins Ava had joined in, bringing Charlie with her only for Ron and Luna to follow suit a few minutes later. They’d spent the last two hours running and chasing, building sandcastles and swimming in the water until finally they’d split into teams and began a game of catch – throwing a ball back and forth while Mrs. Weasley cooked up a storm inside and Fleur setup a giant picnic table on the sand.
Arthur had arrived halfway through, watching the excitement and activities peacefully while chatting with Shacklebolt and conjuring chairs. Dean sat on the sand with Remus, who’d shown up after Tonks had made him go so he could get some fresh air. They were talking quietly and even though Dean had refused to join in the commotion directly, he seemed to be enjoying it just the same as Bill finally came home from work and joined them. Even Colin had come out with Mr. Ollivander, seated in two chairs at the far end of the long table, an odd expression of peace on his face as he spoke to the old man and admired the cliffs to the South. Apparently, Colin had started to finally accept his situation for what it was. He wasn’t happy about it; he still did little to join in or show any sort of thanks for being alive – which Hermione felt was fair – but he had formed an odd bond with the old wizard at his side. They exchanged stories and completed crossword puzzles together during the afternoons.
Griphook had, in his typical fashion, flat out refused to join in, but Hermione had seen him looking out the upstairs window of the cottage a few times, spying on the activity from the safety of his small bedroom while she sat on the beach a little ways away from the others twisting a piece of dune grass between her fingers – watching the events unfold silently after being told by Fleur to go relax while she went to help Mrs. Weasley finalize the food.
After the meeting to discuss the Gringotts break-in Bill had gone to work, Griphook had returned upstairs, the other cottage residents had made their way downstairs and Nasir had left to run more errands. Where he went, she had no idea, but she had followed Harry outside to practice duelling and then spent the rest of the early afternoon review their banding charm design with him until the outdoor activities had started. She’d stripped down to her thin-strapped tank top while they were alone – enjoying the feel of the cool beach air moving across her skin in the safety of their wards.
But now, she sat quietly, her hair twisted into a knot on the top of her head wearing a thin, baggy long sleeve shirt that covered all the markings on her body, soft black slacks and bare feet. It was still comfortable – but she did miss the freedom she’d felt earlier as the air had brushed across her arms.
When the swimming started, Luna had quietly asked her and Harry if they wanted to join them – but Hermione had politely declined. She’d not been comfortable with the idea of exposing her torn and worn body to the others and her skill with masking charms was still limited – it would never cover every mark on her body. Besides, even if she had mastered the charm she still would not have participated. She didn’t feel comfortable with it and if she was being honest – she didn’t know how.
It was like she’d lost the ability to play, the ability to fully relax and have fun and instead was trapped in her mind in a state of seriousness. So, instead she watched with Harry, deciding to participate in her own way by helping Fleur with the setup. Bringing out dishes and cups, placing out bowls and candles before finally shifting off to the side when Fleur told her there was nothing left to help with and that she could go relax.
Relax.
Hermione nearly snorted. The word was so ridiculously foreign to her now. She’d never been good at relaxing before, but she’d gotten even worse at it. The only relaxing she’d done in a long time had been sitting with Harry while his arm healed and that had been mandated. She doubted that they would have taken that time to themselves if he’d not been required to sit there unmoving. Harry on the other hand seemed a bit better at disconnecting his mind from their situation and enjoying the life around him. Maybe because he’d dealt with these sorts of feelings longer or maybe he was just better at hiding his stress and doubt. But he smiled and laughed and joked with Bill when the man arrived before joining Hermione on her dune to watch the others play. He’d left a moment ago after recalling that they still had some treacle tarts and sweets in their stores for a special occasion – he’d gone to fetch them so that they could be shared with the others during dinner.
So Hermione sat alone, watching as Ava and Liza complimented the twins on their firework, standing there with their bare feet submerged in the icy water and enjoying the warming charm that was still in effect as they all laughed and Liza said she couldn’t wait for the full show. A twelve-foot-tall sandcastle towered to the right, the makeshift flag on top blowing in the breeze – it was a drawing Ava had made this week transfigured into a flag by the boys and lifted to the top by an exceptionally excited Liza. Ron was now sitting with Luna and Dean – Remus was standing near them and laughing at something the redhead had said. Bill was talking with Shacklebolt and everyone looked happy.
Calm.
Peaceful.
Hermione felt her heart twist almost painfully in her chest as she watched everyone before her, happy and enjoying the day. She could feel the flower in her hair as she discarded the blade of dune grass she’d been crumpling and dropped her head to her hand, her elbow resting on her knee. Liza had found the early blooming thrift and picked it excitedly several hours ago, bringing it to Fleur – who had charmed it so it would not wilt. The flower had exchanged hands, eventually making it to Ava who had, for some reason, come to show it to Hermione. She didn’t know why the woman had done it but after a polite exchange Ava had looked at her for a quiet moment then gently and slowly reached forward and tucked the flower into her hair. Hermione hadn’t known what to say but she hadn’t stopped the woman either, she’d just stood there awkwardly until Ava gave her a kind smile then told her that she was welcome to come play in the water too if she changed her mind later.
The exchange had left her somewhat unsettled and stirred her carefully controlled emotions – so had the idea of a carefree beach party picnic in general. The whole week leading up to today had felt tense and exhausting, the energy was tight and constricted – it was as if they all subconsciously knew.
This was probably their last weekend.
Their last moment of peace before a ruthless and unrelenting storm. It was the 25th of April, and in five days’ time, they would be breaking into Gringotts. While hardly anyone knew the specific details of the plan or why they were doing it and what was to come – they were all aware that there was a plan and that an important action was going to be taken on the 1st of May. The whole Order knew it and the whole Order seemed to sense that this was it.
If things went wrong, people could die.
If things went wrong, it could singlehandedly cause them to lose the entire war. It could bring forth the terror and the wreckage of Voldemort, it could quite simply put, be the straw that broke the metaphorical camel’s back and result in an outright blatant war. A full-on battle – they’d all known that this moment was coming, the last few months had felt long and exhausting and unending – and yet now suddenly, almost as if out of nowhere, it was here.
Yet looking at them now you would never know it. You would never know that this group was on the edge, that they were floating on borrowed time and training to save their lives and prepare. They were too happy, too normal and having way too much fun as they all talked and laughed and enjoyed the beach. And that was probably why she couldn’t join them. It was why as much as she was happy to see it, watching them before her hurt so deeply she’d been afraid to do anything other than twist that strand of grass between her fingers like it was the only thing keeping her calm.
Because she loved these people.
All of them. And she was haunted by the idea of not doing enough.
She was tormented by the thought of having had wasted her time when she could have done more. Because she could feel it too – that same tight tension and the voice in the back of her mind that told her that this was it. The Gringotts break-in was their make it or break it moment – hell, even Nasir seemed to feel it. The man was pushing them in training harder than ever before and it only confirmed her suspicion that they had, one way or another, reached the end of this war. And because of this, her mind was riddled with doubts and worries.
What if she’d thought about things longer, planned a little harder and trained for another hour? What if she asked Nasir one more question, stayed up a little later to study and duelled with Harry one more time? What if she squeezed in one more potion, brewing something that could mean the difference between life and death?
Because god forbid, they messed up and she lost this. God forbid that these people – her friends, her family, and all the others at Hogwarts that she didn’t have physical eyes on got hurt. She knew they would. She knew that no matter what she did there would be losses. But she couldn’t even stomach the thought of it and seeing them now – so human, so pure, so kind – so alive, just made it hurt even more.
This was nothing like the books she’d read as a child. Nothing like the stories and fairy tales that told of glorious battles and bravery where the heroes won, and good people lived simply because they were good and that was how it was supposed to happen. She knew people were going to die, she knew they might lose, in fact she knew it might even be likely that they were going to lose. And that knowledge was unbearable, like an ache that could not be healed and she felt it constricting across her chest like a vice as her eyes started to sting in the cool breeze that brushed across her face.
The sound of sand shifting to her left made her head twist to look and see who was approaching.
“Hermione,” the warm familiar voice sounded as two black shoes stopped a foot away.
“Oh hey – Arthur, hi,” Hermione said quickly, awkwardly she rubbed the sleeve of her long sleeve shirt across her eyes. She hadn’t been crying exactly, but she knew her eyes were glossy and she sure as hell did not want him to see that. She cleared her throat and tried to look calm as she glanced up at him. “How are you?”
“I’m well,” Arthur said warmly as he sat down on the sand beside her. He seemed not to care that sand filled his shoes and covered his pants as he did so. “How are you doing, Hermione?”
“I’m okay,” she lied, smiling at him gently and hoping that it looked sincere. He looked at her for a long moment, the breeze ruffling his hair as the sound of the other’s voices echoed in the background.
“You didn’t join in on the fun,” he said, his voice low and soft as he watched her.
“Yes, well,” Hermione felt the tightness in her chest grow and the weight of her rune deepen.
She hesitated before she let out a short sigh and gave him a pained smile. She knew he was just trying to help but she didn’t exactly feel like talking about this, frankly, she didn’t really feel like talking at all. Her head was swimming, she was running over the Gringotts plan, going over the list of supplies, potions, and the training schedule as she fought to keep track of everything while trying to think up every detail that they may have missed. She felt like she was drowning in all of it as she tried to stay in control. She didn’t understand how the others could be so carefree right now and she both envied them and was annoyed by it. She felt disconnected and lost. She’d become too serious and stoic to belong at or see the point of a beach picnic.
“I guess I wasn’t really feeling up to it,” she shrugged.
He nodded but continued to look at her for a long moment before finally shifting his eyes back out to the beach. They sat there in silence, watching the others play and chat like they didn’t have a care in the world. A cool breeze ghosted across the back of her scarred neck as she saw Harry cut across the sand from their tent, making his way toward the long table carrying the cookies and treats he’d gone to get from their tent.
She’d not particularly wanted to attend this event – Harry had been the one who said they would join in and so she’d only left the tent because he’d said it would be good for them. She knew he was right of course, but that didn’t make participating any easier. Her lips twitched as she watched him get pulled into a conversation with Shacklebolt and then she heard Arthur’s low voice beside her.
“You know,” he said quietly, almost pensively. “Sometimes, despite what we tell ourselves – we aren’t in control.”
Hermione’s eyes flicked towards him, taking in his side profile as he continued to stare out along the beach and watch the others have fun.
“And that’s okay,” he continued slowly, and she felt her stomach knot as she realized why he’d come over here to talk to her. “Sometimes, despite our best efforts and despite everything that we do – life just happens and there isn’t anything we can do to prevent it, there isn’t any level of preparation that can prepare us. Sometimes, it doesn’t matter how hard you try, or how much time you invest – it just happens. And it’s not your fault.”
Hermione felt her shoulders tense as her eyes dropped back to the sand before her. She couldn’t handle a pep talk right now, even though she knew his intentions were sincere.
“It’s okay to feel overwhelmed by that,” his voice was so quiet now it was just above a whisper, and she could feel his eyes on her as he spoke. “No one person can carry the weight of everything on their shoulders, Hermione. It’s okay to need a break – people should never feel guilty for taking a second to breathe. I know that everyone handles things differently, I know that – but, sometimes you need to take a moment to feel alive while you’re still living and to remember why we’re here and what we’re fighting for.”
“Arthur,” Hermione could feel the tremor in her voice as she fought to keep it level. This was the very reason why she’d come and sat alone, away from everyone else. She’d made progress the last little while with getting used to being around people and tolerating their closeness but expressing or dealing with emotions was still hard because she kept so much of it at bay in order to function and do what was necessary. She was okay showing it with Harry and she’d come around on letting Nasir in, but she still felt massively uncomfortable with everyone else even though she tried extremely hard to fight her discomfort. “I – at this point, I honestly don’t even know how to join in anymore.”
“I know,” he said softly, and his response somewhat surprised her.
She’d been expecting him to continue to give some sort of optimistic lecture. To tell her that eventually, things would be fine and she would once again go back to normal and enjoy life like she used, that this wasn’t permanent and that her scars and memories wouldn’t haunt her forever – but instead, his voice had almost sounded accepting, as if he was taking her as she was and wasn’t going to pretend things would change. She glanced up at him and saw that he was looking at her with a sadness in his eyes.
“I know you don’t,” he said quietly, his voice slow and level as he stared at her. “And they all know that you don’t, even if not all of them understand it. After everything that you and Harry have been through – expecting anything else would be unfair and unrealistic – and we all know that it will likely never change. I can’t even begin to imagine what has been going through your head these last few days, or how you feel after everything that has happened and with everything still left to come.”
Arthur paused, his eyes flicking over her face as if looking for something.
“But what I do need you to know, is that everyone here, is here by choice, Hermione – you don’t need to carry the weight of their lives on your shoulders. This is everyone’s war and you and Harry are not alone in this. It isn’t your responsibility to keep us all safe. We all have a duty to play our part and we are all willing to do it, willing to take the risks and do what we have to. I know that we were slow to come around on what was required to fight this, to acknowledge the seriousness of this war and just how bad things have gotten – but we’ve accepted it now. Please believe me when I say that even though they’re running around and laughing, joking and having fun right now they all know what’s coming. They’ve all accepted that they might not be coming back from whatever is about to happen and you can’t protect them all even though I know you want to.”
Hermione swallowed hard, her brow pinching in pain as she fought to keep her face composed.
“I know it probably seems ridiculous to have a picnic and fireworks right now – I know that running around on the beach seems stupid – probably like an impossible task for you and a waste of time – but it’s not, Hermione. It’s just a moment to breathe and a moment to enjoy something that we might not ever have the chance to enjoy again,” Arthur let out a breath and pushed himself up from the ground. She watched as he slid off his shoes, stripped off his socks and then cast a charm to make his pant legs roll up to his knees. She could see the scar from his werewolf bite marking his leg, a permanent angry red line that would mar his skin forever. Then he turned back to her and outstretched his hand. “Let’s go for a walk.”
She stared at him, her body tense with emotion and anguish as his words circled in her head and she struggled to decide what to do. She didn’t want to reject him and yet she couldn’t seem to make herself join him. Logically she knew what he said was true and yet… she could not help but feel responsible for all their safety. She could not help but carry the guilt of knowing that she and Harry had been the ones to push them to learn dangerous magic and to ask some of them to help on a ludicrously risky plan.
“Arthur, I –“
“I’m not going to make you jump in the water, Hermione – nor would I or anyone else here ask that of you,” he said softly, his eyes still firmly fixed on her face. “But perhaps, maybe – we could dip in our toes, just to see how it feels.”
She knew her face was strained, she could feel the discomfort of emotions rushing through her body as it instinctively recoiled at the idea of joining in – and yet, somehow, she felt her hand slowly leave her side and extend out to his. He gripped her tightly, his hand warm and strong, and pulled her up from the ground, waiting before her as she swallowed hard and flicked her finger to roll up her own pants. The air was getting cooler and she fought back a shiver as it danced across her calves before looking to Arthur once more. He smiled at her, and it was so sincere it made her chest hurt.
“Come on,” he said warmly, placing a hand gently on her shoulder and guiding her toward the water.
She followed along beside him, keeping her eyes focused on the approaching waves even though she knew a few people were looking at them. They were probably surprised that she agreed to leave her spot. As they approached the water’s edge, she saw Arthur cast a warming charm on his legs before his hand fell from her shoulder and he took the first step into the icy water and let out a laugh.
“I never liked the beach,” he said brightly, turning back to grin at her widely as the water sloshed against his calves. “Too much sand – and I never did learn how to swim. Did you?”
“I did,” Hermione said quietly, still standing on the dry sand and eyeing the water carefully. She ought to cast a warming charm like him but as the next wave rolled in, and for a reason she couldn’t explain, she decided that she didn’t want to. Before she could let herself overthink it, she took three steps forward into the icy waves. It stung against her skin, sending a violent chill down her spine. It was not near as bad as the pond in December had been but she felt her muscles tense as she inhaled sharply and looked up to Arthur with a pained but open smile as the rush of adrenaline rushed through her with the cold. “I used to be rather good at it.”
“Perhaps someday, you would be kind enough to teach me,” Arthur grinned at her, watching as she slowly began to walk with him through the shallow water toward the others.
“I can do that,” Hermione nodded, feeling the numbness settle in as she fought back another wave of shivers. She looked back to the man on her right once more, catching the warm and concerned smile on his face, the one that only a father could make as he gently patted her back once more and his low voice echoed only between them.
“See,” he said, gesturing down to the water with his eyes. “It’s not so bad.”
Hermione smiled at him, her eyes flicking up to look at the others before her and then to Harry on her left who was still standing by the table next to Shacklebolt. Harry was looking at her, a warm smile on his lips and an almost painful look in his eyes. His face was radiating with that deep heated love that made her stomach flutter with nerves and her chest constrict with agony.
“No,” Hermione said softly, looking back over to Arthur as another large wave rolled in and the man’s arm continued to guide her and ground her like an anchor of hope. “It’s not that bad.”
-x-x-
Harry had watched Hermione walk through the water with Arthur with a feeling of what could only be described as deep appreciation. Because the truth was, as each and every day went by he worried more and more about Hermione. He knew that she was pushing herself. He knew that she was taking on the weight of the world and as it was, he had to fight her to let him carry his fair share. He knew that no matter what anyone told her – she would never forgive herself if anything ever happened to the people here. He knew that she didn’t particularly like the idea of involving Bill or Griphook in the break-in and he knew that she was only doing it because she literally had to because they had no other choice.
Harry didn’t like it either – but he knew that she handled it even worse than he did and that was saying something. He’d had a hero complex his whole life and struggled to let people help. He knew if she could, she would bear the burden of the entire war herself just to spare the others – so it was nice to see that Arthur hadn’t given up on her, that the man wouldn’t give up on her and would continue to try and help her participate again while being mindful of the fact that things had changed. That she had changed and she would probably always struggle with normal life.
It was easier for Harry to pretend to be fine, he wasn’t sure why… maybe because he’d already accepted his death and he was just trying to do the right thing with the little remaining time that he had left. Or maybe it was because he was just used to pretending after years of abuse with the Dursley’s and everything else that had been thrown at him.
He wasn’t sure.
But either way, once Hermione reached Ava, Liza and the twins – Harry stripped off his shoes and socks, swallowed the pain that sat heavily on his chest, rolled up his pants and went and joined them in the water.
The rest of the evening had been odd – happy, excited and filled with delicious food and laughter. And yet it was odd because it was like everyone knew it was a false sense of peace. Yet that didn’t make the night any less real or any less enjoyable.
Fred and George put on what was likely the best fireworks display the wizarding world had ever seen. Liza had stood there with her mouth hung so far open Harry was sure it would never shut again, and Ava had been blown away while Charlie had stared at it in awe. Hermione had held his hand tightly throughout the display, leaning into his side as she sat on the dune and buried her still exposed feet and legs into the sand. Nasir had shown up just before it started and, shockingly, had come over to watch with them. He’d even told the twins that their work was impressive – which had resulted in a fascinating moment of discussion between the three of them that seemed to make Mrs. Weasley incredibly uncomfortable. The tall, and often silent man, had been interested to know how the fireworks worked and the twins had been interested to know if he had any spells that could be used to improve them. After twenty minutes of talk Nasir finally excused himself and Mrs. Weasley seemed to let out a breath she’d been holding.
Evidence, Harry supposed, that not everyone had entirely accepted the mysterious man without concern after his miraculous return from the dead. He still made the Order nervous, and there were some who still questioned his involvement even if they did remain silent on the subject.
By the time the fireworks stopped, the beach was cleaned up and everyone had stopped talking it was nearly midnight. Harry followed Hermione back to their tent and got ready for bed, both of them so exhausted from the week they could barely keep their eyes open as they crawled into bed and turned off the light.
Except that Harry did keep his eyes open. He forced them open – waiting quietly and unmoving until he was sure that Hermione was fast asleep before he carefully crawled from the bunk. He paused at the table, grabbing his black hooded sweater and pulling it on before slipping on his boots by the door and exiting the tent. And just like the last time that he’d snuck away in the middle of the night and cut across the darkness, his feet shifting silent through the sand as he approached the only other small tent on the beach – the warm glow of a fire came into view after he passed through Nasir’s wards.
When he rounded the tent, he saw the man sitting before the fire, but this time instead of burning leaves and bottling them he was stirring a small cauldron containing a potion that Harry had never seen before. It was crimson red and somehow looked cold despite the fact that it was boiling.
“Hello Harry,” the man’s low deep baritone filled the air around them, giving a sense of déjà vu as he once again didn’t bother to look up and see who was there. Either his wards contained an identifier, or the man was just incredibly good at sensing his surroundings. “Can’t sleep?”
“Something like that,” Harry said, repeating the same response he’d used the last time he’d visited in the middle of the night. But this time, he added. “How about you? Don’t you ever sleep?”
“Occasionally,” Nasir said slowly, his dark eyes shifting to meet Harry’s gaze as he pulled the stirring rod from the cauldron and placed it carefully on the ground. Without moving a muscle, the man cast a spell and the flames died down so the potion reduced to a low simmer. “Take a seat.”
Harry moved to the same place he’d sat before, sitting down on the sand and pulling his hood back now that the warmth of the fire was there to keep away the chill of the night’s air. They sat there for a long while in silence, Nasir tending to the potion and unbothered by Harry’s presence. The first time he’d joined Nasir at his fire Harry had assumed the man was indifferent towards him, that he didn’t care that he was there. But after their discussion and after spending more time with him – Harry had come to realize that that wasn’t the case at all. Nasir wasn’t indifferent towards him – he was just comfortable with him. Comfortable with his presence and comfortable with sharing his space with him in silence.
And it was an oddly nice realization to have made.
“Hermione said you know about Horcruxes,” Harry said quietly, his eyes glancing to the man on his right.
“I do,” Nasir said evenly, once again stirring the potion before him as he summoned several small vials from the tent behind him.
“Do you know how to get rid of them?” Harry asked, watching as the man beside him quickly siphoned the potion into the vials and then removed the empty cauldron from the flames. The fire remained burning low before them as his gaze shifted back to Harry’s.
“I do,” Nasir said quietly, his eyes raking over Harry’s in that soul-piercing way that made Harry’s skin crawl with discomfort regardless of how adjusted he’d become to the man. “But so do you, don’t you Harry? As I understand it, you are familiar with Horcruxes and have dispatched two already.”
Harry swallowed, his eyes not leaving the man’s gaze. “That’s accurate.”
“So then what is your real question, Harry,” Nasir’s voice was flat and to the point, but there wasn’t an ounce of harshness or irritation to it. He clearly knew that Harry was here to ask something specific and was simply cutting around the crap.
Yet it rendered Harry tense and speechless just the same. He knew what he wanted to ask and yet he didn’t really know how to say it. His eyes drifted down to his hands, the firelight making the white Lichtenberg scars gleam like a decorative pattern on his flesh as Nasir patiently waited for him to find his words.
“Are all Horcruxes the same?” Harry asked slowly, his eyes shifting back up to meet Nasir’s gaze. “If you make one out of an inanimate object – is it the same as making one out of a human? Or is it different?”
“It’s different,” Nasir said slowly, his deep voice hanging heavy in the cool air as if they’d disappeared into a void with just the two of them in it. Harry watched him closely, hanging on every word as he spoke. “One does not usually make a Horcrux out of a human – since, after all, a Horcrux isn’t an overly complicated item in and of itself. It’s simply an object that holds a piece of a soul. The concept is incredibly straightforward, and the magic used to create it is crude – though that does not make the implementation any less immoral or heinous.
“It’s really no different than placing a piece of yourself in a box and saving it for later,” Nasir said quietly. “There is no added value to picking one particular item in which to store that piece of soul in over another since the magic involved in creating the Horcrux inherently protects it and makes it extremely difficult to destroy. Aside from the obvious reasons of one object being more easily concealable, secret or readily available than another it really doesn’t matter what inanimate object you use – unless you are a pompous theatrical lunatic who feels the need to try and make them more significant than they are. A piece of scrap paper, a bit of chewed gum or a twig would be just as effective at being a Horcrux as anything else.”
Harry watched the man speak, his brow raising at the hint of sarcasm that seemed to lace his voice toward the end. It was almost as if Nasir seemed to think Horcruxes were a rather pathetic attempt at keeping oneself alive – almost as if he knew Voldemort had them and that he thought the demon’s choice of objects was a joke, that he viewed Voldemort’s selection of items as pretentious and the demon himself as a crazed and childish boy.
“That said,” Nasir said slowly, his eyes meeting Harry’s with a new intensity. “Human Horcruxes are entirely different.”
“How so?” Harry barely even realized that he’d leaned forward, his hands now tightly gripping the fabric of his pants. He could barely control the anxiety that was starting to pulse through him, but he fought to keep his heart rate down so as not to wake Hermione.
“They’re complicated,” Nasir said carefully, picking up the vials he’d filled and sending them back inside his tent without breaking his eye contact from Harry. “A Horcrux is a soul fragment contained within something else. The soul is a complicated thing, Harry. It is the very essence of a human’s life – their personality, their emotions, their desires, their drive, their life force if you will. It’s a difficult concept to tangibly speak of but it is both what makes someone human and what makes a person who they are. That is why an object turned into a Horcrux seems to take on a strange sense of life. It will fight to stay alive and it will influence the environment around it.”
Nasir fixed Harry with a dark stare, the flicker from the fire ghosting across his skin like a kaleidoscope and Harry realized as it flashed across his face and neck that the man’s scars and runes were exposed. He wasn’t wearing his masking charm and seeing the black markings trace along the underside of his chin and stretching down along his neck somehow made the air feel even more intense.
“Imagine how that might impact another force of life, another soul,” Nasir said slowly, his low voice causing the muscles in Harry’s spine to stiffen. “In some cases, it results in the slow deterioration of the human body and mind over time. In most cases, it results in immediate death. And in rare cases, very rare cases – when the soul fragment sticks and the Horcrux is fully formed – the two souls become tangled. How much the soul fragment affects the host is hard to determine. It depends on the size of the fragment, how long it has been there and how compatible they are. Things like personality traits, tastes, interests or desires could blur. The host’s magic can be affected, the fragment is nearly impossible to retrieve and thus useless to the creator and, in some cases, the host’s control can be lost entirely. So, as I said, one does not make a human Horcrux. It leads to nothing but complication and disaster.”
Harry stared at the man before him for a long silent moment, his eyes tracing over the man and drifting over the two scars that marked across his face – cutting from his forehead, across his eye and nearly reaching his cheek. It was imposing and intimidating, and Harry’s mind spun at the new information as the fire continued to burn quietly before them.
His soul was tangled with Voldemort’s and his personality, likely everything about him was being influenced by that demon. He knew the connection that Dumbledore had told him he had with Voldemort in fifth year was in actuality the Horcrux itself. Voldemort was able to access the piece of his soul within Harry and use it to spy on his mind. He knew that Voldemort was able to influence him – he’d already experienced it. He’d already nearly lost control to the demon and so everything that Nasir had just said was only confirming what he’d already known or suspected – and it was serving to back up his decision to die.
“You know,” Harry said quietly, his eyes tight with the pain that was starting to build in his chest as he met the man’s gaze once more. He stated it like a fact, not a question and although Nasir didn’t respond verbally he shifted his head in a small almost imperceptible nod. The man had likely known Harry was a Horcrux for a while based on that reaction. “And there isn’t – there isn’t any way to untangle the souls is there?”
Harry felt like his heart was hanging in the balance as Nasir stared at him silently. Each painful quiet second ticking by like agony as he held his breath and waited for the blow.
“No,” Nasir’s word felt like a dagger even though it was spoken softly. Harry felt his shoulders fall at the words despite his best effort to remain unaffected. “It doesn’t work like that; you cannot unmake a Horcrux.”
Harry nodded, his jaw clenching tight as he forced himself to breathe and swallow.
“Right,” he said almost hoarsely, it was a stupid thing to ask. “Of course not.”
Nasir watched him for a long second as Harry fought to keep his emotions in check.
“You don’t necessarily have to die, Harry,” the words came out slow and quiet and Harry’s eyes shot to the man before him, hope flittering in his chest. “You are choosing to.”
Harry snorted and shook his head as he realized what Nasir had meant. For a brief second, he’d foolishly thought that maybe the man had a solution – that maybe the man knew something that could help. But instead, Nasir was just going to say that Harry could continue living as the final Horcrux instead of dying after Voldemort was defeated.
“You mean that I could just stay alive after I’ve killed him? Just leave that piece in there forever and pretend like it won’t be a problem?” Harry said bluntly, a hint of disgust and sarcasm dripping from his voice.
“It is what most would do,” Nasir said quietly.
“Yeah well – most have never been a fucking Horcrux either,” Harry said tightly, his eyes flashing with anger. “He’s influenced me in the past Nasir, and it only got worse as he got stronger. Staying alive while his soul still exists within me was never an option. It’s just another chance for him to come back, yet again – and I’m terrified to know how much worse it will be when I’m the last piece of him left. I can only imagine how that would go – here’s a hint – he’ll try to fucking take over my body or find some way of coming back. You’re not seriously suggesting that’s a good idea?”
“I never said that it was a good idea, Harry,” Nasir said evenly, ignoring the anger Harry was letting out. “Just that it was an option.”
Harry snorted again, shaking his head and dropping it to his hands once more before he tilted his head to the right to look at the man. Nasir was still watching him, silent and unmoving, expression entirely calm as if he was discussing a simple topic – as if Harry’s small outburst of anger entirely unphased him.
“And what would you do,” Harry asked him, his eyes practically glaring at the man. “If you were me, what would you do?”
“I’m not sure it’s physically possible for me to be in that position,” Nasir said carefully, and Harry couldn’t stop the annoyed groan that left his lips.
“But what if you were,” Harry pressed, his voice now tight with desperation. He knew his tension was showing, he knew that his face was betraying him, and his pain was blatantly on display as he once again found himself thinking of leaving everyone behind. He knew he would do it, but it didn’t make it hurt any less and a part of him was desperate to know that he was making the right decision. That deciding to die was the right choice. “If you were in my position right now – what would you do?”
Nasir sighed, his shoulders falling slightly as he looked back to the fire with an almost distant stare.
“Two weeks ago,” Nasir said quietly as if confessing a secret or admitting something personal. “I would not have cared, and I would have undoubtedly kept living. But now–“
Nasir’s eyes shifted back to Harry, and he could see something painful sitting behind them. A collection of emotions that seemed so foreign in the man’s eyes and almost at odds with his own body.
“Now I would do exactly what you are planning to do,” his deep baritone echoed quietly between them. “Because it is the right thing to do.”
Harry closed his eyes and let out a breath. Bringing his knees up to his chest he dropped his head against them. The wind was ruffling through his hair and sending a chill down his spine but with it, he felt a small flicker of relief. As if somehow those words helped – somehow it made him feel less guilty about leaving everyone – about leaving Hermione. Somehow knowing that he wasn’t making the decision blindly and was indeed doing the right thing made it a bit easier to swallow. Taking a deep breath, he forced his head back up and looked up to the sky as his shoulder dropped – it was a beautiful night, the clouds were sparse and the stars were easily visible.
“It's too bad someone can’t just Avada that piece of me away,” he murmured. “But life has never been that easy, and it doesn’t work like that.”
Nasir shifted beside him, the movement catching Harry’s attention and drawing it to the man once more. He was looking at Harry curiously as if unsure.
“You’ve used the spell before,” Nasir asked him quietly though it was more like a statement.
“Yes,” Harry eyed him, unsure of where this was going.
“And you,” Nasir hesitated, he had a strange expression on his face as if Harry’s words a moment ago had sparked some new line of thought. “You know how Avada Kedavra works?”
“Yes?” Harry arched a brow; not really sure he was following the question. He’d tried to look into the curse before but the documentation on the spell was nearly non-existent in any texts that Hemione had been able to get her hands on. “It’s a killing curse. It kills people – it’s unforgivable, and it weighs on your chest like a fucking boulder when you use it because it ‘splits the soul’.”
“Does it?” Nasir asked as he arched a brow back and Harry got the impression that the question was rhetorical, or more of a challenge – that his understanding of the spell might be wrong. He remained silent until Nasir spoke again. “Do you know how that spell was created?”
“No,” Harry said quietly, his eyes carefully watching the man before him. “Hermione and I tried to look it up but – it seemed to be conveniently removed or left out from most documentation.”
“It was,” Nasir nodded. “Because the spell was controversial since the very moment of its inception. Avada Kedavra severs the soul from the body, Harry – it rips it from its housing and destroys it. That is why it is a painless death, that is why it is instant – there is no inflicted bodily harm. It was and always has been considered unforgivable because there is absolutely no way to reverse it and it is the only spell which ultimately and utterly destroys a human’s existence on this plane. It’s not like sectumsempra where there is a counter-curse – or Bombarda where the person that you attacked has a possibility of surviving with injuries that could be healed. It was never intended to be used as how you know it today.”
Harry was leaning forward again, his body tense with anticipation. “What was it meant for?”
“For death,” Nasir said quietly. “But not in the way that you’ve seen it wielded. It was created by a healer in the early 1600’s to help a round of patients infected with Dragon Pox and doomed to suffer until their bodies finally gave out. This was before Gunhilda of Gorsemoor invented the cure for the disease and before the Painless Death Potion was created, which in and of itself is controversial as well – just as within the muggle world, Harry, mercy killings and assisted suicides have always been considered controversial at best and taboo at worst. But that was, in essence, what the spell was created for – to painlessly end the suffering of many who were ill-fated to die excruciating deaths and to prevent them from becoming ghosts, poltergeists or lingering spirits which would continue to suffer in agony by removing the only thing that could allow them to stay attached to this world – their soul.
“The spell is unforgivable, make no mistake Harry. It is permanent, it is inescapable, and it is the most final and absolute magic that one can cast in this world. The reason it weighs heavy like a boulder, as you so aptly described, is because you have destroyed the very essence of a human being. It is entirely different than killing someone by allowing them to bleed out from their physical injuries or by destroying their body. There is no pain for the one that dies, that pain is transferred to the caster the second their soul ceases to exist. Using it doesn’t split one’s soul, it simply makes you bear the weight of annihilating one – which is why using it makes it feel like your soul has torn, why it's unbearable and unlike any other feeling in the world. It’s why it plagues you, Harry. That’s why it haunts Hermione and it’s why you both will never be rid of it,” Nasir said quietly. “It is, simultaneously, the most gracious gift that you could give someone in pain and the most damnable and most vile action that one can take. The only thing that makes it somewhat bearable, is knowing that you used it to spare someone of their suffering and that by wielding it you have taken their pain unto yourself.
“To use it for any other reason is illogical, yet people do because it’s true purpose has been lost,” Nasir’s voice was quiet, but his eyes seemed to grow darker. “Tom uses it because he wants to ensure that his enemies are obliterated from this plane entirely – guaranteeing that they cannot, in any way shape or form, come back or linger. He wants them to cease to exist, he wants them completely annihilated – wiped wholly from this earth. And that is the only reason he uses it – because believe me, Harry – there are far more painful ways to die and Tom is well acquainted with them and he uses those methods just as often depending on the threat level of his target. His followers on the other hand are idiots, they do not understand the purpose of the spell and they use it simply because he does. Which, as it turns out, has only proved to work in his favour. Because each time a Death Eater grows more torn, each time the weight compounds and becomes more unbearable – they become easier to control, easier to sway and even more dedicated to the cause and open to committing despicable acts as they are consumed by the blackened ball of despair and agony that grows in their chest. Tom and others like him before have altered the meaning of that spell over the years.
“I suggest that you avoid using that spell again,” Nasir said slowly, as he met Harry with a firm stare. “Except in cases like you have already experienced if you find yourself without a Painless Death Potion.”
“I won’t,” Harry exhaled like he was letting out a breath held tight in his chest. He’d been glued to Nasir’s every word, dumbfounded and utterly shocked by the information that the man had just bestowed upon him so openly and with such detail. He wasn’t really sure how to process it, he wasn’t really sure what to do with it or even why the man was telling him all this. Sure, the information was fascinating, and Harry was glad to have it – but it somehow felt like a precursor to something else because his dark eyes were still looking at Harry as if in deep thought. “Why are you telling me this?”
Nasir looked at him for a long moment, his eyes tracing over Harry – piercing and endless as if he was reading Harry like a book.
“Because when people forget the meaning of a spell – they miss things,” Nasir finally spoke, his voice low like a whisper. “Including myself.”
Harry’s grip on his pants was so tight he could no longer feel his fingers. He was certain that if he’d looked down at them at that moment, they would be ghost white – but he didn’t, he kept his eyes locked to the man sitting just two feet before him.
“What do you mean?” Harry whispered, his voice was hoarse with anticipation and his heart was starting to thud dangerously quick.
“Avada Kedavra was designed to destroy the soul Harry – one soul,” Nasir said slowly, his words felt like a vice on Harry’s chest as his brain caught up to the man’s meaning. “As far as I am aware, there's never been an instance in history when it was used on a human Horcrux.”
“So you – are you saying that–“ Harry hesitated, unable to make himself finish the sentence, but Nasir answered him anyways.
“I'm not sure,” his deep voice was so quiet Harry couldn’t breathe. “I don’t know what would happen if he used it on you again – I’m not sure if it would rip both souls from your body or not, or how it would affect you.”
“Well what if it did?” Harry’s blood was rushing as he stared at the man. “What if it ripped out both? Would it destroy both or just the one? How would it decide which one to kill?”
The silence that rang between them was painful as Nasir sat stiff and still like a statue. His eyes burning through the dark as his gaze practically bore a hole through Harry.
“It is impossible to say – especially given your history. It could destroy a fragment of each or destroy one completely – but I’ve never studied the way the curse identifies the soul relative to the target. I’ve never had the chance to, after all Harry, you are only the second living human Horcrux that I have ever personally met.”
“You've met others,” Harry said slowly.
“Two – Tom wasn’t the first to make Horcruxes. He is, at best, mediocre when it comes to new ideas and I do believe that you were not on purpose.”
Harry ignored the way the words sounded and pushed on as he continued to fight to remain calm. “And what happened to them – to the other two?”
“One died before the magic was completed, I only saw the body. And the other,” Nasir said carefully. “I dispatched before they could be studied.”
“So you killed them,” Harry said tightly.
“I did,” his voice was flat and emotionless, his eyes losing a hint of the new emotion and becoming more detached like how they used to be.
“How?”
“Fiendfyre – but if you are hoping for a chance to live through this I can guarantee you, Harry, that fiendfyre would obliterate the both of you and you would not walk away. But,” Nasir fixed him with a level stare. “That is not how Tom would kill you – he would, without a question of a doubt – use Avada Kedavra to try and remove you entirely.”
Harry felt his jaw clench. “Undoubtably – especially given what you’ve said.”
“Indeed,” Nasir’s voice was low once more and his eyes were practically dancing across Harry’s skin. “The question is – what will happen when he does it.”
Silence rang out between them once more, the coals of the fire burning low now as the ocean’s soft waves echoed behind them. Harry could tell the man was thinking, thinking deeply as if this were a new puzzle or a new challenge. A part of him was foolishly hopeful, a part of him was surprised to see the small amount of care in the man’s eyes – and another part of him was disturbed by the flashes of cold detachment that continued to flitter across Nasir’s eyes as he looked at Harry like he was a science experiment. Harry fought back the shiver that threatened to run down his spine, wordlessly stuck in the man’s gaze, his thoughts spinning like a record until finally, Nasir’s deep baritone startled him back to reality.
“It is getting late Harry,” the man said quietly. “You should go get some rest or tomorrow you will appear tired and Hermione will surely worry.”
Harry felt a tug of guilt across his chest as his mind shifted to Hermione who was still fast asleep in their bunk and entirely unaware of what had just transpired. He couldn’t make himself speak, so he just nodded and slowly made to pull himself up from the sand.
“And come back Wednesday night,” Nasir’s deep baritone made him freeze on spot, one knee resting in the sand mid-rise.
“Why?” Harry asked him, the word hoarse and worn like how Harry’s heart had felt over the last several weeks.
“Because in the extremely rare and unlikely scenario where your soul is not obliterated – you will need something to help guide it back to you,” Nasir said evenly. “But Harry–“
His gaze turned dark once more, and his tone had become so serious Harry’s breath froze in his chest like ice.
“I cannot guarantee you anything – nor would I suggest that you even begin to allow yourself to hope there is a chance of survival. I want to be very clear with you, I want there to be no misunderstandings – when the time comes, you will be going to your death. Is that clear?”
“I know, it’s clear,” the words were a ragged whisper, but Harry said them honestly and with full commitment as he nodded firmly. He’d never expected anything else. If Nasir was telling him there was no way to unmake a Horcrux, that human Horcruxes typically didn’t live to start with and his only microscopic chance at surviving depended heavily on a technicality of the functional requirements of spell created in the 1600s to literally obliterate souls – he knew he was going to die. More than that, he accepted that he was going to die, and he was ready for it no matter how much it hurt. “Thank you, Nasir – for everything.”
The man nodded and Harry slowly got up from the sand. The trek back to his tent felt long and exhausting, the sound of the waves like a hypnotic pulse as he thought of the one sure thing that Nasir had given him that night.
He was going to die – but it was the right choice.
And that small little confirmation gave him some peace as he shrugged off his sweater and slowly crawled back into bed next to Hermione, pulling her tightly to his side.
-x-x-
Sunday morning seemed to come out of nowhere, and along with it, things quickly slipped back into the same tense, rushed and desperate feel of the week before. Hermione was woken by her alarms at 6:00 am, her mind bleary from sleep and her body still tired. Somehow over the past few weeks since meeting Nasir, she had been able to avoid any violently turbulent nightmares that woke her in a fit of screams and sweat. She’d stopped using Dreamless Sleeping draught once her arm was healed and she’d been rotating between using the mind charm that Nasir had taught them and trying to use only her occlumency control. Harry was taking the same approach, and it kept the monsters at bay enough to sleep through the night, but her dreams were still plagued by unpleasant and stressful images. And it did precious little to shake the weight of dread that seemed to constantly sit on her chest like an anchor.
Each morning she woke with an odd feeling of being physically rested but mentally worn as if while her body was recuperating her mind had been hard at work trying to keep the worst memories at bay. She’d made a mental note to ask Nasir about it this week – to see if maybe she was doing something wrong or if maybe there was something else she could do (aside from taking the potion again). Because as much as she hated to admit it, it sort of felt like she was starting to slip, like she was failing and the charm wasn’t quite enough – like she could feel the terror lurking at the back of her mind, slinking around the edges of her control like a predator hunting its prey and threatening to break through her borders at any moment.
It was concerning, to say the least.
But despite this, and despite her lingering exhaustion, Hermione pulled herself from bed with a groan and began getting ready with Harry. They cooked a quick breakfast and she forced herself to wake up as she prepared for the day and quickly encased the thrift that Ava had given her in glass. She didn’t know why – but she really liked the flower and she wanted to keep it. So she transformed it into a small pendant and tucked it into her purse for safekeeping.
They’d agreed to join the others at the cottage for lunch, so they were going to go practice tethering up and down the Southern cliffs this morning with Nasir and Griphook after their training and practice duel with the tall man. And in the afternoon, before meeting with the Order to continue training after dinner, she and Harry were going to implement their bond provided that Nasir approved the final design. It was another busy day, a hectic day jam-packed with endless things to do and an ever-condensing timeline.
They met Nasir at 6:30 am on their usual spot in the sand, directly between their two tents on the scorched and damaged land. Hermione eyed the blacked ground with regret as she thought about how they had ruined Bill and Fleur’s lovely beach. She made a mental note to try and find a way to repair the damage later, but frankly, it was a small concern lingering in the back of her head and nothing in comparison to the rest of the things that truly troubled her and ate away at her mind.
Her eyes flicked to Harry, she could see the bags under his eyes, and she knew that he was exhausted. He’d either slept terribly and his occlumency was starting to slip as well, or the training last week was catching up to him – possibly both, she thought as she forced her mind to pay attention to the tall dark man before them. She would talk to Harry about his exhaustion later – perhaps encourage him to use some Dreamless Sleeping draught with her for a few days so that he could at least get some restful sleep before the break-in. They couldn’t afford to be distracted by exhaustion or functioning at anything less than 100% capacity – but right now, she needed to pay attention because they were about to practice duro, deprimo and defodio, and then duel the man before them as a team using non-lethal spells.
The spells, which Nasir had started to teach and review with them the week previous, proved simple enough to cast. They turned a collection of random objects and beach wood into stone then gouged huge sections of that stone away with defodio before blasting holes in the ground with deprimo. They were useful spells, ones that very likely would help them while descending and scaling the walls of Gringotts this Friday.
Then after over an hour of practice Nasir picked up one of his fake wands and stood before them like an intimidating statue, still and unmoving, sound and unbreakable before he flickered from view, becoming invisible with a silent masking charm or disillusionment and Hermione bolted to the right while Harry circled to the left. It was a new tactic that Nasir had implemented to make the duelling even more challenging – as if he thought that them fighting him while visible wasn’t hard enough as it was.
Still, it forced her to think on her feet. It forced her to react faster, to be creative and to coordinate with Harry using little more than the few hand signals they’d agreed on in advance and the odd look they managed to steal from the corner of their eyes as they dashed across the ground and avoided Nasir’s attacks.
As such, the duel was hard – incredibly hard.
With Nasir invisible he was nearly impossible to track, his spells seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere – and Hermione lost track of the times during the first hour of their fight that she had to drop flat on her stomach and roll away to avoid being clipped with a stunner. She was wearing her shield, as was Harry, and she knew that if she got hit nothing would happen, but that wasn’t the point.
She’d learned first-hand in the den that sometimes things didn’t pan out, sometimes spells wore out and your timing was off. As a result, Nasir had lost a hand saving her from getting bitten. Sometimes – things did not go to plan and you could not rely on your magic to save you. She could not allow herself to grow lazy and depend on her shield to keep her safe. She needed to avoid attacks or block them; the shield was to be used as a last resort only. She’d learned that the hard way and over the last two weeks every time Nasir struck a blow on her and knocked her to the ground with a painful thud it was further ingrained in her mind and repeated like a mantra – duck, dodge, avoid, roll, don’t get hit.
After all, relying on magic was unquestionably the biggest weakness that any magical being had. Witches and wizards depended on it – they didn’t know what to do without it and frankly, they lacked a lot of skills because of it. And that was almost always their downfall in battle.
They assumed that their shields would hold against a blow, or that they would be able to utter a counter-curse in time or cast a quick protego before the attack hit. When in reality, if she rapidly let her legs go loose and dropped to the ground she could not only dodge the spell but she could send a barrage of counterattacks instead of wasting her energy on casting a quick shield and losing her turn in the fight on an unnecessary defensive move. It was far more effective to dodge and attack and know that her full-body shield would protect her in case she messed up her timing.
Honestly, the more she thought about it the full body shield charm that Harry had been determined to learn was one of the single biggest advantages they had – that and training themselves to remember to use their entire bodies in a fight instead of just their wands. Nasir had forced them to learn knives and to use their full arsenal of spells – anything and everything could be helpful. You didn’t need to know a violent spell to attack someone or land a blow or gain an advantage. Disillusioning oneself and ducking into a random and unexpected direction could mean the difference between life and death, success and failure, and frankly – the more she thought about that the more she wondered why wizards didn’t use disillusionments more often when fighting.
Perhaps they thought it was dirty, perhaps they thought that hiding oneself from the naked eye and rolling across the ground was dishonourable or disgraceful – perhaps it was too barbaric and therefore too muggle.
But she didn’t care.
She didn’t give a single flying fuck.
There’s nothing honourable about war, she thought as she rushed forward, Harry running along the dunes to her left and ducking and rolling as a barrage of spells fired over his head. Nasir was standing on a dune just before them, his disillusionment having long since faded out as their practice battle continued to rage on. Especially not a war fought over blood status and led by a maniac.
She made a dive for the dune before her, quickly recasting her shield charm at the same time she grabbed her dagger from her leg holster and threw it towards Nasir’s tall frame. She knew it would miss, she knew he would dodge it – but she was counting on that.
He side-stepped her dagger as expected, his dark piercing eyes turning towards her as she rushed forward again, gaining more ground as Harry began to curve his approach so he was coming from behind. She dodged his attack, countered his spell and leapt forward over a small sundried log to roll up near his feet. Then, as she’d anticipated, she felt his spell hit her. Her body went rigid as ropes twisted around her small frame and his warm hand closed around her neck and he tugged her up from the ground. Her arms were bound to her side and useless, her body under his full control now as he turned to fire something from his blunt arm back at Harry who was pushing the rear and launching a plethora of non-lethal spells at the man.
Nasir had her.
He’d won, again – or so he thought. Without a second of hesitation, Hermione leaned into his hold and did the one thing that she knew Nasir would never expect.
She bit his wrist.
She turned her head into his grip and fought the natural instinct she had to pull away from him, instead she threw her body into the motion he was already making and bit his wrist as hard as she could. Wordlessly she cast a tether between her jaw through his arm to lock it in place since her arms were useless and she rapidly cast a set of sticking charms on her feet to secure them to the ground. Her added momentum threw him as her shoulder made contact with his abdomen and she shoved forward as desperately hard as she could. The force was enough to unsteady him, he’d not anticipated her counterattack at close range – he’d expected her to take defeat like she usually did since her body was now wrapped with ropes and while physically protected by the shield – was nearly entirely immobile and useless – so he’d not used a sticking charm on his own feet to hold him in place.
She heard him inhale sharply, seemingly aware of exactly what was about to happen as she wordlessly summoned the dagger that she’d thrown past him back to her hand. It lifted from the sand as if possessed, the glint of the blade flashing across the sand as it twisted then came hurtling towards him in an effort to return to Hermione’s hand as a brand new slew of spells fired from Harry’s fake wand came from his right.
Nasir had three choices, she’d boxed him in and forced his hand. Even with his ability to dual cast, he could not stop everything that Harry had thrown at him and dodge the dagger while he kept his hold on Hermione and removed her tethers and sticking charms. He could either get hit with the dagger and block the spells, take the spells and block the dagger, or – and without a second’s hesitation, she felt his grip on her neck tighten momentarily before she was thrust backward out of the way and he let go, choosing the third and only viable option she knew he had as she released her tether and let her feet disconnect from the ground. He jumped back several feet and right into Harry’s path as Hermione hit the ground with a thud, skidding in the sand on her side and catching the dagger in her hand as Harry managed to hit Nasir’s feet with a harmless leglocker before he rapidly pulled his own dagger on the tall man and closed the small distance to point his fake wand at the tanned skin along Nasir’s throat.
The dunes were silent, only the sound of panting filled the air as everyone froze and Nasir stared at Harry with burning eyes. But instead of being upset, instead of being angry that he’d lost or looking disappointed in the events that had unfolded Nasir smiled and dropped his hand to his side in pleased defeat.
“Well done,” his deep baritone was raspy and Hermione could tell the man was exhausted even though he still seemed to hide it well. His white dress shirt wasn’t ruined and covered in sweat and dirt like the clothes that she and Harry wore – but it was rumpled, his left sleeve was torn and she could see a sheen of sweat across his exposed skin while his slightly elevated heart rate thudded loudly in her head. He turned to look at Harry fully, the strange grin still present on his face. “I surrender.”
Harry grinned back at the man, his serious and deadly expression immediately vanishing as the smile split across his face and he let out an exhausted sigh as if he’d been holding his breath in the last few moments of battle. Harry dropped his fake wand to his side and quickly undid the leglocker so Nasir wouldn’t topple over as he continued to grin up at the tall man. Hermione watched the two of them and felt her heart warm painfully in her chest. It was such a rare and peculiar sight to see – Harry and Nasir grinning at each other almost as if they were friends, almost as if they’d just had fun. In the past Nasir’s dark smile had made her uncomfortable, but ever since his return, ever since the shift in his personality – the smile actually felt human and she and Harry had found that they liked the rare occurrences when he decided to show it.
“I never thought I’d hear you say those words,” Harry breathed, his words coming out in a hard pant as he dropped his hands to his knees then looked toward Hermione and grinned at her just as widely. “Never thought I’d see you bite someone either.”
“Sorry,” Hermione laughed as the ropes around her vanished and she pulled herself up from the ground in one swift movement. She made her way over to them exhausted, sand sticking to her damp skin and covering the legs of her pants as she stopped next to Nasir and reached for his left hand. “I wasn’t really planning to – it just sort of worked out that way.”
“I’ve been telling you two to use everything you have and to stop being predictable,” Nasir said as he relented and gave her his arm. He watched her carefully as she rolled his sleeve up out of the way and started to look over his wrist. Harry summoned several small bottles from the open purse nearby and uncorked the wound cleaning potion to hand it to Hermione. “And as you can see – it was effective.”
“Yeah but still,” Hermione breathed hard, her brow furrowing as she realized that she had actually managed to split his skin and had left an open wound resembling a human bite mark on the man’s wrist. “I didn’t think it would result in this, I guess the tether really increased the bite force didn’t it.”
“Here,” Harry handed her the wound cleaner and she quickly poured some over the man’s cut. Human mouths were disgusting and if she left this much longer it would certainly become infected regardless of how good her own dental hygiene was. Nasir didn’t so much as flinch or blink as the skin sizzled and the small incisions were sterilized. She was about to grab the dittany Harry held out when Nasir gently jerked his hand out of her grasp and shook his head.
“Save that for when we need it,” he said quietly, instead casting a silent ferula and allowing the bandaging to wrap around the wound. “This will heal in a matter of days.”
“But it will probably scar,” Hermione said looking up at him carefully.
“And?” He arched a brow before turning to look at Harry. His eyes flicked down to the bottle in Harry’s hands then his head imperceptibly shook. “You both should know by now that I don’t care about that. It’s just a body – besides, Griphook is on his way out, we should make our way to the cliff.”
Hermione would have probably protested a bit more since it was her who had made the mark on his skin and she felt bad that the man might carry a permanent scar on his body that perfectly matched the imprint of her teeth. But at Nasir’s small head shake Harry had already capped the bottle and nodded at him as if entirely comfortable with following the man’s guidance.
She eyed the two of them briefly, wondering what it was that seemed odd about the dynamic – yes both she and Harry were trying to save as much of the supplies as possible but still, it was just a few drops that they could have spared with no issue. But then again, Harry had changed over the last few months. He wasn’t nearly as argumentative as he used to be, he was much more calm, collected and level-headed. But still, she would have thought that he’d insist a little, he rarely just followed directions blindly.
Her brow furrowed as she watched them, Harry looking up at the tall man calmly and making a comment about how he thought they should use the tethers for climbing as he summoned her purse from the sand and returned the potion bottles to their home as they began making their way toward the approaching goblin. Maybe it was the one on one training that they did now that had altered their bond – or maybe it was the shift in Nasir’s personality since his return, but Hermione couldn’t help but feel like something had shifted between Harry and Nasir.
They’d become closer, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on exactly what had changed.
Harry had never had any outright animosity or jealousy toward the tall man per se – true Harry had been worried about Hermione’s relationship with Nasir from the perspective of her trying to use the man to save his life or becoming too tempted with dark or questionable knowledge. But ever since Nasir’s return that seemed to have faded and Harry seemed to outwardly view the man as more of a friend and ally like she did – like a mentor as opposed to just a mysterious and dangerous man that they needed to be wary of because they suspected that he might turn on them. It was strange, she paused as she looked at the men before her and she suddenly realized that she couldn’t remember the last time that she’d sincerely worried that Nasir might betray them.
Was it several days ago? Hours? A week? Was it since the confrontation she’d had with him in the tent after Harry’s arm and he’d exploded on her in a fit of new and unmanaged emotions that made her realize that he was struggling too?
She wasn’t sure, she honestly couldn’t remember with everything that had been going on. It had all just blurred together.
But at some point, she had come to trust the man and had fully accepted him into their bizarre little group without question or concern. At some point, even though she knew he was still incredibly dangerous; she’d stopped worrying that he was a threat – and it seemed like Harry had too. As if Harry had in his own way through their individual training and one on one time come to some sort of an understanding with the man and established some sort of trust.
Maybe that was a mistake, it could be – she didn’t know that either.
But she realized at that moment that at some point over the last little while – their behaviour to their surroundings had changed because they’d also stopped packing up their tent every time they left it.
Was it that their paranoia had finally begun to lessen? Or had they grown too comfortable and relaxed since the werewolf den? Or, did they just trust everyone here at Shell Cottage enough on a fundamental level that they no longer felt threatened every second of every day?
The thought was a bit overwhelming to consider. Had they let themselves slip or were they simply getting better and learning to trust and reconnect?
“Hermione?”
Her head jerked up and she realized that she’d been standing still and staring blankly at the sand.
“Sorry – yeah I’m coming, just got lost in thought,” Hermione said quickly, giving Harry a smile and jogging forward to his side. She moved into the space they created for her with ease, Harry on her right and Nasir on her left. She felt Harry’s arm wrap around her waist as she quickly transfigured her tank top into a thin long-sleeved shirt to hide her scars before they crossed through the wards and back into view.
Climbing the Southern cliff face with nothing more than tethers had proven to be much more difficult than Hermione had originally anticipated. She’d never thought it would be easy – but she’d not realized how hard it would be to coordinate their weight, navigate the cliff and tether from precisely the right point on their body so they were balanced and didn’t spin out, twist, or collide with the cliff face every time they tried to move up or down. They realized rather quickly that one tether simply didn’t cut it and that they actually needed two, each tether attached to a hip in order to have any sort of control while making their movements – otherwise it was impossible to stay steady and they ran the risk of head injuries.
They also learned that you could not trust the rock surface to be stable – Hermione had learned this the hard way. Before having implemented the two-tether system she’d been slowly navigating her way down the cliff face a few feet below Harry and had stepped on a section of rock that was apparently weak. The rock had broken under her weight, her foot slipped and within less than a fraction of a second, she’d lost her balance, spun out to the left and cracked her head against the cliff while she simultaneously scraped her back on a sharp piece of rock that jutted out from the side. If not for Harry and Nasir’s rapid response to her rampant and uncontrolled swinging she could have been seriously injured.
She should have recast her shield charm the second it had run out – but the truth was controlling the tethers, balancing on the cliff face and using their wands was incredibly difficult to do. She’d been close to the bottom when her timer went off and she felt the shield disappear so she’d told Harry she would wait until she reached the ground to recast – but evidently, that had been a poor decision.
Thankfully, her dangerous sway had been immediately stopped as six sets of tethers latched onto her body and froze her in place as Harry rapidly descended towards her and Nasir left Griphook’s side to stand beneath her and help lower her down.
After being carefully lowered to the ground Hermione had sat on the sand with her elbows resting on her knees, leaning forward as she waited for Nasir to finish repairing her back. She’d let the man and Harry check her over and, to her surprise, the injuries she’d gotten were minimal. She’d not had much luck over the past several months when it came to bodily damage so she’d been expecting the worst and was frankly surprised that she’d only been left with a small cut and bruise on the side of her head, and a large but relatively minor scratch down her spine that Nasir had repaired with dittany.
She’d told him just to clean it and leave it because it could heal on its own, but the tall man had ignored her request, gently pushing the fabric of her shirt up her back and carefully cleaning the scratch before removing any trace of it from her body in a flash of green billowing smoke as Harry tended to the wound on her head.
She’d told Harry not to bother with the bruise paste either and to save it for when they needed it, but similarly to Nasir, Harry simply gave her a look and summoned the container regardless of her request and smothered a small glob into her hair on top of the small goose egg that was forming on her skull. Within minutes her injuries practically ceased to exist, and they recast their shield charms and continued on.
It was after that incident that they implemented the two-tether system – so that even if the rock did break below their feet the most that would happen is they would collapse chest-first against the wall and then need to regain their footing. It was a much more stable approach and provided much more balance.
Yet despite the slow improvements to their methods and the increased speed in which they were able to climb, it was clear that Griphook was unimpressed. Hermione could hear him muttering under his breath as they practiced, catching the odd words here and there as he observed. His favourites seemed to be ‘ridiculous’, and ‘we’re all going to die’, followed by ‘this is bloody insane’ as he watched them anxiously but yet did nothing to offer a better solution. He scowled as Harry asked him to come try it with him since they’d both agreed that Harry would be the one to carrying Griphook down the ledge while Hermione manned the purse and all their supplies. She watched as Harry somehow convinced Griphook to climb on his back and she cast and strong sticking charm on them so that the goblin would not fall off.
She had a sneaking suspicion the only reason he allowed her to do it was because he’d seen her minor tumble and he didn’t want anything remotely similar to happen to him during their climb.
Griphook was sort of a strange goblin… he’d agreed to help, he knew he was risking his life, he complained about it (a lot) and seemed convinced that he was going to die – but yet he continued to stick around and help them anyways. He even asked for a second tether charm to be added between him and Harry ‘just in case’ despite the fact that he thought it was demeaning to be ‘tethered to a wizard like an animal’. For all his commentary on their efforts being both ‘fruitless’ and ‘hopeless’, and even though he seemed certain they were all going to die – he still wanted the extra protection, so Hermione added it without complaint.
Her brow creased as she stood at the bottom of the rock face and watched Harry begin his ascent with the goblin on his back. Griphook was proving to be wildly inconsistent. He was greedy and yet wholly selfless. She could not quite figure the creature out and it made her slightly nervous to have him on their team. But regardless of her feelings towards the goblin, she appreciated his help and made a silent vow to ensure that they got him out of Gringotts alive. After all – this wasn’t his war. He was doing them a favour so no matter how much he complained and no matter how many snide remarks he made about wizards – she would tolerate him, she would forever be grateful for his assistance, and she would keep him safe.
Even if she did not particularly like him.
When Harry made it to the top successfully, she smiled and turned to look at Nasir who was standing by her side.
“It works well with the two tethers,” she said, choosing to allow herself to feel a small flicker of optimism instead of the crushing weight of doubt and dread that had been growing in her mind as they grew closer to May 1st. “Aren’t you going to give it a try?”
Nasir looked at her silently, his eyes glinting with that mysterious if not slightly mischievous glint that she’d come to know.
“You’re not planning to climb, are you?” she said slowly, arching a brow at him.
“No,” his lip twitched as he looked at her as if the idea of him requiring a tether system to scale a cliff was nothing short of ridiculous – but he gave no further response.
“So how are you getting down then?” Hermione asked him, her eyes flicking back to the cliff to see that Harry had reached the top and was starting his descent. She twisted to look at Nasir once more.
“Using an alternative method,” he said evenly.
“And you’re not going to tell me?” Hermione said dryly, crossing her arms over her chest as she watched him.
“You’ll find out on Friday,” he said quietly, his eyes narrowing in what looked to be amusement at her. And then to her surprise, he continued in an almost teasing dry voice. “Are you telling me that your curiosity is so insatiable that you cannot wait until then?”
“I can,” she scoffed, still watching Harry in her peripheral vision to make sure that his descent was going okay. “I just thought it might be nice to know. The more information we have the better prepared we can be. And it’s – you know – helpful to know what your teammates will be doing during a bank robbery.”
Nasir looked at her for a quiet moment, his eyes sweeping over her face in that soul-piercing way before he finally spoke in a low knowing voice. “You already have an idea of what it is. You just want me to confirm it.”
This time Hermione’s lip twitched, and she couldn’t quite stop the smirk that crossed her lips.
“I do,” she said quietly, eyeing him carefully. “I was thinking about it since the meeting yesterday when you never mentioned using disillusionments or anything of that matter. I figured you’d be using masking charms to sneak your way in – but then you also avoided mentioning the use of tethers for yourself and now you’ve refused to practice.”
Nasir said nothing and simply watched her with his glinting eyes, so she continued.
“There are no other spells that can be used in Gringotts that will allow you to safely descend that far uninjured. Magic in Gringotts is limited by the wards – there isn’t much that can be used except,” Hermione paused, eyeing him suspiciously, almost anxiously because she’d come to this conclusion a while ago but had yet to say anything about it to anyone else.
Just like she did with all things in life and especially with all things related to this war she’d thought obsessively about it and analyzed it. She’d reviewed it and studied it. After seeing the den she’d wondered how the hell Nasir had managed to sneak inside and gather information unseen. After seeing the wards that surrounded the cursed place she’d wondered how he’d managed to slip past them and move unnoticed. Yes, the man had masking charms, but that would not fool wards. Based on everything she’d experienced in life and everything that she’d read, and everything that Alastor Moody had taught her in the summer – there was only one type of magic that could have allowed him to do it.
“Animagi magic,” Hermione said firmly, knowing wholeheartedly that she was correct even if he didn’t admit to it. Nasir had to be an animagus – it was the only way he could have spied on the den unnoticed for that long even if none of the other Order members had managed to work that one out yet. “And your form can fly. So, what is it?”
Nasir’s eyes darkened, his lips twitching once more as he watched her.
“You’ll see on Friday,” he said darkly, his body shifting as he turned to look back up at Harry once more. “And perhaps you will be kind enough to do me a favour then.”
“Alright,” Hermione couldn’t help but grin even though her stomach fluttered nervously at the thought of owing the man a favour. On one hand, she was nervous about what he might ask and on the other hand, she was happy he finally seemed to feel comfortable enough to ask for something as if he finally seemed to feel like he was part of the group and with that came give and take he could participate in. “Friday it is.”
Hermione turned her attention fully to Harry as his feet touched the ground and he turned back to face them with a wide grin on his face.
“I think we got it,” he said brightly as he knelt to the ground so Hermione could remove the sticking charm and tethers and detach Griphook from his back. “It works – and with the dual tethers, it’s totally fine. I think we’re set.”
“Great,” Hermione smiled at him and ignored the muttered criticism that Griphook whispered as he straightened his clothes and stepped away from them to make his way back to the cottage. Apparently, despite his discontent, he was satisfied enough with the practice round that he felt like a second climb wasn’t required. That, or he felt like they were so doomed that a second round wasn’t worth it because it wouldn’t help any. Hermione tried to ignore the second thought and instead fixed Harry with what she hoped was an optimistic look. “I think it will work.”
They spent several minutes packing up their stuff before they began making their way to the cottage for lunch. Mrs. Weasley had cooked up a storm once more while they’d been practicing, most of the remaining Order had gone out and completed the fitness routine on their own and had spent the rest of the morning studying their notes on potions and healing. But at 12:30 pm everyone sat around the table to eat the sandwiches and salad that decorated the long surface while seemingly avoiding addressing the growing tension that was slipping over the group.
That tension was made even worse when Shacklebolt arrived to join them. The man looked about as worn as Hermione felt internally and he came bearing the news that he and Thomas, his Ministry ally that was faceless and anonymous and seemed to only be known to Shacklebolt and Arthur, had finally successfully removed Ava, Charlie, Colin and Liza’s presence from the muggle world in their entirety. A large portion of their belongings, but not everything, had been brought to the farm safehouse along with their savings which would, at a later date, be exchanged for wizarding currency.
The news was met with mixed acceptance. Ava seemed borderline indifferent – taking it in stride like she did with everything else and thanking Shacklebolt for taking care of her loose ends. Colin went still, his face growing tense before he silently moved upstairs with no words and locked himself in his room with Mr. Ollivander. Liza handled it well, and much to Hermione’s pleasure, Shacklebolt had agreed to her request – he would be taking Liza Wednesday afternoon to her grandmother’s to say goodbye for the last time before the elderly woman’s memories were modified.
As it turned out, based on the research that Thomas had been doing for Shacklebolt over the last week, Liza’s grandfather had in all likelihood been a muggleborn wizard – but his parents seemed to have refused to allow him to go to Hogwarts. He’d never been educated; he’d never been made aware of the wizarding world and he’d been plagued with inexplicable situations and strange events for the length of this life with no explanation. His wife, Liza’s grandmother, was aware of his oddity but had accepted him anyway even though it was challenging for the family at times and made work difficult. Yet neither of them or anyone else in the family seemed to be aware of or have any connection to the wizarding world – but why Liza had never received a letter was beyond them, and without access to Hogwarts they would never know.
Liza had asked if Fleur could come too and if the woman would help her make a farewell gift that afternoon. The blonde had agreed instantly, dropping her plans to brew more potions and leaving the task to a nervous looking Ron who would be working under Bill and Mrs. Weasley’s close supervision. Yet despite his nervousness, the redhead seemed determined to be helpful, and he’d quickly and silently made his way over to the makeshift potion bench to start prepping ingredients with Bill. Fred and George told Ava they would take her outside to show her and teach her more about magic while Arthur and Remus went over the news and status reports that Shacklebolt dropped off at the kitchen table.
As Hermione and Harry made their way back to their tent with Nasir, they saw Luna take Dean’s hand and gently coax the boy outside to work with Ava and the twins.
Dean had been doing better since Malfoy Manor, he’d finally managed to put on some weight and he no longer looked like a skeleton with huge black rings under his eyes. But Hermione could tell just by looking at him that he wasn’t the same, and he never would be the same again. She was glad that he had Luna to help him, that he seemed to have formed a solid bond with Remus and that the Order would not abandon him. They would work with him, fight for him and tolerate his occasional twitches and nervous behaviour with love and acceptance, being there for him no matter what – just like how Arthur had been there for her the night before.
In some ways, knowing that she and Harry weren’t the only damaged people was reassuring but it was also disheartening and haunting – as she wondered how many others would end up like them when this was over.
But she forced the thoughts from her mind and followed Harry inside their tent, Nasir trailing along behind her and taking his usual seat at their table as Harry flicked his hand to start the kettle and prepare tea. The review of the bonding charm took just over an hour. Hermione sat at the table next to Harry, her thigh pressed tightly against his as Nasir sat across from them and they explained the design. They went over each rune, why it was selected, why they’d picked gold as their base material and what it was that they wanted to accomplish. She pulled out her arithmancy calculations, she reviewed each step with him, and Harry revealed his own calculations which double-checked Hermione’s and confirmed the same result. They both sat there silent and patient, sipping at their second cup of tea as Nasir pulled out his own notebook and quickly crunched some numbers. By the time Nasir finished his review Hermione had drained her drink and was leaning quietly against Harry’s side, her fingers laced with his under the table as she enjoyed the way his warmth radiated through his hand and up her arm. But her eyes remained locked to the man before her, she’d been watching Nasir’s left hand as it’d scrawled across the page before him and carefully completed two new sets of calculations.
“It’s fine as is,” Nasir said slowly, his dark eyes finally lifting from the page and glancing up to meet them both. “My only question is – why are you set on wearing it as a band. Are you planning to remove it frequently?”
“No,” Harry said slowly, shifting in his seat to lean forward and look at the second set of calculations that Nasir had twisted and slid across the table toward them. His eyes scanned over the paper with Hermione’s and she saw him nod in understanding at what the man was proposing. “Would this make it permanent?”
“No,” Nasir said evenly, his finger tapping next to the place where he’d recommended a change in material. “You could remove it later if you wished, but gold has never been ideal for surgical procedures. My only concern with an external band is that people will see it and they will ask questions – believe me. Besides, anything external on the body is prone to wear, it can be damaged, removed and tainted or cursed. As with most things like this – I would and always will suggest to keep them hidden when possible and this is a very straightforward procedure. You won’t even lose a day to it. You also need to consider that bonding magic is extremely dangerous and is thus restricted by the Ministry. Assuming that we come out of this war in one piece you would likely be faced by questions from the prying eyes of the Ministry when they eventually and inevitably see your bands. Unless Shacklebolt exempts you as he has with your werewolf band experimentation – though that current exemption is not sanctioned. Shacklebolt is simply choosing to look the other way given the situation and will not be reporting it to the Ministry.”
“Okay,” Hermione nodded, scanning over the modifications once more. It wasn’t surprising to hear that banding magic was legally restricted and she could see his point about being faced with questions later if they made the bands obvious. It was likely managed by the Unspeakables and legally charged and enforced by the Magical Law Enforcement department – and she’d rather not get them involved. “I’m fine with this change – I just don’t have any surgical steel to use as a base though.”
“I do,” Nasir stated. “It’s your choice, either design will work. But if you decide to implant the band, I can provide you with the materials you will need.”
Hermione turned to look at Harry, her eyes flicking over his face and absorbing the brief moment of thought that flicked across his eyes before he smiled and shrugged.
“I already have a wand core in there, which I’m sure is illegal in some way – what’s another implanted object going to do. I’d rather reduce the risk of having the bands tampered with or damaged in battle so I’m on board,” Harry said simply, looking back to Hermione and squeezing her hand. “What do you think?”
“I agree,” Hermione nodded firmly before flicking her eyes back to Nasir. “We’ll go with this design.”
Nasir hadn’t been lying, it didn’t take long at all – the procedure wasn’t difficult.
He’d gone back to his tent to get his surgical steel and returned moments later just as Hermione and Harry had finished cleaning up their mugs and disinfecting the table. As it turned out, the surgical steel he had appeared to be sourced from a muggle medical tool – which Hermione suspected he’d probably used either for medical procedures on himself or more likely, the torture of others. Either way, she didn’t question it and instead helped him sever two pieces of metal off the tool’s handle before reshaping them into two thin flat pieces with rounded edges. Harry disinfected them and then Hermione carefully cut the selected runes into the surface after adding a drop of their blood into the center of each piece before Nasir sealed the small objects.
In the end, they almost looked like thin beach stones, like the kind you would collect and skip over the water. They double-checked them three times, each of them carefully examining the small pieces of metal before casting a final disinfection charm and then drawing out their daggers. Hermione’s was inserted into her right forearm just below the elbow and Harry’s was inserted into his left. Aside from the pain of Harry cutting into her forearm, the process was quick and painless. Within half an hour both of their arms were healed using the dagger counterspell that Nasir had taught them and the ‘bands’ were in place – giving Harry yet another taste of what it felt like to have a string of foreign vitals sounding in his mind. Except that this time, they would stay there for longer than a single night and Harry would be aware of her status at all times until they decided to remove the bands – which Hermione suspected they never would.
Based on the banding design, which differed from the werewolf bands because it essentially created a controlled occlumency linkage between their minds – Nasir had recommended that they not try to use them for the rest of the day and give themselves a chance to get used to the feeling of a connection. So they’d decided to spend the rest of the afternoon outside completing target practice in the nice weather. Aside from the thin silver scar that now ran down her forearm and the matching one on Harry’s – the procedure was invisible. No one would know what they’d done except the three of them, and if Hermione was being honest, she liked it that way.
There were some aspects of this war that she didn’t want to share, some decisions that she’d made that she did not want people to know and some elements of her relationship with Harry and how close they’d become that she did not want to explain. She knew that certain people would think the procedure was insane – they’d think that creating a mental link to your partner was borderline obsessive or codependent. Others would see it as extreme and pushing the boundaries on what was ethically acceptable or required for the war.
But she saw it as not only an advantage but as a necessity. It would allow them to communicate. It would allow them to stay safe and ensure that the other was okay. It would allow them to talk unnoticed by others and it would allow her a much better shot at keeping Harry alive.
She smiled as Harry hit the cloth that Nasir had been shifting around in the air above them. His fake wand gripped lightly in his hand, his erratic black hair jutting out obscurely as the cloth erupted in flames and fell to the ground. No matter how many times she watched Harry practice, Hermione would never cease to be amazed by his skill.
-x-x-
“Hermione?”
“Yes, Harry?”
Harry watched as Hermione turned to look at him over her shoulder. She was standing in the small makeshift potion lab, her hair an utter mess, curls falling out of the bun that was piled on top of her head, a thin sheen of sweat covering her body from the heat of the multiple fires as her loose-fitting black tank hung around her small frame as if floating. Nasir had just left them for the evening – the man having spent the entire afternoon helping them complete another batch of potions, working seven cauldrons with them in an effort to increase their supply of strength potion and blood replenisher. He’d even rejoined them after training with the Order after dinner to help them bottle everything up. They’d finally finished at quarter to ten, but somehow it already felt like midnight.
Maybe it was the exhaustion that was finally getting to him, or maybe it was knowing that tonight was Wednesday and he would be sneaking out for a third time to go see Nasir – but either way, Harry felt anxious. Anxious and on edge.
They’d trained hard all-day Monday, testing out the bond they’d created between themselves and trying to get used to both sending and receiving thoughts. It was so very similar to using the werewolf bands – except that instead of only feeling emotions from the opposite end of the bond Harry received full complete thoughts and images from Hermione when she sent them. They appeared in his head as if they were his own, except that they weren’t because he could feel them sliding into his head like a warm flutter against his mind before a string of things appeared in his mind’s eye. They were always organized, detailed, incredibly well put together and constructed and it made him question what being in her head must be like. He imagined it was overwhelming even if it was organized.
But despite the organized nature and the ease of learning how to use the bond – it was still exhausting and slightly excruciating. Just like with the werewolf bands he could feel a tension headache forming behind his eyes as they used it and he’d still not gotten accustomed to feeling her heartbeat fluttering constantly in his mind. Nasir had told them that based on their design the headaches would likely go away with practiced use and time – but he’d also recommended not to push it and to take it slow.
Bonding and banding magic was delicate, he’d said, and it was even more delicate because they actually cared about one another and didn’t want to damage their minds. It would be all too easy to shove over a slew of emotions, thoughts, memories and images through the connection and overwhelm the other person. If they weren’t careful, they could borderline render the other temporarily incapacitated by sending too much all at once – like an information and sensory overload that could result in their bodies physically seizing while their brain tried to catch up. So they stuck to simple, concise messages and thoughts and took their time over the last three days while training and working with the Order.
On Tuesday they had assembled potion packs with Ava, Liza and Fleur in the morning. Hermione had charmed a collection of thigh packs that Shacklebolt had brought to the cottage, extending them and making them weightless before they all worked to carefully stuff each pack full of a variety of life-saving potions. She’d been fairly certain Shacklebolt had gotten the packs from a muggle military outlet, but she didn’t mention this to anyone else but him through their connection and simply noted outwardly that the thigh packs were a good idea and would be incredibly useful. There was a pack for each person in the Order and even two for Ava to have for use at the farmhouse should they ever be separated. Then Hermione had spent the afternoon training with Nasir while Harry trained Liza and practiced duelling with Luna and Ron.
It had been strange, Harry thought, to duel against Ron and not want to kill him. They’d practiced for over an hour before Remus showed up and join in while Dean built a sandcastle with Charlie – Ava sitting beside her son and watching the ongoing duels with interest while Liza practiced magic off to the side. Between her training with Harry, Luna, Hermione and the twins Liza had learned how to cast expelliarmus and had seemed to master wingardium leviosa despite the fact that she struggled with her wand.
But what the girl was determined to learn, and what she’d worked on while Harry duelled Ron, was casting the diagnostic spell and bandaging spell. The girl had apparently not been joking about being interested in medical magic and wanting to help because she’d spent the entire afternoon endlessly casting again and again in hopes of a diagnostic bubble showing up.
None did.
But that didn’t stop her.
She continued practicing until Fleur finally came out and called everyone in for dinner. Then after eating Harry, Hermione and Nasir resumed their training with the Order.
Ron seemed to have mastered expulso and had gotten the hang of sectumsempra, and though he still religiously avoided casting the full-body shield charm he would practice the movements and the vocals separately to keep them fresh in his mind. The twins continued to be effective in nearly everything they tried, Remus was beyond adept at what they’d taught him and had started to move on to practicing his own set of spells. Arthur delivered consistently in his duels though he seemed to still lack the raw power that Shacklebolt had and the wicked violence that Fleur was capable of dishing out. Bill was solid, Dean was iffy at best, Luna was only okay with offensive spells but excellent at healing magic and the shield charm – and Mrs. Weasley was oddly competent but somewhat slow in her reaction time.
All in all the Order had improved, their confidence was increasing with each round of practice and their capability and physical fitness were improving. Even though Harry was still concerned that what they’d learned might still not be enough, he couldn’t help but feel just a tiny bit proud of what they had accomplished over the last few weeks. It felt like the DA on steroids – deadly and serious and working ten times as hard.
But now, only one full day away from breaking into Gringotts, he could feel his confidence teeter. Harry was fighting to remain optimistic and fighting to keep his pain in check. He felt like they’d done everything that they could have done, everything they were physically capable of doing. He had a wand core in his arm, a band token in his other, a stack of potions, a team of people trained and at least somewhat capable of not outright dying in battle – and a partner who was formidable and relentless. He’d made a deal with Nasir to protect Hermione – he knew she would be safe, and they’d practiced nearly every waking hour for the last few weeks while replaying and reviewing the plan over and over.
And yet, despite this, he could feel his chest constricting with doubt. It still didn’t feel like enough. He’d managed to keep his shit together, he’d managed to hide is concern and keep his secret close to his heart while they worked – but now he was left feeling worn and thin, insecure and somewhat desperate as if his last few guaranteed moments of life were slipping through his fingers right before him. And looking at Hermione, exhausted but determined and working harder than anyone he’d ever known, it made him feel like he was looking at his last breath of fresh air as the walls threatened to close in, yet in some ways – she was the thing that was crushing him.
“You know that I love you, right?” Harry said quietly, his eyes tracing over her small frame. She’d been putting out the flames below the empty cauldron stands but she froze at his words, her hand poised before the last fire as her eyes clouded with something deep and sad as she looked at him.
“I know,” she said quietly, her finger twitching to put out the flame as she twisted around to face him. She was looking at him like that again – that same way she always looked at him when she was worried about him, concerned for him and determined to keep him forever. It hurt like a knife to his gut. “I love you, Harry.”
She went quiet for a moment, watching him in the low light before she shifted and made her way across the makeshift potion lab towards him, stepping around the extra stool they’d brought in and stopping before the one he was sitting on, standing between his legs and fixing him with a piercing stare.
“What’s wrong?” she said it so quiet he’d almost wondered if she’d just transferred the thought to him.
“Nothing,” he murmured, reaching out to touch her face and gently tracing his thumb along her cheekbone. She was the most beautiful person he’d ever seen, the most brilliant and wonderful and he wondered how the hell he’d gotten so lucky as to have gotten the chance to love her before he died.
To have gotten the chance to be loved by her, he thought painfully.
“Harry,” Hermione said slowly, her eyes searching over his as she unconsciously leaned into his touch. “You’ve been looking at me like that all week, what’s going–“
“Nothing Hermione,” he cut her off, not wanting to get into a conversation that might make him reveal too much or leave them both swimming with doubts that would gain them nothing in the long run. At this point, there was nothing else they could do, nothing else they could cram in and the pressure that had been building all week with the Order and the upcoming mission was just the reality they were condemned to face – there was nothing else they could do. “I’m just tired, this has just been a long week and I–“
He paused, his eyes tracing over her face as he reached out with his left hand to grab her hip and slowly tugged her closer.
“I just need you right now,” his voice was almost hoarse, his grip on her hip tightening as he fought to keep the connection between their minds closed and his anguish under control.
“You have me,” Hermione whispered, her eyes still searching him skeptically, doubtfully as if she knew he was avoiding her question. As if she knew there was something he wasn’t saying as if she knew – just like he knew – that they’d both broken their promise and made deals to try and save the other. He wasn’t stupid, he knew they were both fighting against an internal struggle to stay calm and optimistic in the face of the challenges and strife before them. He could see it in her as much as she could see it in him but to his relief and for once in her life, she didn’t push for answers. “Always Harry. You have me always.”
His fingers twisted into the fabric of her tank top, his hand pulling her face down toward him until his lips ghosted against hers and he heard her exhale. It sounded like a wave of tension leaving her body, he could feel her muscles slacken as the doubt and anxiety and torturous stress left her small and weary frame under his touch – leaving them with nothing but the contact between them as she melted into his kiss and he pulled her between his legs. Gripping her body tight to his, her chest pressed firmly against his as his hand threaded into her hair. He could feel his heart rate start to spike as the panic of losing this crossed through his mind like a burning agony that hurt worse and weighed heavier than anything he’d done to date.
But he didn’t care.
He didn’t care that she could feel it through their bond, he didn’t care that she would know that this was the agony he’d been hiding as he gripped her tighter and twisted his head to kiss her deeper. All he could do at this point was continue on with his plan and hope that his deal with Nasir would outrank anything she may have done. He felt her muscles begin to tense once more as the stress and panic of his own body reached her through the bond. The anxiety building once more in an entirely different way, like a wave consuming both of their bodies as her hands found his shirt and tangled there, permanent like a grip of death as she pressed herself into him and he pulled her hips as close as he possibly could.
His heart was practically pounding as he stood abruptly from the stool, the metal clanging on the floor as it fell as he backed her up against the potions workbench and kissed her so deeply it was hard to breathe. His hand traced up her side, shoving the thin tank material out of the way so he could feel her skin as his movement became desperate and heated, his hips pressing between her slightly spread legs as her hands wrapped around his body and knotted into the fabric of his black t-shirt. He could feel every inch of her body against his, but it wasn’t enough, it would never be enough as he gasped for air against her lips and consumed her once more. He needed more, he needed so much more and there would never be enough time to do everything he wanted – to have a future with her, a home with her, a life with her. And it broke something so fundamental and deep inside him he thought he might sob as he clutched her body to his and dragged her back from the potion workbench and out into the living space.
His lips never left hers, his hands mapping her body like it was the last time he would ever touch her as he led her to their bunk and gently pushed her back against it. He caught a glimpse of her eyes in that moment, heated, cloudy, painful and filled with – agony. And then he was on her again, consuming her lips in a deep and needy kiss as her hands began to tug at his clothes, desperate and urgent like his own as she pushed his shirt over his head and he all but tore the thin tank top from her body. His lips trailed down her neck and down her chest over her rune, kissing across every scar and every mark she had – memorizing them, committing it and every detail of her body to his mind as he made his way down to the small black shorts she wore and tugged them down her legs.
Before she could even catch a breath, he pushed her legs apart and dropped his head between them, running his tongue over her slick folds and nearly groaning at the feel of her fingers tangling in his hair and tugging it tightly. She was already wet, her hips jerking against him as he circled his tongue over her clit and he heard her groan outwardly, his name panting from her lips as she tried to tug him back up to her but revelled in the feel of mouth. She wanted him, just like he wanted her – needed her. He pulled away from her, crawling back up her body to capture her lips as her hands attacked his belt, undoing it and working to tear off his pants and boxers before he dropped between her legs once more and pushed his stiff length deep inside of her.
“Fuck,” he groaned out at the feel. She was so wet and tight, so unbelievably warm and perfect. He felt her fingers dig into his skin as she inhaled sharply and flexed her hips up to meet him. It was everything that he needed and somehow still not enough.
He threaded a hand beneath her back, bracing her neck and twisting his fingers into her hair once more as he brought them even closer still. Kissing her deeper, his tongue traced over her lips, her teeth and tangling with her own in an endless and impossible battle as he rolled his hips against her. Her legs wrapped around his waist, her grip on him impossibly tight as he clutched her body to his. Each thrust was like a drug, leaving him craving more and needing another hit – he pushed into her over and over, deeper and harder as she gasped for air beneath him and pushed up to meet him each time. It was overwhelming, it was heated, it was building with the panic he felt as he desperately tried to hold himself together while his heart felt like it was breaking.
And he knew she could feel it too.
Her nails bit into his skin almost painfully, her gasps becoming ragged with each thrust. He could feel himself growing closer to the edge as she clenched her channel tighter for him and panted in his ear. He wasn’t going to last much longer even though he was desperate to keep going – desperate to never let this end – to stay this way with her forever.
“Hermione,” her name was raspy and ragged, his bleary eyes meeting hers as he felt himself tittering on the edge of bliss and despair. “Stay with me – until the end.”
“Until the end Harry,” she breathed out, her eyes swimming with a hailstorm of emotions, her face flushed with heat as she clutched him even tighter.
He pushed into her deep, gripping her hip tightly and lifting them up a fraction so he could fuck her deeper. Her back arched and her mouth fell open with a deep and throaty groan as he continued to pump into her. He felt her clench as her orgasm ripped through her – taking him with her and leaving him breathless. It was perfect and it was misery, he struggled to breathe as he came apart, his hips jerking as he came inside her, holding her to his body as if she was his life-line and letting go would mean the end.
He didn’t know how long he stayed embedded within her, or how long they held each other in silence, his eyes trailing over her body as his hands traced over her skin. And still, somehow – by the grace of Merlin – she didn’t ask him anything.
Maybe it was because she’d felt it, his desperate and inescapable panic. Maybe it was because she knew that right now what he truly needed more than anything was just to lay there with her in his arms, close to his chest as he absorbed every last piece of her that he could. He’d never truly know, but he stayed there clutching her, his lips trailing across her temple until it grew so late her eyes started to flutter shut.
Then, just like he’d planned – he waited until she’d fallen asleep. Until it was well after midnight and the silence rang heavy through the tent. Until he was sure that she wouldn’t wake, until her heart rate had lowered and it was safe to move. And then carefully, slowly – quietly – he extracted himself from her tangled limbs and shifted off the bunk. With a flick of his finger he wordlessly summoned his clothes, dressing in silence and grabbing the worn dragon hide boots that Fleur had given him. He could hear the waves rolling in the blackened night as he slipped through the tent door and began the small trek through the darkness to where he knew Nasir would be waiting.
-x-x-
Hermione woke Thursday morning to the sound of waves rushing and wind blowing, her eyes fluttering open and taking in the early glimmer of dim morning light before her alarm went off. It was going to rain today, they’d known that, but with it a chill was coming in and the tent had grown cold overnight. She snuggled into Harry’s side and blinked her eyes clear to look at him. He was fast asleep, his messy black hair long once more and falling across his face. He looked tired – exhausted was probably a better description, slight bags lingered under his eyes and his jaw was slack as his head rested on the pillow next to her. He was wearing a fresh black t-shirt and pajama pants. Apparently, he had put on some clothes and she had passed out nude.
She let out a slow breath and brought her hand up to the side of his face, tracing her thumb across his cheek and pushing the hair from his face as she fought back a shiver. Last night had been tense and emotional, yet silent and unspoken. Harry had needed her in a way like she’d never seen before, in a way that she’d never felt before. It was like at that moment he had let down his guard and allowed her to feel the tension and stress and rapid heart rate that had been plaguing his body – and had probably been hidden from her all week as the tension around the cottage mounted. He’d kept the bond connection closed of thoughts – but she’d felt his anxious tension. His desperation.
Yet now, with his eyes closed and his body still – he looked at peace. He looked so normal and so young – so unlike the typical stoic and controlled man he’d become. He almost looked like Harry from a year ago, almost. Except for the hair, the bags under his eyes, the exhaustion he carried in his bones and the scars that littered his body.
He’d changed just as much as she had.
But she’d never loved him more than she did right now, baggage and all.
She heard the dull ringing of her alarm begin to sound as Harry started to stir at her side. She wished she could just turn the alarm off. She wished she could stay in bed with him today, ignore the world and hide from it all. She wished she could ask him why he’d been so desperate the night before – was it just the pressure finally breaking him or was there something else going on. She hated the fact that she suspected it was the latter. And what she hated even more was that she wasn’t sure she could or even should bring it up because even if she did, Harry wouldn’t tell her. If he’d done something, if he’d planned something or made any deals with Nasir to protect her during the bank robbery he wouldn’t let her know – it would turn into an argument. It would turn heated and even more desperate just like last time. He’d counter her and ask her what she’d done, he would ask her what deals she’d made or what she’d promised – and she wouldn’t tell him either.
And she didn’t want the last day before breaking into Gringotts to be marred by anger or aggressive desperation.
She didn’t want to argue with him. She didn’t want to fight. She just wanted to be with him, she wanted to focus and prepare so that hopefully the plan would be a success and no one would need to make any sacrifices tomorrow. She wanted everything to be okay.
She wanted everyone to be okay.
Harry’s green eyes flicked open and he looked at her through his early morning haze, a soft smile crossing his lips before he pulled her closer and kissed her gently.
This, Hermione thought as she kissed Harry back and tangled her fingers into his shirt. This is what I want.
But the secondary alarm in her head sounded without respite and Hermione felt Harry slowly pull away.
“What do you want for breakfast,” Harry asked her, his arm still resting over her body as he summoned her a sweater.
“I don’t know,” Hermione sighed, grabbing the large worn grey hoodie from the air and slowly sitting up to shrug it on. The day was starting whether she liked it or not and unfortunately, it was time to get moving. “But I guess we better go find something. We’re meeting Nasir in twenty minutes.”
Harry nodded and pulled himself from the bunk as she summoned a set of pants and then made her way to the small washroom to start the day. Within twenty minutes Hermione had showered, tied her hair into a braid down the back of her head, eaten breakfast and joined Harry in pulling on their jackets and lacing up their boots. Then, they slowly made their way out into the cold morning air toward the tall man who was waiting for them on the sand. There would be no intense duelling this morning, just some simple spell work practice before heading into the cottage to review the plan and finish packing the potion packs before training the Order in the afternoon.
Though if Hermione was being honest, even though she knew they needed to rest before tomorrow, a part of her almost wished that they were aggressively training today. A part of her longed for an intense bought of duelling, to feel the rush of battle and the extreme concentration needed to evade Nasir’s attacks or anticipate Harry’s next move. Because that would have been easier, that would have been a distraction from the tension that seemed to be laced through the air as they carefully cast a few spells and practiced a collection of medical ones. Everything they did felt robotic and detached, Hermione cast spell after spell with little effort or cause as she watched Harry do the same at her side, his eyes staring off into the distance as if he were lost in thought.
Nasir quizzed them on their medical knowledge for over an hour before they made their way up to the cottage to meet the others. Reviewing which spells could be used when, how to combine potions for the best effects and stressing the importance of how poison affected things and how to properly measure out strength potion. When they finally did go to the cottage Hermione felt like her head was spinning as she carefully tried to categorize and organize her mind so as not to lose track of the critical information they might need in an emergency.
They spent the hour before lunch working with Ron, Luna, Fleur and Nasir to finalize the potion packs – adding in the last few batches of wound cleaner, strength potion and blood replenisher that they’d been able to brew. Somewhat surprisingly, Ron had managed to brew two cauldrons nearly on his own between helping Sunday and Wednesday – and his ears turned pink when Hermione offhandedly told him that the batches had turned out well as she packed away the vials that Fleur had passed her. They made sure that everything was labelled, that every kit was stocked and that they were all organized and stacked on the table by the door and ready for use. Mrs. Weasley would be brewing tomorrow as well and once that potion was ready, they would add the new vials to the packs and repeated that process day by day until they ran out of ingredients – or until the war started and the packs were needed for use.
Hermione wasn’t sure what would come first, but when she saw Nasir slip several small vials into her pack and Harry’s specifically, she got the impression that it was the latter. That the war would come before they ran out of supplies.
Her eyes locked to his dark ones as the tiny vials of crimson liquid vanished from sight and into the depths of their two packs. She would recognize that potion anywhere – it had saved her life at Malfoy Manor, she’d learned its physical description after asking Nasir about it during one of their training sessions and the way it nearly glimmered made it unmistakable. She didn’t know where Nasir had gotten it from or if he’d made it himself but as she stared at the tall enigmatic man before her, his face impassive as his dark piercing eyes bore into her with that newfound hint of emotion that looked so eerily familiar – she started to wonder if maybe his involvement wasn’t as complicated as she’d originally assumed.
That maybe, her thought – while being complex and borderline crazy – was actually elegantly easy, simple and obvious when she laid everything out on the table and removed any ounce of objectivity or bias that she had.
Her mind rapidly flicked through every piece of information that she had on him – his sudden appearance and involvement with the Order. The strange symbolic markings on his chest around the three consecutive runes, his words, his behaviour, how he’d treated her arm and conveniently had every potion that he’d needed to get it done. How he’d returned her wand, evaded her questions and seemed to have critical information about things, about the war – about them. And then there was his reaction to Ginny’s letter. But before she could open her mouth to say anything to him or formulate a complete thought her arm buzzed and voices started to ring out behind her as everyone looked at the stream of incoming messages.
Tonks was in labour.
Remus had just messaged to let them know, Shacklebolt was on his way with modified portkeys and the twins were coming by to join them for lunch and practice in the afternoon. And then just like that, the day went from feeling slow and tight with tension to launching off like a rocket ship and moving at a pace quicker than manageable as everyone struggled to process the wave of happiness they felt for Remus and Tonks with the still lingering tension and stress of the war and upcoming mission. As the excitement started to grow and the potion packs were completed Hermione took hers and Harry’s, stuffing them in her purse as Nasir took his own, before going to help Fleur make lunch.
Shacklebolt showed up minutes later, calling Ava downstairs to show her how the modified port keys to the farm safehouse worked under her command while Charlie sat on her hip and a red-eyed Liza came down to see the twins.
The girl had said goodbye to her grandmother yesterday afternoon and spent the rest of the evening in her room. Hermione didn’t ask for details when Fleur softly murmured the comment to her while they worked to prepare lunch, but it was clear that the experience had been hard on the girl. Yet despite this, Liza was once again fighting to remain optimistic, she was fighting to stay strong and quickly joined Fred, George, Harry and Nasir – heading out into the rain in yellow boots to help gather more beach wood for training that afternoon. Hermione could see the lot of them from the kitchen window as Mrs. Weasley bustled around the cottage collecting stuff to send to Remus and Tonk as Ron and Luna attempted to help her and Dean watched the commotion from his seat at the table. Liza was carefully lifting each stick with wingardium leviosa, her face tense with concentration as she walked the wood forward and then carefully lowered it to the pile that Fred had started as the others summoned wood at double the speed. They managed to grab a sizable amount before Fleur called them all back in and everyone sat down at the table to eat.
Practice in the afternoon felt long and endless, yet entirely too short. Harry separated everyone into pairs, telling them to practice their shields and duelling. They worked on it for well over an hour before they shifted to splitting the wood that had been gathered as Liza practiced moving rocks around the beach near Ava – who sat with Charlie and watched the training carry on through the misting rain under the charm that Hermione had cast above them to keep them dry and warm. Hermione watched the young girl from the corner of her eye all afternoon as she switched from lifting rocks to wrapping her arm in bandages and tearing them off only to do it again and again. Then an hour later she began relentlessly casting the diagnostic spell to no avail.
Hermione could see the frustration growing on the girl’s face as she desperately tried again and again. Her eyes burning with determination despite being red and swollen from crying the day before.
Hermione adjusted Luna’s form, still watching the young girl from the corner of her eye and wondering just how long she would keep at it before losing heart when suddenly a tall black figure entered her peripheral vision and she watched nearly stunned into silence as Nasir carefully approached Liza. She couldn’t make out what he said but Liza jumped in surprise at his words, turning to look up at the man, a blush of self-doubt and embarrassment dusting her cheeks as she spoke to him.
Ava was watching the exchange closely, leaning in towards them with interest as Nasir spoke and then gestured to the wand in Liza’s hand. Liza looked at it and shrugged before saying something else that Hermione could not hear as she moved toward Dean to watch him practice his shield charm while still watching Liza. The girl was one of the few people at the cottage who seemed truly unbothered by Nasir, she wasn’t nearly as comfortable around him as she was with the others – but she didn’t outright fear the man like Dean did or watch him skeptically like Mrs. Weasley.
As Hermione made a small suggestion to Dean regarding his pronunciation, she saw Nasir slowly lower himself into a squat before the girl, balancing on the balls of his feet so he no longer towered above her. His movements were slow and controlled as if he was purposely trying to appear less threatening. Or as if he suspected that Mrs. Weasley was watching and was ready to march over and pull the girl away from him because he was a bad influence – a quick glance to the right proved Hermione’s suspicions correct as she saw the older woman start her approach across the sand. The Weasley matron had barely tolerated the man engaging in conversation with Fred and George, so it was no surprise that she blatantly thought it wrong for him to interact with Liza and it raised an underlying question that Hermione had not yet considered.
Who was responsible for Liza? With her existence now wiped from the muggle world who was her legal guardian in the wizarding one?
But before Hermione could ponder the question further and before Mrs. Weasley made any headway across the sand Nasir carefully reached into his black robes and pulled out a light brown wand from his pocket. It was simple, roughly a foot long and unlike any of the fake wands he stocked – and then he held it out to the girl handle first and Mrs. Weasley stopped short halfway across the sand her eyes wide with surprise.
Liza took the wand carefully, her mouth moving in what was no doubt a question of whether or not the man was sure about giving it to her, but Nasir simply nodded and took Pettigrew’s wand from her before standing and saying something else. The girl nodded, nervously, lifting the new wand before her and making the motion for wingardium leviosa once more. The rock she’d been struggling to lift earlier sprang into the air with considerably less effort and her eyes widened in shock before a huge smile split across her face. She lowered the rock and raised it three more times as if in disbelief that it could be so easy.
Ava was grinning widely, Charlie was watching the rock with interest and Nasir’s lips twitched into one of his rare almost smiles. Then, under what Hermione could only assume was Nasir’s direction because his mouth had moved again and Liza had nodded – the girl took a deep breath, pointed her wand at Nasir, and then made the movement for the diagnostic charm. Three bubbles flickered into view, floating above the tall man’s shoulder and displaying his perfect vitals for everyone to see.
And then Liza sobbed and began to cry.
It was like a wave of relief, pain and happiness had flooded the girl. She was too tired, too worn and had been too frustrated with all her failed attempts to be able to control her emotions at the sight of those bubbles dancing around Nasir’s shoulder. Before anyone could react, Liza grabbed Nasir around the waist, pulling him into a tight hug as she sobbed. Ava quickly pulled herself from the ground, moving to stand beside the girl and placing a gentle arm around her shoulder. After a moment of what looked to be awkward discomfort on Nasir’s face, Liza finally let him go and wiped her eyes on her sleeve.
Hermione watched with a smile as Nasir carefully stepped back towards the group, walking past Mrs. Weasley without acknowledgement as Liza’s voice cut through the air.
“I DID IT!” Liza’s voice was broken with joy and everyone on the beach turned to look at her. Her eyes were glossy, and she was leaning into Ava as if she physically needed the support to stand. Her eyes met Hermione’s and she felt a tug across her chest as the girls’ voice lowered, but the words were unmistakable. “I did it – I can help now. I can help.”
The twins were the first to make it to her, swarming the girl with hugs and congratulations before Fleur got there and everyone took a pause to celebrate her accomplishment. Hermione lingered back, coming to stand between Harry and Nasir and watching the excitement unfold.
“I figured the wand wasn’t helping her any but we didn’t have any other spares,” Hermione said quietly, her fingers circling around Harry’s hand as her eyes flicked to her left to gaze up at Nasir. The man was staring at the others silently. “Where did you get that wand?”
“I’ve had that one for a long time,” Nasir said quietly.
“What was it for?”
“I hadn’t decided yet,” he said slowly, his eyes drifting down to meet hers. His face was impassive, but she could see a hint of warmth behind his cold dark eyes. “I’d been saving it for the right moment.”
“Well I think you found it,” Harry murmured, and Nasir’s eyes flicked to him before shifting back to Liza.
“I agree,” Nasir said quietly, and Hermione found herself reaching for him.
She gripped the tall man’s arm with her free hand, giving him a firm and reassuring squeeze before letting go once more and stepping forward with Harry to congratulate Liza. They let the small girl try the diagnostic spell on them and spent nearly half an hour with the group, allowing Liza to test the spell and even getting her to try a few other simple charms. The wand made a world of difference and Liza was able to cast a small repair charm on a broken stick and could even unlock the door of the cottage with alohomora.
She still had a long way to go to become a great witch – but Hermione had no doubt she would do it so long as they lived through the war and she was given more time to learn. Once the excitement calmed down they returned to practice for another hour before heading inside for dinner. Bill came home from work around the same time that Arthur showed up and they both ruffled Liza’s hair and asked to see the charm before the group divided once more and Hermione, Harry, Bill and Nasir sat down with Griphook to review the Gringotts plan one final time.
They had just closed their notebooks and Bill was just rolling up the notated map when the rain finally stopped and the door to the cottage opened to reveal an exhausted but happy looking Remus.
“Remus,” Arthur stood from his seat in the living room where he’d been talking to Shacklebolt and his wife over tea. “What are you doing here – why aren’t you are home?”
“Because Dora insisted that I come and tell you in person,” Remus said with a smile and a sigh, his eyes flicking between the three in the living room and the small bunch at the kitchen table. “My son was born – our son was born. 7lbs 14oz. His name is Edward Remus Lupin and Dora has already taken to calling him, Teddy.”
Hermione practically startled at the noise that came from Mrs. Weasley as she stood from her seat and made her way over to the greying man, pulling him into a fierce hug and squeezing him tight.
“Oh, Remus!” Mrs. Weasley beamed. “That’s wonderful!”
“Congratulations,” Arthur was grinning as he and Shacklebolt followed his wife toward the door. He outstretched a hand to his friend, his voice warm as Remus took it tiredly. “You’re going to make a great father, Remus.”
“Merlin I hope so,” Remus muttered, shaking Arthur’s hand before the redhead clapped him on the back and Shacklebolt stepped up in his place.
Hermione carefully pulled herself from the table, keenly aware that Griphook apparently didn’t care about the news since he began to head back upstairs just as Fleur came down and Bill made his way over to the others.
“’Ow is Tonks?” Fleur asked as she gave Remus a hug and then stood next to her husband with a wide smile.
“Incredible,” Remus shook his head, he seemed almost in a daze and unable to stop smiling. “She’s incredible and he – well he looks so much like her already. She said she wishes that you could see him, but with the wards and the house being watched, it’s just too much of a risk. She’s going to send a picture though.”
“That would be lovely,” Mrs. Weasley smiled. “Oh, and I put together a little basket for you, I was going to have Shacklebolt drop it off to avoid attention, but you can take it with you tonight.”
“Thank you,” Remus looked genuine as he nodded to her. “That’s very kind.”
“It was nothing – if there is anything you need just let us know,” Mrs. Weasley stated firmly.
“I will – definitely, but you have all done so much already. I can’t stay too long – or well I told Dora I wouldn’t and if I’m being honest I didn’t want to leave at all. She sort of kicked me out to come and tell you the news but I do have one other thing I need to do,” Remus’s eyes scanned the room, spotting Harry and Hermione who were standing behind the others. “Ah Harry – Hermione – could I have a quick word with you both?”
“Yeah of course,” Harry nodded as the others shifted to give them space, allowing Remus room to finally move away from the door fully into the cottage. Harry moved toward the man now that there was room, Hermione close behind him as he gave Remus a tight hug, hand patting the man on the back firmly as his voice dropped lower. “Congratulations Remus.”
“Congratulations,” Hermione smiled genuinely at the man, he seemed nearly beside himself with emotion. She hugged him once Harry had let go and she found it was surprisingly easy to do compared to how this sort of closeness had felt on her first reunion with the Order.
“Thank you,” he said quietly his eyes practically shining as he looked between the two of them, one hand on each of their shoulders. “I honestly can’t believe I’m a father now.”
“I can,” Harry said warmly, the grin still lingering on his lips. “You were an incredible professor Remus –you were there for me in third year when I needed guidance, and you’ve been there for me ever since. Even when things got bad – even though I haven’t been the easiest to deal with.”
“Thanks, Harry,” Remus gave him a sincere look and let out a sigh. He looked almost nervous as he eyed them quietly for a moment and then cleared his throat. “There was something that I wanted to ask of you both – it’s a big ask and I’ll understand if you say no, you don’t need to feel pressured to agree.”
“What do you need Remus?” Hermione’s brow furrowed as she watched the man.
“With everything that’s been going on – Dora and I, well we want to make sure that we’re prepared. We want to make sure that Teddy is safe,” Remus said quietly as Hermione and Harry nodded in understanding. She couldn’t even begin to imagine the massive block of stress on the man’s shoulders at the reality of bringing a child into the world while in the middle of this war with no clear end in sight. “I know things have been a bit tense lately – and I know that our relationship hasn’t been quite the same after everything that has happened this past year. But, Dora and I have talked at length about this, and we want you to be the godparents – well actually, we want two sets of godparents for Teddy because – well like I said, things are… well they’re not looking the best right now and we don’t want to take any chances.”
Remus’s face had grown grim as he spoke, and Hermione’s body had stiffened under his grasp at his words.
He wants us to what?
“We’ve already asked Bill and Fleur to act as godparents as well – but god forbid should anything happen to them, or to Dora’s mother Andromeda – I,” Remus’s voice grew tight and his expression was painful. “I know it’s a lot to ask of you. I know it’s unfair and honestly, I was unsure about whether or not it was the right thing to do – if I should ask you at all. I don’t want to put any pressure on you or the relationship that you two have by asking this but – there isn’t a doubt in my mind that the two of you would be able to keep him safe. That you would do what you had to to keep him safe. Shacklebolt has already agreed to be our secret keeper for him and Molly and Arthur have pledged to help as well. But it would mean the world to us if – if you would consider it.”
Hermione felt the tightness across her chest turn into numbness at the sincerity that shone from the man’s eyes as he looked at them. This poor man had a son, a newborn baby son and he and his wife were preparing because they knew they might die. Because just like her and Harry, Remus understood the gravity of the war and he knew that not everyone would be coming out alive. He was trying to be responsible, he was trying to be a good father – to ensure that if anything happened his son would be safe and cared for by the people that he and Tonks trusted most.
And he’d picked her and Harry, placing them in the same rank as Bill and Fleur.
She felt a sting in her eyes as she swallowed hard and nodded her head. She could feel Harry shift beside her and she glanced at him to see something that looked like pain flicker behind his eyes before he nodded.
“Remus we would be honoured,” Harry said quietly. “I promise you that I will always do whatever I can to care for your son.”
“As will I,” Hermione said quietly, not trusting her voice to speak any louder.
“Thank you,” Remus exhaled a breath he’d been holding as if a physical weight had just been lifted from his body. “Thank you – it means more to us than you know, we don’t have many people in our lives Harry and we have even less that we truly trust. I’ll tell Dora when I get back – I’ll just say goodnight to the others but Harry – Hermione–“
Remus fixed them with a firm and even stare.
“Be careful tomorrow,” he said quietly. “Trust your instincts, stay focused on the task and if you should need any backup at any time – you call us, and we’ll come. All of us will come.”
“I know,” Harry nodded as Remus squeezed both of their shoulders one last time and gave them a look.
They both stood there in silence watching as the desperate and exhausted and exhilarated man turned and moved back to the living room to bid farewell to the others. The conversation in the room continued after he left, everyone chatting excitedly at the news as Hermione reached for Harry’s hand and gripped his fingers tightly. She didn’t know why Remus’s request had hit her so hard – was it because it showed he trusted her despite everything? Was it because it made her think of what it might be like to have a relationship with Harry in the future that involved caring for a child?
She swallowed hard again, blocking the thoughts from her mind and not even allowing herself to go down that road. Her eyes drifting to Harry’s, catching the strange and heavy expression on his face before he blinked and looked at her clearly.
“It’s getting late,” Harry said quietly, his voice nearly a whisper. “We should head back and get to sleep. Tomorrow is a big day”
“Yeah,” Hermione let out a breath and gave him a weak smile. “We should – and we should take some Dreamless Sleeping draught tonight as well.”
Harry nodded as they moved toward the table and finished collecting up their supplies. Hermione saw Nasir leaning casually against his typical place on the wall, he’d stuck around to wait for them but had apparently felt the need to disappear for the celebratory news. He slowly made his way over as Harry and Hermione moved toward the door and the rest of the Shell Cottage guests followed.
“We’ll see you tomorrow afternoon then,” Bill said to Harry, his eyes flicking over Hermione and Nasir. “After lunch to prepare and review – then we leave by 5:30 pm.”
“5:30 pm,” Harry confirmed, nodding firmly. “We’ll go through the potion packs once more and the plans. Maybe sneak in one more round of cliff practice before it’s time to go.”
“Make sure you sleep in though,” Bill said firmly, his eyes revealing a hint of stress as he looked at them. “It’s going to be a long day tomorrow and there is no benefit to getting up twelve hours before we leave. We’ve done what we can – you both need your rest.”
“We will,” Hermione gave Bill a small smile and then turned to face the others.
They said their goodbyes outside, everyone had filed out of the small cottage into the dark to return home to bed after a long and eventful day. Shacklebolt shook her hand and Hermione hugged Arthur tightly. She tried to bite down the nerves that fluttered in her stomach as she held the man and hoped to Merlin that this was not the last time that she would see him and that she hadn’t just signed his son’s death notice. He murmured a similar sentiment to Remus’s before he stepped away – telling them to call them tomorrow should they run into trouble at the bank. She knew that he meant it, she knew that Arthur and Remus and Shacklebolt and everyone else would come if they called – there wasn’t a doubt in her mind.
But she also knew that they couldn’t call for help.
Not unless they wanted to place a giant target over everyone’s back and cause more problems for the Order while simultaneously risking their position in the war. Tomorrow evening once Bill got them inside, he would go start his 6 pm shift and then she, Harry, Nasir and Griphook would be on their own. There was no tangible back-up plan. There was no rescue that wouldn’t result in full out war. They had to be successful tomorrow – they had to, there was simply no other option. And she could tell when she met Bill’s eyes that he knew it too, he just hadn’t said anything.
She hugged Fleur goodnight as well, the thin blonde gripping her hard and telling her to get a good night’s rest. Then, to the woman’s surprise, Hermione let Mrs. Weasley give her a brief hug. She wasn’t entirely comfortable with it, but like always, Hermione was determined to try and she knew it meant a lot to the older woman – and she knew if things went poorly tomorrow she would regret it. Mrs. Weasley’s fingers had practically knotted into her shirt and the woman’s heartbeat was ragged as she wished her good luck.
After finally letting go of the woman Hermione shifted away from the group, standing back several feet next to Nasir so that Harry could say goodnight to the group next. She could feel the tall man’s still frame brush against her side as she subtlety leaned in toward him in the cool night air. She waited until Harry was wrapped in Fleur’s arms to cast a wordless muffliato around them so only Nasir would hear her low whisper.
“Our deal still stands, right Nasir?” Hermione whispered softly, glancing up to his dark piercing eyes as Harry shifted and was buried in Mrs. Weasley’s arms next. The woman was chattering worriedly to him and entirely consuming his attention. “You’ll help me keep Harry alive – you’ll save him. If anything goes wrong – you promise to help me save him.”
“Our deal still stands,” Nasir said quietly, his eyes sliding slowly over her face before they locked to her own. They were dark and glinting, yet gave away nothing of his thoughts as he stared at her. “I’ll do everything that I can.”
“Thank you,” Hermione said quietly, a small rush of relief washing through her body at his words. “And in return, I’ll hold up my end. Whatever you want – you can have it.”
He didn’t say anything to her, his eyes simply continued to stare endlessly as she nodded to him once firmly and then cancelled the silencing spell and looked back to the group before them as they began to disperse.
The trio travelled in silence across the sand, moving through the dark toward their tents and murmuring a low goodnight before splitting off and going their separate ways. Hermione followed Harry inside their home, safely stowing her purse by their bunk and quietly getting ready for bed as the tight tension began to creep back through her body, up her neck and down her spine as her mind raced with the overwhelm of what they were about to do. She cycled through everything that she knew, every detail that she had, wordlessly and obsessively thinking until she finally pulled on her thin tank top and shorts and crawled into the bunk next to Harry, curling into his chest. They both set additional alarms and wards, then downed a small bottle of Dreamless Sleeping draught each before waiting for the effects to kick in. Her fingers slowly traced over the fabric of his t-shirt, her mind tiredly wondering why he was wearing it when he usually slept shirtless.
But the potion was taking its hold, she could feel it tugging her mind into darkness as she stared at Harry, his hand calmly stroking the skin of her hip even though she could feel the incredible stress and anxiety that riddled his body through their bond. The last thing she managed before her mind succumbed to the potion, was to push the feelings she felt for him through the bond. A wave of love, a small glimpse at how much he meant to her floating into his mind like a whisper.
She saw his lips twitch as he received it, a faint smile playing across his face as he looked at her – and then something agonizingly heartbroken flitter through his gaze before her own eyes closed and she was forced into slumber.
"Liza?” Hermione’s voice was quiet, but despite this, the girl froze mid-chop.
The young witch had been standing at the make-shift potion bench that Fleur had added to the Shell Cottage kitchen, diligently working on chopping several handfuls of valerian roots before she pulverized them into a thick paste. But her eyes immediately flicked to the right as her head turned to meet Hermione’s gaze. Her right hand hovering with the knife inches above the cutting board and the unsuspecting root tips awaiting their demise.
“Yes?” Liza’s eyes widened and brighten with question in the way that they always did, full of curiosity and – Hermione hated to admit it – what looked to be a small amount of wonder.
It was the same look that she gave to Harry, Nasir and Shacklebolt when they spoke to her. The girl had seemingly flagged them as being on a different tier than the others in the cottage. She looked to Fleur and Bill with respect and admiration, to Ava as an older sister and confidant that understood her feelings, she looked to Mrs. Weasley like a grandmotherly authoritative figure, Remus like a fun and helpful uncle and Arthur rather similarly. But when Hermione or the other aforementioned people spoke to the girl outside of lessons, she always seemed to be a bit surprised that they wanted to talk to her directly. And she always seemed excited and slightly more awestruck by whatever they had to say.
“Do you have a second?” Hermione said quietly, shifting toward the girl another foot.
“Of course,” Liza carefully placed her knife on the cutting board, taking the time to wipe her hands on the small pink-flowered apron that Fleur had given her to wear before twisting around and moving to stand before Hermione.
As it turned out, both Liza and Ava were exceptionally good at prepping potion ingredients. Liza followed every instruction to a T and Ava seemed to be intuitive on how to cut or mash things ‘just so’. It made Mrs. Weasley’s life a lot easier with managing and coordinating the potion brewing and Fleur had been able to pass off quite a decent amount of potion ingredient prep to the girls and Ron – who had unexpectantly, also proven himself to be rather adept and useful.
“What do you need?” Liza asked Hermione quietly. Her eyes darted toward Nasir and Harry who were currently talking with Bill and completing a final review of the potion packs while Fleur and Ron cleaned up the kitchen after their early dinner. Hermione felt her lip twitch as she looked at the small girl before her – she was incredibly insightful and tended to read the room rather well and had clearly picked up that this exchange was intended to be somewhat private yet not outright secret.
“I have something for you,” Hermione said slowly as she carefully pulled a small beaded bag from her black leather jacket pocket. It was a duplicate of her own purse, but the fabric colours were deeper and the beaded pattern was traced in more reds and blues – yet the resemblance between the two bags was uncanny and Liza seemed to immediately recognize the object.
After taking Dreamless Sleeping draught last night she and Harry had slept uninterrupted until 11 am. Consumed by the dark and heavy sleep of the potion they’d woken to feel rested and renewed. It was the first time in what felt like ages that Hermione didn’t feel mentally weary after waking and she was genuinely not exhausted. Which was an odd feeling – her mind seemed to be functioning quicker, her body didn’t feel quite so heavy and her general level of irritation and stress seemed lower. Even Harry had commented that he felt more rested than he had in weeks – that he felt ‘human’ again.
They’d taken the time to eat a rather full and heavy breakfast, cooking up eggs and bacon, and making toast and tea – and Harry had brought a plate to Nasir’s tent before they both made their way out into the bright afternoon sunlight with a stool and scissors in hand so that Hermione could cut Harry’s hair again. It wasn’t nearly as long as the last time that he’d allowed it to grow out but with the upcoming mission, Harry didn’t want it to be a nuisance and so he’d asked her to cut it the same as before.
Exactly the same.
The words of his request had made her blush, thinking that Harry had so adored the terrible haircut she’d given him with shaky hands that he actually wanted her to replicate it made her heart ache.
She loved this man.
She loved him so much it physically hurt.
So, she’d kissed him deeply, her two perfectly functional hands knotting into his dark black locks before she sat him on the stool once more and replicated the haircut for him – she’d even purposefully buzzed a few mistakes into the back just like before. She understood why he wanted it duplicated – it made him look more intimidating, it made him look dangerous, dark and deadly. It made him look older and she figured that in some ways it must have made him feel more confident, or maybe he just liked it because it was the first haircut that she had given him and maybe that thought brought him comfort or some sort of nostalgia.
Either way, when she’d finished, he looked incredibly handsome and incredibly lethal. Harry had run his hands through his hair with a smile. He’d thanked her, kissed her and then gone into the bathroom to shower quick while Hermione went to grab Nasir so they could start on their next task of the day.
One final practice climb.
Nasir had stood watch at the bottom while the pair quickly ascended and then descended the small cliff. The tethers had worked well, the cliff face had held their weight and all in all the practice was uneventful and could have even been called a huge improvement from the last one and possibly even a complete success. Yet as they’d made their way back to the tent to spend the next few hours of their day organizing their own personal belongings and trying to make sure that they had everything that they needed within easy reach – Hermione had felt the unease in her stomach start to twist.
The practice climb had gone too well – it had been too quick and too perfect and it had left a bad taste in her mouth as she’d duplicated her beaded bag and carefully sorted through the contents.
There was no way Gringotts would be that easy.
Life had proven to be a fickle bitch and when things went their way it just made her nervous.
Yet she’d forced herself to push the doubt aside and focus on the task before her – she needed to split her purse and reduce her belongings.
Desperately.
As it was the inside of her purse was approaching the size of a small flat, and while the size wasn’t an issue for her charm work it was an issue for time. Depending on where things were stored within her purse it took too much time for them to be summoned. Additionally, she’d already been captured once and lost several belongings while her purse had been raided. None of them had had any huge sentimental or financial value – thankfully – but that was pure dumb luck.
Bellatrix could have taken anything out of her purse at random and it would have been lost to Malfoy Manor along with her few books and favourite old teapot.
What had happened that morning at Malfoy Manor was unacceptable – and she could not allow it to happen again. She’d already warded her bag so that only select people could access the contents and summon items from its depths. But even with the new wards in place Hermione still wanted to cut her belongings and leave stuff behind – because the truth was, she didn’t need everything in her purse for what they were about to do. And if she was being honest – she didn’t want to bring everything with her.
There were things stored in her bag that she wanted to keep safe – that she needed to keep safe, even though they weren’t mission-critical or remotely helpful to the war.
A part of her, the obsessive and controlling part, wanted to keep everything with her at all times ‘just in case’ because one could never be too careful or too prepared, and you never knew when you might need something. But a much larger part of her, the cold, jaded, logical and emotionally damaged part knew that it was impractical to continue to carry her entire life around with her in a bag. She knew that it was impossible to keep it safe just by carrying it on her person – especially when she was about to break into Gringotts and her ’person’ seemed to be constantly at risk of injury and death.
And she could not risk damaging these items, she could not risk losing them – so she’d made the decision to lighten the load and to only keep what she truly needed. It hadn’t been an easy task, but it had been something that was a long time coming and something that she’d been meaning to do for a while - she’d just not had the chance to do it until earlier that day. And, up until coming to Shell Cottage, she’d had nowhere remotely safe to leave some of her extra belongings. But now, for the first time since she’d packed her bag at the Burrow, she’d felt ready to part with her belongings. She’d felt like she finally had someone to leave her items to if things went wrong – and it felt right in a way that she could not properly explain.
“This is a duplicate of my purse,” Hermione said quietly as she held the small bag out to Liza. The girl had been carefully reaching toward the beaded bag, hesitant and unsure as she always was when things were offered to her – but she froze at Hermione’s words.
“This purse has your belongings in it?” Liza asked as her eyes went wide and her hand stood stiff and floating two inches away from the bag.
“Yes,” Hermione nodded and dropped her voice even lower as she moved the beaded bag into the girl’s immobile hand. “And I want you to have it.”
“But shouldn’t you take it with you?” Liza asked nervously as her fingers slowly closed around the soft fabric. Her voice had become nervous and unsure and she was clearly uncomfortable with physically taking the purse. “What if you need something from here?”
“I won’t,” Hermione gave the girl a sad look and felt her chest constrict as she dropped her own hold on the bag, her hand falling silently back to her side. In some ways it almost felt symbolic, it was like she was physically giving away a piece of herself – a piece that she desperately wanted to keep safe and away from the war. “You know that my purse was charmed to be much larger on the inside than it appears, and the problem with that is that it makes locating things and summoning things take longer. The mission that we’re about to go on is going to be dangerous, and undoubtably fast-paced. I can’t carry around my entire life in a bag anymore, I need to make sure that we have only what we need and that it is readily accessible.”
The girl was staring at her, her gaze clouded with concern and blatant confusion. Hermione felt her shoulders drop a fraction as she let out a low sigh and along with it the truth slipped from her lips in a low whisper.
“I won’t need the things in that bag, Liza,” Hermione said quietly, a small and painful smile ghosting her lips. “All the books in that bag I’ve memorized and could recite by heart. I hardly need my winter jacket anymore nor do I need my old school robes and notes from first year. You don’t need to worry – both Harry and I went through everything this afternoon and double-checked to make sure nothing we needed was missed. We’ve kept all the potions, the ingredients, the tent, any books we need and reference materials that might come in handy. I promise you – I won’t need anything from that bag.”
Hermione’s smile faltered and she felt some of the pain that was tightening around her heart seep into her eyes despite her best effort to remain detached.
“But that said, what is in that purse is incredibly valuable,” Hermione said quietly as she fought to keep her voice steady. “On a personal level to me. It has all my old school textbooks, my class notes from first through fourth year, clothes, furniture, pictures, keepsakes, memories–“
Hermione’s voice faltered and she swallowed. She’d figured it would be difficult to hand off everything that was truly hers but she’d not realized just how hard it would be. Yet she knew it was the right thing to do.
And more than that – she knew it was what she wanted to do.
“I want to keep them safe,” Hermione whispered, her voice nearly hoarse as her hand twisted into the hem of her light grey long sleeve shirt. “A while ago, before you came here, Harry and I were on a mission that went wrong. My purse was searched when we were captured and I was incredibly lucky to only lose a few items. Frankly, I’m lucky I got my purse back at all. I don’t want to risk losing these things and it serves no purpose for me to carry them around in dangerous territory when we don’t need them to fight the war and they serve no purpose. Not when you could use them and benefit from them. So, I would like you to keep them safe until we get back.”
Liza was staring at her silently, she looked like she wasn’t breathing as Hermione forced herself to continue in a calm and level voice.
“If anything happens to me or Harry on this mission – everything in that bag belongs to you Liza,” Hermione said quietly.
“You'll come back,” Liza said firmly, nearly cutting her off with the quick response. “These are your things, Hermione and you and Harry are coming back.”
Determination was burning in the girl’s gaze and her grip on the beaded bag grew so tight that her knuckles were stark white.
“But until then,” Liza said quietly, her voice nearly a whisper as she clutched the beaded bag tightly to her chest, the colours clashing horribly with the pink-flowered apron as she met Hermione’s gaze with a serious stare. “I will keep them safe for you. I won’t let this purse out of my sight – I promise.”
“I know,” Hermione said quietly, and she felt her lips twitch into a second painful smile. “That's why I asked you.”
And she meant.
She meant everything that she’d said.
She didn’t need the books in that bag. She didn’t need the extra clothes, her old bedroom furniture from her parent’s house, or the random pictures and trinkets that she’d decided to pack because she simply couldn’t bear to leave them behind or destroy them when she’d altered her parent’s memories. Nor did she need the pictures she’d collected over the years from Colin at Hogwarts – the ones of her and Harry and her friends.
But she wanted them.
She wanted to keep them. When the war was over she wanted them as a reminder of where she came from and who she once was. As a reminder of what life could be when it wasn’t decorated in horrors and bathed in blood. The contents of that second purse documented her life, it felt like it contained literal pieces of who she once was, and it held more sentimental value than she could quantify. And regardless of what happened going forward, those items were a part of her even if at times it felt like they were nothing but relics of a past life lost in the war that she could never return to.
But she couldn’t bring them with her.
Not only was it not practical to keep all those items and extra weight on hand when they served no sensible purpose – but she also just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t bring those things with her on this mission, she couldn’t bring the relics of her past and the innocent pieces of herself into battle and bloodshed.
Not again.
Not when she knew the road was dark, dangerous and clouded with questionable decisions that might leave her wondering who the fuck she was or what she’d become at the end of this war. Not when she knew that she would be killing people again; when she would be doing anything and everything to save Harry and defeat Voldemort at all costs. Not when she would be flooding her body with the dark magic of sectumsempra, fiendfyre and countless other dark spells that would laden her with the burden of death and the empty darkness that came from walking so far into the grey she abandoned her morals and was nearly lost in black.
She wanted those things safe.
Away from the hellish nightmare of this war, away from the darkness that clouded her soul and the terrible things she would unquestionably do to end this war when the time came and if it was asked of her. She wanted them away from herself – away from what she might become so they would remain as untarnished as possible, so that someday – maybe – if they were lucky and this horror ended she might be able to reclaim them and try to remember what normal felt like.
But in the highly likely scenario where they failed, and she died – she wanted those belongings to belong somewhere instead of being burned into a pile of ash or raided by Death Eaters or lost on a battlefield next to her unmarked grave.
She wanted them to be loved, cherished, made useful and protected.
And she knew that they would serve that purpose for Liza. The books would help her grow as a witch and learn magic. The notes would give her a taste of Hogwarts and a better explanation of fundamental concepts. The furniture could be used at the farm safe house, the clothes could be transfigured and reused while the pictures would serve as proof that at one point in time Hermione Granger did have a family, that she did have friends – that she was happy and innocent and peaceful and full of naivety.
That she was, indeed, just a girl who had had dreams of a normal life – a moral life and a future filled with hope.
Hermione felt her heart clench tight as she stared at the girl before her and said a final silent goodbye to her past and treasured trinkets. She didn’t know why her hand moved in that moment, but it did – slowly rising up on its own accord toward Liza’s head. It was a gesture that she’d seen the others make countless times – Remus had done it, Arthur had too. Bill, the twins and even Harry had ruffled the girl’s hair once or twice when they’d spoken or interacted with her. But never once in the entire time that Hermione had known Liza had she ever voluntarily touched the girl outside of medical care or academic purposes. She’d never shown any outright sign of physical affection.
Until now.
Carefully and slowly, her hand dropped lightly onto Liza’s dark locks. Hermione felt her lips twitch into a small smile once more as she softly and gently ruffled the girl’s hair, a look of disbelief flickering across Liza’s face before the small girl’s lip started to tremble and her eyes became glossy.
"You're going to be a great witch Liza," Hermione said quietly, her hand lingered on the girl’s hair for a moment longer before she slowly pulled it away. "There isn’t a doubt in my mind – you’re going to accomplish great things."
"Hermione?" Bill's voice called out and Hermione glanced toward him and nodded. It was time to go, she needed to strap on her potion pack and then head outside with the others so they could prepare themselves to leave.
She shifted and turned to make her way back to the others only to freeze on spot as she felt two small arms wrap tightly around her waist before Liza’s face buried into her back. And shockingly, her body didn’t flinch in reaction – only a small shudder of surprise ran down her spine.
"You're coming back," the words were so quiet Hermione barely heard them as Liza squeezed her tight and then carefully stepped away. "Promise me that you'll do everything that you can to come back."
Hermione twisted to glance at the girl, her eyes were defiant once more but this time they held barely veiled desperation – as if Hermione’s gesture and small touch had cemented the seriousness of what was about to happen. As if Liza had realized at that moment that she’d truly mean it – that there truly was a possibility of failure where they may not return.
"I promise," Hermione nodded firmly, then turned and made her way across the kitchen toward Harry and the others who were saying their goodbyes. She accepted the handshake that Ron extended to her, gripping his pale hand tight and nodding once as he told her to be careful. She hugged Luna and Ava – noting the nervous look in Ava’s eye and the uncommon tension in Luna’s body. She held Fleur tightly as the witch hugged her and she smiled when Fleur pulled away only to lean back in and kiss her firmly on the cheek while telling her to be safe.
After the string of goodbyes, it hadn’t taken them long to gather the final supplies from the cottage and make their way outside onto the beach. The weather was holding up well, the sun was warm and bright, and it seemed entirely at odds with the feel of the cottage and what they were about to do. Hermione walked a few more feet out onto the sand next to Harry and Nasir as Griphook trailed behind them and Fleur kissed Bill at the door and told him to be careful. Hermione could already feel her shoulders starting to tense as she carefully fastened her potion pack to her left thigh and checked to make sure that her dagger was secure on her right. She’d already tethered her wand and stored it in the calf holster she was wearing, and she’d tethered her purse inside her jacket pocket so that the openings aligned. She’d be able to reach into her pocket and pull out anything that they needed from her purse.
She let out a quiet breath as her eyes flickered over her attire one final time and she fidgeted with the sleeve of her jacket. She’d taken a lot of care in selecting her outfit today, and she’d spent the final hour of their afternoon preparation charming the bejesus out of it to make sure that she was ready for anything.
Her worn dragon hide boots were firmly laced up to the top eyelet and doubled knotted with a heavy sticking charm, thus removing any chance of rolled ankles or laces getting caught during the climb. She’d covered them in a waterproofing charm and even charmed the bottoms and the toes to make them largely impenetrable – leaving them effectively similar to muggle safety boots. Her fuzzy purple socks hidden within had been charmed to keep her feet dry and warm but not too hot. Her dark blue jeans were fitted so that no material would snag on any jagged rocks, but she’d layered the pants in half a dozen charms – they would stretch as she moved but wouldn’t rip if she fell. It would take a significant amount of force to cut through the material at this point, and then she’d made them as waterproof as her boots.
Her thin light grey long sleeve sweater was charmed the same way – warm, but not too warm, waterproof and rip protected. The collar came up just high enough to hide her scars, but no so high as to make her feel like it was choking her. The back leather jacket was the same one Fleur had given her – but she’d added some additional spells as she had to the rest of her wardrobe to protect it and keep her body temperature better regulated. She was warm, comfortable, prepared for anything – and yet still so entirely not ready.
A small breeze from the water blew the few tendrils of hair that framed her face across her skin. She’d taken the time to properly wash her hair that morning, coating the thick locks in a copious amount of sleakeasy that had been left in her purse unused for well over a year. She didn’t do it because she gave a shit about her appearance or how she was going to look for the mission – no, that wasn’t the case at all.
She did it because like Harry, she did not want her hair to be a nuisance during the break-in. She didn’t want it falling in her face or causing her any issues. It’d grown long over the last seven months, nearly reaching her lower back and it was simply impractical. She’d debated hacking it off or asking Harry to cut it for her – truth be told she was still contemplating it and just might do it when they returned. But in the meantime, she’d forced it to behave, layering it in the haircare potion until it formed tighter and more controlled curls before she carefully and diligently plaited it into a long fishtail french braid down the back of her head. She’d added several sticking charms to keep it all in place and aside from the few shorter stragglers that hung by her face, it seemed to be entirely contained.
Her eyes flicked to Harry who was sporting a similar look – charmed dragon hide boots tightly laced, dark jeans protected by the same spell work as hers, a dark charcoal long sleeve shirt under his own black leather jacket and a matching dagger and potion pack strapped to each thigh. He looked just as rugged and dangerous as he had the day they’d gone to the den and when he caught her eye, he shifted towards her, his hand instinctively curling around her waist as she leaned into his side. Fleur had just finished adding a final charm to Bill’s jacket and was leaning against the door frame watching them. Hermione could see Ava, Liza, Ron and Luna lurking in the background behind her, nervously watching and waiting for them to depart.
“Ready?” Bill asked as he approached and stopped next to Griphook. The goblin made a face but said nothing as Hermione and Harry nodded. “Alright, we leave in fifteen – I’ll apparate us all there, as we’ve reviewed already you will all need to be disillusioned before we go because I’ll be landing in my usual place just a few feet from the back door. Once we land you need to stick close behind me – the door will only open for a short while and it closes automatically so we’ll need to move fast so you all get in. Once inside I’ll split to the left as per my usual routine and go card in – you will follow the hall and head to the right and Griphook will lead you to the access tunnel.”
Griphook nodded but once again said nothing so Bill continued.
“It’s unlikely that you’ll run into anyone – but it is possible. If that happens and they notice you, you will need to obliviate them,” Bill said evenly as he tucked his own potion pack into his robes pocket. “If anything happens – call and we will come get you. Is that clear?”
“Clear,” Harry said firmly from Hermione’s side even though she knew, and she knew Bill knew, that no one would be calling anyone if they ran into trouble. He’d probably just said it because the others could hear them.
“Alright,” Bill nodded to them, his eyes shifting around the group. “Then take a breath and get yourselves hidden. Hermione, as discussed – you’re behind me, hold my hand firmly until we land then grab the back of my robes to follow me inside. Harry, you’re behind her with Griphook and the cloak. Nasir – I’m not sure what you were planning, but I wasn’t joking about the door being fast. We won’t be able to get five bodies through it before it closes so I hope whatever you have planned somehow puts you somewhere in the middle between me and Harry.”
Hermione could see the anxious look in Bill’s eyes, like her, he seemed to want all the details of the plan sorted out before they were leaving and he had not been particularly pleased when Nasir had refused to comment on how he intended to get inside the bank with them. Bill had brought up his concern regarding the automated door already and that sneaking five bodies in would be virtually impossible – as it was getting three people and a goblin in was going to require rapid movement and coordination. But Nasir had simply stated that it wouldn’t be an issue and that he’d meet them inside the bank without providing any additional details.
Even now with Bill looking at him anxiously as Harry left her side to kneel next to Griphook Nasir simply stared at the redhead – so Bill, begrudgingly, looked away and shifted toward Harry. The second his back was turned Nasir’s lip twitched slightly and he shifted closer to Hermione, leaning his head down toward her and dropping his voice to a low whisper.
“About that favour,” Nasir said quietly as Bill’s attention remained on Harry, the redhead was helping the goblin onto Harry’s back and making sure he was secure. “Would you be so kind as to allow me passage on your person?”
“Passage on my person,” Hermione repeated, not sure if she should laugh and be amused at the wording of the request or if she should be concerned about what that might entail. She tilted her head to look up at the man beside her, his dark eyes were glinting with what appeared to be amusement. “Please tell me your animagus form isn’t a tick or something that burrows.”
To her surprise, Nasir smiled at her joke. “I said on not in, Hermione. I would like to request a ride on your shoulder if that would be agreeable with you.”
“Alright,” Hermione nodded, the knot in her stomach now twisting with not only anxiety and stress for the mission but nervous excitement. She was about to find out Nasir’s animagus form. She’d been pondering it in the recesses of her mind since they last spoke about it and she couldn’t wait to see if one of her many guesses was correct. “You can ride on my shoulder.”
She glanced toward Bill and Harry who were currently double-checking the tethers on Griphook and getting the cloak out to cover them both since the goblin could not be fully disillusioned – they’d tried it, but he always seemed to glimmer a bit while under the spell and it was much too noticeable.
“You’ve already masked us right now, haven’t you?” Hermione said quietly as she met Nasir’s eyes once more. “So they don’t see you transform.”
“Obviously,” Nasir said evenly though the small smile stayed on his lips as he took a step back from her to create some space. “And my second request is that you keep this to yourself, Hermione – do I have your word?”
“Of course,” Hermione nodded seriously as she felt her chest start to tighten once more. Nasir was choosing to trust her with information that he clearly wanted to keep secret – this was a big deal. “You have my word.”
“Good,” Nasir said firmly.
He stared at her for a moment longer, Hermione watching him unblinkingly, afraid that she might miss it as she held her breath and then finally – his form shifted. His body almost seemed to ripple, like it was slowly warping in space and time before it suddenly and seamlessly twisted and shrunk into a small black bat. He fluttered soundlessly before her in two small loops before he darted towards her body and landed perfectly and nearly weightless on her shoulder.
She could feel him shifting in closer to her neck, his tiny sharp claws gripping to the hemline of her shirt and lightly scratching against her skin – no doubt to hold him in place as they apparated – before he settled in just inside the collar of her jacket on her shoulder.
Her face split into a wide grin as she felt the warmth of his tiny and probably now invisible body against her neck. The change had been so quick and he’d moved so fast that she’d not gotten the chance to really look at him – she had no idea what type of bat he was or exactly how large. But in an odd way, it was borderline adorable. She had to bite back a small laugh as she thought about how one of the most dangerous and deadly wizard’s she’d ever met was currently hitching a ride on her shoulder, nestled into her neck for safety as a tiny innocent little bat. Bat had indeed been on her list of possible animagus forms for Nasir and maybe in the future, if she was lucky, he would let her see it again and give her the chance to look at him properly. Maybe he’d even teach her how to become one.
But that was a thought for another time.
Letting out a breath she shook her head and forced her mind to refocus – checking out Nasir’s animagus form would have to wait and would be a bizarre sort of reward for not dying in the war. Right now though she needed to focus on the mission – so she turned back to look at Bill who had just finished covering Harry with his invisibility cloak and adding sticking charms so that it would not fall off during the apparition.
“Ready Hermione?” Bill looked up to her again, his face clouding in brief confusion and darting across the beach, no doubt looking for the tall dark man that had been there seconds ago. “Where is Nasir?”
“He’ll meet us there,” Hermione said quickly, schooling her face back into its normal impassive and serious look. She winked at Harry when she saw him smile and then she quickly made her way across the short distance towards them and prepared to apparate to Diagon Alley.
-x-x-
They landed with a faint pop in a small cobblestone alley behind the bank. Harry’s hand instinctively tightened on Hermione’s as all of his internal alarm bells and anxiety fired at once in a rampant burst of panic. It was the first time that they’d been out and about in public since Birmingham and it was the first time that they’d been to Diagon Alley in nearly a year. And despite the fact that he knew they were undetectable, invisible, and in a quiet alley – he still fucking hated it.
He could feel the uncomfortable bristle physically run through Hermione’s body as the onslaught of stressful vitals followed – her heart was thumping quickly in his head and he knew that her breath was shallow, nervous and tight. She clung to Bill before her, squeezing Harry’s hand like death as they immediately started to shift closer while the tall redhead started to open the automatic employee door. They were lucky that Bill typically arrived early for his shifts so there were no other employees waiting to get inside and nothing about his arrival would be considered suspicious. Regardless of this the sooner they could get inside the better – but even then, Harry knew it wouldn’t be much safer than being outside in the open.
His eyes watched the entrance to the alley, if this had been two years ago, he would have seen streams of witches and wizards shifting across the opening as they happily did their shopping, chatted freely and went to meet friends for coffee at the local cafes. But as it was, with the war, he only saw a small handful of people moving quickly and nervously through the street before them. Still, even that was enough to set his teeth on edge. He’d almost forgotten just how uncomfortable he was with people and with being out in public.
Almost.
The tension in his body was reactive, familiar – reminiscent of their wandering tent days in the cold. The defensive, tight and paranoid reaction was ingrained into his body now, like an invisible scar – and he knew that the damage was done. Permanently. Assuming they won the war, he knew he’d never ever be comfortable in crowds again, he would never be able to walk carefree down the streets of Diagon Alley on the way to meet friends while casually shopping.
Not that he’d get the chance to anyway.
The problem was hardly a problem at all given what he knew was coming.
He shifted closer behind Hermione as the automatic door began to open once Bill had completed a careful set of taps against the surface, muttered a word and cast a small identification spell.
He could feel Griphook sitting on his back – just as tense and nervous as the rest of them. The goblin had made his doubts about the mission obvious and he seemed to be pretty sure that they would fail – but thankfully, he’d not said anything too depressing while they’d been finishing preparing earlier that afternoon at the cottage. He’d not even made a fuss when Harry cast a feather light charm on his small body.
Harry was able to carry the goblin without it easily since he did not weight much – but it seemed short-sighted and stupid to waste energy unnecessarily. He had 600 feet of wall to descend, a 200 yard sprint ahead of him and Merlin only knew what other challenges waiting inside Gringotts. He had no interest in burning energy for no reason – so even if the goblin had complained he would have cast the charm anyway.
Yet despite the creature’s pessimistic viewpoint Harry actually felt prepared. All and all, despite the dangerousness of this mission, he felt like they had done literally everything that they could have done to prepare. The bank was at its highest vulnerability today and they had a team of competent people – there was simply nothing else to do but to ‘do it’.
His eyes shifted back to where he knew Hermione was and he prepared to quickly move forward as the automatic door swung fully open. So far he’d not caught a glimpse of Nasir since the man had mysteriously disappeared from the beach while he’d been fussing with Griphook. That was really the only other unknown on this mission and it unsettled Bill deeply. But Harry knew Hermione better than the back of his own hand – better than anyone else in the world, and he’d recognized the hint of a smile on her lips and the excited flutter of her heart before Bill had asked where the tall man had gone.
And that was all the reassurance that he needed.
He knew that Hermione knew something. He knew that she likely knew exactly where the man was and that Nasir was somewhere close by– but there wasn’t time to ask before departing and frankly, it didn’t really matter at this point.
Because he trusted her.
And he trusted Nasir.
Foolish as some may call him to do so the truth of the matter was simple – he trusted the man and he couldn’t even fully explain why. But he’d known the tall man long enough to understand that he only shared information when and if he wanted to and he only did something if he wanted to. He would tell Harry about how he got into Gringotts later if he felt compelled to share the information and if he didn’t – that was fine. Because regardless of how the man disappeared and met them inside Harry knew that he would meet them inside and that was what mattered.
After everything that the man had done for them, everything that he’d taught them, everything that he’d shown them, and after what he’d done for Harry on Wednesday night – Harry didn’t have a single doubt in his mind.
Nasir would protect Hermione.
He would hold up his end of the agreement until the end, and he would – if he could – help Harry too. There was just less the man could do for Harry at this point given the fact that he was a Horcrux that could not be unmade. Nasir would support them from his unseen location, and he would appear when they needed him and not a second sooner. There was no need for him to worry – at least not about that aspect of the mission, there were plenty of other things that needed his attention at this time and warranted his concern. Right now he needed to focus.
Because it was time to move.
Bill quickly stepped forward, Hermione evidently right on his heels because Harry felt her pull his hand hard as they made to rapidly dart inside the door. Bill hadn’t been lying – it really didn’t stay open for long. As soon as it opened it seemed to already be closing – and his chest was practically bumping into Hermione’s back as they darted through the closing space.
He felt his jaw tighten stiffly as the large steel door began to swing shut – threatening to lock him outside. Hermione must have given Bill a push because the wizard somehow managed to double his pace while keeping his cool and making it look like he wasn’t rushing. The gap was closing, there was under two feet left as Harry started to slide through it.
He felt Griphook’s nails dig into his shoulder hard as his hand clamped Hermione’s. He held his breath, shifting and twisting awkwardly to make sure they didn’t touch anything as he somehow managed to slip through the narrow space between the heavily reinforced frame and rapidly closing door. He’d only just leaned forward to pull Griphook out of the way as it clanged shut with a heavy bang behind him.
He had to fight against his urge to let out a deep sigh of relief as he heard Griphook mutter something unintelligible under their silencing spell. It sounded an awful lot like a string of curse words followed by a ‘cut it close didn’t you’ – but Harry ignored it as his eyes flicked around the small backroom they were in and he tried to blink them into focus in the dull light.
The small entry room opened into the wide L-shaped hallway that filled the space behind the main customer banking area and ran along the back two-thirds of Gringotts. There was a gold door at the end of the short hall that stretched before them and it led to another small back room of the bank which then opened to the main banking area. Two black doors on the left led to the employee break room and lockers respectively – he could hear the dull mutter of chatter in the farthest rooms. There were likely a few employees in there having a quick dinner break.
Shelves filled with random odds and ends covered the wall to the right, stretching along the hall just as Bill had described – then the hall jutted to the right into a long stretch of wide hallway which contained doors on both sides to several offices, other storage rooms and small research labs. Bill had sketched out the layout of the bank for them and the smallest locked room, the seventh door on the right down the long hall, was where they were headed.
For it contained the old but not entirely forgotten entrance to maintenance tunnels
His body tensed once more as Hermione squeezed his hand twice – indicating that she’d dropped her hold on Bill and they were about to proceed. He quickly changed his position, moving to her right, hand still gripping hers tightly as both of them started silently making their way down the short empty hall as Bill calmly made his way to the nearest black door on the left. Harry gave him a look as he passed by, taking in the relaxed and indifferent expression on the man’s face and he could not help but be impressed.
Not only had Bill just successfully gotten them into Gringotts unnoticed – he was entirely in control of his body and was about to go in to complete a shift as if nothing had happened. He was so much like his father – a good man and far stronger and far more capable than most gave him credit for. He’d have to try and remember to tell him that someday – that his actions and assistance in this war were not only invaluable to their efforts to win – but that he’d also become a reliable ally. More than that.
He’d become their friend.
Harry let out a low breath and buried the thought deep as he and Hermione quickly moved past the man along the short hall before stopping at the corner and pressing themselves against the wall. Harry waited – knowing that Hermione was peering around the corner and checking to make sure the way was clear before they darted around the edge. The last thing they wanted was to rush right into someone unexpected.
‘Clear’
The concise word appeared in his head like a whisper and then they were on the move again. His heart pounded calm but hard in his chest as they slowly shifted around the corner and carefully made their way down the long hall. Each time they passed a door Harry felt Hermione’s grip tighten on his hand – as if she was expecting someone to burst out and catch them. But as each one passed the silence of the building only seemed to grow more heavy and nothing happened. In less than five minutes they were standing before the seventh door, Hermione facing the hall and keeping watch as Harry knelt to the ground so Griphook could unlock it.
His heart nearly jumped in his throat as a door burst open and the sound of voices rang out on his left from the far end of the hall and they all froze. Griphook’s finger still touching the golden handle as two goblins walked out of the large door three down from them.
“Have you finished your section?” came the low gravely voice of a taller goblin.
“No – it is nearly done but what with the interruption we had this morning I was delayed,” the shorter goblin replied as his face grew tense. “Their presence is causing us issue Nagnok, we cannot keep–“
“Watch your mouth, Ragnok,” the tall goblin’s harsh whisper cut through the air as he froze on spot and looked around them warily. “This building may be still largely under our control but they have access to nearly everything.”
“And that is exactly the problem,” the shorter goblin named Ragnok replied in a tense and almost angry whisper. “Since when have goblins made it a habit to allow wizards the right to roam these halls and influence our operations. Vannuk has yet to do something about it and it is only a matter of time before things get worse.”
“And what is it that you propose he does,” Nagnok said darkly, his beady eyes glaring at the shorter goblin. “Do you forget what happened the last time our species rebelled? At least this time things have not gotten worse and we haven’t been stripped of our standing – and if anything, we are turning a higher profit and better securing our future.”
A strange sound came from Ragnok’s throat like a scoff as his eyes narrowed at the taller goblin.
“If you think it will remain as such then you are more foolish than I thought,” Ragnok said quietly and the tension in the hall seemed to double. “Things will get worse – don’t be blinded by the short-term rewards or you’ll miss the bigger picture. They don’t need us Nagnok – and it’s only a matter of time until they figure that out.”
“You’ve spent too much time with that wizard friend of yours,” Nagnok said coldly, the distaste evident in his voice. “You’re a disgrace to goblins – you hardly even behave as such. If you think we are at such a great risk, then why don’t you do something? Why don’t you speak to Vannuk?”
Silence rang through the hall as Harry remained still and unmoving, his eyes watching the exchange as Hermione continued to grip him tightly. He could feel the tension radiating from Griphook along his spine as Ragnok glared at the taller goblin but said nothing in reply.
“I thought so,” Nagnok said coldly, his beady little eyes filled with disgust and irritation. “I suggest you focus on your report instead of raising concerns that need not be dwelled upon. Otherwise, the keepers will be the least of your concerns.”
With that Nagnok turned away from Ragnok and began moving toward them once more. Harry felt Hermione shifted closer to his side against the wall – both of them holding their breath as the goblin walked past them toward the corner they’d just come from. Ragnok stood fixed in place, an odd look on his face as he glared after the other goblin, his hands balled tight at his sides. For a brief second, Harry worried he might not move from his place but then, slowly, Ragnok shifted and followed the same route as the goblin before him. His jaw was clenched tight as he passed, his body stiff and angry as he silently made his way by them, his body merely inches away from grazing them as he swept past and then finally turned the corner.
They didn’t move until they heard the door to what was probably the break room open and shut for a second time as the hall went silent once more. Then, without delaying another second further – Griphook finished unlocking the door and they slipped inside the tiny storage room. Harry felt Hermione cast several silencing charms on the room as he cast a round of detection spells – but they all came up blank. There were no wards or alarms in this room, no traps or triggers that would set off an alarm to alert the bank of their presence. So Harry let out a deep sigh and dropped to his knees once more to let Griphook off his back.
“Who is Vannuk?” Hermione’s voice rang out as she flickered into view. She kept her eyes on the door, her wand pointed at it as she asked the question to Griphook.
“He is the Gringotts head goblin,” Griphook said quietly as Harry released the final tether and he stepped away from the wizard’s back. “He runs the operations here.”
“And the keepers?” Harry asked as he joined Hermione in cautiously watching the door.
Both Bill and Griphook had reassured them that no one would come into this room, but he didn’t want to take any chances – especially since they’d not shielded themselves. Despite all the practice they’d done there were still only so many times that they could effectively cast their shields in a day – and they’d wanted to conserve those for descending the cliff and for their escape after Griphook opened the vault.
Harry removed his own disillusionment, carefully folded up the cloak and pocketed it. He would need to pull it out again once they got through the maintenance tunnel to cover them for the cliff descent. But until then he didn’t need it – Griphook had made it clear that the maintenance tunnel was very small and narrow and there was no way that Harry would be able to carry him through it. The next stretch of their journey would be completed on foot – nearly 5 kilometers of small dark underground passageways that weaved and turned and slowly descended into the depths of Gringotts.
They’d estimated that it would take them around an hour to navigate assuming that they did not run into any issues. And this would likely be their last chance to stretch and breath fresh air until they came out the other side.
“The keepers are the wizards that the Dark Lord has assigned to the bank to monitor the exchanges and keep an eye on us goblins,” Griphook said darkly as he made his way around a tall shelf toward the back corner of the room. Harry and Hermione followed him but continued to keep their eyes on the door. “As you can see – their involvement has been received with mixed opinions.”
“So there is a possibility that some of the goblins here may be interested in helping us,” Hermione said slowly, her eyes flicking to Griphook. “Ragnok seemed to –“
“Ragnok is an outlier,” Griphook cut her off with a tight look as he carefully moved a box out of the way. “He has spent a lot of time working with Bill over the years and that has greatly influenced his personality. There are times Miss Granger where I wish that more of us were like him – then there are other times where I wish he was more like Nagnok. The truth is, it is not in a goblin’s nature to care about the wellbeing of other species or this war in general. That said – in this case, Ragnok is correct. The Dark Lord does not need us and I fear that he will indeed be rid of us in the future – or as you had said the day that you requested my help, he will, at the very least, make our lives worse than they are now. But first, he will exploit us and use us until we are no longer valuable because that is what the Dark Lord does – and he will do that by appealing to our nature. There is a reason why Vannuk has not done anything about the keepers’ presence at Gringotts and that reason is quite simple.”
“What is it?” Hermione asked him as Griphook began tracing his finger along the outline of a small access panel. His touch froze against the surface of the cold wall.
“Greed, Miss Granger,” he said simply, his voice almost hollow. “Greed and an incessant need to protect oneself and their wealth. It is a trait of ours that is often exploited and condemned. You wizards treat us like we are less than you for many reasons – some of which center around you viewing us as ‘cold’ or ‘calculating’ or ‘gluttonous’. But did any of you ever stop to wonder where those traits came from? Have you ever tried to understand our species or truly looked at our history?
“Sure we are cruel by nature, we are calculating, we are greedy and we are cold. But we are also resourceful, clever and cunning. We possess skills in metalwork that you could never dream of having and we are determined and level-headed,” Griphook dragged his finger down the last stretch of wall and a hollow empty click sounded as the access panel slid to the left and revealed a black tunnel. “But since the 1600s wizards have stolen from us, used us, told us they would pay for objects they’d commissioned only to show up and take them and state that it was owed to them. They taxed our lands, they took our resources and they culled our numbers for centuries all while stripping us of our rights and telling us that we were a lesser species – that we were nothing. That we deserved nothing.”
He looked at Hermione hard as he lowered his hand to his side.
“So greedy as we might be and short-sighted as our goals may appear to you – can you really blame them?” Griphook said darkly as his beady eyes flicked between the pair of them. “They’ve known nothing else for centuries and those traits have been carved into them through time like a cliffside marred by the ocean. I understand we are different by nature, that we will never see eye to eye and my fellow goblins will likely never be wholeheartedly compassionate creatures. But it didn’t have to be this way – it could have been different.”
With that Griphook turned toward the tunnel and made his way inside the darkness. Harry glanced to Hermione, taking in the tight expression on her face as Griphook’s words no doubt circled her mind like a vortex.
“You go next, I’ll take the rear,” Harry said quietly, shaking her from her thoughts.
“Right,” she nodded and conjured a floating blue flame from her fingers, sending it into the tunnel and illuminating Griphook who stood inside just a few feet waiting for them. “Let’s go.”
Harry waited for her to crouch and enter the tunnel. It was even smaller than Griphook had described. At only about four and a half feet tall and barely three feet across it was exceptionally small for a three-person group to travel through. He felt a nervous prickle run down his spine at the thought of navigating their way nearly 400 feet down underground through 5 kilometers of twisting narrow tunnels. It was a good thing he wasn’t claustrophobic and was used to spending time in small places, a trait he no doubt picked up from his cupboard days – but even then, he didn’t like it.
Pushing away the nervousness Harry dropped to his knees and crawled into the tunnel behind Hermione, the access panel sliding closed behind him and leaving them in tense silence.
“This way,” Griphook turned and began making his way down the dark narrow path, having no issues navigating the space due to his short height.
Harry followed Hermione’s lead – not even bothering with trying to awkwardly crouch or waddle his way along the path and instead deciding to outright crawl on his hands and knees behind her like she was. The rock was rough and cold beneath his hands and it made him glad that they’d taken the time to charm their clothes that morning, otherwise by the time they reached the end of the tunnel their pants would have been worn through and they’d be freezing cold.
They moved in silence for the first twenty minutes, nothing but the glow of blue light guiding their way as the flames bobbed before Griphook and the tunnel continued straight at a slow decline. It wasn’t until they reached a small fork that they spoke and Griphook pointed them to the left. The route to the right had apparently collapsed over two hundred years ago and so they were taking the alternate tunnel that had been dug around it.
Several times along the way the twisting tunnel narrowed only to grow wider and narrow once more. It was almost like they’d dug out sections to allow for goblins to pass one another or to give space for them to stop and chat in small groups. Countless smaller tunnels split off their main branch, going to different levels of the bank and other locations that Griphook refused to comment on and the deeper it went the darker it seemed to get.
Nearly forty minutes into their journey Griphook stopped them and indicated that they’d reached the point where the tunnels grew unsafe. And when Hermione asked if he meant structurally or because of dangerous creatures Griphook had stared at her and simply answered ‘Yes’ before continuing.
“I recommend you light the rear,” Griphook said almost nervously as his beady eyes flicked to Harry, peering around Hermione’s crouched frame. Harry had silently been casting warming charms over his hands and watching the small goblin from over Hermione’s shoulder as he rolled and rubbed his sore wrists. “The remainder of this tunnel has not been used in decades – and I have no idea what might be down here.”
“Alright,” Harry nodded and he quickly conjured a blue flame to float along behind him, locking the three of them in a dull blue glow. Some of the tension that had faded from Hermione’s body during their mundane crawl had visibly returned at Griphook’s words and Harry felt his own body tense in anticipation. Yet despite this, their hearts continued to beat calm and steady through the bond. “We should tether ourselves together then. The last thing we need is someone getting dragged off or attacked.”
“Good idea,” Hermione nodded before him and he felt the familiar touch of her tether latching through his chest.
With the tethers set they took a short moment to roll their shoulders and try to stretch in the small space – but there was only so much one could do in a four-foot tall, two and a half foot wide tunnel. It was no wonder Nasir had said he’d meet them inside, Harry couldn’t imagine the tall strong man crawling through this narrow network. With their renewed warming charms on their hands, they nodded to Griphook and began the journey once more.
“We’re about halfway so the decline is going to get steeper as well,” he called over his shoulder as he set off once more. “So watch yourselves.”
The decline was steeper.
Harry could feel the awkward strain on his wrists increase sharply as the ground tilted forward just a few feet after they’d started moving once more. It had taken them forty-five minutes to reach the halfway point which meant that they were already behind schedule due to their crawling. It was a slower process than they’d anticipated, and it meant that they had another forty or so minutes stuck in this tunnel until they’d be able to stand. Harry let out a quiet breath and set his jaw tight.
If he never went through another tunnel in his life after this it would be too soon.
And if he got the chance after this was over, he was going to ask Nasir how the hell he was able to get inside and avoid this crawl. Because whatever method he used Harry wanted to learn it – it was clearly far superior to crawling around on the cold hard ground for an hour and a half.
They continued for another twenty minutes in painful slow silence – even with the silencing charm encasing them and the muffliato dampening their feet their movements still felt too loud. The air was too cold, too tense, too uneasy and too dark – it almost felt wrong to talk outwardly and so only the sound of their breathing filled the small tight space.
The path continued to twist and turn, the air grew colder still, heavier – as if it hadn’t been disturbed or moved by something living in years. And with each slow shift forward Harry felt his doubt and dread start to grow. He could see the faint light of glow bugs on the walls ahead of them and the ominous sound of faint scratching echoing through the tunnels. He tried not to think about what might be making the noise – fighting to keep his strange panic at bay and his eyes wide as he silently hoped it wasn’t plague rats or mortis bats.
Or something worse.
They stopped again when they reached a small alcove, taking a break to roll their sore wrists once more as Griphook’s beady eyes stared into the darkness before them – his body tense as he wiped the thin sheen of sweat from his brow. This was the most physical activity he’d done since his injury – and while he wasn’t complaining his faint limp was becoming evident.
“You holding up okay Griphook?” Harry asked him quietly as Hermione cast another warming charm on the goblin and then her own hands. A bristle of being watched trembled down his spine and Harry stiffened again, the doubts that had been festering in my mind like an unpleasant taste in his mouth. He glanced over his shoulder into the faint blue glow behind him – but there was nothing.
Just like the last four times he’d checked while they’d been slowly crawling through the now barely two foot wide tunnel.
Just black and rock and dirt.
Nothing.
“I’m alright,” Griphook nodded tightly, his eyes avoiding theirs. “Just a bit stiff.”
“Would you like a numbing charm for your leg?” Hermione asked quietly as she crouched low on her elbows before him to give her wrists a break. “I can numb it from the knee down.”
“It’s really not that bad, Miss Granger that won’t be necessary,” Griphook said quietly, his distaste toward accepting her help clear.
“And it’s really not a big deal to cast it,” Hermione replied calmly, her voice level but firm. “We still have more tunnel to go – then we have to descend the cliff and cross the cavern base. Then we have to come back. I might not have time to cast it later if things go badly.”
“Fine,” Griphook said tightly as he glared at her. “If it will make you feel better.”
Hermione simply nodded, ignoring his hostility and carefully casting the numbing charm on Griphook’s leg. The goblin had never liked accepting favours from wizards and he didn’t like having spells cast on him either. But the look of relief on his face after Hermione had placed the temporary numbing charm was evident.
‘So stubborn’ the thought floated into Harry’s mind and he fought back a smile.
“Alright let’s go – we still have several more feet of tunnel until the ledge,” Griphook turned and started to make his way into the dark once more. “But if we keep a steady pace it won’t take too long.”
Hermione let out a quiet sigh twisting awkwardly to give Harry a look and reassuring squeeze on the arm before she leaned forward once more and began her steady crawl after the goblin.
But Harry hesitated to follow.
Her small comment through the bond had been amusing, but the tiny relief he’d felt at her words had faded almost instantly. He couldn’t shake the feeling of unease that clouded his mind. It felt unnatural as if it was coming from nowhere. He grit his teeth tight as he forced his body to slowly crawl forward once more.
His mind felt littered with despair – and yet he couldn’t seem to rationalize it. Their journey thus far had been successful, everything was going to plan, and he was comfortable and accepting of the risks involved. He had been since they started planning this mission.
So why did he feel so desperate?
Why was the sinking feeling growing exponentially in his chest with each step forward he took.
His movements seemed to involuntarily slow as another shiver ran down his spine and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He paused, glancing over his shoulder once more into the faint blue light and scanning them across the dull tunnel. But there was nothing – nothing but rock.
He frowned.
It didn’t make any sense. He cast a silent collection of detection spells that all came back negative – there were no people trailing them. There was no other human within hundreds of feet of them and the only creature that showed up on his radar was the glow bugs. The tunnels were silent and unmoving and yet his nagging feeling grew. He forced his body to turn back to face the front, watching as Hermione grew further away until he felt the tug of her tether across his chest and she froze.
“Harry?” Hermione’s quiet voice cut through the space between them as she stiffly turned around to look at him. It wasn’t an easy feat given the tunnel restrictions and her body looked awkward and strained. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing – I just,” Harry hesitated unsure of how to describe his unsurety. “I thought I felt something, so I was just checking – but there’s no one there. I’m right behind you.”
“Alright,” she nodded and made to turn back around only for her eyes to go wide and her mouth to open as her hand shot forward. “Harry!”
Harry heard the noise a fraction of a second before he felt the sting of something sharp on his shoulder and neck. A deeply heavy weight hit his back, knocking him forward onto his stomach as something viciously tried to devour him.
“What the – fuck!” Harry cursed as he made to slice whatever the thing was – but Hermione’s voice stopped him as she rapidly shifted toward him.
“Don’t move!” her hand was already pointed at his shoulder and Harry froze at her voice as a bright red stunner lit up the tunnel and the heavy weight rolled from his back with a thump. Pulling himself forward toward her he awkwardly twisted in the tight space and took in the sight of an odd-looking rock near his feet.
“What the fuck is that thing?” Harry asked as he kicked the rock with his foot, and it rolled to reveal a small body.
“A pogrebin,” Hermione said quietly as she crawled up behind him. He felt her hands on his shoulder and heard her open her thigh pouch. “They stalk their victims, filling them with dread and despair then devour them when they collapse on their knees to cry. It must be desperately starving to attack you in a group, it’s probably been trailing you for a while – but thankfully they’re not poisonous and they’re easy enough to defeat. I’d have cast something a little more permanent than a stunner if your shield was on but I didn’t want to risk it.”
“Thanks for that,” Harry sighed as he kicked the thing farther back up the tunnel away from them. He could feel the odd and uneasy feelings of dread leave his body like it had been washed away. “I knew something was trailing us – but I just couldn’t see it. It didn’t show up on any of my detection spells and I didn’t see it. The damn thing blended into the rocks.”
“They don’t show up on detection spells,” Hermione said quietly as Harry felt the bitter sting of dittany cover the small wounds on his shoulder and neck. Green smoke began to billow softly as Hermione recapped the vial and placed it back in her pouch. “That’s how they get you. There are probably more in these tunnels – and while they’re not overly dangerous I don’t fancy the idea of dealing with a swarm of them. Or meeting up with whatever else they might have attracted from the noise and smell of blood. There – you’re good, their bite isn’t all that bad. They’re mostly dangerous because of their weight and to muggles who can’t defend themselves. It only grazed you, the punctures weren’t deep, but we should get out of here.”
“Definitely,” Harry nodded as the clicking sound he’d been hearing behind them grew louder. He tethered the small creature’s stunned body to the rocky floor of the tunnel behind them – it was a cruel and terrible tactic, but it might serve as a distraction for whatever other creatures might now be trailing them in the tunnel. “Put your shield on. And Griphook – we need to move a bit faster. This tunnel is tainted with the scent of blood now and that clicking sound is growing – and I don’t want to find out what’s making it.”
The goblin who had been lingering close behind Hermione and watching the scene unfold nodded tightly. They rapidly cast their shields and then awkwardly twisted around in the small space once more to continue the journey down the tunnel at a much faster pace. As they crawled Harry felt the length of their tethers shorten, Hermione keeping them closer together as they carefully and quickly navigated the narrow dark steeply declining passage. They made it another five minutes down the tunnel before Harry heard the unmistakable sound of crunching echoing behind them, the clicking and clattering of bodies became audible and a shudder ran down his spine.
“Faster,” he said sharply, his hands practically scraping across the surface of the stone as Griphook all but ran before them and Hermione’s heart rate spiked.
Something rattled, almost like a hissing intake of air behind them as the tunnel declined further. He could hear the echo of hard legs scuttling across the rock. His knees ached in pain, his back and shoulders practically on fire as they took the next left and the tunnel started to narrow. He felt his hair brush against the ceiling as Griphook was forced to drop to his knees before them – carrying on at a rapid crawl. There was a louder crunch, then the unmistakable sound of a blast and Harry suddenly and immediately knew what was coming.
“Fucking no way,” the words left his mouth like a bitter whisper as the blue flame before them disappeared from sight as it slid through a small hole ten feet before the goblin.
“What?! What is it?” the panic in Hermione’s voice was evident as she rushed forward toward the small opening, Griphook was visibly panting as he started to clamber through the hole. “Can you see it?”
“I don’t need to see it,” Harry said tightly as the sound rushed closer and Griphook cleared the hole. The tunnel was too narrow to turn around now, too low and too tight for battle. He could try to throw a spell behind them but the best option was to clear the hole and attack from the other side. “You remember fourth year?”
“You can’t be serious,” Hermione breathed as she ducked low and used defodio to carve away a chunk of the stone to make the opening larger. She’d only just finished enlarging it when the clicking stopped – a beat of silence echoing through the tunnel before a blast shook the rock and the sound of scurrying hard legs rushed down the tunnel behind them.
“Go now – now!” Harry drove her forward, pushing her legs to help shove her through the hole and following immediately afterward as Hermione shortened the tether to rapidly pull him through.
He’d barely managed to pull his feet from the opening before the smell of rotting fish filled the air and a large black stinger attacked the spot they’d once been. A slew of spells filled the space as Hermione launched a collection of attacks at the Blast-Ended-Skrewt that was trying to weasel through the hole. Rolling to the side as Hermione released his tether Harry sent a round of silent sectumsepmras through the hole, the sound of ripping and gushing filled the small tunnel as pieces of skrewt landed on the hard rocky surface and coated the tunnel with blood. But as legs and stingers and pieces of bodies collected in the tunnel the sound of more scuttling filled the space.
“Shit there’s a whole bloody slew of them – I’m going to seal the hole and close them in! They’re going to attract something else,” Hermione said tightly as she pulled out her wand and pointed it to the rock beside the tunnel while Harry manned the hole and prevented the creatures from getting through.
She carved out a section of rock, quickly lifting it and guiding it into place before the hole. Adding a collection of sticking charms as Harry tethered it and silenced it to block the sounds of the skrewts aggressively attacking and devouring each other from propagating any further. With one final silencing spell the space grew quiet once more and Harry let out a breath and felt his shoulders drop.
“If I ever see Hagrid again – remind me to ask him why he thought it was a good idea to breed these things in the first place,” Harry said hoarsely as he turned to look at Hermione. She shook her head in disbelief as she pushed a few loose curls from her face. A thin sheen of sweat covered her brow and her hands were dirty from the crawling.
“I will – so long as you remind me to ask him why the hell he gave them to Gringotts,” Hermione muttered before she finally turned around from the sealed off tunnel and shifted to look at their surroundings.
They were standing on a ledge, no bigger than the small storage room they’d first entered. It overlooked the huge cavern of Gringotts lower vaults and dropped sharply into what appeared to be a black and endless pit. With the few lights the goblins had installed to illuminate the space Harry could make out some of the cart tracks, he could hear the low rumble of the thief’s downfall to the left and could barely see the outline of the water as it reflected the light. The space was huge, empty and cold – exactly like what he remembered from all of his other visits except this time he was actually able to see it.
The goblin carts moved much to quickly to allow you a good view – but from this vantage point he could make out multiple other ledges on the far side that housed client vaults. He could see the odd glow bug here and there, the jagged walls and the uneven and dangerous ledges that littered the place and threatened to kill any patron not paying attention to their footing. It was light enough that the blue flame wasn’t needed, and he’d almost not noticed that Hermione had extinguished it.
“I guess it’s time to climb,” she said quietly as she cautiously peered over the edge of the cliff.
“And what about when we come back?” Griphook said tightly, his eyes still locked to the closed-off tunnel, his chest rising and falling in rapid short breaths. “You closed off the tunnel – how are you planning for us to leave now?”
“Well if I know Blast-Ended-Skrewts,” Harry said slowly as he shifted to stand next to Hermione and looked over the edge. “And I do – because Hagrid had us study them and care for them in fourth year – they’ll eat the remains of the dead, possibly kill each other a bit more, and then scuttle off to go find something else to eat or attack. Hopefully, by the time we get back up here, they will have cleaned up the mess and wandered off. If not – we will deal with it then, they’re dangerous but they’re not too hard to dispatch.”
“We’ll unseal the tunnel when we come back Griphook,” Hermione nodded to Harry’s words, her wide eyes rapidly taking in the view before them and committing it to memory. “It will slow us down a few seconds to have to reopen the tunnel but there isn’t much else to do. If we leave it open, they will follow us onto this ledge, other things could follow and it will draw attention to this area.”
Griphook’s lips pursed into a tight line but he didn’t say anything. Harry knew the goblin was probably just inwardly cursing them and assuming they wouldn’t even make it back at all.
“Alright,” Harry let out a breath as he stretched his sore arms and rolled his neck. It felt so incredibly good to stand. “Let’s get down this cliff then. It’s already after 7 pm and we still have a lot left to go.”
-x-x-
Hermione carefully recast her shield charm and then slowly began to lower herself once more. They’d been rappelling down the cliff face for several minutes so far and things had been going smoothly. With the two tether system in place, it was just a matter of carefully walking down the uneven surface as they extended their tethers to their maximum, anchoring into the wall securely with a third tether, removing the old two tethers and adding news ones before detaching the anchor and then repeating the process.
Harry kept a steady location approximately twenty feet above her, Griphook once again tightly fastened to his back and covered with the cloak as they silently and carefully made their way down the wall. Hermione scouted out the best route to rappel and then relayed him the directions through their bond. Overall, the process worked well.
Though it was likely more difficult for Harry who was carrying Griphook. She imagined that by the end of this Harry might have a collection of nail marks from the goblin gripping him like death out of fear. She didn’t need to worry about the same from Nasir’s small claws. He’d carefully clung to her collar and neck as she’d crawled through the tunnel, his small body unmoving and hardly noticeable as she shifted forward through the dark behind Griphook. But the second they’d made it out onto the ledge and safely sealed the tunnel she felt the tiny bat shift off her shoulder and flutter away into the darkness. Knowing Nasir, he was either at the bottom waiting for them or was flying around in circles just below them in case they fell. But either way, she suspected that she would not see him until they reached the bottom and so she carried on at her steady pace unconcerned about his whereabouts.
Two carts had passed by on the nearest set of rails – but both continued by, proving that their presence within Gringotts remained undetected and unnoticed.
If not for the fact that they were hunting a Horcrux, at risk of falling to their deaths and being caught and brought to a madman that would torture and kill them without a moment’s hesitation – Hermione would have actually considered the experience to be rather fun and educational. The motions were repetitive and almost calming. Each time she anchored in and prepared to set a new set of adjustable tethers she took a moment to look around and take in their surroundings because she knew that she would never get the chance to see Gringotts like this again. And frankly – the sight was incredible.
They’d built the vaults into a natural cavern, chipping away certain sections and leaving others in place. The cart rails were a maze, the lights placed in locations that would have certainly required aid from a witch or wizard and the faint sound of the waterfall was oddly soothing. With the blue flame gone her eyes had adjusted perfectly to the dark and she was able to see everything.
Each level of the bank had stops for the carts and each ledge was specifically cut so that if you fell off of it there was no way you would land on another. They’d designed it so that if you did fall – you fell the entire way down, all 1100 feet to the bottom if you were unlucky enough to misstep on the topmost ledge.
It was a sadistic design – but it was certainly effective.
Overall, the cliff face they were descending had been relatively easy to navigate – mostly.
At least it was until she reached a weak section about halfway down. She could feel her boots cracking the rock beneath her as she carefully made her way out onto the jagged ledge that jutted from the side of the wall. Peering over it there was nothing and she felt her stomach knot with anxiety as she realized that the wall must be heavily inset below the ledge. The goblins had likely not built any vaults here because the rock was weak and they knew it wouldn’t hold.
She let out a low frustrated sigh.
‘Hold’ Hermione sent the thought to Harry as she carefully tested the sturdiness of the ledge and tried to come up with a plan. She could carve it away to make a straight shot down the wall – but the rock would fall to the ground as she did so and make a ton of noise. And she didn’t trust that it would go unnoticed. But since she wasn’t able to vanish anything – she’d already tried it and found the magic ineffective – she couldn’t carve it away and remove the material. Which made sense given that they were in a bank – of course that spell would be ward restricted. The last thing the goblins wanted was for someone to break in and vanish someone else’s wealth.
But without being able to vanish the rock the best she could do was try to move the material she carved away and pile it on the ledge further back. Which, based on the unsteadiness of the ledge, the shift in weight might break the whole damn thing off.
“Fuck,” she muttered under her small silencing spell as she laid down on the cold rocky surface, shuffling to the edge and carefully peering over it and trying to see the wall below them. The tether that she’d fastened to the strong section of wall behind her tugged at her body, keeping her safe but restricting her just enough that she could not get a good view.
‘I’m tethered in and holding, what’s wrong?’ Harry’s response came like a whisper in her mind.
‘There is a ledge here, it extends about 32 feet – I can’t see the wall below. It must be inset,’ Hermione relayed as she bit her lip and stared into the black abyss. ‘Just trying to figure out how to get around it – give me a minute.’
Carefully retreating from the edge once more Hermione moved toward each side of the ledge and assessed the options. The edges were worse, the rock was so weak it threatened to crumble under a light breeze, and they appeared to drop off in a completely sheer drop with no sight of the wall below at all. And from the looks of things, that continued to the right and left indefinitely. They’d reached an odd lip of the cavern, one that jutted out and then rapidly retreated. Whether natural or not she wasn’t sure – but it wouldn’t surprise her if this had been purposely carved in order to prevent people from doing the very thing that they were doing.
They’d have to go over the lip, perhaps even crawl along the underside of it and they’d just have to hope that the rock held. There wasn’t any other viable option with her limited magic. Biting back her irritation and nervous anxiety Hermione tugged the right sleeve of her jacket and thin sweater up and sent a quick string of messages on the old white tag, mentally thanking her past self for taking the hour to extend the character count on the messaging capabilities the day before.
Hr-Nasir?
N-Yes
Hr-Ledge is inset, by how much?
There was a long pause and Hermione imagined the man fluttering about in the space below and assessing the ledge.
N-At least seventy-five feet
Hr-Fuck, my tether won’t reach
N-You will need to swing
Hr-The rock is weak
N-The middle appears most sturdy
N-Place your tether there
Hr-Alright
Hermione let out a heavy sigh and pushed the hair from her face.
Hr-Hopefully it doesn’t break
There was a pause, then her arm buzzed again.
N-It might
Another second passed.
N-But I’ll catch you if you fall
Hermione snorted and closed her eyes, this whole situation was absurd and she could not believe what she was about to do.
‘Did you get that Harry?’ she asked him through the bond.
‘Sure did,’ came the whispered reply in her mind. ‘I should have known – the descent was going far too quick and way to easily. I’ll wait until you say it is clear but Hermione – promise me you’ll be careful.’
‘I will,’ she told him quietly.
Hermione felt her arm buzz once more and she glanced down and couldn’t help but smile at the reply Harry sent to Nasir.
H-You’d better.
Rolling her sleeves back down Hermione approached the edge of the ledge once more and tethered herself to it. She could feel the anxiety building in her stomach like a violent knot as she detached her safety tether from the strong wall and dropped to her hands and knees – slowly crawling over the edge until she was hanging from her fingertips and then, she took a breath and let go.
Fear and panic flooded through her body as she hung there, her chest burning as she waited for the rock to snap and send her plummeting to her death.
But it didn’t happen.
She could hear the ledge groan under her tether but the rock didn’t shift and so she sucked in a gulp of cold air and slowly began to lower herself down. When she reached low enough that she could fully see the underside of the ledge she quickly attached a tether to the middle section of it as Nasir had instructed – ensuring it was safely fastened before she grit her teeth tight and removed the other tether. A fresh wave of panic and terror flooded her body, adrenaline racing as she swung out under the ledge, her tether acting like a pendulum as her body spun and twisted and she desperately tried to gain control.
She could see the inset wall rapidly approaching before her, she lowered her tether further as her body swung, and she sent out a tether to the inset wall – desperately hoping it would anchor.
It didn’t.
The rock broke when she pulled the new tether and suddenly her body was swinging backwards away from the wall she was trying to reach and back out into the empty space below the ledge once more. Her momentum carried her body as she kicked and attempted to right herself. She didn’t have enough control. Rapidly she cast another tether into the middle of the ledge above her, using it to help control her spin as she leaned into the returning swing and reached out toward the inset wall once more. Her fingers extended, her body stretched as far as she could push it, she leaned into the chaos of the movement and she sent out another tether, willing it to hold.
This one stuck, and her body jerked awkwardly and hard in the air as her swing came to an abrupt stop and she was left dangling between the two anchor points.
“Fucking hell,” Hermione whispered, her voice hoarse as she eyed the empty black below her. Her right hand was outstretched and tethered to the inset wall by her forearm, her hips were tethered to the ledge above leaving her horizontal in the air. She looked like she was trying to fly hundreds of feet above a rocky and instant death and her heart was beating so quick she could barely breathe.
‘Are you okay?’
The worry in Harry’s message was clear and she knew that he was restraining himself. He’d no doubt fully experienced the rush of her emotions, the panic, the turmoil and the fear. He was probably gritting his teeth and fighting against the urge to come help her and make sure she was alright.
‘For the most part’ she sent back, and she let out a panted breath and tried to calm her nerves. She’d never liked heights – not one bit. It was part of the reason why she hated flying and she’d been fighting back her fear since the minute they’d stepped out on the ledge. ‘Just in a bit of an interesting position. I’m almost at the wall. I’ll let you know when I’m there.’
Hermione forced her eyes away from the black beneath her to the inset wall. She needed to get to it, but no matter what she did she was in for a rough and painful ride. The second she removed her hip tethers she was going to drop and swing into the cavern wall – hard. But she couldn’t extend herself any further from the ledge and there really wasn’t a viable point to latch to above that was within reach. The underside of the ledge was recessed and concave, which made the weakness of the thing make more sense but it also meant she couldn’t reach it with her tethers. The middle section that Nasir had told her to anchor to was much thicker and lower than the rest of it.
“Shit,” she muttered, squeezing the final length from her hip tethers and tightening the length on the one to the wall so she was stretched taught. She’d have to just let them go and deal with the blow of landing against the wall. At least she had her shield so she wouldn’t be too physically damaged. She suspected it might still hurt though – you could feel pressure through the shield, and she would probably still get a decent bruise from the impact. Letting out a sigh she grit her teeth and attached a fourth tether from her arm to the inset wall just in case. “Here goes nothing.”
She released both hip tethers and immediately felt the drop in her stomach as her body plummeted through the air. The tug on her arm and shoulder was painful and jarring as the tethers on the inset wall caught her fall and she began to rapidly swing in toward the wall. She heard a crunch; her eyes went wide with panic as she rapidly shortened the length of her tethers but the first one failed and ripped from the weak surface.
She was still ten feet from the wall, her body swishing through the air like a rogue bludger when she heard another crunch and her body started to free-fall – her second tether had broken from the rock with a crack under her weight and movement. Panic flooded her body once more like a wave as she thrust both hands forward and desperately sent out a rapid string of tether after tether. But each one ripped from the rock as her body continued to drop uncontrolled until she felt a familiar one latch through her center and jerk her sharply into the wall.
She collided with something hard – but it definitely was not the cavern wall, because it had its arm wrapped around her waist and its chest was shifting each time it breathed. Blood racing, her body trembling – she blinked her eyes and looked up to see Nasir’s familiar glinting gaze.
“Told you I would catch you,” his deep voice vibrated between them as he carefully shifted, and she felt three more tethers latch to her body and tie her tight against the wall. “Now let’s get Harry down here before the ledge gives out completely.”
“Thank you,” Hermione breathed, the words a hoarse whisper as the adrenaline continued to tremble through her body. She added two of her own tethers to the wall, balancing her boots on the narrow lip that Nasir was standing on and forcing her heart to calm. She didn’t bother asking him how he could see her through her disillusionment and instead just felt grateful that he could as she focused on the next huge obstacle. “I’ll send Harry the instructions.”
Nasir nodded, his arm still firmly gripping her waist as his eyes darted back up to the ledge above them. “Tell him to add a feather light charm to his own body – it will help slow his swing and make the impact a little less rough.”
Hermione nodded and messaged Harry, sending him careful instructions on where to anchor and what to do. Telling him that she and Nasir were there to catch him and that he should add a feather light to his own body.
Then she waited.
Her heart beat nervously in her chest as she stood against the cold rock wall, tight to Nasir’s side as she watched the ledge nervously. She could feel Harry’s nervousness, his anxious hesitation as he started to make his way out onto the ledge and tether himself in. She felt her breath catch in her chest as he messaged that he was lowering himself over the edge and she found herself anxiously glancing at Nasir – who was silent and still and watching the ledge unblinkingly with dark intensity – his eyes tracking an object that she could not see.
And then her eyes darted back out to the ledge as she heard the familiar crack and groan of rock and her heart lodged in her throat as a few small pieces of rock fell from the underside of the ledge. Then faster than she’d ever seen him move Nasir outstretched his free hand as rock crumbled and broke from the wall above them from Harry’s failing tethers. He leaned forward, grabbing something invisible – then sharply tugged it back in towards the wall with a heavy thud.
“Harry?” Hermione’s voice was tight as she enlarged her silencing charm and leaned into Nasir to peer around his chest at the invisible mass he seemed to be holding tightly to his right side.
“Hey,” came the strained reply followed by a breathy exhale. She felt relief flood her body like a wave as she sunk into the cavern wall and let out a sigh. Oh thank god, she breathed as his voice sounded again. “As fun as that was – let’s add that to the list of things to never do again.”
Hermione snorted, barely catching what sounded to be an unimpressed and angry mutter from Griphook under the cloak.
“Agreed,” she breathed, relaxing slightly against the stone and Nasir’s arm. Her poor body was trembling with adrenaline, her muscles already weary and exhausted from the stress and rampant anxiety. “Let’s hope that’s the only ledge.”
“It is,” Nasir’s deep baritone rang between them and she glanced up at the man. “It’s a clear shot down after this – it shouldn’t take you long. But before you continue let me check your arm, Hermione – you may have dislocated it or torn the muscles.”
“Alright,” Hermione nodded and stood still as Nasir shifted again. Probably adding additional tethers to Harry and making sure he was secure before he carefully and nimbly turned on the tiny ledge to face her fully. She waited as he cast a diagnostic charm on her arm, his dark eyes glancing over it wordlessly before he cancelled it and pulled a small orange vial from his pocket.
“It’s not dislocated, but drink this,” Nasir handed her the vial. “You tore a few muscle fibers and you might as well heal it now.”
“Thanks,” Hermione nodded and uncorked the vial, downing the liquid without hesitation and returning the empty glass to him.
“How’s the wall below this?” Harry asked quietly and she heard him shifting against the rock.
“It’s relatively stable below this ledge,” Nasir said quietly once he had repocketed the empty vial. “Just keep at it slow and cautious like before and you should be fine. I’ll wait at the bottom for you.”
“Alright, thank you for saving our necks – that would have been a nasty way to go,” Harry’s voice came from the empty space and Nasir nodded towards him. “You’re okay to keep leading Hermione? How’s your arm?”
“Yeah,” she nodded and smiled at Harry even though he could not see her – and even though she couldn’t see him. “My arm is fine, I’m good – ready to go. Let’s get to the bottom and get this done.”
Carefully turning on the tiny ledge and using Nasir’s arm as a brace she faced the surface once more and securely set her tethers.
“Alright,” she breathed, letting the last traces of her stress and panic wash from her body as she took a deep breath and forced her shoulders to roll back. She felt Nasir release the tethers he’d placed on her and he gave her a small nod. “Here I go.”
They continued the rest of their descent in silence, carefully and meticulously working the tethers and ensuring that they were secure before they removed and set the next pair. Hermione focused on each foot placement and each movement as they dropped lower and lower towards the bottom – sending careful instructions to Harry and finding the most secure path for them. Harry had resumed his climb once she’d dropped twenty feet below him once more and Nasir had waited to disappear until they were both comfortably on their descent.
As they descended the air grew colder still, the vaults more spaced out and the doors taller and thicker on the opposite wall of the cavern. She could make out the sound of a low growl every now and then but she tried not to think about what might be lurking in the darkness around them. After another long few minutes, Hermione peered into the black below her and felt her heart flutter in excitement and relief as solid rock became visible. It was only another few short minutes until her feet gently touched the ground.
Her legs trembling softly from the physical exertion, she carefully removed her tethers, took a step back from the wall and leaned forward with her hands on her knees and let out a shaky breath.
‘I made it safe – just another twenty feet Harry,’ she told him and felt his elated relief through the bond.
“Are you okay?” the deep baritone sounded behind her and she turned her head to take in the sight of Nasir moving towards her from the shadows.
“Yeah, I’m fine, just a bit shaky from the adrenaline and nerves. That ledge stunt seems to have worn me out a little,” Hermione breathed. She straightened as he came to stand beside her, his dark eyes carefully sweeping over her body and checking to make sure she was still uninjured – which she was aside from a few bruises and scrapes from the journey. Letting out another low sigh she rolled her stiff shoulders and looked up at the cliff above them in disbelief. “I can’t believe we came down that.”
“It was quite the descent,” Nasir said quietly as Harry quickly closed the distance toward them. “But you both did well.”
“Thanks,” Hermione said quietly, her eyes flicking to him once more. Then her voice dropped lower. “But neither of us would have made it over that ledge without you. Thank you for that.”
“It wasn’t a problem,” Nasir said quietly, his familiar discomfort with gratitude showing on his face.
Hermione grinned at him then stretched her arms tall over her head before she leaned to the side and tried to stretch out her legs and hips. Her hip bones ached from the tug of the tethers, but there was nothing she could do about that pain except wait for it to fade. It was likely a bone bruise and it would likely hurt for a while. She heard the small scuff of Harry’s feet against the rock above her and she smiled up at his invisible form.
“Almost there Harry,” she said quietly, knowing that they were all contained within her silencing charm.
With the faint sound of feet touching rock Harry’s voice rang out once more.
“God that sucks,” he breathed, and she heard him groan stiffly before her.
“You may remove your disillusionments and cloak if you wish,” Nasir said evenly, his eyes swiftly flicking up and down Harry’s invisible form – no doubt checking him for injury as well. “This mission is dangerous enough as it is – but it will be much easier if you can all see each other. I will keep you masked as we make our way to the vault, you just need to stay within a few feet of me.”
“You don’t mind?” Hermione asked arching a brow. After dabbling in the masking charm the week prior she was well aware of how much effort it took to keep it in place. And right now Nasir was already using one to hide his runes and to keep himself invisible.
“No, I’m using one anyway so it is of little difference to simply extend it another few feet,” Nasir said evenly as Harry pulled the cloak from his body and Griphook became visible.
“Thanks, Nasir,” Harry nodded, flickering into view and folding up the cloak once more. “It’s definitely easier knowing where everyone is – instead of talking to empty space and hoping I’m looking in the right direction.”
Hermione followed his lead, removing her disillusionment charm and thanking Nasir once more. The second she became visible Harry met her gaze, his eyes breaking away to sweep over her body in concern before he gave her a small relieved smile.
They took a moment to stretch further, Harry letting Griphook off his back and rolling his tight shoulders as the goblin fixed his clothes. The small creature was muttering again quietly under his breath, but this time he kept the words too low for them to make them out. Yet his irritated and displeased tone was enough to guess that he was agitated from the descent and probably happy to be back on his own two feet.
Hermione didn’t doubt that Harry had gotten an ear full after the ledge stunt. She could only imagine the goblin’s displeasure at hanging hundreds of feet in the air and swinging toward the cavern wall before being grabbed out of mid-air by a man he barely knew as they fell to their death. She’d have to ask Harry about it later.
After their quick two-minute break, they recast their shields once more, layered their muffliato and cast a silencing spell around the tightly huddled group. Then they were off, moving silently and swiftly across the uneven cavern floor toward a short ledge on the far side. Griphook took the lead, moving them at a steady pace, the numbing charm clearly effective as he pushed forward and didn’t stop. Hermione could feel her anxiety spike once more as the low growl she’d heard while rappelling the cliff became louder and the goblin in the lead seemed to tense. Her hand gripped Harry’s more tightly as they moved – but it wasn’t until they had climbed the small ledge at the opposite side of the cavern, closed another short distance and rounded a corner that she saw what was making the noise and froze on spot.
“So you do keep dragons in Gringotts,” Hermione whispered, her voice strained as she took in the sight of the large white beast that lay across the huge stone slab before them. It was chained to the center by its hindlegs, its scales were pale, flaky and sickly looking. Its eyes milky pink and dull. A far cry from the majestic and terrifying animals that she’d seen during the Triwizard tournament – but still effective at stopping a wizard in one’s tracks.
“There have always been dragons in Gringotts, Miss Granger,” Griphook said tightly as he shifted them toward the nearest column and rapidly tapped the rock. The stone seemed to fade away, revealing a small secret cabinet with a collection of odd-looking brass devices. He grabbed one quickly and held it before him tightly. “They are used to protect the deepest vaults.
“Surely there are other ways,” Hermione’s voice was tight as her eyes flicked over the dragon’s spiked wings. They looked weak like they’d not been used in decades. There were rips and tears along the bottom of the thin skin of its wings and scarring on its neck and back. It seemed to have just taken notice of them and it was eyeing them cautiously, almost as if it could not properly see them and it was unsure if it should attack – almost like it was waiting to see who they were. But before the beast was able to decide a terrible dull ringing sound echoed in the cavern and Hermione’s eyes shot to Griphook who was waving the brass device like a flag. “What is that?”
“It’s a clanker,” Griphook said as he carefully started to shift around the dragon and gestured for them to follow. The beast moaned in agony at the sound, curling away from Griphook and pushing itself up against the stone wall at the edge of the slab in fear. “They’ve been trained to expect pain when they hear this – it is the only way to get by it safely, come on. Don’t linger.”
“That’s disgusting,” Hermione said coldly as her eyes narrowed at the goblin and she followed him around the outer edge.
“You make it sound like it was the goblins that brought it here,” Griphook said snidely, his eyes narrowing at Hermione. “Surely you know we’d never be capable of that.”
She felt Harry’s hand tighten around hers hard and she squeezed it tight as they quickly made their way around the pale dragon toward the large and ancient looking vaults that lay behind it as her stomach curled into a knot. She hated that Griphook was using the clanker, she hated that she had to let him use it in order to get by. She hated that the dragon was here at all and that the goblins would be cruel enough to keep it – but more than anything, she hated that he was right.
There was no way goblins could have brought a bloody dragon into their vaults on their own. It would have had to have been brought in by witches and wizards and it might very well have been a human’s idea to use them in the first place.
She knew full well that people were no better than goblins when it came to cruelty – they were in the middle of a war with a psychopath who thought blood status defined them for Merlin’s sake. But now wasn’t the time to dwell on Gringotts’ cruel security measures.
So she just squeezed Harry’s hand tighter and pulled him to her side. Sticking close to Nasir’s tall and emotionless form as they made their way around the rest of the slab and reached the ancient vaults at the back. Griphook continued to shake the clanker until they rounded a scorched stone column near a rather tall and thick looking vault door and were safe from the line of fire.
Barely.
The tiny enclosed space before the vault door had clearly been designed to fit one goblin and only one human – and it was not intended to safely cover one goblin and three full-sized humans from the dragon’s attacks. Hermione had no doubt Bellatrix would have requested this design herself.
Because within seconds of the noise stopping a great and ragged growl split the air, rattling the stone and making the hairs on the back of her skull prickle with fear. The intense heat of fire filled the small corner they crowded as a blast of white and red flames burned against the stone column behind them. The fire nearly curled around the edge, threatening to burn them to dust and wipe them from existence.
Just as she made to step farther away from the corner two different strong hands grabbed Hermione tightly, rapidly tugging her away from the corner and the flames and crushing her body in against the bundle of people behind Griphook’s small form. She felt like a sardine in a can – her back pressed against Nasir’s chest and her front sandwiched against Harry’s as they both held her tight and all three of them nearly crushed Griphook into the tall old black metal door.
The heat was unbearable. It was like fiendfyre in a closet.
She wasn’t sure how their shield charm would hold up to the blast, but she had no intention of finding out and she also suspected that the dragon’s ruckus might draw some attention – they needed to get out of here as quickly as possible.
“Griphook we need to get out of here as quickly as possible!” Harry’s tight voice echoed her concern as he leaned over her shoulder in the small space toward the goblin. He was practically yelling to make himself heard over the noise the creature was making. “Unlock the vault!”
“I am!” Griphook bit back bitterly as he clenched the clanker tight in his left fist and ran the long fingers of his right hand across the black metal door. He was crammed so tight against its surface he could barely maneuver his hand along the path he was attempting to trace. “It doesn’t just happen in an instant Mr. Potter!”
His finger traced along an invisible pattern, turning and stopping and twisting, his elbow hitting Harry each time he moved his arm as sweat collected on his brow – he twisted it once more to the right before a large clang rang out and the sound of turning gears filled the tiny corridor. Hermione suspected it would have been a rather loud sound if not for it being drowned out by the angry growls and burning rampage of the dragon just around the corner.
“I’ll wait at the door for you and keep watch!” Griphook said as the heavy door slowly started to swing open into the vault. “Whatever you do Mr. Potter – do not touch anything in that vault except for what you need. Miss Lestrange has implemented her own security methods in there and I have no idea what might happen if you do!”
“I won’t!” Harry nodded as he squeezed by the goblin and shifted toward the door. Hermione followed behind him, sliding carefully away from Nasir and eyeing him questioningly over her shoulder as she squeezed past Griphook toward Harry’s side – careful to make sure that no one was pushed out from the safety of the small corner into the blasting flames by her movement.
“I will wait with Griphook,” Nasir said calmly, his eyes glinting as he watched Harry step into the vault now that the slow swinging door had finally opened large enough. “I suggest you find your object quickly, Harry – we don’t have much time.”
Harry nodded and then fully stepped inside the tall door, Hermione following closely behind him and into the dimly lit room.
It was immense.
The room itself was huge but so was the collection of objects that littered the shelves and cold stone floor. Piles of gold, trinkets, vases, pictures, furniture – jewels and heirlooms and hundreds of objects that had no doubt been cursed or stolen or saved through time as part of the Black family wealth. Her eyes caught a glimpse of ruby red and widened at the sight of the Sword of Gryffindor lying haphazardly in a pile of gold. It was a fake, an exact and convincing replica.
She had no idea who had had the gall to have given it to the crazy witch and been audacious enough to tell her that it was real. But whoever it was, they’d convinced her – because Bellatrix desperately thought that they had stolen it from this very vault. A vault that in a matter of a few short minutes she would know they were in.
After the run-in at Malfoy Manor – Hermione did not doubt that the witch had placed further wards and charms on her vault. And while the magic she could have used was restricted by the Gringotts wards – she’d likely been able to add a basic security notification charm that would alert her if anyone entered her vault. So they would need to move quickly because the goblins knew they were here the second Griphook had touched the door.
Harry shuffled forward carefully, sidestepping objects and hopping over lose coin like he was dancing – or like he was a kid playing a muggle game of hot lava. She followed his steps, balancing carefully on her trembling legs and taking note of everything that she saw while silently thanking Nasir for training them so harshly. They were both far more nimble and agile now than they’d ever been, and it made them much better burglars.
“Do you feel anything?” Hermione whispered to him softly, her voice sounding foreign and eerie as they made their way toward the back wall of the vault. They’d spent ample time discussing Horcruxes for the past several months and they both suspected the object would be related to a Hogwarts founder in some way based on the small amount of information that Dumbledore had left Harry about Voldemort’s trophy collecting obsession and his choice to use the Salazar Slytherin locket. But Harry had always seemed to be particularly affected by the Horcruxes and could somehow feel them out. It was a detail that lingering in the back of her mind like an itch she couldn’t scratch, and like his connection to Voldemort – it unsettled her. “Is it here?”
“It’s here,” Harry said darkly, his eyes flicking across the room as his shoulders started to tense. “I can feel it – I can hear it near the back wall.”
“Wait – you can hear it?” Hermione arched a brow in question as they shifted forward another few feet, then stopped in a small clearing between an old mirror and a pile of gold. She knew Harry could sense them but he’d never once before mentioned that he could hear them – and that detail changed everything. That detail made the many different explanations that she’d come up with for his connection to Voldemort narrow down to a short and terrible list of options.
She could see Harry’s eyes desperately scanning the room, his neck craned as if he very much was listening to the room and trying to pinpoint a sound she could not hear. She was just wondering what he might possibly hear as she searched for anything Hogwarts related with her eyes when she felt his hand tighten around hers like a vice and her body went stiff.
“It’s on the back wall,” Harry’s low voice was tight and his eyes were boring into the shelf at the back of the vault. The expression on his face made her stomach drop, his eyes were dark and narrowed, glued to an object as if possessed by it. She followed his gaze to the back wall and saw the dusty old gold cup that sat in the middle of the center shelf. There was an ‘H’ on it – and she immediately recognized it from Hogwarts a History.
“The Hufflepuff cup,” she whispered as Harry started to shift them forward.
He moved lithe and quick, his eyes never leaving the object and his face creasing almost as if in pain when they neared it. She watched as he carefully reached out to grab it, his hand trembling slightly and his eyes creasing further as if there was a noise aside from the dragon’s roars that was grating on his nerves. And then her list narrowed even further, a horrible realization hit her like a slap – and it was like her body had been plunged into ice.
“Harry,” she said almost hoarsely as his grip on her hand became impossibly tight.
How could I have been so stupid? She thought bitterly as she carefully kept the bond between them closed. Is this even possible!?
“Harry,” she repeated, squeezing his hand tight as the panic began to grow in her chest. This couldn’t be right, it couldn’t be – he would be dead. There would be no way that he’d have lived this long – no way. But the sickness in her gut told her that that answer accounted for everything. It explained everything about his connection to Voldemort and so many of the strange things that had happened to him throughout his life. “What do they sound like to you? Could you hear the locket too before we tried to destroy it or is it just this one?”
“Now’s not the time Hermione,” Harry said tightly as he forced his hand to grab the cup and then carefully began to store it in his jacket pocket. “We need to get out of here - we don't have time.”
“Harry,” Hermione said tensely, her eyes scanning over the unreadable expression on his dark face as he shifted and started to pull her towards the door of the vault once more. She tugged his arm, stopping his motion and fixing him with a tight stare – unsure if he knew what this meant and was hiding it from her, or if he was just anxious to get out of the vault before they got caught. For the first time in her life she genuinely didn’t know the answer – and she wasn’t sure which answer was worse. “Harry what–“
A loud explosion sounded from the open doorway, the dragon’s roar rattling the entire vault and shaking objects from the shelves around them as a flutter of different flashes of light flashed across the entrance to the vault. Smoke poured in the door, the edges of flames visible as the dragon seemed to unleash its full fury. Griphook was yelling, she could hear other voices screaming and then Nasir appeared before the open door with his dagger drawn and his fitted black robes steaming from heat and spattered with blood.
“We need to go!” his deep baritone was deadly and it echoed loud into the vault as he yelled to them. His eyes were cold and glinting in the dim light, his body rigid and unmoving as another loud bang rang out in the cavern. “Now!”
Warnings:
This chapter contains: blood, violence, explicit descriptions of gruesome injuries including but not limited to burns, loss of limbs, melting skin and other not so awesome things. If you are squeamish be wary.
*******************************************
Harry grabbed Hermione’s hand tight, his grip undoubtedly painful – but he didn’t even spare it a second thought as he rapidly began making his way toward the vault door, jerking her along behind him before she could utter another word.
He’d just fucked up.
He carefully and quickly stepped over the piles of gold and other objects, his feet effortlessly and perfectly dodging and stepping and inching around the contents of the vault as he forced his eyes to focus on the tall blood-covered man before him while he tried to block out the sound of the Horcrux from his pocket. He could feel it – worse than any of the other ones he’d encountered thus far, he could actually hear the cursed thing. Maybe it was because there were fewer of them now? Or maybe it was just all in his head because he knew he was a Horcrux himself and it made the noises that he heard from the demonic object seem so much louder and inescapable.
He wasn’t sure about that detail – but he was sure that he’d just royally fucked up.
He’d said too much.
He’d told her that he could hear them.
Stupid! he berated himself as he moved through the vault. He'd made it this far and now he slipped up?
He could feel his anger growing as he kept the bond clamped firmly shut from his side and fought back the urge to outwardly curse at himself. Hermione’s heart was racing, her stress levels had increased dramatically and even though she’d closed off her thoughts and wasn’t sending him anything through the bond he knew that her anxiety had nothing to do with being in Gringotts.
Hermione had always known that the Horcruxes affected him differently, that they impacted him in ways that they didn’t impact her or anyone else. She’d always known that he had a strange connection to Voldemort and he knew that this detail unsettled her. They’d had months in a tent together alone and they’d talked about nearly everything and this topic had come up multiple times before – but previously he’d always managed to brush it off or duck away from it because the truth was, neither of them really knew what the connection was. So, anything they discussed was pure speculation and it quickly and easily got lost to other more pressing issues and topics that needed their attention. She’d never before argued or fought with him on it when he moved the discussion forward or dropped the topic entirely.
He’d had his suspicions back then, and he suspected that Hermione had too – but now he’d potentially just confirmed it for her. In fact, he was positive that he’d just confirmed it. Now, based on her reaction, she either knew he was a human Horcrux, or she was considering it as the most likely explanation for his connection to Voldemort.
Hermione never lost her cool.
She never got distracted on missions.
The fact that she tried to stop him in the middle of a bank robbery to discuss it said it all.
She knew.
She bloody well knew and it was entirely his fault. The only question that remained now was what was he going to do about it. He’d either need to lie and deny it, and that thought made him feel sick – or he needed to tell her.
But that thought made him even sicker.
He’d already been down this road; he’d walked this path and analyzed his options. She would never let him die and yet it was something he had to do – there was no way around it. He’d done everything that he could possibly do to preserve his own life and the rest was out of his control – but if she found that out she would never accept it.
And he could not allow her to stop him when it was his time to die.
But right now, the focus was to get out. They needed to escape and this would have to be dealt with later.
A second loud growl split through the air, rattling the vault once more and nearly causing Harry to lose his footing as a flash of green lit up the space just outside the door. He saw Nasir rapidly turn, re-holstering his dagger as he ducked and pressed Griphook tighter to the wall. They closed the last fifteen feet to the vault door at a desperate sprint, Hermione no longer hesitating behind him and seemingly entirely refocused despite her racing heart as Nasir drew his fake wand and fired off a round of spells as they rushed through the door. They’d barely crossed the threshold when the tall man grabbed Harry by the scruff of the neck, pulling him across the small open space quickly and pushing him tight up against the stone column – his blunt arm wrapped around Hermione’s waist and yanked her across the space nearly simultaneously.
“What happened?!” Harry yelled above the noise of the commotion, his body now crammed up against Griphook’s once more as an explosion rattled the bank and Nasir pushed Hermione behind him and tight against Harry’s chest.
“They know we’re here,” Nasir said darkly as he fired another set of spells around the column and Harry heard a loud scream.
“I figured that!” Harry said as he drew his own fake wand and tried to peer around the tall man. “I mean what’s going on – how many are there?”
“Six now,” Nasir said as Hermione wedged a hand between them to draw her wand from her calf. “Though I’m sure more are coming. I managed to take out several silently – because Griphook asked that I refrain from destroying the bank as much as possible but–“
A loud explosion cut him off, his arm jutted out, pressing them all tighter against the wall as everything shook and an enormous roar split the air. The sound of crumbling rock and explosive fire rang throughout the dark cavern and sent a chill down Harry’s spine.
“I think that’s out of the question now,” Nasir said flatly, as he leaned forward and fired something around the corner of the column. “Harry get Griphook. We go now! Tether up and stick together.”
Harry felt Hermione’s tether surge through his chest a fraction of a second before Nasir shifted around the corner and sent out a barrage of spells. Hermione rapidly followed after him, Harry delayed only a moment behind her as he cast a feather-light on Griphook – ducking to one knee and all but yanking the goblin onto his back while casting a quick sticking charm. There was no time for anything fancy and no time to make sure that Griphook was comfortable – and as Harry rushed back up to his feet, raised his fake wand and stepped around the stone column he saw exactly why, and he knew precisely where the blood on Nasir’s robes had come from.
There were five bodies on the ground – well, there were two, the other three were charred black and nearly disintegrated into piles of dust on the ground. But their lack of heads was unmistakable. Nasir must have snuck out behind each one of them as they approached and beheaded them. Keeping the attacks silent and less destructive just as Griphook had asked him. But more had arrived and someone had, whether on accident or not Harry didn’t know, let the dragon loose – and it was on a bloody rampage.
The large stone slab was a warzone. There were streaks of blood and black – charred remains littered the ground and broken rubble from rock that had exploded near the vaults around them highlighted the scene, leaving it looking like a deeply disturbed version of abstract art. Evidently, not all of Gringotts was charmed to be indestructible – just the vaults themselves were. And Harry suspected it might only be the lower vaults at that.
His eyes darted around them as he ducked a blast of purple and shot at one of the men across the stone slab who was hiding behind a broken column for cover. His mind raced as looked around the cavern and his senses were bombarded. The scent of burning flesh, the flashes of light, the men yelling as three more carts came hurtling down the nearest set of tracks toward them filled with keepers and driven by a goblin each. The dragon was roaring, growling, its tail collided with another pillar, sending stone everywhere as it flapped its useless wings and attempted to fly upward – yet it could barely get itself off the ground. A million things were going on at once, it was like the werewolf den all over again but somehow more chaotic and the keepers couldn’t seem to make up their mind on who to target.
Half of them were attacking the vault entryway and attempting to kill them – the other half were attacking the dragon and desperately dodging its fire as they fought for cover against the blaze.
Harry was barely able to take it all in before he felt the tug of the tether through his chest and they were on the move again. Nasir darted out onto the slab, his wand flicking and taking out the men coming toward them from the right as Hermione blocked attacks and cut down a keeper that made the mistake of peeking around a block of rubble.
Harry dodged to the left close behind them, taking out one of the keepers that had just come running around the corner from the lowest cart station as Griphook’s nails dug into the skin of his shoulder.
“Mr. Potter!” Griphook’s panicked voice was barely audible through the noise, but Harry’s eyes had already taken in what he was about to warn him of.
“Dodge!” Harry screamed and in one rapid motion, he grabbed Hermione and threw himself to the left with Nasir as the dragon turned and sent a blast in their direction. The heat was scalding, it poured over them in waves until the next second the fire shifted to be redirected at a set of wizards hiding behind another column.
“Fucking hell,” Hermione breathed as the three of them rolled away and darted to the next block of cover. Every attack that the keepers sent toward the dragon seemed to do nothing and Nasir wasn’t even paying the creature any mind aside from dodging its fire. A goblin that had just gotten off the cart was disintegrated by the blast – the brass metal clanger he’d been shaking falling to the ground with a clatter, having done absolutely nothing to stop the beast or invoke the fear they’d been using to control it. “Nothing is hitting it! Who let it loose?!”
“It’s been charmed with a shield!” Nasir responded without missing a beat, grabbing Hermione’s left arm and tugging them in a chain-like formation across the stone slab. Harry took out another keeper on the right as they went, the nails of his left hand digging hard into the fabric of Hermione’s black jacket. “And I let it loose.”
An explosion behind them from a misfired shot at the dragon by one of the keepers just getting off the carts sent more stone colliding to the ground. Harry dodged the larger pieces, the smaller ones colliding with his shield and pinging like hard-hitting hail.
This is fucking insane!
Time seemed to have sped up, everything was happening too fast – there were keepers getting off the carts, there was too much fire, the dragon roared and the ground shook as it turned and began crossing the cavern floor. It paused and twisted, sending another stream of fire toward their general direction as Harry took in the familiar sight of blast-ended-skrewts scuttling across the cavern floor toward the carnage. The blood must have drawn them out – the noise – and it meant that there were other holes and pathways through Gringotts that would leave them vulnerable to attack. This entire thing was a cluster fuck and Merlin only knew what other creatures might be lurking in the walls of Gringotts and on their way to join the party. But in that quick split second before they ducked behind a broken column to dodge the fire, Harry had already assessed their options and he already knew.
Any hopes that they had for a quiet and secret exit by climbing up the way they’d come were long gone.
With the dragon headed toward the cavern wall and skrewts cutting across the ground towards them, the keepers getting of the carts at the platform and the general chaos which was consuming the cavern floor – attempting to climb the wall was a death sentence. Even if they disillusioned themselves it was way too dangerous – the loud crack of the dragon’s talons cutting into the rock face and the sound of loose pieces crumbling away from the weak surface echoed out around them. Whatever mild structural integrity the cavern wall might have had was now just thrown out the window by a dragon clawing and clambering up it. They could not afford to risk climbing up behind that creature – and the ledge that had nearly killed them on the descent was simply out of the question for a safe and quick return.
Not to mention that going back through a skrewt infested tiny tunnel seemed like a bad idea now that they were all stirred up and on the move – there was no room to battle in those tunnels, nowhere to go if they got stuck or cornered. Surely a goblin or keeper would clue in as to where they were headed, or maybe they already had figured it out and the tunnel would be searched or sealed. Using the tunnel for their escape had really only been a viable option had they been able to get in and out of the vault before the keepers and goblins had shown up and before they were spotted. But their response time had been much too fast and they’d already been seen, their presence was likely already reported and known by people beyond those that littered the cavern base.
They’d lost their advantage of stealth and now they just needed to get the hell out as quickly as possible and by any means necessary.
“We can’t climb the wall!” Harry yelled as he dodged another keeper attack and crept along the edge of the slab tightly behind Hermione as Nasir continued to lead. The keepers were more adept than the den snatchers, several of them used shields and most of them seemed to understand the concept of cover. Apparently, Voldemort’s ranks were not all one and the same and their attacks were far more effective than that of the run of the mill snatchers. “It will take too long – we’ll never make it and we’ll be too open to attack even if we’re disillusioned!”
Nasir nodded in agreement as he shielded them against a blow from the left.
“And how do you propose we get out!?” Griphook’s angry and panicked reply came from over his shoulder.
“The carts!” Hermione yelled as they shifted past a blackened smear that was once human and pressed themselves tightly against a column as another round of attacks blazed past from the keepers moving towards them. “Griphook you’ll have to drive a cart!”
“A cart?!” the goblin sounded incredulous. “They’ll see us leaving! They could shut it down!”
“They already know we’re here!” Harry yelled back as he cleaved one of the skrewts that had gotten to close clean in half. “We need fast Griphook – not inconspicuous!”
“But what about the–“
“Do you want to climb back up the cavern wall behind a dragon?!” Hermione yelled over her shoulder at the goblin, cutting him off. “We just have to clear this group – then we go and we don’t stop until we get to the top!”
If Griphook planned to protest further it was lost to the sound of a loud crack that split through the air as the ledge that they’d swung over on their descent cracked away from the cavern wall and began tumbling down the rock face toward the bottom.
“Now!” Nasir’s deep baritone rang out and Harry felt another jerk through his chest as Hermione rushed forward behind the tall man toward the carts.
Her wand was a flurry like his own as the three of them used the moment of distraction from the crumbling cliff to rush across the short distance toward the five parked Gringotts carts. The massive chunks of falling stone collided with the cavern floor, shaking the entire underground vault and making the dragon roar out in confused rage as a fresh wave of fire spat from its mouth. The beast kept slipping down the jagged surface, flapping its wings in disarray while viciously trying to claw its way up – but Harry could only glance at it as he followed tight behind Hermione and ignored the bite of Griphook’s nails and the string of uttered curses that left the goblin’s mouth behind his ear as they tore through the remaining keepers near the slab and rushed the tiny platform.
One goblin tried to help the keeper he stood beside and was sent flying backward by a red stunner from Hermione’s wand. A second faltered at the sight of them, dropping the clanker that he held to the ground and raising his hands in the air as the keeper at his side was split in two by Nasir. Harry barely recognized a flash of red before he’d uttered another round of sectumsempra.
“Bill?!” Harry asked incredulously as he shifted his wand at the last second and narrowly missed cutting the tall Weasley’s head off. “What the hell are you doing down here?!”
He felt Hermione’s heart spike in his head as she turned her eyes in the direction he was looking and her mouth fell open in surprise. Bill Weasley was standing next to the small goblin holding up his hands which they recognized as Ragnok by the farthest away cart. His eyes were wide at the sight of them and their surroundings, his wand was raised in defense but he appeared to be fully in control of himself despite the chaos.
“I was on the second level when the alarm went off,” Bill said quickly as he fired a shot at the encroaching skrewts over Harry's shoulder. “First shift didn’t finish the audit on time so I was assigned to help, and I couldn’t say no, or people would have been suspicious. I tried to move us along as fast as possible to get us out but we’d only just finished up the third last vault when the signal sounded and the keeper on our crew commandeered the cart. I wasn’t able to send you a message but it was either get abandoned on the second level until Merlin knew when or go with him and Ragnok – and based on the racket echoing up through the cavern staying put seemed like a bad idea.”
Fuck, Harry cursed inwardly as his eyes darted to Nasir. The tall dark-clad man seemed to have a similar sentiment in mind, his dark eyes were narrowed at Bill and Ragnok, then they darted back to the first cart and he shifted quickly toward it.
“Are the carts still working Ragnok?” Griphook’s voice sounded hoarse as Harry kneeled to the ground at the rear of the platform and let the goblin off his back while Bill shifted to the middle and began to help Hermione cover their position from the approaching skrewts. Harry could hear Bill questioning her about what the hell had happened and what was going on as Nasir called them all closer to the cart.
“Griphook?” Ragnok looked confused, his voice was laced with disbelief. His eyes rapidly flicked over the lot of them and then circled back to Bill then to Griphook once more as Nasir quickly dragged the two dead bodies out of the first cart to make room.
“Are the carts still working?!” Griphook’s voice had grown tighter, the tension visible on his face as he pushed past the confused looking Ragnok and made his way toward the cart that Nasir had just cleared.
“I thought you were dead?” Ragnok’s eyes drifted up to the dragon as it let out a horrid roar of fury and the cavern shook once more.
“RAGNOK!” Griphook yelled sharply as he spun back to face him. The smaller goblin’s eyes darted to Griphook once more. “Are the carts still working? Did they shut them down yet?”
“No,” Ragnok said quickly, shaking his head. His brain finally seeming to grasp the words the other goblin was shouting at him. His eyes darted nervously to Hermione and Bill who were backing up toward the cart on Nasir’s orders, then to Harry who held the rear and was fending off a swarm of moving little rocks that had come from their left flank through a crack in the stone from an earlier explosion. “They’re still functional for now – they won’t be much longer but why are you here? How did you even get in?!”
“We’re fighting against You Know Who,” Harry said quickly as he glanced at the goblin and motioned for him to follow behind Griphook. “That’s why we’re here. But we need to go now!”
“I know who you are,” Ragnok said as he watched Griphook clambering toward the first cart as if Harry’s words had been the stupidest ones the goblin had heard all day. “I figured that’s why you’re here – I meant Griphook – why are you here? With them? How did you get here?”
“The details don’t matter now!” Griphook yelled sharply as he climbed into the cart and took hold of the steering wheel. “But I made my decision – I’ve picked my side and now you need to pick yours.”
“But you had always said that–“
Ragnok’s words were cut off by an explosion along the wall above the dragon that shook the ground beneath their feet and threatened to deafen their ears. Harry’s head shot up toward the beast which was now hurling fire at the tracks where a cart filled with more keepers had briefly stopped to attack it. He felt his chest constrict just as Hermione’s words echoed in his mind.
‘Harry it’s going to break the tracks!’ he could feel her panic through the bond as she transferred the very same thought he’d just already had. ‘We have to get past the dragon before it destroys the cart system and we can’t get out!’
The small incoming cart was on the move once more, clearly having realized that attacking the dragon was a bad idea and that it would only result in their death and the destruction of the tracks that prevented them from falling to their deaths. It was now twisting down the thin rails away from the dragon’s vicious counterattack and headed in their direction. Hermione was right – if they didn’t get out now, if they didn’t get closer so they could take out that incoming cart the creature might destroy their exit plan. And Harry wasn’t sure they had a viable backup option.
“Harry!” Nasir’s deep voice cut through the echoing of explosions and roars and Harry turned to look towards him as the tall man yanked Hermione back from the skrewts and ushered her toward the first cart. His dark piercing eyes flicked to the small hesitant goblin between him and Harry as he reached for Bill next. “Get in the cart! We leave no witnesses – Ragnok, either get in the cart NOW or you will be left here to fend off these skrewts with an obliviated mind!”
Harry didn’t need to be told twice. He sent a final blast at the swarming wave of rocks that was flanking their rear, biting down the doubt and fear that clouded his mind from the pogrebins that were starved and determined to eat them. He knew this time what was causing his doubt and so he forced himself to ignore it, forced himself to push all the sadness and insecurity away as he blasted through them and turned toward the small confused goblin.
“Ragnok!” Harry yelled as he ran towards the small goblin and the waiting carts. “We need to go! You’ve wanted to make a change for the future of goblins for years – this is your chance! Help us, help us escape – I promise you I will fight with you. We will all fight for you and fight for change – but first, we have to win this war and I’m not going to leave you here to die so you can either come willingly or I’ll knock you out – but either way we’re leaving now!”
Ragnok’s eyes had locked to Harry’s as he ran toward the goblin at full speed. Just as Harry closed the final steps towards him and thought he would indeed have to knock the goblin out and grab him by the scruff of the neck to drag him toward the cart something in his small glinting eyes hardened and he started to run – toward the carts.
“You won’t all fit in one cart!” Ragnok said quickly, his eyes now focused and flashing with a heated determination that seemed to radiate from deep within. “I’ll drive the second with Bill and he can cover the rear – Bill take the second cart! But we may not make it all the way up before they shut the system down. We’ll be lucky if we get halfway!”
“Is there any way to stop them from shutting down the cart system?” Harry asked as he ran beside the goblin and closed the final few feet to the carts just as Bill had climbed into the one behind Hermione and Nasir had stationed himself at the front of the first with his wand out.
“No,” both Griphook and Ragnok answered the question simultaneously.
“That can only be done by the head goblin,” Ragnok said as he climbed into the second cart and grabbed the steering wheel. The light flickered on at his touch as Harry climbed into the back of the first cart next to Hermione.
“But they won’t shut it down so long as they need them to get to us,” Hermione said quickly as she shortened the tether on Harry.
“Exactly,” Griphook said as Harry heard the break locks on the cart detach. “Which means we have to go fast – hang on tight!”
-x-x-
Hermione felt her stomach lurch violently as the cart jerked forward with more force than she ever remembered experiencing in her previous Gringotts cart rides. Impossible as it was to think it, somehow the carts went even faster than how the goblins drove them with patrons inside. If not for the magic encasing the cart surely her head would have snapped back painfully with the g-forces as Griphook launched the cart forward up the track toward the chaos above them. Instead, it just felt like her body was pressed up against an invisible wall as they shot off into the darkness at break-neck speed. Wind rushed past her ears, the cold air stinging her eyes and dulling her vision as she tried to adjust to the speed.
She heard Ragnok’s cart follow them, the headlight flashing behind them as he and Bill tailed them at just as fast a pace. She tried not to let her mind think about what might happen when they closed the distance to the upcoming cart.
What if they didn’t stop?
What if the oncoming goblin and keepers didn’t care and simply crashed right into them? Did the cart system have any anti-collision magic that would protect them from a head-on crash? How did the carts pass one another? She’d only ever seen one set of tracks.
But the questions that rattled around in her brain were quickly shoved to the side as her body adjusted to the velocity, and a blur of rushing colours came hurtling towards them from the oncoming cart – and everything blurred together in one giant chaotic mess of a nightmare. And suddenly, it was nothing but adrenaline, darkness, fire, colour and a ruthless determination to live.
Griphook was yelling, Nasir was standing in the front next to him hurtling magic toward the oncoming cart. Hermione cast a shied on the cart as Harry sent a round of attacks. The dragon’s roar rattled the tracks and Griphook narrowly pulled them ahead of a violent blast of fire as they hurtled away from the cliff around a bend and then right back into the thick of the heat and full out battle. It was like fireworks – like insanely dangerous and beautiful fireworks as spells from the keepers collided with the rock wall and swerved past their cart while they road the rollercoaster from hell.
Chunks of rock fell to the cavern floor as the dragon raged on their left – then their right as they jerked violently round another curb. She could see them twisting and winding upward – closer and closer to the oncoming cart as they battled it out on the tracks. Just as they levelled out onto a straight stretch of rails Hermione managed to knock one keeper from the oncoming cart as Harry shielded Griphook from an attack and Nasir disappeared from sight. A brief flicker of panic jolted through her heart, she felt the echo of it in Harry only for her eyes to widen as the tall man reappeared inside the oncoming cart and drove his dagger through the chest of the second remaining keeper while he simultaneously kicked the third one out with a heavy boot to the chest.
“Griphook the carts not stopping!” Hermione yelled as Nasir grabbed the goblin in the oncoming cart, but the vehicle still did not stop. “Griphook!?”
“Brace yourselves!” Griphook’s hoarse voice echoed around them as he jerked hard on the steering wheel and twisted a lever on his left, a loud grinding noise clanked, the cart jerked, Hermione’s body was jolted against Harry’s before being pressed hard into her seat as the cart launched upwards at the last second. The axles extended as the wheels rotated to the outer edge of the track – lifting the cart six feet higher a fraction of a second before it collided with the one rushing toward them before it rapidly lowered back down to the tracks once more. Hermione’s eyes widened as her head whipped around just in time to see Ragnok’s cart do the same, extending upwards and driving over the oncoming cart with just enough clearance to avoid taking off heads – then they jerked around another curb and Ragnok and Bill fell out of view as Nasir re-appeared in the cart before them.
“There’s at least one more coming up ahead!” Nasir said darkly, his body crouched next to Griphook’s as they sailed around an upwards corkscrew and Hermione was once again thrown violently into Harry’s side.
“How many?” Harry asked as he gripped Hermione tightly, steadying her body as he was pressed painfully hard into the cold metal side of the cart from the force of the twisting corkscrew. She should have cast a bloody sticking charm.
“Another three or four per cart,” Nasir’s dark voice barely carried over the sound of the screeching metal wheels as the whined and threatened to detach from the tracks. But Griphook didn’t let up – if anything it felt like he was picking up speed as the whirled their way upwards as if riding a demonic carousel.
The cart jerked to the right, sailing through pitch black away from the cavern wall they’d descended, sailing past two other platforms until it jerked back to the left and began racing around a wide bend. Hermione could feel the tension in Bill as she and Harry recast their shield charms, his stress levels were rising as the cart picked up more and more speed, the long arching curve seemingly endless until they suddenly straightened out and shot through a small tunnel. Everything went black and then she heard it once more – the unmistakable roar of a very large, a very angry and a very pissed off dragon.
Her brain had hardly been able to process it before they shot out the end of the dark tunnel back into the open cavern and her eyes went wide in fear at the sight of two carts paused on the track up ahead.
They’d passed the halfway point.
In fact, they’d made it almost two-thirds of the way up, she could hear the Thief’s downfall and see the ledge they’d exited after leaving the maintenance tunnel – the very same ledge that the dragon was now perched on, its wings extended, hot fire like lava bursting from its mouth as it breathed fire at the nearby carts, its clawed feet crumbling the rock beneath them and breaking open the sealed maintenance tunnel. Skrewts were creeping out, something long and black was twisting through the cracked rock and she had no idea what it was – but she didn’t want to know. A violent jerk rattled through the cart as one sharp taloned dragon’s leg reached out to brace on the nearby track.
“Fuck,” the word slipped from her mouth just as she heard Griphook yell.
“HANG ON!”
The sound of twisting metal ground through the air like nails on a chalkboard, like broken glass – it groaned and it moaned and her whole body flinched as she felt a tether shoot through her center. It locked her and Harry to the cart and Nasir’s body as the vehicle jerked and rocked while the tracks bent like rubber beneath them.
Despite knowingly keeping dragons in the vault – the Gringotts bank designer had obviously never anticipated one getting loose – and the tracks had clearly not been designed to support the weight or withstand the torque or the heat that was currently being inflicted on it. Magic or not – the metal deformed, twisting and groaning and warping under the dragon’s talons as yelling broke out from the carts above them and the keepers desperately tried to back up away from the raging beast. The screeching sound of metal on metal grated in her mind as the cart wheels locked up and Griphook threw on the breaks. Harry collided with the front seat, Hermione hitting it right after him as they started to slow, but she knew without looking that they would never make a complete stop before reaching the dragon and warped metal tracks.
She could see it all in slow motion.
The dragon’s claws cut through the superheated metal, snapping the tracks like a twig. The first keeper cart began to roll forward into the fire, unable to escape the slope that dragged them to their doom. Their screams rang out briefly before being cut off into silence as the unnamed occupants melted away into charred dust while the burning hot cart fell from the broken tracks into the dark nothingness below. The second cart reversed, the keepers inside it still yelling as they desperately tried to shield against the flames and get away from the dragon.
Their own cart was desperately screeching as Griphook tried to stop while Nasir stood up and raised his wand, sending an explosion at the ledge and causing the dragon to falter and slip before his voice rang out clear, dark and deep.
“Hermione tether Bill! Harry get Griphook,” He glanced back toward them, his eyes burning and his shoulders tight with tension. “We’re switching carts!”
Her body reacted before her brain could even process what it was they were about to do, following his orders without question. Muscle memory took over, all their training kicking in and it sent her body into battle autopilot as she forced herself to stand in the cart despite everything going on around them. Despite the turbulent motion of their cart as it continued to skid to a stop, despite the terror in her chest or the heartrates racing in her mind and the endless questions she was fighting to keep at bay. Harry rose at her side, his eyes hard and focused, his hand reaching for the goblin in the front as Hermione twisted toward the back and outstretched her arm – sending a tether through Bill’s chest and fastening him to Harry as the redhead reached down for Ragnok. She barely even registered the look of horror on the smaller goblin’s face as she shouted the orders to Bill and then turned around and began to move.
Nasir had already shifted, his tall form running down the short front of the small cart in three quick steps and jumping out into the dark air before them with his hand outstretched toward the moving keeper cart above them. His tether caught it, and his body rapidly began zipping up toward the cart as he shortened the length and Harry and Hermione simultaneously began launching an attack at the panicked keepers inside the vehicle. Every movement was seamless – as if Nasir had known that they would cover him. As if he’d fully trusted them to react exactly how he needed, exactly how they all needed, as a team – a single functioning unit, as if they’d had decades of experience fighting battles together and navigating ludicrous situations.
And it was exactly how it felt, and exactly how it came together.
Each one of them instinctively knowing what to do and trusting the rest of their team to hold their own and play their part – even Bill and Griphook immediately sunk into action without a moment of hesitation or doubt.
“Sectumsempra!” Hermione screamed unleashing the spell at the keeper who was gesturing in their direction. The dark magic caught across his chest; blood spattered as he cried out in pain and stumbled in the cart.
Harry’s attack caught the second keeper, the woman’s left arm splitting off as the third keeper ducked and countered her next attack. Hermione dodged the counter, shifting forward on the cart, using sticking spells on her feet as she moved and rapidly threw up a shield for Griphook. She felt the tether in her chest tighten and pull twice, signalling her turn as her adrenaline spiked once more and Bill’s attack knocked the keeper she’d injured from the cart as her legs pushed her forward – following Nasir’s pull. She mimicked his motions, running three steps down the front of the moving cart and using the momentum of their stop to launch herself harder as she threw herself into the air.
For a brief and terrifying moment she thought it might not work, fear coursed through her veins as her heart dropped into her stomach.
Weightlessness shifted through her body like a sickening flutter as she reached the arch of her jump before gravity kicked in and she began to fall for an instant – then the tug came, hard against her chest as her heart lurched back up into her throat and she was being hauled up into the air by Nasir who was already inside the keeper cart. She saw a body fall past her, then a second and then a strong hand grabbed the back of her leather jacket as she gripped the metal edge and hauled herself inside the vehicle – not stopping to think as she kicked the final keeper from the cart behind Nasir.
She twisted back around to Harry – he was already jumped into the air, Griphook awkwardly clinging to his shoulder and half on his back as their old cart went flying off the broken rails toward the dragon. Bill leapt into the air not a second later with Ragnok in hand a moment before their own cart followed suit and crashed into the side of the cavern with a crash.
Her jaw clenched hard and she steeled herself for what was coming. She stuck her feet to the cart floor as their bodies swung out beneath the moving cart – she felt Nasir’s magic lock her in place as he urgently cast a set of spells over the edge at them.
Then she felt the tug on her body.
Her sternum cracked, her right arm jerked hard in her socket – the pain leaving her lungs in a heavy grunt as the weight of Harry and Griphook and then Bill and Ragnok all jerked against her body for a fraction of a second before their weight disappeared and Nasir’s feather-light spells took effect. And then they were all being rapidly hauled up towards them as she and Nasir shortened the tethers and pulled them up.
“Griphook drive the cart!” Nasir’s words bellowed by her ear as he reached down beside her and hauled the goblin over the side of the cart off Harry’s body.
Hermione grabbed Harry’s shoulders and helped pull him inside the tiny space as the cart raced backwards along the tracks. He was grimaced in pain, his black hair damp with sweat and his jaw set tight – he no doubt had fractures just like hers from launching himself into the air and dangling from bones that were not meant to support the weight. Griphook clambered to the front of the cart without hesitation, shoving the other goblin aside and taking the wheel as Nasir helped Hermione finishing hauling Harry over the edge before glancing at the dragon which was inhaling deeply and crawling along the cavern wall toward them with a vengeance.
“Deal with the dragon!” Hermione yelled to Nasir as she leaned over the side of the cart once more and placed a sticking charm on Harry to keep him secure.
“We’ll get Bill!” Harry yelled as he rapidly twisted to lean over the cart edge and began shortening the tether and hauling the redhead up.
Nasir nodded, twisting around and stepping over the divider into the front of the cart before shifting past Griphook and onto the nose of the cart. Hermione heard an explosion, the rattle shaking the weakened tracks and making them sway as she grabbed Bill’s hand and helped Harry haul the redhead up over the edge. But there was nowhere for the man to go, with the third unnamed goblin in the front seat with Griphook, Nasir crouched on the nose of the cart and her and Harry taking up the back seat there was simply no space.
“Here,” Harry shifted, carefully climbing out of the backseat onto the narrow backend of the cart so Bill could get inside and Ragnok could sit on the edge of the divider that ran down the middle of the cart. “Make sure you stick yourself in place!”
“Griphook let me drive!” Ragnok’s voice cut through the air as he turned to face the front while Hermione summoned a small strength potion from her purse. They were moving slower than before, the cart clearly not having the same speed capabilities when going in reverse – she could see the dragon gaining ground on them.
“What?!” Griphook’s voice was laced with fear as he continued to navigate the cart backwards and Harry began launching spells toward the dragon to aid Nasir.
The beast seemed torn between climbing upward and trying to kill them. It violently scratched its way up along the cavern wall, attempting to spit fire only for Nasir to blast the rock out beneath its feet and cause the beast to lose its footing and fumble each time. But the tracks were started to bend, curving around the rock face toward the Thief’s Downfall and bringing them closer to the cavern wall – keeping them just barely in reach of the dragon as it chased along after them.
“They will know you’re driving! Do you want them to stop the carts?!” Ragnok yelled as he pushed his way over into the front of the cart and all but sat on Griphook’s lap. “Let me drive!
“Get off!” Griphook’s yell was futile as Ragnok sat on top of him – firmly taking the wheel before he began shoving the larger goblin to the side while Hermione downed a third of the strength potion then passed the vial off to Bill who did the same thing before handing it to Harry.
“Shut up and move over!” Ragnok cursed at Griphook as Hermione felt the cart speed up and Griphook was forced into the back half of the vehicle up against the edge next to Bill. She could feel the heat from the potion coursing through her body and numbing out the pain of her injuries. “Don’t be stupid Griphook – if I drive, they might assume we stopped you – we might actually stand a chance at making it to the top!”
“We’re coming up on the Thief’s Downfall!” Bill yelled as the cart lurched to the side and began speeding tightly around the corner and closer still to the cliff face.
“We need to go faster!” Harry yelled as heat filled the air around them and the fire from the dragon brushed against the track just before Nasir’s crouched body. Despite Harry and Nasir’s counters, the beast was relentless under the protection of its shield and was now breathing more and more fire.
“We can’t go any faster!” Griphook yelled, the irritation and fear sounding desperately in his voice as he clung to the side of the cart. “The water from the Thief’s Downfall could make us slip off the tracks on the next bend!”
The tracks rattled once more as the dragon’s talons scraped against the metal, the next burst of fire nearly reaching Nasir’s boots as it brushed against the nose of the cart and forced the tall man to back up on the cart so he was nearly crouched on Ragnok’s steering wheel. His blunt arm braced him against the surface as he turned back with burning eyes to look at the small goblin.
“Go faster,” Nasir said darkly, his tone daring Ragnok and Griphook to argue otherwise.
And Ragnok didn’t argue – with the jerk of a lever the cart picked up speed, racing backward and further out of the dragon’s reach as the bend grew tighter and the rushing sound of water flooded Hermione’s ears.
“Brace yourself!” Bill yelled as suddenly the falls were upon them.
Coldwater cut through Hermione’s charm work like daggers, soaking her clothes, freezing her body and filling the shallow vehicle with water as they whizzed through the heavy stream. Drenched and shaking Hermione jerked violently in the cart once more as they hit a sharp bend. She was thrown into Bill, the tall redhead rapidly sticking himself to the cart once more with fresh tethers and grabbing her tightly as the squealing of metal on metal ground out below them and the cart began to tip as the dragon burst through the water behind them. Its roar was deafeningly loud as it fumbled through the falls and flapped its wings, the gusting wind cutting across her skin as Harry hung on to the back of the cart for dear life and gripped her jacket tight.
Just when she thought they were surely going to tip right off the rails the dragon’s wing hit the tracks and the cart lurched once more, skidding up into the air as the wheels detached before dropping hard back onto the rails with an ear-piercing clang.
“GRIPHOOK!” Harry’s yell caught her attention. He’d dropped his hold on her jacket, his eyes were wide, his body was poised at the edge of the cart as Hermione’s head twisted to see the empty space where the goblin had once been.
Her stomach lurched.
Their sticking charms had been washed away with all of their other magic and he’d not been able to hang on – and they’d not added another charm.
Before she could even open her mouth she watched in horror as Harry leapt from the cart, diving headfirst over the edge as if trying to propel himself forward as quickly as possible while his thoughts flooded her mind.
‘I couldn’t reach him from the cart – I have a tether!’
“HARRY!” Hermione dove to the far edge, latching her own tether through his body as she re-stuck her feet to the cart and felt Bill grab the back of her jacket and tether her body to his own.
She watched him fall headfirst, arm outstretched toward the tumbling goblin before her tether caught and he jerked to a halt. Her breath caught in her throat as she watched the goblin continue to fall another few feet until he jerked violently on the end of an invisible line and she felt herself exhale sharply with a flood of relief.
“Get them back in the cart!” Nasir yelled as the dragon closed the distance once more, climbing up from below them just mere feet from Griphook’s dangling body. But the creature wasn’t looking at Griphook any longer – its movements seemed more purposeful, its wings more powerful as if it had finally gotten the hang of things and had finally remembered how to climb and fly. It started to flap once more as the track jerked up into a steep incline. They were near the top, she could smell it – she could feel it, and the dragon could too.
The air was warmer here, the light was brighter as they approached the main platform, the smell of the dark underground was all but gone and it was as if the dragon knew it was close to freedom – they were no longer its main focus, it lusted for something greater.
Hermione began to shorten the tether, hauling Harry up as the cart ascended, Bill gripping her tightly and adding his own sticking charm to her feet before he crouched at her side and threw down a tether and started to haul as well. Harry was almost at the cart, the cart was almost at the platform, Nasir threw another spell at the dragon, hitting its wing so that it did not hit Griphook or Harry. It growled out and then she heard yelling from above. Before she could even turn to look at what she knew would be the main platform hexes rang down on them like falling stars and Nasir had turned his attention upwards to block the barrage of attacks from above as Ragnok continued to drive them relentlessly upwards.
Just as she had hauled Harry into the cart and Griphook hung less than ten feet below them the dragon fired a blast up to the platform and Hermione felt the heat before she heard the screams of agony.
“GRIPHOOK!” Hermione screamed as she brought her arm up to shield her face from the heat of the fire as Harry landed face first in the cart and twisted around – still shortening the invisible cord that had kept the goblin from plummeting to certain death. “Harry pull him up!”
Bill reached over the side just as the blast connected with the platform. The yelling grew louder with the sound of rock cracking as the keepers desperately tried to defend themselves from the dragon’s fury and the attacks that Nasir wielded in their direction.
“HOLD ON!” Ragnok shouted as he slammed on the breaks.
They were coming in too fast. She could hear Griphook screaming as Harry shortened the last length of tether, she knew it was bad – she almost didn’t want to look, but she steeled herself and bit down the bile at the back of her throat as Bill finally managed to grab Griphook and haul him into the cart a moment before he would have collided with the rock of the platform as the cart wheels sparked against the breaks.
All she could see was blood and black – charred remains of limbs and Griphook’s face twisted in delirious agony as she summoned a bottle of dittany from her pocket and began pouring the contents all over his entire body. She couldn’t even make out all the injuries in the chaos, but she was fairly certain he was missing some limbs and was all but burnt to a crisp.
The green smoke billowed and Griphook shrieked. Her stomach lurched as the cart jerked into the small station, dangerously jumping and skidding on the tracks as Nasir jumped off the cart and began taking out the keepers that lined the small platform. Bill followed next, confirming that Hermione had Griphook before he rolled out onto the platform from the still moving cart and took out a stunned looking keeper – the word ‘Bill?’ was barely audible from the man’s lips before he was cut in half and dropped to the ground in one unforgiving slash of Bill’s wand.
‘Get Ragnok!’ Hermione sent the words to Harry’s mind as she bundled the burnt remains of Griphook in her arms.
After everything this goblin had done for them – after Harry risking his neck to save him by jumping headlong into the dark off the cart to catch him – she’d be damned if she left him behind now. Unsticking her feet, she threw herself onto the platform with every bit of strength that she had to clear the tracks, hitting the ground hard and rolling across the surface with the goblin in her arms just seconds before Harry did the same with Ragnok and the other goblin that Nasir had clearly left imperioed in the front seat.
Her elbows knocked hard against the stone, her head hitting the ground before she managed to roll herself up to her knees, clutching Griphook with her left arm and taking out the keeper on her right. They were lucky they’d had the element of surprise – lucky that the keepers on the station were not expecting a tiny cart with four people and three goblins to come hurtling up the track with a dragon on its heels. Lucky that Ragnok had thought to drive in all the chaos or otherwise they probably wouldn’t have made it this far because the cart system surely would have shut down.
They were lucky to be alive – and yet she knew it wasn’t just luck.
It was all the training, all the skill, and all the hard work over the last few weeks that made her trust that Bill’s shield would hold as he got hit with a hex on the left. It made her trust that Harry could manage as he slung Ragnok onto his back and looped the imperioed goblin under his left arm. She trusted that Nasir aiming his wand and blowing open a hole in the ceiling was the right thing to do as the dragon reached the platform and shook the entire station with a roar.
“Bill!” Hermione screamed as she shot out a tether, latching the man through the chest and pulling him back as the rocks from the ceiling fell where he’d once been standing.
“Thanks!” he yelled as he stumbled back, nearly crashing into her as the light from the gaping hole spilled into the cavern station and Hermione blinked in pain. She could see bits of marble flooring, pieces that looked like wood, almost as if…
“THE DRAGON IS LOOSE!”
The scream came from above, panicked yelling broke out as Hermione’s brain processed exactly where Nasir had blown the hole. He’d blown a goddamn hole right into the middle of the main Gringotts banking area and the dragon was now clambering and clawing and scratching its way through it – as if the sight of light had ignited a spark within its heart and given it the strength to keep on pushing. Rock cracked, its growls deepened – with two beats of its wings and a mighty roar it pushed its head and upper body through the hole up into the main floor of Gringotts – entirely unbothered by the screams of panic and spells being cast its direction by the staff above as it desperately sought to break free.
Nasir!” Harry yelled, ducking under an attack from the keeper Bill had been duelling before cutting off the attacker’s head in one rough swish of his wand. Blood was trickling down his face, a deep bruise was settling in on his cheek – but he paid his injuries no mind as he rushed toward Hermione and Bill. She felt the familiar touch of his tether as he connected them all together once more then launched an attack at the keeper on Nasir’s left while the tall man took out the one on his right. “We need to get out!”
“This way!” Nasir yelled over his shoulder as he finished driving his dagger through the keeper’s chest then let the body drop to the ground with a thud. He rushed toward the rubble on the platform – right below the dragon as it made to pull its hind legs from the hole. “Grab onto each other and disillusion yourselves now!”
Hermione didn’t hesitate.
She grabbed Harry’s hand tight, gripping Griphook harder and wrapping them in a disillusionment spell as Bill took the imperioed goblin from Harry then grabbed his other hand and flickered from view. Harry had just disappeared from sight with Ragnok on his back as they closed the distance to Nasir when she felt the tall man’s familiar tether latch onto her body – joining the one that Harry had put there. There was a quick hard pull that tugged them all close together beneath the raging beast – she realized what was coming next and she forced her lungs to inhale and her heart to calm.
“Hang on tight,” Nasir’s deep voice echoed between them before he grabbed the back of her neck and she felt Bill’s heart rate spike as Harry gripped her like death. Then Nasir flickered from view and a burst of red hit the dragon’s hindquarters.
A roar split the air – Hermione’s body jerked violently and she fought against the urge to cover her ears at the deafening sound as flames burst through the roof of Gringotts and the dragon took off. With one last desperate push against the ground, the creature batted its wings, taking out the chandeliers and desks – breaking through the windows and sending people and objects and glass flying everywhere as it launched itself through the opening it’d just burned. She felt her feet leave the ground, Griphook’s wails rang in her ears, bodies pressed hard against hers as they all collided together while hanging from a tether beneath the beast as Harry shortened his ties to keep them from jostling about. There was a rush of wind, a blaze of heat and then the cold breeze of night air ghosted over her heat burned skin as they were wrapped in darkness once more – but this time it was open and free and dotted with speckles of light.
The tethers pulling them upwards detached, the feel of falling tugged at the pit of her stomach for what felt like the millionth time that day, her body no longer even reacting to it as they began to drop in the air. She held Harry's hand tight, she took in the sight of Diagon Alley from thirty feet up for a fraction of a second before she felt Nasir’s hand gripping the back of her neck compress harder – then there was a tug behind her navel and the world twisted and warped around them.
She heard the sound of waves before anything else materialized. It rushed into her brain before it was quickly followed by the smell of salt, cool misty air and then the harrowing cries coming from the goblin that she still clutched tightly to her chest. Her feet landed first, a strong arm wrapping around her to prevent her from falling as the world shifted back into view and she regained her footing.
Shell Cottage.
Never in her life had she ever before been so excited to see this place again or to hear Ron and Fleur’s voices cutting out across the beach. It felt like a wave of relief had just washed through her body, she could feel the tension lessen as she rapidly scanned through the heartbeats in her head and confirmed that they were all present and everyone was safe and accounted for. Her eyes dropped immediately to the goblin in her arms, her face scrunching in pain at the sight and sound of his cries which sent a gut-wrenching chill down her spine.
He was definitely missing a leg.
A leg and an arm.
And the only reason he’d not died from blood loss was because the dragon’s fire had both burned away and immediately cauterized his wounds. His face was a mess – covered in heat burns and blood blisters and ash and blood and skin that had melted and peeled off. The dittany had patched some of it up, but it was rough and twisted and looked like he’d been turned inside out.
“Bill tell them to keep everyone upstairs in the house!” Harry’s voice rang out beside her as she began rushing toward the cottage. Bill sprinted ahead to Ron and Fleur, she could hear his voice, but she paid it no mind as she ran with Harry and Nasir at her sides towards the open door of the cottage. She saw Ron turn around ahead of them and sprint back – no doubt going to tell everyone to clear the main floor. Fleur rushed toward them, Ragnok still hanging on Harry’s shoulder through it all as Bill carried the imperioed goblin under his arm – she doubted if he even remembered that he was holding him.
“What do you need?!” Fleur’s voice was tight with barely contained panic as she sped to their side.
“Dittany and burn paste–“ Hermione rhymed off as her mind raced.
“Calming draught and disinfectant,” Harry added as they reached the cottage and rushed inside to the table.
“Get dreamless sleeping draught,” Nasir said as he pulled Ragnok from Harry’s back and set the small goblin on the ground. “As soon as the potions have had their effect he needs to be knocked out. But I might need to put him in a magically induced coma given the extent of his injuries.”
“On it!” Fleur rushed to the cabinet in the kitchen as she simultaneously flicked her hand to open it. The potions flew out toward her and landed on the table – which Ron had already cleared for them.
A diagnostic bubble appeared above the goblin’s head – Hermione had no idea who had cast it, but it didn’t matter. Her eyes were too busy absorbing the information displayed on it to ask or to even notice who all was in the room. She just set the goblin down on the table and began rhyming off his injuries.
“Broken collar bone, third and second-degree burns, left leg is missing from mid-thigh, and the left arm is gone – we’ll have to cut it back to the shoulder, we can’t regrow the tissue on the protruding bone,” Hermione said as her eyes flicked over his stats. “He’ll need blood replenisher and – fuck he’s going into cardiac arrest!”
The cries leaving the goblin’s mouth fell silent as his heart rate skyrocketed, beating erratically for several pumps before it flatlined entirely. The bodies around her shifted like a flurry as Harry began restarting his heart while Nasir pulled a vial from his pocket and dumped it down Griphook’s throat.
“'is 'eart is not restarting,” Fleur’s voice was panicked as Harry hit the goblin with the spell for a third time as she cleared the melted skin from his face.
“Again!” Hermione called as she began pouring the disinfectant Fleur had summoned over the goblin’s wounds. It didn’t even register in her brain that there were two sets of beady eyes watching their every movement, or that there were bodies standing silent and still on the stairwell watching the scene unfold.
“More dittany,” Ron called on her right, putting the bottle in her hand as she tossed away the empty disinfectant vial.
Griphook’s body rocked on the table as Harry hit him twice more consecutively.
“Still nothing!” Harry called, the frustration in his voice growing as Hermione started to dump a fresh batch of dittany over Griphook’s wounds.
“Again!” Nasir called before Hermione could even open her mouth.
The charm hit him once more.
Again.
Again.
Hermione could feel her heart sinking, the sickness rising in her stomach as she stared at the flatlined purple signal and the anger in her chest began to grow with rage as her lungs seemed to constrict.
Why was it like this?
Why was it always like this?
How was this their life?
Why was it always them, and always everyone around them? Why was it always the people who decided to help that got hurt? Why was it Griphook after everything he’d done? Miserable and jaded and cruel as he was this goblin was part of their team and he’d been critical to their success today. She had to save him. He deserved to live and if she could not save him – how in Merlin’s name was she to save Harry? How the fuck were they going to win this war or battle Voldemort and live to talk about it? Especially now that her worst nightmare about his connection to Voldemort had just all but been confirmed and Harry may not even know about it.
Why was all of this happening to the people who didn’t deserve it?
She felt her eyes start to prickle as she screamed at Harry to go again. She could see tears falling down Fleur’s cheeks, but the woman didn’t stop, she continued to tend to the goblin’s body as Bill and Ron brought them potion after potion.
Why? the word echoed in her head like a beating drum. He couldn't die like this - not like this.
Why?! she could feel her pulse racing as her pent up rage at everything that had happened to them started to leak out.
“WHY!?” the word left her lungs in a ragged yell as she thumped the goblin hard on the chest with all her might. She heard the crack of his ribs under her fist from the strength of the blow as she did it again and her words came out like an angry snarl. “COME ON GRIPHOOK, WAKE UP!!!!”
She heard a sob from Fleur as she hit the small goblin’s chest three more times, her body shaking with anger – a wave of emotion washing through her and making her think she might be sick from the smell of burned flesh that clung in the air around them.
“WAKE UP!!” she practically screeched as she hit him hard one more time over the heart and begged for just an ounce of kindness in this world. She was just about to hit him again when a tanned arm shot out and grabbed her arm, Nasir’s fingers closing tight around her wrist as she saw the tiny flicker on the diagnostic charm and her heart nearly stopped in her chest.
“Wait,” his voice was low, and her panting breath caught in her chest as everyone in the room went perfectly still.
One blip.
Nothing.
Come on.
Two blips.
Nothing.
Come on! she urged in her mind as she stared unblinking at the diagnostic charm and still did not breathe.
Three blips.
A fourth.
A fifth.
Hermione’s arm started to tremble in Nasir’s hold, her pulse erratic and racing as Griphook’s heart started to beat once more and a gasp of air left his lungs. At the sound of his inhale it was as if a wave of reprieve had washed through the room and everyone went from motionless and silent to breathing and uttering sentiments of relief. Nasir’s hold on her wrist loosened and she dropped her arm back to the table.
“Fucking hell,” Hermione breathed, her eyes closing shut as she ran a shaking hand through her hair. This was too much, this was all too much and she felt like she was teetering on the edge of a breakdown as she fought to recompose herself. “I’ll finish his arm – Fleur can you get the leg.”
“Of course,” Fleur nodded, wiping a tear from her eye as she dropped her hold on Bill and made to finish tending to Griphook’s leg.
“I’ll finish with the burns,” Harry said quietly, his hand reaching out to her and squeezing her shoulder firmly as he shifted by her toward Griphook’s face.
“I’ll fix his ribs,” Ron offered quietly, shifting in beside Harry to start mending the minor breaks that Hermione had just beaten into the small goblin while Bill grabbed them potions.
They worked silently for several minutes, Hermione carefully cutting back the remains of charred bone sticking out from Griphook’s left shoulder until it was flush with his body before cleaning and sealing the wound. Once Harry had finished covering the goblin in burn paste and Ron and Fleur had finished their tasks Nasir placed him in a magically induced coma and noted that he should not be woken for at least three days. Her eyes drifted around the room as she finally took a step back from the table – her shoulders slumping in exhaustion as she looked at the chaos in the kitchen.
It looked like hell.
It looked like war.
She could feel her rune growing heavy at the sight of a blood-covered and battered-looking Bill, a red-eyed Fleur and a pale looking Ron. Her eyes flicked to Harry and a dull ache echoed in her heart. He looked terrible - covered in blood, ash, bruises and death.
Why did this all feel so familiar? Why did she feel like she was getting used to this yet somehow sicker by it each time it happened?
Her eyes flicked to the staircase, having caught the hint of movement that shifted there and she stared up at the three girls who were looking right back at her. Ava was gripping Liza tightly, Liza’s hand was clutching the front of her dark grey sweater – Hermione recognized it as her old school uniform jumper, she’d left it in her purse for the girl and she must have put it on after they’d left earlier that day. And Luna, normally all happy and full of life was staring with a deep sadness radiating from her eyes and it made Hermione’s heart ache so badly her eyes started to prickle.
They’d not made it upstairs in time.
Or maybe they’d come down when they heard the commotion.
How much had they seen? How much had Liza seen? She wasn’t sure – maybe they’d just not been able to look away like when you’re watching a disaster unfold or a muggle car crash happen. But when they realized she was looking at them their expressions shifted, and they all smiled. Each one of them – it was painful, but it was filled with relief like Fleur’s face had been, and Ava nodded to her firmly.
“Thank you.”
Hermione’s head jerked down to the small raspy voice that had sounded to her left. It was Ragnok and he was staring at her with an expression she’d never seen and one she could not read. The goblin looked lost, confused – like his entire world had just been ripped out from under his feet and shattered before his very eyes.
“Thank you,” he repeated, sounding oddly calm. “For saving me and – for not giving up on him.”
“It was nothing,” Hermione whispered before she cleared her throat and then forced a small smile on her lips - pushing her heartache to the side and making her mind refocus. “Here, let me make sure you’re uninjured.”
Ragnok stood there silently as she cast a diagnostic bubble on him, he wordlessly watched her as she fixed a small crack in his hand and then healed the scrapes and bruises that covered his face. He didn’t utter another word as she worked, his expression pensive and his beady eyes simply watching her work and taking in every detail of her movements. He thanked her again when she’d finished and then continued to watch her as Harry approached on her right. It wasn’t until she felt Harry grip her left arm and it ached in pain that she realized her strength potion had worn off, and along with it the numbing effects were gone – exposing her own injuries.
“You’re next,” Harry said quietly, steering Hermione away from Ragnok and the table as Fleur and Ron finished cleaning up the goblin. They watched her as Harry guided her past, but he didn’t stop and just led her to one of the chairs further back in the kitchen – and despite the adrenaline that still pumped through her body she felt herself sit without resistance. “Hermione – are you okay?”
“What?” her eyes darted to meet Harry’s face, it was laced with concern and his eyes were flicking over her body assessingly. It was only then that she realized she'd been lost in her own thought. “Yeah I’m fine – Harry, you’re bleeding, you hit your head we need to heal that.”
“You can do that after – I said you first,” he said, pushing her gently back into the chair when she tried to stand. She saw a diagnostic bubble form above her shoulder, and she watched as Harry frowned. “You cracked your sternum again – your left forearm is cracked, and your right shoulder is misaligned.”
“I know,” Hermione let out a breath and cast her own diagnostic on Harry, her eyes flicking over it as he began healing the crack in her sternum. “Or well – I expected it at least. That strength potion was a hell of a mix – I didn’t even notice the damage until now but I figured it had happened given the tethers. Harry your cheek is fractured, again, and you have a crack in your sternum and hip from diving off the cart.”
“I know,” he said gently, his warm green eyes meeting hers with that look of love that made her heart heavy. “Or well – I expected it at least.”
She smiled at him, a deep exhale leaving her lungs as she closed her eyes and let out a quiet sigh.
“We were lucky,” she whispered, her eyes cracking open and darting to the scene behind them. Nasir was healing Bill’s injuries and Ragnok and the third goblin were just standing there starring at Griphook’s motionless battered form.
“I know,” Harry said quietly, finally allowing her to heal his minor fractures now that he was done tending to her. “Extremely lucky – but also not.”
He paused, his eyes creasing with regret as he looked at Hermione and gripped her thigh.
“I couldn’t let him die Hermione,” he said quietly, squeezing her leg tight and shaking his head. “I’m sorry for jumping out of the cart like that but after everything he did I couldn’t just let him fall.”
Harry paused once more, his eyes flicking over to Griphook and darkening as his face fell.
“But honestly I’m not sure if it even mattered,” Harry whispered, his tone so low it was barely audible. “He may not survive this – he could still die and even if he lives, he might not want this life.”
“Maybe,” Hermione said as she stood up next to him and finished the final adjustments on his cheekbone before pulling out dittany to heal the open cut by his temple. “But it definitely matters – look at Ragnok – it matters Harry, you showed him that not everyone thinks goblins are disposable or that their lives are worth less than ours. Griphook deserves the chance to live, whether he wants to or not after what’s happened is up to him. But it was the right thing to do even if you did scare the living daylights out of me.”
Harry’s lip twitched and he nodded slowly.
“I’m sorry Hermione,” he said quietly, his eyes still lingering on Griphook as his arms slowly wrapped around her waist and he pulled her closer. His eyes returned to her face, his lips ghosting against her temple as he leaned in before his voice dropped lower near her ear. “But it wasn’t all me, you showed them that you care – that he matters.”
Hermione let herself lean against Harry’s chest, her body relaxing in his light hold until she could no longer hold back the question that had been burning in the back of her mind and making her feel sick since the second they’d located the Horcrux. She forced herself to step back from his warmth, closely monitoring his vitals through the bond and fixing him with an even but carefully indifferent stare. She didn’t want him to think she was nervous – she didn’t want to freak him out in case he didn’t know unless she was sure. And she didn’t want to give anything away in case he did know and tried to hide it.
But she did want to ask him.
She had too.
“Harry,” Hermione said quietly, her eyes calmly searching over his face as she forced her heartbeat to remain steady in her chest despite the panic she felt in her mind. She kept the bond carefully closed to her thoughts and her face tightly schooled. “In the vault, you said you could hear the Horcrux – what did it sound like?”
Harry’s face didn’t falter, his warm eyes were still flicking over her face like they had been moments ago – like she was the only thing in the world that mattered to him and his heart rate remained unchanged as his low voice responded.
“It’s hard to describe,” Harry said slowly, absolutely nothing about his tone or body vitals hinting that he was at all concerned by her question. She felt her heart sink a little further – maybe he didn’t know. “I’m not sure that hear is even the right word to describe it – it was just a feeling, like the same feeling I had with the locket.”
“So you didn’t hear the locket?” Hermione asked quietly, her fingers twisting into the fabric of his jacket as she fought to keep the skepticism out of her voice and her face neutral. “What about the other ones?”
“I didn’t hear the others,” Harry said, meeting her eyes once more with an almost thoughtful look. “I didn’t hear the locket either – it was just that feeling, the one Ron described when he wore the locket but worse. I guess they just affect me a bit more than everyone else. I wonder if it is similar to the Dementors and how they used to bother me more as well.”
“I see,” Hermione said, eyeing him carefully and watching for any sort of tell that may give away his lie. But there wasn’t one – he was calm, cool, collected. He was Harry – her Harry, and there was nothing out of the ordinary about his vitals.
And yet, somehow, despite this she found that she didn’t believe a single word he’d just spoken.
Her hand twisted tighter in his jacket.
“Harry,” she said more firmly her eyes narrowing a fraction. “You and I both know you have a strange connection to You Know Who.”
“I know,” Harry said, his brow quirking as he looked at her almost curiously. “Hermione I’ve had that all my life – that’s not anything new.”
She felt dumbstruck – completely disbelieving and yet he was giving her nothing to doubt him on except for her gut feeling that told her he couldn’t possibly not have considered this.
“Harry what if it’s more than a connection – what if you’re one of them,” she said bluntly.
“One of what?”
As the words left his mouth she felt her anger and irritation flare along with her panic.
“There’s no fucking way you don’t know what I’m talking about,” Hermione whispered at him harshly, her eyes narrowing even further. “We promised we wouldn’t lie to each other! You’re not stupid, Harry – I know you must have already considered this. What if you’re–“
“Harry!” Nasir’s voice cut her off, the man was approaching them quickly, his dark eyes were flicking between them but he seemed indifferent to the angry expression on Hermione’s face. “We should go take care of the item in your pocket.”
“Nasir, I need to talk to Harry – that can wait a minute,” Hermione said tightly her hand still firmly gripping Harry’s jacket as if she was preventing him from leaving.
“No,” Nasir’s dark eyes flicked to her and she saw them glinting as his voice dropped lower so the people behind him wouldn’t hear. “It cannot. It needs to be taken care of now – it’s possible that once they find out it is missing Tom will be able to trace it. You need to dispose of it before that happens, you can’t carry it around or it will lead them right here and unless you want to go on the run again you have no other option. Bill’s ward work is good, but it will not withstand a full out attack. We don’t have time to linger here any longer. Your priority needs to be destroying that cup and ensuring the safety of everyone here.”
“You’re right,” Harry nodded to Nasir before turning back to Hermione and looking at her with an indecipherable expression.
She’d known him for 7 years, she’d been to hell with him, fought through the impossible with him – and yet still, now, standing before him covered in blood, ash and sweat she felt like she had no idea what was going through his mind and it made her stomach knot as her dread began to build.
“We’ll talk later,” Harry said quietly, giving her a small smile and leaning forward to kiss her before turning back to face Nasir and shifting away. “Let's go get this done.”
Hermione felt her fingers slip from his jacket, her mind racing a million miles a minute as she tried to collect her thoughts and wrap her head around everything that had just happened in the last few hours.
Did he truly not know?
Her stomach twisted painfully as she fought against the urge to pull him back and yell, to demand answers, or to glare at him, to shout, to scream – to voice her every and all concerns – then to tell Nasir off for interrupting them and send him away; but the logical side of her brain knew that the man was right. They’d never discussed the Horcruxes in detail with him, or the specifics of their mission, but Nasir was a smart man and he knew about Horcruxes – so she didn’t doubt he’d figured it out on his own and knew exactly what the Hufflepuff cup was based on what they had told him during the planning.
Every muscle in her body wanted to fight against it so she could focus on Harry potentially and almost certainly being a Horcrux, but they had to get rid of that cup now, they couldn’t keep it around and risk the safety of the cottage. Especially not when deep down she knew that even if Harry was a Horcrux – what would telling him accomplish right now? What could she possibly do with that information right this very second when they had an urgent task to complete and needed to finish checking over the others and restocking the potions before they started to plan their next move.
She hated this.
She hated all of this – everything about it.
She could feel the tension and sickness churning agonizingly in her chest as her rune grew heavy as a boulder and she watched Harry shift away. She felt her jaw clench painfully tight and she forced her body to follow after the man she loved – then she froze. Her eyes darting to Nasir then back to Harry once more as one possible alternative option struck her.
“Alright,” Hermione said slowly, nodding in agreement and keeping her voice as calm as possible. “But first I need to check over Nasir – no one has healed you yet.”
“I'm fine,” Nasir said evenly but Hermione simply ignored his remark and cast a diagnostic charm on his body. Sure enough two small fractures showed up along with some minor bruising and she gave him a look and arched her brow.
“Of course you are," Hermione said flatly. "I’ll heal these quick and then we go outside to deal with it. We can spare a minute to make sure everyone is healed Nasir and that includes you. It doesn’t do us any good to leave people injured, who knows if we will have time to fix you up later. Harry can you just make sure that Fleur has rechecked Griphook’s arm quick? I'm worried the skin may have split open under the bandage if the dittany didn’t take properly.”
“Alright,” Harry said slowly, his eyes lingered on her for a second longer than normal. If he suspected her of anything he didn’t say it and instead he glanced at Nasir then turned away once more and shifted toward the table. The second his back was turned and he was three steps away Hermione rapidly cast a silencing spell around her and Nasir before she grabbed the front of the tall man’s robes roughly and jerked his body around so no one could see them talking.
“Are human Horcruxes possible?” Hermione asked quickly the words pouring from her mouth unrestrained as she tapped her wand against his sternum and heard the crack of his ribs as they shifted back into place. He didn’t even flinch as it happened. His dark eyes were glinting and locked to her face, but his expression seemed detached and indifferent.
“Anything is possible Hermione,” he said slowly his eyes sliding over her face and then watching as she let go of his robes and moved her hands to his left forearm. He let her take it and start to examine it.
“Do not jerk me around right now, Nasir,” Hermione whispered harshly as she started to heal the small fracture in his forearm. Her eyes narrowed as she looked up to him and then grabbed the front of his robes once more and jerked him forward, her voice dropping even lower. “Are they possible? Could someone be a Horcrux and not know?”
Nasir stared at her silently for a second, his eyes flicking down to the fistful of his robes that she held like death before flicking back up to meet her hard gaze. She could feel his heart beating slow and even in her head like it always did as her desperate frustration started to build to barely containable levels.
“Someone could be,” Nasir said finally, his voice low and his eyes glinting darker. He leaned forward a fraction, his eyes once again shifting over her face as if he was reading her. “But it is incredibly unlikely. People tend to die when you store little bits of soul inside them that don’t belong, the odds of one existing are extremely low but it is certainly not impossible.”
She felt her stomach drop.
“Is Harry a Horcrux?” Hermione blurted, the words tumbling out like a whisper.
She didn’t care about keeping her worst fear a secret from this man – not when she knew he was likely the only person in the world who could help Harry if it was true. She’d already researched Horcruxes, she’d already looked into everything and anything she could find on them and never once had she stumbled across any documentation on human Horcruxes let alone how to help them. She already knew that she and Harry could not fix this on their own and that they would need his help.
“Could he be a Horcrux?”
Nasir’s eyes narrowed a fraction his brow quirking at her question as she continued to hold him hostage by his bloodied black robes.
“Did Harry say that he thinks he might be one?” Nasir asked slowly.
“No,” Hermione said, then she faltered and shook her head.
For all she knew Harry might have already figured it out and asked this man about it – but surely, Nasir would tell her if that was the case, wouldn’t he? They had a deal. Surely she would have been able to tell if Harry was lying to her just now, right? She honestly didn’t know. She could feel her confidence in everything slipping as exhaustion overtook her, her rune grew heavier and full-on panic set in. She didn’t have enough time – nowhere near enough time to deal with this the way she wanted to, and her words began to ramble.
“I don’t know – I was trying to ask him just now but you interrupted. He didn’t seem to have any idea what I was talking about – I even watched his vitals while he spoke and there was nothing to suggest he was lying but – but I don’t believe it.
“I just don’t know,” Hermione let out a frustrated sigh and heard her voice become tighter. “Maybe he suspects it but is in denial or maybe he’s never thought of it that way or maybe he’s just lying to me but I just – if he is one then it makes everything fit. Everything. I’d considered it before but dismissed it because I didn’t think it was possible so I started looking into other things to explain his connection to You Know Who but then in the vault he said he could hear them – but then just now he said he couldn’t. If he could then it makes me think he would have to be one because that would make sense, right? It’s two pieces of his soul so Harry would be able to hear it or possibly communicate with it. Did he ask you about this? Has he said anything? Do you know if he is? Is there something we can do to fix this or some way to test and see if he is one? Can you help him? How could he even live that long if he was one? Have you seen this before? I just think that–“
“Hermione, breathe.” Nasir’s deep voice cut her off but it felt like the world was spinning violently around her. Her grip on his robes had grown so tight she could no longer feel her fingers. Everything was blurring together, and it was getting harder and harder to breathe as the panic started to take over. She fought to keep her heart rate steady and the bond with Harry closed but she could feel it starting to slip beyond her control. Then his low voice echoed before her once more. “Breathe, Hermione.”
She inhaled sharply, it was like needles in her chest as her head clouded with the pain and agony of Harry being a Horcrux – of what that might mean. She could feel desperation creeping through her body.
“Our deal still stands,” Hermione's voice was almost hoarse as she looked up into the man's dark eyes. “If Harry is a Horcrux we have to find a way to help him – to un-Horcrux him – promise, promise me you’ll help. Promise me we’ll keep him alive.”
Her grip tightened harder and she jerked his robes, pulling him closer by another few inches as she stared up at him desperately.
“Promise me,” she whispered, her heart threatening to beat much too quickly any second – it was already starting to race. “And like I said I will give you whatever you want when this is over.”
His warm hand closed around her wrist as he ducked his head another inch toward her and his voice dropped dangerously low. She felt the hairs on the back of her skull prickle as his dark gaze all but bore into her.
“I promise you that our deal still stands, Hermione,” he said slowly, his deep rumble echoing between them as she heard Harry talking to Fleur in the background. His eyes seemed to grow darker, a tiny crease forming around them as something shifted behind his eyes. She couldn’t tell what the emotion was but it reminded her of the time they’d spoken in the tent after his outburst – he seemed so much more human. “I will do everything that I can – but right now, you need to focus. These people and Harry need you. If Harry is a Horcrux it doesn’t change anything between you two and it doesn’t change what you need to do to win this war.
“There is still time, Hermione.” His voice dropped to a low and serious tone as he fixed her with a hard stare. She could feel his grip on her wrist getting tighter – grounding her back to reality and forcing her to focus on him instead of her swirling panic. “So take a breath, and get control of your mind – you need everyone here including yourself to be completely focused or people are going to die, do you understand? Think of everything that you’ve done, everything that you’ve been through – you’re too close to lose control now, not after everything and not when I know you can do this.”
He paused, his eyes glinting with darkness as they flicked over her once more.
“I’m asking you to trust me, Hermione,” Nasir’s voice was almost stern. “To trust Harry. We can figure this out, but you need to get your head on straight and concentrate on what has to be done right now. Can you do that?”
Hermione swallowed hard, her hand trembling once more against his robes as he gripped her wrist tightly and she forced herself to nod and inhale deeply. Her mind felt like it was slipping – like it was being torn in half and she was fighting to keep it in control. She knew everything that Nasir had just said was true – they could figure this out, they could find a way and he would help them, there was still time – and yet, her rampant emotions were still spinning and making her sick with worry and dread.
“Say it,” Nasir said darkly, his grip on her wrist growing tighter still – his dark gaze commanding her full attention once more as she fought against her internal panic.
“I can do it,” Hermione breathed as she met his hard stare with an even one of her own.
She took a second deep breath, it burned in her lungs but she forced herself to let it out low and slow as she dropped her shoulders and demanded control of her panic addled body. She was in charge – and nothing good would come from her losing her shit. She took a third deep breath then a fourth and she felt her shoulders drop naturally as her heart rate slow.
“I can do it,” she repeated, nodding her head again but this time with conviction. “I trust you; I can focus – I can do this.”
“Good,” Nasir whispered as he slowly straightened until he was fully standing before her once more. “Because things are going to get worse before this is over and they need you Hermione – Harry needs you. Now let’s go take care of that cup before Tom storms the beach.”
She felt her silencing spell around them drop as Nasir stepped back and dropped his hold on her wrist. Her legs were shaky as she watched him step away, only for him to pause and turn back to her, motioning with his head for her to follow.
And she did.
Forcing her body to relax and remain calm.
Forcing her mind to stop spinning as she chose to trust this man – to trust that he would help her save Harry.
There’s still time, she breathed, as she focused on keeping her legs steady. We can figure this out.
She followed him over to the table where Harry had just confirmed with Fleur that the dittany had taken. Griphook’s arm was healed though the scarring would remain. She talked briefly with Bill and Ron and asked them to start checking and restocking the potion packs they’d used. Then she grabbed Harry’s hand tightly and exited the cottage, walking steadily out into the night along the beach with Nasir on her left and Harry on her right. They didn’t stop until they were safely within the wards that Nasir and Harry had set-up ages ago and then Harry pulled out the cup he’d tethered within his pocket.
“Alright,” Harry let out a sigh as he placed the cup on the ground and took a step back. “Hermione can you pull out the sword – we’ll get this done and over with so we can go back in and help Bill figure out what to do about Ragnok and the other goblin. He’s messaging Arthur and Shacklebolt now and telling everyone to retreat to the safe houses away from the Ministry until we can confirm that his involvement with our escape hasn’t been found out. Otherwise, his, Arthur’s and pretty much everyone’s cover are blown and it’s too risky for them to go back to work as if nothing has happened.”
Hermione nodded in understanding as she pulled the sword from her pocket. Harry was right. Nasir was right. They were still in the middle of a war where every second mattered and lives were depending on them, they had things they needed to focus on right now. But she would talk to Harry tonight when they went to bed. Then tomorrow they would go see Nasir and work their way through this and come up with a plan.
They would figure this out.
“Harry,” Nasir’s deep voice sounded across the dark beach just as Hermione had pulled out the sword of Gryffindor from her pocket and held it out to Harry. “Would you mind if I took care of this one?”
Harry’s brow arched in surprise as Hermione turned to look toward the tall man on her left.
“You want to destroy the cup?” Harry asked him, his hand now gripping the sword before him as his eyes fixed to Nasir.
“Yes,” Nasir said as he cast a small blue flame to light up the beach and shifted closer to the golden cup that lay on the burnt and blackened sand of their practice grounds. He fixed Harry with a strange look, his head tilting to the side a fraction before his voice lowered. “So long as you don’t mind.”
A moment of silence passed between them as Harry stared at the man and then slowly nodded.
“Alright,” Harry said, carefully handing the sword out to Nasir as Hermione’s eyes darted between the two males before her.
She didn’t like the look that had just passed between them, there was something about it that made her uneasy – but then again everything about today was making her uneasy and based on what happened the last time they’d destroyed a Horcrux she knew she might just be projecting some of her inner anxiety. So she forced herself to breath again and watched Nasir shake his head at the sword.
“I won’t need that,” Nasir said quietly as he turned and shifted around the small golden cup so his back was to the water. “I suggest you both take a few steps back.”
Hermione took the sword back from Harry as they shifted away, carefully re-pocketing it as they stood twenty feet back to his right and waited for him to move, but he simply looked at them and told them to move back further. Hermione swallowed hard, shifting another ten feet away and gripping Harry’s hand tightly as a cool breeze started to shift across the sand and send a shudder down her spine. Nasir pulled out his fake wand, his eyes dark and glinting as they flicked down to look at the golden cup once more. She could feel Harry’s heart rate increasing in her head as his grip tightened on her hand and they both seemed to hold their breath.
Nasir shifted his stance, taking the familiar form she’d seen him in countless times before – then red flames poured from the end of his wand and curled along the sand. His balance between chaos and control was insane, she felt her heart clench tight in her chest at the wave of heat generated from the small tendril of fire as it circled around the cup – she’d never been able to get such a small fire so hot before and she was awestricken as she watched him do it with an impassive and indifferent face.
But his expression shifted just as she heard a terrifying noise start to echo from the cup – it was the same noise that still haunted some of her dreams. The one that she’d heard on frozen ice after nearly drowning in the pond. The sound grated on her nerves, it sent a cold shiver down her spine as her nose filled with the smell of death and a rough rattled inhale reverberated around them as Harry’s grip on her hand tightened so hard she thought he might break it.
“Hello, Tom,” Nasir’s words were dark and laced with a hollow empty acid that made her stomach churn. She’d always wondered if the man knew Voldemort and it felt like she’d just gotten a hint of the answer.
Nasir turned his fire on the cup and the blackened sky ignited with colour as a shrieking scream split through the air – the flames grew, rushing up into the sky like a tidal wave of fire as heat seared out and burned across her face.
She could see him.
The outline of Voldemort’s deranged face showing in the flames like a demon before his voice cut through the air in a raging roar.
“YOU!!” it hissed at Nasir, its words echoing out through the night and making her entire body flinch. “I WILL TEAR YOU APART AND RIP YOU FROM THIS EARTH!!!”
The hatred it carried shot through her heart like a dagger as the ground trembled. She saw Nasir’s mouth move as he shouted something that she couldn’t make out over the raging flames and then a deafening boom split across the ground. Hermione was thrown backward as the fire twisted into a raging inferno and Harry was ripped from her grip. She collided with the ground, skidding several feet before she finally came to a stop, panting hard, her clothes steaming from heat as she groaned and hauled herself up on her elbows to look out at the beach before her. The sand was black, she couldn’t even tell it apart from the night’s sky as a gust of cold air shifted over her head and rustled her hair – like there hadn’t just been a violent explosion of flames a moment before.
Her eyes rapidly scanned across the sand, searching the darkness for signs of another body as voices rang out behind her and several sets of heartbeats skyrocketed in her mind.
“HARRY!” she hauled herself up from the ground, coughing as her heat burned lungs ached, her eyes bleary and watery. She staggered as she got her footing, her eyes taking in the sight of a tall figure dressed in black that was calmly walking towards her.
Nasir, her mind supplied. He was fine. Her eyes shifted to the left once more and then she saw him. Harry was sitting up on the sand twenty feet away clutching his chest as if someone had just punched a hole through it. His face was pale white, his body was shaking and the look in his eyes told her that if he hadn’t known before this moment – he knew it now.
Harry was a Horcrux.
There wasn’t a single doubt in her mind and Nasir exploding that cup had been like an attack on his own body.
“Harry!” she darted out across the sand toward him, dropping down to her knees at his side and wrapping her arm around him to help him stand. He staggered and leaned on her hard, his breath coming in pants as he fought for air and then he grabbed her tightly – looking into her eyes with a desperate sort of terror.
“We have to go,” he panted, his face grimacing in pain.
“Harry, it’s okay we’re safe – let me get some dittany and we can–“
“No!” Harry pulled away from her only to grab her upper arms tight and jerk her before him. “We have to go – now! I saw it – I saw him!”
“Harry?” Nasir’s voice sounded as he approached, and Hermione felt terror settling deep into her bones as Harry sent a snippet of a memory through the bond into her mind. Her body went incredibly still, the colour draining from her face as Harry shook his head, his eyes pinching in pain as he looked over to Nasir, then glanced at the cottage where she could hear the others running out.
“I saw him,” Harry repeated, his breath coming in more controlled gulps as his body started to tremble and a look of agony crossed his face. His eyes were flicking between her and Nasir now as his hands had started to shake. “He’s going to Hogwarts – tonight, he knows his Horcruxes are being destroyed and he thinks that Nasir is doing it. He’s going to Hogwarts to get the one he left there – I know what it is Hermione, it’s the diadem – from Ravenclaw. It’s the last one besides the snake – that’s where it is, at Hogwarts. We have to go – now – we have to go, and we have to get it first and we have to get everyone out. He will burn that place to the ground and destroy his Horcrux himself before he ever lets Nasir get his hands on it.”
A dull ringing began to echo in Hermione’s ears. He’d not shown her everything he'd seen, she knew he’d cut out most of it – but she’d seen Voldemort’s face, she’d heard his voice, she’d smelled the death that clung to his body as he exploded in a fit of terror and rage at Malfoy Manor.
Harry wasn’t lying.
If they wanted any chance at getting the last Horcrux and any shot at winning this war they had to leave now – Voldemort was assembling his people and he was going to storm the castle grounds. And he would do exactly what Harry said – he would destroy and burn that entire school and all its inhabitants to dust if they did not get there first.
Stealth was out the window.
Secrecy was no longer an option.
They had officially run out of time.
The war was upon them whether they liked it or not – whether they were ready or not, and they had to go face it head-on.
She felt a cold chill run down her spine.
They were going into battle.
Warnings:
This chapter contains: explicit smut (which can be skipped without missing out on main plot), and some descriptions of injuries which are unpleasant.
*******************************************
April 19, 1998
Hogwarts, 12:02 pm
Snape fought back the urge to sigh as he climbed the stairs to the Headmaster’s office and mentally prepared himself for the possibility of bad news. He was exhausted, weary and every muscle in his body seemed to be aching and begging him to go to sleep and get some rest – except that he couldn’t. He’d stayed up most of the night after Nasir left to keep an eye on the werewolf farmhouse situation and start brewing. Thankfully nothing had gone wrong and the nearby village hadn’t been ravaged by a group of newly transformed beasts. Unbelievable as it was – Granger’s bands, whatever they were, had apparently contained the creatures and left them nearly tamed from what Phineas had been able to observe.
He had no idea how the annoying know-it-all had managed to do it because she and Potter never left the purse open long enough for him to get all the details. He just knew that it centered around the banding design Bellatrix’s project had created and that it was, rightly so, being kept tightly under wraps because it could be used for far worse things. Someday, if Snape ever got the chance, he would review the bands and try to figure out how they worked. It was on his list of things to do if he managed to not die too soon – right next to examining Granger’s apparently endless purse and speaking to Arthur and Shacklebolt about how they’d managed to alter Peter’s memories and get him on board with protecting the Order.
The potential for bad news today was, as always, regarding Potter and Granger – or the stupid prat and his annoying girlfriend as he tended to refer to them in his head.
Keeping tabs on them felt much like sitting next to a smoking volcano that was threatening to blow at any second and give him a heart attack – and he’d know, he’d already had one. With the way things had been going this year and his excessive use of experimental potions, he was walking a very fine line in relation to his health and he’d already experienced a minor heart attack. But he’d brushed it off, using a heart regulation spell he’d learned years ago to correct his erratic pulse and force his body into submission. Then he’d gone right back to work.
He never knew exactly what the duo was up to and he never knew when they might find trouble next. Even with being at Shell Cottage and having Nasir with them, it was still a stressor that left him agitated. The pair of them were troublesome and he sighed as he entered the office and quickly warded the door behind him. He’d had to leave early that morning to go pick up supplies from Hogsmeade and then he’d had to deal with the latest directions from the Dark Lord.
Evidently, his timeline for the Dark Lord losing his shit was incorrect – it seemed that the paranoia had set in a hell of a lot faster than he’d anticipated and the Dark Lord was already losing his patience toward finding Nasir and collecting his head. Things at Hogwarts were, yet again, going to change for the worse. This upcoming week would be hell and he just sincerely hoped that Weasley and her band of idiots would learn to shut their fucking mouths and keep their heads down – because the school was now officially shut down and there was no escape. He’d closed the wards entirely on the 16th per the Dark Lord’s orders and this morning he’d just received word that the ‘problematic’ students were to no longer receive treatment from the Hospital Wing post detention.
It seemed that the Dark Lord wanted to send a message not only to the students but to the professors as well – to the parents, the Ministry – everyone. Anyone who might potentially be a threat would be dealt with swiftly and with full force. The Prophet was about to explode with stories of more people going missing – which meant they were dead – and the Carrows were now authorized to use any means they felt necessary on students identified as potential threats. Or on those who may come from families that had ties to the Order or to Nasir in order to maintain control of the school and to encourage alignment with the Dark Lord while dishing out punishment to those who deserved it. Which pretty well meant that every other student besides the Slytherins was now a target.
And there was nothing he could do about it anymore.
Not without risking his position and using memory charms on the Carrows. McGonagall’s Deputy Headmistress status had long ago been turned void as per the Dark Lord’s order so she held no authority over the castle and its control remained solely with him.
First thing tomorrow morning Hogwarts would become a nightmare, and he wasn’t sure that he was ready for it. He wasn’t sure that the students or the other professors could handle it – they had barely been holding it together as it was and now his hands were more tied than ever and the school’s supplies had been cut in half in order to help make up for the losses caused by Nasir. This morning Narcissa had learned that one of the Death Eater supply locations had been disintegrated, taking with it a large collection of ingredients and food. The signature of the dark magic was unmistakably Nasir’s – Snape had confirmed it that morning and he knew it must have happened sometime in the last few days. But oddly, the man had not mentioned it the night before.
Why he had no idea.
Was the man working with the Order to dismantle the Death Eater's storage locations? Or had he simply done it on his own for shits and giggles because he wanted to torment the Dark Lord and drive him crazy?
Either way, it would have been impossible for Snape to be aware of the operation because he hadn’t even known the location of that storage site. It was managed by Yaxley’s crew, he knew nothing about it and so it wasn’t information that Snape could have revealed. To say that the Dark Lord was angry was an understatement. The only good thing about the situation was that he had passed his veritaserum test with flying colours and was totally in the clear and off the suspect list - that, and the loss had hit the Dark Lord’s forces hard.
The downside was that the Dark Lord was now about two seconds away from going on a full fucking rampage, it had emboldened the Death Eaters and now the school was going to suffer the consequences. One wrong step by a foolish student, or one wrong look from a professor and people might die. He felt the runes on his chest grow heavier than a lead balloon as he shifted across the floor and leaned against the desk before Phineas’ empty portrait and let out a sigh as he dropped his head and pinched the bridge of his nose.
Who am I fucking kidding, Snape thought bitterly as he shook his head in defeat. Students are going to die – I can’t protect them any longer. It’s just a matter of time.
“Oh, Severus!” Phineas’ voice rang out and Snape’s head shot up. “You’re back – any news?”
“Nothing good,” Snape said dryly, forcing his face to remain impassive. “Nasir blew up a storehouse and the Dark Lord is pitching a fit. There are going to be some changes around here this week.”
“What changes?” Dumbledore piped up, his piercing blue eyes narrowing at Snape.
“Changes,” Snape said snidely as he glared at the dead Headmaster. “They were always going to happen they’ve just come sooner than I expected.”
“And they came as a result of Nasir – because he doesn’t care about you or the students, or anyone! I told you that he would become a problem. He’s set Tom off on a rampage and now the students will pay the price,” Dumbledore seethed as he glared angrily at Snape.
“They’re already paying the price, Albus!” Snape spat as he ran his hand through his hair. Dumbledore’s words stung a bit more than usual because there was a shred of truth to them. Nasir’s action had and would impact them; and the man had not even given him any warning – but Snape refused to acknowledge that to the old man before him. Not after making the decision to stick things out with Nasir and not when Dumbledore’s own track record was as muddy as a Death Eater’s. “Or have you forgotten that the Carrows have been tormenting students since September? Either way there is nothing we can do about it now except try to end this as quickly as possible. Which is exactly what I am trying to do so save your fucking breath and do me a favour by shutting up! Phineas –“
“Yes?” Phineas replied immediately, eyes snapping back to his, but Snape didn’t miss the way the portrait had been glaring at Dumbledore in annoyance.
“What’s the update at the cottage – has Potter managed to kill himself yet?” Snape asked with irritation, he ignored the look that Dumbledore gave him.
“No – it seems like Potter is taking the day off to recover from something but I couldn’t make out all the details. My frame seems to have shifted within Hermione’s purse and for a good part of the morning I was covered by something fluffy and green and it was entirely silent,” Phineas said and his brow pinched as if in thought.
Snape frowned and fought the urge to roll his eyes. He didn’t want to hear about strange fuzzy green objects in Granger’s purse. He just wanted an update.
“But you’ve confirmed that Potter is okay?” Snape pressed, fixing Phineas with a stare and hoping that the man would focus on the information that actually mattered.
“Oh yes, definitely – I heard Hermione say that she planned to make him dinner when he woke, it seems like whatever happened was planned. Perhaps he just exerted himself in training,” Phineas said optimistically. “They seem to know what they’re doing and they’re being careful and following a tight schedule. I’ve told you before – they’re not stupid, Severus.”
“You’ve never met them,” Snape said dryly as he pushed off the desk. He ignored Phineas’ claim that he had ‘indeed met the two of them in person before’ and instead made his way around the desk to sit in the large chair. “But at least that’s one good piece of news – anything else? What are they doing now?”
“Well Potter is sleeping right now, and Hermione is reading,” Phineas said as Snape turned his attention to the stack of papers before him. “They mentioned ‘testing it’ during training tomorrow but I’m not sure what that means. I’m wondering if Potter spent this morning developing something and that is why he needed to rest – I heard the word ‘core’ mentioned but I don’t know exactly what it was in reference to. But there was – well, there was one other thing that came up that I did hear.”
“What?” Snape said dully as he flicked through the papers on his desk and mentally checked the time. He would need to go stir the cauldrons soon or he would have six batches of useless red, blue and green paste – which would be no good. He needed those potions; they were to be split between Narcissa and Nasir this week. He grabbed his quill and started to adjust the note he needed to send out to Narcissa regarding the potion status and pick-up date.
“Well,” Phineas hesitated a second. “Hermione and Nasir had a row.”
Snape’s head snapped up and a flutter of panic shot down his spine.
“What do you mean a row?” Dumbledore’s voice cut through the air before Snape could even speak. The old man was twisting in his portrait to look at Phineas and the anger in his eyes had sparked back to life. “Is she okay? Did he hurt her?”
“Of course she is okay,” Phineas snapped, glaring at the dead Headmaster to his right with irritation. “Nasir would never hurt Hermione – they simply had a disagreement over implementing some dark magic.”
“What did he do?” Dumbledore said darkly and Snape’s grip on the papers remained rigid.
“He didn't do anything,” Phineas sniffed and turned his attention away from the Headmaster and back to Snape. “From the snippets of conversation that I have been able to catch over the last little while it has become abundantly clear that Nasir is there to help them. In fact, he has never done anything but – he’s not done a single thing to hurt or harm them in any way and after this morning it is obvious that he has come to care for the girl and Potter.”
“Care for them?!” Dumbledore scoffed but Snape felt some of the stress leave his body as he arched a brow in question.
“Then what did they fight about?” Snape asked, twisting fully to look at the portrait of his friend. He’d never in a million years have thought that Phineas would join the side in favour of Nasir, and it made him wonder just what the hell he had heard the Revenant say this morning. After all, only yesterday Phineas had looked like he wanted to fade away into nothing when the tall man had nodded to him in greeting. In less than 24 hours his opinion had flipped entirely. “Who wanted to implement the dark magic?”
“It sounded like Hermione wanted to implement something that Potter did to help them in the war, but Nasir refused,” Phineas said as he sent another quick glare in Dumbledore’s direction. “They got into an argument over it this morning – it was hard to make it all out clearly because I was still half-covered by that green thing, whatever it was, but they were arguing about some kind of procedure. I don’t know what the procedure was but they both started yelling at each other and it got a bit heated until Nasir ended up explaining to Hermione that the lingering effects from the magic would be too hard on her body given her past injuries.”
“And I imagine that went poorly with Granger,” Snape said slowly as he watched the expression on Phineas’ face shift into one of sadness.
“It did,” Phineas nodded solemnly and then his voice dropped quieter. “She’s been struggling with her arm Severus – Nasir may have fixed it, but it still causes her issues when she’s exhausted, and I think it makes her feel weak. She’s trying to take on too much and she isn’t used to hearing no. And it went especially poorly because Nasir had let Harry do whatever it was. She thought that he was saying she wasn’t capable of handling the procedure but it turns out that wasn’t it at all. He was just trying to protect her – to make sure that she had room for the tolls of life after the war ended.”
Silence echoed in the room as Phineas stopped talking and Snape shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
“I see,” Snape said slowly, even though he didn’t feel like he understood it at all. It was impossible for him to imagine the man who had carved runes into his chest and ripped away a piece of his soul having that conversation with Granger – let alone him telling Granger to avoid dark magic. He had expected the exact opposite from Nasir, and he was having a hard time processing the information. He couldn’t picture Nasir yelling in an argument – and he couldn’t picture Granger yelling at Nasir. And he certainly could not imagine them having a heart to heart conversation about Granger’s feelings, her arm or her incessant habit of taking on too much or the long-term effects that dark magic would have on her body. “So, what happened?”
“They worked it out,” Phineas said quietly, and his lips twisted into a small smile. “They both stopped yelling and they talked – she forgave him. It seems that the man has been struggling to adapt to having emotions once more and he explained that to Hermione.”
“What?!” Snape’s body flickered with panic as every muscle stiffened. “What did he tell her? Did he tell her about his lack of soul? Did he tell her that he has one now?!”
Just what the fuck had that man been telling them?!
“Hardly,” Phineas scoffed waving that thought away with a swish of his hand as if the very notion of it was crazy. “Don't be ridiculous Severus – from what I can tell Nasir doesn't reveal very much information to them and it actually seems to be a point of annoyance with Hermione and Potter. I told you before and I’ll tell you again – they are not stupid, Severus. You have got to stop underestimating them. Hermione and Potter have spent nearly every hour of every day for the last month with that man – did you seriously think they wouldn’t notice that there was something off about him?
“They’d picked up on the fact that he seemed unnatural and had no emotions almost immediately – they just didn’t understand why,” Phineas said as he crossed his arms over his chest and fixed Snape with a firm stare. “So, it’s not surprising that when Nasir turned back up and suddenly displayed some emotion that they figured it was related to his disappearance and return. Hermione figured that out on her own, she outright stated it this morning – I heard that part of the conversation clearly. Nasir simply confirmed the suspicion she had – but he never said why or how, and she didn’t ask him for details.”
Phineas let out a sigh and leaned against the edge of his frame, a weary but calm expression shifting over his face.
“I think that, like you, he has been busy on the sidelines and isn't getting very much sleep. Which you essentially confirmed today given that Narcissa found that storage location destroyed. He’s obviously doing more than just helping Hermione and Harry train. He was friends with Shacklebolt wasn’t he? Or as close as he could be to a ‘friend’ given his nature at the time – but either way, he was working with the man and don’t forget that Shacklebolt was the one who brought him in to help the Order. I bet he’s still working with him on the side while fitting everything else in. So when Hermione asked about whatever that procedure was and she refused to accept his answer he lost his patience faster than he normally would have because he’s probably exhausted and not used to your emotions,” Phineas said quietly. His eyes creased a fraction as he fixed Snape with a knowing stare and then his voice flattened. “Which is hardly surprising – you struggle to manage your emotions and you’ve had them since you were a boy. Imagine how he must feel having a piece of that inside him now after being empty for decades.”
Snape’s eyes narrowed to a hard glare but Phineas only rolled his eyes and continued.
“That wasn’t meant to be an insult – but it is true, Severus. Your temper and bad attitude are infamous – but that doesn’t matter. He apologized for yelling at her and they have since worked it out. He didn’t tell Hermione that he has a soul and he never mentioned you,” Phineas said firmly.
“He apologized,” Dumbledore’s voice sounded dumbfounded as he stared at Phineas’ portrait in disbelief. The words hadn’t even been a question, they’d just come out as a blank unbelieving remark.
“Yes,” Phineas said tightly, his eyes narrowing into a glare once more as they shifted to the dead Headmaster. “Despite what everyone seems to think and what I've heard everyone say about the man – I have not once yet witnessed him being the monster that you have made him out to be. Perhaps the issue isn't the man himself, perhaps the issue is everyone else and how they perceive him. Have you not heard of the theory that if you tell someone they are something long enough, they will learn to believe it and then they will become it? Perhaps people should be afforded the opportunity to define themselves instead of being slapped with a label by those around them. Is it so hard to believe that that man might actually be human? Especially now that he has a piece of Severus' soul? Who, I might add, has always been a reliable and honourable man.”
Snape nearly blanched at the statement and a strangled cough came from his lips as he gave Phineas a look that perfectly conveyed the ‘what the fuck?´ that was racing through his head.
“There are an infinitely vast number of people who would vehemently disagree with that statement, Phineas,” Snape said tightly as his eyes narrowed to a glare. It was the most absurd statement that he had ever heard made about him and that included the ridiculous ones made by the students in the castle who seemed to think he was legitimately a bat or a vampire. “You should refrain from saying that again or I’m going to start questioning your sanity. Perhaps you have spent too much time clanging around at the bottom of Granger’s purse.”
“And those ‘infinite numbers’ of people would only say that because they do not know you as I do,” Phineas gave Snape a strange look that he could not quite decipher. “Because you keep everyone at arm’s length and you never let them see you. You are simply a man who has made decisions in his life, some better than others I'll admit and yes you’ve made mistakes that have left you with hard consequences – but you are not, nor have you ever been, a monster.”
Silence echoed in the office once more and Snape’s body tensed with discomfort as he swallowed the bitter taste that had suddenly appeared in his mouth at Phineas’ words.
“Yes well,” Snape said uncomfortably as he dropped the letter to Narcissa back on the desk and stood to move towards his quarters. He was painfully aware that both Phineas and Dumbledore were watching him closely now, but he couldn’t seem to make himself look at them. “We’ll see if you still think that at the end of this week once the changes at Hogwarts have been implemented – once the war has ended and we can finally get a clear view of the blood on my hands and a count on the lives that I’ve taken and ruined beyond repair.”
Snape pushed open the door to his rooms, moving through it in three quick steps before slamming it shut behind him.
April 24, 1998
Hogwarts, 10:37 pm
“How many times?” Ginny murmured as she gently ran her fingers over the angry red lines. They were deep, incredibly deep – they’d cut into the muscles below the skin.
This was new.
The Carrows must have developed a new quill working off the original design or perhaps they’d just modified one – because the ones they were using before could have never done this much damage even after writing a thousand lines.
“I lost count,” Neville muttered as he sat on the stool before her incredibly still. The bloodstained white dress shirt of his school uniform hung unbuttoned from his right shoulder, exposing the entire left half of his chest and back – he’d had to mostly take it off so Ginny could look at the words that were now cut into the back of his left shoulder. But his eyes were fixed on the small Ravenclaw boy that Susan was treating across the common room from them. In fact, he was so focused on them that he’d not even flinched when Ginny had poured wound cleaning potion over his shoulder only a moment ago. “Not that it mattered – I wasn’t able to get him out without injury, I wasn’t able to keep them off him.”
“No,” Ginny said quietly, acknowledging the regret in Neville’s voice as her eyes flicked to Susan who was currently placing a bandage over the kid’s right arm. “But you saved his wand arm and you managed to keep them from casting another round of cruciatus until McGonagall arrived. That’s a win Neville – a huge win. That matters.”
“Maybe,” Neville murmured as his head started to shake and then his voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “I can’t believe this is Hogwarts – I can’t believe that they won’t let us go to the Hospital Wing anymore.”
“I know,” Ginny said, hearing the hollow emptiness in her voice as she carefully smoothed the paste that Madam Pomfrey had smuggled to them several days ago across Neville’s raw shoulder.
When the healer had caught wind of the upcoming changes to Hogwarts’ policy she’d collected a rather large selection of supplies and began sneaking them out to the students and having the house elves deliver them to the dormitories. And it had all been in preparation for this – as of four days ago, Madam Pomfrey was no longer allowed to treat students injured during their ‘detentions’.
For how would they learn if she healed them?
The Hospital Wing was now under surveillance by a new Death Eater she didn’t know the name of with the aid of a rotating group of volunteer seventh year Slytherins – they’d been employed to assist the Carrows rather similarly to how the Inquisitorial Squad in fifth year had assisted Umbridge – and Madam Pomfrey was being closely watched at all times while her stocks were being monitored and raided. Ginny had personally witnessed another two men she didn’t recognize carrying out boxes of supplies from the school.
Yet that did not stop the older witch from finding other ways to help them, heal them, and counsel them. Pomfrey siphoned them supplies, she met with them at odd hours to inspect their injuries in the Gryffindor or Hufflepuff common rooms to ensure that they’d managed them okay. She’d even given Ginny, Susan, Lavender, the Patil twins, Neville and a collection of other upper-year students a crash course in basic first aid training so that they could manage their injuries until she was able to sneak out and see them. She usually got to them within 48 hours – but still, it was nice to know that they had the skills and the resources to keep someone from dying or being permanently maimed until she arrived.
Ginny held back a sigh as her eyes travelled over the two words that would forever be carved into his skin.
BLOOD TRAITOR
It was a popular choice by the Carrows but this was the worst instance of it.
Thick and sluggish lines of blood had been seeping from it, staining through his clothes as he’d stumbled into the common room twenty minutes ago with the small Ravenclaw boy and McGonagall hot on his heels. The older witch hadn’t been able to stay long – she’d had to go deal with the Carrows – and the regret on her face for leaving them alone to tend to Neville and the boy was debatably more painful than Neville’s injury.
McGonagall was struggling.
Ginny could see it just by looking at her, the stress lines on her face were nearly as deep as the wound before her – she was thin. Too thin. And her eyes were filled with a myriad of emotions that led Ginny to believe the older witch was just barely hanging on to her final threads of sanity. It was concerning.
But it made sense.
Her students were being injured before her eyes and there was little that she and the other professors could outright do to help aside from helping them to manage the clean-up afterwards. Her school was overrun by Death Eaters and their supplies were now being used to stock the resources of a crazed lunatic who wanted to obliterate half the wizarding population.
Some of the students had started to resent the professors for not doing more – but Ginny wasn’t stupid. She knew that the professors were doing literally everything that they could. If McGonagall spoke up directly or tried to take blatant action she would simply be killed and then she wouldn’t be able to help them at all. Ginny had read enough from the Prophet to figure that out – the professors were dispensable and they knew it. And helping a little bit was better than being dead.
McGonagall’s actions were careful and calculated, she did everything that she could when she could and even though she visibly hated it – she depended on Ginny, Neville, Susan and the core gang to help hold shit together. To step up and play a role that Ginny knew they were far too young and inexperienced to be playing.
But there wasn’t any other choice.
And so Ginny gladly played her part because like she’d said to her parents over the Christmas break that now felt like a lifetime ago – she was part of this world and part of this war whether she wanted to be or not. She would not stand aside and watch it burn because she was too afraid of getting hurt – and she would never cave and crumble at the feet of a madman to save her own skin. The only way any of them stood a chance was if they fought together and stayed strong. It was just proving to be more difficult and complicated than she’d originally anticipated.
Classes were still ongoing – but they’d been fading over the semester and in the last two weeks they’d become a complete joke. Some of the professors didn’t even teach at all anymore. Some of them used the time to let students nap safely, practice defense spells or even just sit there staring blankly. Really it was only the lower year classes that were still ‘ongoing’ because the professors were desperately trying to keep the little kids calm and give them some kind of normal within all this crazy, even if it was just false hope. But years five through seven didn’t really study anything anymore. And in the last Arithmancy class, Professor Vector had just sat behind her desk and stared blankly at the surface without talking for the entire duration – her eyes had been distant and unfocused.
They were falling apart.
In the last month, their cracks had started to show more clearly and the ones that hadn’t yet broken were on the verge of it, only hanging on because they had too – because they were vehement in their efforts to keep it together for the students. After all, they were the only thing they had left, and if they didn’t have each other they had nothing.
Ginny couldn’t believe that this was Hogwarts either. That their once great school had turned into something dark, dangerous and filled with hatred and torture.
And yet she could believe it. She did believe it – because they’d lived it each and every day since coming back to school in September and it had only gotten worse as the days went on.
Since Susan’s run-in with the Carrows seventeen days ago and the explosion with McGonagall and Snape in the hallway things had changed and the situation had grown even more worse than Ginny could have imagined.
After the incident and after Susan got news about her family a week had gone by like normal. They’d placed a swamp in the Slytherin corridor on the 15th as per their plan to keep Snape and the Carrows busy while they stole more food from the kitchens and got additional supplies from the other professors. Then they’d kept their heads down and focused on training in the common rooms until the 19th hit, and then suddenly, Snape’s behaviour seemed to shift and the Carrows were filled with a new wave of violence and charged sense of purpose.
It was as if they’d been told to double down and make sure that the students knew exactly who was in charge of the school. As if they’d been told to grab any student they could get their hands on and cause as much pain a possible. In the last four days the letters delivered by owls during breakfast seemed to double – students were losing relatives faster than they could keep track. The Prophet told stories of more treason, more sentencing, more supply shortages as a result of the Order and their rebellion. Law changes were implement that made it blatantly obvious the Ministry had fallen entirely under Voldemort’s control. The teachers seemed to have grown more stressed and exhausted – some of them looked like they’d aged ten years in a single week and Ginny was beginning to wonder if they would manage to keep it together.
Thirteen students had been hit with the cruciatus curse since the 19th. One had lost a finger during detention; one was currently in the Hospital Ward cursed and unconscious, and countless others were now littered with text that was permanently carved into their skin. It had been one week – and they’d had more injuries and torture than they’d had all fucking year.
She’d not heard anything from Fred and George since the last deliveries on the weekend of the 11th and she wasn’t due to hear anything else from them until the 26th when they did their Sunday supply run – but she knew something must have happened. Something in the war outside of Hogwarts had shifted and it had emboldened the Death Eaters and turned the quiet war into an outright blaze.
She could feel it.
Not just because of the fresh scars that littered her body.
Not just because of the pain that seemed to be constantly radiating down her spine from when she’d been thrown into the wall by one of the Slytherin’s during their bullshit DADA class.
No.
She could feel it in her bones.
She knew from watching the way the Carrows glared and stalked the halls. From the way the teacher’s eyes had grown full of fear – from how Snape had been missing more meals, his body growing thinner and thinner by the day as his eyes seemed to become hollow empty pools of death that promised nothing but agony to those that dared meet his gaze. He looked more lethal than she’d ever recalled him being – like one wrong move or one wrong word might send him into a fit of rage that would destroy the entire school. Yet simultaneous – he appeared calm and in control, and it was fucking terrifying. Even the Carrows were avoiding him more than usual – and when she’d accidentally caught his eye during dinner the other night it had sent a chill through her body as if she’d walked through a ghost.
And she knew.
They were on the brink of all-out war.
She just wasn’t sure exactly when it would happen or exactly what was going to happen. She fought back a sigh as her mind continued to spin and she tended to Neville’s shoulder.
“Do you think the twins will have any news this weekend?” Neville said quietly as Ginny finished rubbing the paste over the last letter on his shoulder.
“I hope so,” Ginny muttered glancing up again to see that Susan had finally finished with the Ravenclaw boy and had sent him with Lavender to get something to drink. “The last update we got wasn’t great though – Dobby’s death confirmed, the Ministry losing more ground and supply shortages because the Death Eaters are hoarding everything. Fucking hell – the only good news we got was finding out that the Order is still alive and that they had some plans that might help. But – if I’m right, and I think I am – their plans going ‘right’ seem to be making things here worse.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Neville muttered, his face grimacing as he started to pull his shirt back on. Ginny’s face pinched in pain on his behalf and she didn’t miss the way that a few of the girls in the seats nearby glanced toward him as he moved. His confidence wasn’t the only thing that had changed this year – he’d finally filled into his body, no longer an awkward duckling. His broad shoulders were muscled now, he no longer looked like a boy and she knew some of the girls found him attractive even if he didn’t show them any interest in return. They glanced at her too – as if jealous that she was the one who got to touch him. That thought nearly made her laugh… if only they knew. “Do you think your dad or Shacklebolt will do anything with the report we gave them?”
“Maybe,” Ginny sighed as she quickly cast a cleaning charm over her hands and then started to pack up their supplies. Neville stood and started to help her. “But what can they do Neville?”
They’d been debating sending an accurate report back to the Order about just how bad things at the school had gotten for several weeks now.
On one hand – they were literally the only ones with a line of communication from Hogwarts to the outside world and they were the only ones aside from McGonagall capable of getting word out. They’d told the older witch about their secret passage to Aberforth’s and the supply runs ages ago – she supported them, obviously, but McGonagall wasn’t able to get away with using it very often because Snape watched the other professors like a hawk. Though she did occasionally give Ginny a coded status report to send with their exchanges.
But on the other hand – what would telling the Order accomplish? There was nothing that the Order could do for them – not when they were out there fighting the real war. Writing a letter detailing the ordeals that they were facing as students would only make them worry and stress out – Merlin, she could only imagine her mother’s reaction and the screaming fit with her dad that would ensue as she pressed him to ‘do something’ about it. Because despite the precarious relationship they currently had and despite how bitterly things had ended at Christmas – Ginny knew that her mother, in her own obsessive and obtuse way, still cared about her and would be devasted to find out about the torture they were enduring.
But the cold hard truth was the Order had no method of evacuating the school or coming to their aid. The wards had been closed, the school had been all but shut down – it had always been heavily restricted this year with extremely limited access but now no one left the grounds anymore, no one could leave the grounds anymore – not without Snape giving them access. Not even the teachers or the Carrows were allowed to leave the premise or go to Hogsmeade and thus they had no means of communicating with the world because Snape had put them all in lockdown.
Yet in a bizarre way, it was debatably safer here in the school rather than out of it because at least here they were together and could keep each other safe as they waited things out. At least they could train, they could hide, they could eat and not be hunted down to join the list of names that the Death Eaters in the Ministry were executing on a daily basis. Then again, maybe it just made them fish in a barrel – or ‘sitting ducks’ as the muggles would say.
Ginny wasn’t sure – and neither was Neville, which was why they’d held off for so long on telling the Order about what was truly happening at the school with the Carrows until they had finally decided to do so in their last letters. But now, eleven days later that report was already outdated – because things had gotten worse yet again and the danger had gone from seriously bad to deadly bad.
She could feel the dread spreading through her body as she turned to look at Neville once more.
“They don’t have a method of evacuating us Neville you know that – and even if they could get us out where would everyone go?” Ginny said quietly, her hands pausing on the small potion bottles in her grasp as her eyes flicked out to the common room.
There were pillows and blankets everywhere. There were cots made from transfigured books and curtains strung up for makeshift rooms. Half of Ravenclaw was living in the Gryffindor tower now and the other half was living in Hufflepuff’s. Some of them slept in the common rooms and some of them were bunking up with the Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs in expanded beds where they’d crammed upwards of three to four people.
They’d made the change at the start of the week after a Slytherin had stalked a young Ravenclaw girl back to her quarters and then attacked her outside the door. With the Carrows having enlisted the help of the upper-year Slytherins it was no longer safe to be so spread out across the castle because they just couldn’t keep an eye on one another. So, they’d doubled down on their security and they’d abandoned the Ravenclaw dormitories all together. They’d debated moving to the Room of Requirements – in fact, it was something that still came up quite regularly in their nightly discussions with the core gang leaders, but the truth was they didn’t trust the room anymore. Not after Malfoy and the fifth year Inquisitorial Squad had been able to break into it and find their DA practice room and not when the room currently contained the tunnel to Aberforth’s.
It was too risky to keep all their eggs in one basket, but it was also too risky to remain as three separate houses so far apart from one another.
So, they’d set-up the main base in Gryffindor Tower and the back-up base in Hufflepuff because it was nearer to the kitchens which made stealing food, supplies and contacting the house elves easier. McGonagall and Sprout had secretly worked together with Flitwick to implement several layers of additional protection around the two house entrances to help keep them safe and the few portraits inside the common rooms had all been taken down and stuffed into a broom closet with a heavy silencing charm so they could not be spied on. The only faculty capable of getting into their dorms now was Madam Pomfrey, who they trusted, and McGonagall and Sprout – who had helped them set it up to start with and would rather die before they allowed anyone in the house dorms.
It was about as safe as they could be while still at this school.
Sure, Snape could, in theory, still get into their tower if he wanted to or enter the Hufflepuff common room if he wished – he was the Headmaster of the school after all and he could go anywhere he pleased whenever he wanted. But Ginny and Neville sincerely doubted that he ever would because as the insane month of April went by, they’d watched the ominous man more carefully – more closely – and they’d slowly begun to realize that he was not a threat to them.
At least not directly, and at least not yet.
Despite his shift in demeanour and the growing intensity since the 19th he largely left them alone. He left the tormenting of the students to the Carrows and he really only ever got involved when things escalated into outright battle. It seemed like the deadlier the man became the more he existed like a shadow in the school – still dangerous and hateful – he would pop up out of nowhere like a monster from the night. Make no mistake he’d make you regret it if you ever crossed his path and each and every time she completed a supply run or a mission to distract the Carrows she sent a silent prayer to Merlin that she wouldn’t run into him – but the reality was, as she and Neville had finally realized, he didn’t seem to have time for them and as long as they didn’t directly piss him off he didn’t bother with them.
In some ways, she was sort of kicking herself for not seeing it or realizing it sooner.
He was the right hand of the devil himself after all and his presence was heavily split between here and wherever it was that Voldemort sent him. Based on the articles in the Prophet, she and Neville figured he was involved in the disappearances, the killings, the torture and all the other things happening in the real war. He did not have time to deal with pesky students or torture them personally – he was too busy killing the people that mattered. Too busy aiding his Dark Lord and completing the tasks assigned directly to him.
She’d heard the Slytherins talk when they thought they were alone or weren’t being watched. They were the only ones still allowed to send letters home and most of their families were Death Eaters or Ministry officials involved in the war on Voldemort’s side. She knew perfectly well just how high up Snape was because they all feared him – particularly Malfoy. And she’d caught enough snippets over the last few weeks to know that the man was doing much more than just running the school. She could smell the death that sometimes lingered on his robes as he shifted by them towards the head table at breakfast while he ignored the way the Great Hall fell into complete silence when he appeared now. She could tell he wanted nothing to do with them if he could help it.
It was in the way that he looked at them.
To him, they were nothing.
They weren’t even worth a display of anger or power or anything – just a cold hollow stare of hatred that seemed to radiate with death, anger and darkness that made you shudder and cringe.
And that in and of itself was the display of his power.
He would leave them be until he was given the direct order to kill them by the demon himself – and that order had yet to come. It was terrifying and yet it was also their only saving grace that kept them safe from him. Because Ginny had no doubt in her mind now, whatever the Carrows could dish out Snape could do a hundred times worse if he ever felt the need to so – the Carrows were nothing in comparison to that man and what he was capable of.
She’d thought they’d grown up and she’d thought that they were helping the war effort every time they attacked him and harassed him. Yes, the majority of their attacks had been calculated and purposeful. But they’d also been stupid and naive – they’d been, much to her own shame and regret – incredibly lucky that the man had not outright killed them yet. Incredibly lucky that his presence seemed to be desired elsewhere and that he evidently had bigger fish to fry. All the time they’d spent harassing him at the start of the year had been a waste and it might have even made things worse for them in hindsight.
And it was after that observation, after the explosion with Susan, McGonagall and Snape seventeen days ago, and after the change in the Carrows on the 19th of April that lead the gang of rebels to decide to change their war tactics.
They had to get entirely serious or people were going to die.
They stopped harassing Snape directly. They stopped leaving swamps in his hall – they stopped looking at him if they could help it, they stopped antagonizing him, openly glaring at him or even acknowledging him. They kept their heads down if he came near and they limited their actions to attacking the Carrows only when necessary to create distractions, or to save someone from dying or from losing a limb in DADA. Instead, they refocused their efforts on the future and the endless number of ‘what-if’ scenarios that seemed to haunt them at night.
What if war finally did break out? How would they leave? How would they get out and ensure everyone’s safety? Where would they go? Who could they trust?
Hogsmeade was monitored with the Caterwauling Charm now and under tighter surveillance than Hogwarts. They wouldn’t be able to use Aberforth’s tunnel to escape because it led to a dead-end in Hogsmeade and frankly she doubted they’d all be able to get to the Room of Requirements quick enough in a true emergency anyways because it was too far away. So that option was off the table.
So, they did what they could do.
They’d stolen the quidditch teams’ brooms, which had been a ridiculously easy feat given that quidditch was cancelled and no one ever checked on the storage room anymore and Madam Hooch gave them the key. They split the brooms between the two common rooms, and they removed a pane of glass from the window near the Gryffindor common room fireplace and fastened a ladder that could be rolled out to get them within twenty feet of the ground below. They’d stashed backpacks with food and supplies around the school and hidden them in the bushes along the base of the castle below their tower and by the Hufflepuff dorm. They had Hagrid lure the herd of thestrals closer so that they might be able to use them for escape and a large number of them now carried a Weasley product or two in their pocket in case they ever needed an emergency distraction.
Ginny personally carried peruvian instant darkness powder and several stink bombs in a secret pocket of her robes.
It wasn’t the best escape plan or the best situation to be in given that they would not be able to leave the school grounds even if they left the castle unless Snape granted them access through the wards – and he wouldn’t. But they figured having the supplies and being prepared was better than not having them.
And it gave them something to do – something tangible that they could work on and have some control over in all the chaos that was surrounding them. Ginny’s eyes circled back to Neville and she felt her shoulders slump.
“We’re on our own until they have an exit plan Neville,” Ginny said quietly as she put the last bottles away in their pack. “Dad won’t move on Hogwarts until he can do it safely and Shacklebolt won’t risk bringing the war here. Not with all the students, not when the wards are fully closed – there’re too many things that could go wrong. McGonagall knows that too even though she won’t say it – all the professors do, it’s why they’re so stressed. It’s why some of them have given up. I think they thought this would be over by now, I think they thought someone would come or the Ministry would act – they weren’t expecting to be put in lockdown and held on school grounds with no tangible way out. They weren’t expecting things would get this bad.”
“I know,” Neville nodded, and his voice grew wearier. “I know, Ginny – you’re right. I just hope we’re wrong. I want to believe that they’re working on something.”
“They are,” Ginny nodded to him feeling a slight tug at her heart as she thought of her family. If there was one thing in the world that she knew for certain it was that Artur Weasley never gave up. “I know my dad – they’re working on something Neville. He won’t leave us here, they’re coming – and when they do, we need to be ready.”
“We will be,” Neville nodded and then his tired expression shifted into a sad but soft smile. “Thank you, Ginny – for patching me up. Here I’ll clean up the rest you should go see Susan and find out how things went. Then you need to sleep – I know you stayed up last night to cover Seamus’ watch.”
“He wasn’t feeling well – after getting hit with that curse in DADA I don’t blame him,” Ginny said tiredly as she reluctantly stepped back from the small table as Neville’s hand landed on her shoulder and he steered her away.
“I know that,” Neville said warmly, giving her shoulder a soft squeeze. “But the last thing we need is for you to get run down. Go to bed. Parvati is taking watch tonight for you, we’re just bumping the shifts forward by one night.”
“Alright,” Ginny breathed out and nodded, too exhausted to put up a fight. “I’ll see you tomorrow Neville – and I’ll check to make sure that’s not infected before breakfast. If Madam Pomfrey comes by tonight make sure she takes a look at it and tell her we’re running low on wound cleaner – but not to risk herself getting us more. We can manage without it for a little while.”
“Will do,” Neville nodded and got to work finishing up with their supplies.
It was funny how exhaustion hit her, and how well adrenaline seemed to cover up the weariness that sat heavy in her bones. After staying up the night before to complete the watch she’d been dead on her feet all day – but the second Neville stumbled into the tower her heart rate had rocketed and her mind had become focused. Now, knowing that he was okay and the common room was calm once more she could feel the heavy tiredness settling in through her body like an old familiar friend. She nodded to a few people as she passed by the cots and carefully navigated her way to Susan who was now talking with Lavender.
“How is he?” Ginny asked as she paused before the two females and glanced at the small first-year Ravenclaw boy.
“He’s okay,” Susan nodded, stepping a hair closer to Ginny. “His arm wasn’t as bad as it looked but – Madam Pomfrey will need to look at it. I don’t know what they did to it, I didn’t recognize the curse so it must be something new. Apparently, it was thrown by Zabini – he’s getting vicious – but then Neville stepped in and caused a ruckus so the Carrows tossed them both in detention.”
“He’s stressed,” Lavender said quietly, her eyes flicking from the small boy back to Ginny. “But I did manage to get him to eat something. I don’t think he’s been eating very much during meals, but I hadn’t noticed – it’s just so hard to keep track of everyone.”
“I know,” Ginny let out a breath and felt her shoulders fall once more.
“How’s Neville?” Susan asked, her eyes meeting Ginny’s with equal exhaustion.
“He’s alright but –” Ginny hesitated, and the two girls before her naturally shifted closer as she dropped her voice lower so only they could hear. “The lines are deep – they must have modified the quills. We’re going to need to be even more careful because they’re escalating the torture again – travel groups need to increase in size and tell everyone to keep their eyes on the floor. We can’t do anything about DADA class, because I’m just not going to cast hexes at first years, and they’re not going to change the way they run the class but – we need to avoid detentions outside of that as much as possible. It started to cut into the muscle – and I’m worried about the way it looked, the blood coming from it was thick I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
“Do you think it was cursed?” Lavender muttered, leaning in closer and keeping her voice carefully calm. She smiled to a younger Gryffindor who was moving by them and Ginny waited until the student had moved past to answer.
“I don’t know – I don’t know enough about this stuff but Pomfrey needs to see it,” Ginny sighed and ran a hand through her hair. For the most part, the torture was contained to the upper-year students – which was good because she couldn’t imagine a first or second year going through what Neville had endured but if this was the direction the Carrows were moving she was starting to wonder how long the upper-year students would last. “Maybe we need to see if there is another numbing charm – or some potion to cut off the pain or something.”
“I’ll ask Madam Pomfrey tonight if she comes by,” Lavender nodded in understanding. Both girls knew where Ginny was going with her train of thought – things in the last week had escalated tenfold and if the pattern continued at the newly adjusted pace, they were in for a world of hurt in the next few days. “But you two need to go to bed – I’ll keep an eye on him tonight.”
They said their goodnights and then shifted in their usual direction – Susan cautiously following several paces behind Ginny as they made their way up to the girl’s dormitories. The other students still didn’t know they were dating, and Ginny and Susan had still not confirmed the suspicions of the main gang – nor did the gang ask about it. But Susan had given up her bed in Hufflepuff to a Ravenclaw girl and had permanently moved into Ginny’s small dorm room with the others. But even that wasn’t suspicious – because Maisey was bunking with Beatrice, the small Hufflepuff girl Ginny had saved who was too afraid to sleep alone and her other roommate had been kind enough to share her bed with two other girls from Gryffindor in the year below who had given up their beds to some of the Ravenclaw boys.
It was crowded, their trunks were stacked two high and the bathroom schedule was a nightmare – but Ginny wouldn’t have had it any other way.
They smiled to the other girls in the room when they entered, grabbing their shower kits and bathroom supplies before heading to the joint washroom to get ready for bed. They took turns using the sinks around the other girls and showering themselves clean from the days exhaustion while carefully navigating the once large but now cramped feeling space as they got ready and then made their way back to their dorm room. They didn’t talk until they’d said goodnight to the others, crawled onto the slightly enlarged bed, drawn the curtains shut tight and cast a heavy silencing charm.
“How bad was it really?” Susan asked quietly as she pulled the duvet back and crawled underneath it next to Ginny.
“Bad,” Ginny let out a heavy sigh she’d been withholding and slumped against the pillows and the headboard. Her head rolled to the side to look toward Susan. “They’re very deep – deeper than anything so far Susan, I honestly don’t even know what to think anymore. It wasn’t one of the normal quills – they’ve done something, changed something and I don’t think a numbing charm is going to cut it anymore. It didn’t seem to heal right when I put the dittany on it. If they use that on the wrong person, we could have a serious problem.”
Susan nodded in understanding. They both knew perfectly well that not everyone on their side was as committed to the war as they were. There were people in the three united houses that were genuinely struggling to remain in control – there were some ready to snap and crack under pressure and if they weren’t careful it could result in very serious injuries, death or the release of critical information to the Carrows.
As it was, they’d narrowed the ‘gang’ down to a key list of leaders – the information about their supply runs and storage locations was divided across the group and the only people who knew everything going on was herself and Neville. It was a tactic she’d learned from her dad and even Susan didn’t know everything. The others only had pocketed information but still – if it got out it could be detrimental to their safety. If the Carrows were willing to do this, and she’d always known that they were masochists capable of it – then what was to stop them from taking it to the next level? Or stop them from blatantly killing students that they saw as threats or annoyances who would never bend to their will?
If Ginny was being honest, she truly wasn’t sure what was keeping them at bay or what had been keeping them at bay this long – especially given the stunts they’d pulled last semester. She suspected it was McGonagall – and maybe that was why the witch looked stretched thinner than pantyhose. Maybe her leverage over the Carrows had been lost. Maybe she could no longer keep them in check and they were unleashing months of pent up rage. Maybe Voldemort’s hold on the school had just doubled.
She felt her heart clench painfully in her chest as all the emotions she kept locked up started to seep out from their cage.
“I’m scared Susan,” Ginny whispered, hearing her voice grow tight. She never ever said those words out loud – not anywhere but here and not to anyone but Susan. This tiny enclosed bed was her only remaining safe space and the only place she ever let her strong outward appearance falter. She felt Susan’s arms wrap around her and suddenly she was curled into her girlfriend’s warm body. “What if they don’t come, Susan?”
“They’ll come.”
“Yeah but what if they can’t?” Ginny whispered feeling the terror that had been eating away at her heart start to grow. “What if they try and they can’t – what if this gets worse because we both know it’s going to. People are going to die, Susan – what if –“
Her voice caught and she felt Susan squeeze her tighter.
“We’re doing everything we can,” Susan’s soft voice rang near her ear and Ginny twisted her face towards her.
“I know,” Ginny whispered hoarsely, meeting her girlfriend’s bright eyes and seeing the strain behind them. Her heart clenched harder once more and she forced herself to swallow. She couldn’t break down before Susan – not when Susan was barely holding herself together after losing everything. At least Ginny still had her family – she had to stay strong even if it felt like her heart was going to explode. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t let this get to me I just can’t stop thinking about it. It’s like the war has taken everything – it’s even taken the professors now and I don’t want it to take you or anyone else.”
She leaned forward, closing the last few inches between them and kissed Susan hard. A deep exhale left her lungs and suddenly her hands were wrapping around Ginny as their lips all but consumed one another. It was a pattern – a cycle really. They’d both get caught up in their efforts at the castle to keep each other safe. They’d become exhausted and do nothing but crash when they went to bed only to get up and do it all over again the next morning. But every so often they’d end up tangled in each other’s arms as they lost themselves in a heated rush of need.
And tonight, was one of those nights.
Ginny shifted and crawled on top of her, straddling Susan’s hips and sinking low. She could feel the heat of her skin through her thin pajamas. She could hear her panting breath echoing around them in the tightly silenced space. They were safe here – for now, and if she had a choice, she’d never leave this bed.
Without missing a beat Ginny’s hands shifted over Susan’s body, skimming across the skin at her neck then down her arm, and her hip as she tried to memorize the feel of her. She felt Susan’s hands sliding up her back, pushing up her old worn t-shirt until their lips broke apart and the garment was tossed to the end of the bed. Her hand went to Susan’s hip once more, gripping her tight as she kissed her deeper and threaded her opposite hand into her wavy locks. As she bit her lip softly, she heard a familiar heated groan leave Susan’s lips and then their movements became desperate.
Ginny pulled away to tear Susan’s bottoms’ off, shifting to let Susan drag down her own before capturing the girl’s lips once more and kissing her so deep she could hardly breathe. She felt Susan’s hand shift between her legs, ghosting teasingly across her damp panties before tracing up her hip, her side and across the back of her neck. She could feel her girlfriend’s fingers grazing across every raised scar that littered her body while her own hands shifted across Susan’s.
I will do as I’m told – Susan’s hand grazed the back of her neck and then knotted into her hair.
I deserve this – Ginny’s hand brushed over the words that covered Susan’s ribcage.
Blood traitor – Susan’s hand ran down Ginny’s left forearm before closing around her fingers tight.
I will listen in class – the words that covered Susan’s hip brushed against Ginny’s body.
Pain will teach me respect – they ran down Ginny’s spine and she shuddered as Susan’s fingers swept over them.
I am worth nothing, like my family – she traced the markings down Susan’s arm and wished they would vanish along with the pain that they held.
I will learn to serve, or I will die with the rest – the newest letters that were still red and still sore that ran down Ginny’s calf brushed against Susan’s leg as she slid down her body.
She knew every sentence, every letter and every mark that riddled this incredible woman’s form and she touched and kissed each one as if to make them disappear. And as Susan’s hands ran over her own scars it was like a physical relief of the agony that lingered in her body.
She kissed down Susan’s chest, over her hip, shifting down the bed under her head hovered just between the apex of her legs – and as she ducked her head forward and ran her tongue through the slick folds she felt Susan’s hands tighten in her hair.
She loved this girl.
This impossibly strong and incredible human.
She was everything – her light in the darkest of times, her wall of strength, her sounding board and her sanity.
Her tongue delved deeper and she heard Susan moan.
She never wanted anything to happen to her. She didn’t want a single other mark to mar her body and she didn’t want to lose her. She grabbed Susan’s hips tighter as she traced her tongue over her clit, circling the small bud and drawing out a collection of wanting noises from above her head. Shifting her arm, she ran her fingers up the inside of Susan’s thigh, ghosting along until she reached her center and then inserted two fingers into her tight channel.
Susan groaned and Ginny felt her clench around her as she started to stroke the rough patch of nerves within her. She could feel Susan’s fingers tightening in her hair – she could tell that her orgasm was building from the way her body began to tense. She circled her tongue again and again before running it up and down in long strokes against her clit over and over until Susan’s hips started to twitch with pleasure.
“Ginny,” Susan panted, her nails scraping across her scalp as she fought to breathe and rolled her hips up as Ginny sucked on her clit. “Fuck, Ginny – I – fuck –“
Her breath caught as Ginny quickened her pace and gripped her hip tighter to hold her in place. She was moaning now, her hips shifting against Ginny’s face uncontrollably as the pleasure built unbearably and made her muscles tense. She was close – Ginny knew this, and with three more careful and purposeful strokes Susan crashed over the edge and let out a deep throaty moan.
She stroked her down from the high, running her fingers over her hip as she did so until it became too sensitive that Susan’s breath caught once more and her hand pulled at her head to shift her away. Then, slowly, she crawled up Susan’s body, trailing her lips across her skin and placing a kiss on her neck before she collapsed next to her side and Susan’s pants echoed near her ear. She shifted briefly as if to move to return the gesture, but Ginny stopped her, her arms wrapping around Susan tight and pulling her to her side.
All she wanted right now was to hold her.
All she needed right now was to know that Susan was safe in her arms and that there was nothing that could tear them apart.
April 26, 1998
Hogwarts, 8:02 pm
“It’s less than a week away,” Phineas said quietly, his eyes carefully watching Snape as he began packing up a collection of potions, storing them in different bags and pocketing them in his robes.
“I know,” Snape said, his voice emotionless as he slipped a few extra vials of crimson liquid into his pocket just in case and then began summoning a collection of ingredients and other items into a larger paper bag. “Have they revealed any other details?”
“No – nothing new. We know they’re breaking in on the 1st and that Nasir, Bill and Griphook are going with them. They’ve been practicing climbing cliffs with tethers, training and working on some sort of banding project but the rest of the details are just as vague as before. I still don’t think Hermione has suspected that I’m spying – if she had, she would have thrown out my portrait by now or entirely silenced me. It’s just coincidence that she keeps her purse closed more often than before.”
“I see,” Snape said tightly his jaw clenching as he finished packing up his goods. “I’ll be back in half an hour – call me if anything happens.”
“I will,” Phineas nodded, and Snape grabbed the last of his supplies before turning on his heel and apparating to Spinner’s End.
The last week had been worse than he had expected and the stress of it was starting to eat away at his calm exterior. Thirteen students had been tortured and one of them had lost a fucking finger. It would never grow back – the only good thing was that it was on the student’s non-wand hand and it was a pinky, which was the most useless finger in his opinion and the one to lose if you got to pick. It wasn’t much of a silver lining, but it was something.
Then there was Miss Pelton who was now lying in the Hospital Ward in a totally unnecessary magically induced coma. She had been caught in the halls near the potions classroom and brought to the Carrows by one of the Slytherin prats who was ‘patrolling’ – a new tactic employed by the Carrows so that they could have more eyes throughout the school. And there was nothing Snape could do to stop it because the Dark Lord was not only aware of it, he was in support of it because it ‘engaged the youth’ . It was a quick and easy way to help strengthen them to his cause and make them feel like they were participating in the war.
It hadn’t mattered that Miss Pelton was on her way to the washroom facilities or that she was out in broad daylight and wasn’t technically breaking any rules. She had been subjected to the Carrows’ torture just the same and it was by sheer fucking luck that he had been walking down the hall and heard her scream.
He’d obliviated them – the Carrows and the Slytherin who had found the girl, and then he'd modified their memories.
The whole thing had been a cluster fuck that he’d rather forget, and he ended up placing the girl in a magically induced coma to make it look like her ‘injuries’ had been much worse than they were. He wasn’t sure how long he could get away with leaving her in the Hospital Wing unconscious – but thankfully, Madam Pomfrey didn’t seem to suspect anything and so far it hadn’t raised any suspicions with the Carrows or Thorfinn Rowle who was now guarding the Hospital Wing. If he was being honest, Miss Pelton was safer there than she was anywhere else in the school, so he planned to leave her there as long as possible.
The only good thing that had happened over the course of the week was the shift in the rebel gang’s demeanour. It seemed like they had finally realized how serious this war was and they had finally stopped fucking around and causing him problems. They never even looked at him anymore if they could help it and they seemed to be trying to keep their heads down – he just hoped it wasn’t a misdirect or a lead up to some huge counterattack, because if that happened they were screwed. Even with the three houses uniting and moving into two common rooms – and yes, he knew about that and he knew exactly which professors had helped them do it – the reality was he could not protect them any longer and he couldn’t keep tabs on all of them. He was only one person, he was outnumbered and he was stretched too thin between brewing, meeting with the Dark Lord and pretending to look for Nasir while feeding lies and fake information wherever he could.
Each day was a gamble. Would he be exposed? Would he die? Or would he live one more day?
He had never been a fan of gambling. Despite living with calculated risk day in and day out it still made him feel sick and he hated that his life had become a game of muggle Russian roulette. Every morning when he got out of bed, he loaded the single bullet into his revolver then each day he spun the barrel and pulled the trigger. And each day he could feel his mind growing weaker, he could feel his body falling apart as the potions that were keeping him functional ate away at his heart and kidney’s and darkened the tiny piece of soul that he had left.
He wasn’t sure how much longer he could handle it – but there was no other option, so he carried on and spun the barrel once more. The students were a stone’s throw away from death and he sincerely hoped that that Weasley brat and her stupid friends had realized it – because the professors finally had. He could tell from the distant look in their eyes and the way that some of them glanced at him with hard hatred or absolute terror.
They knew.
This was not going to end well, and he was, in fact, the villain that they had all feared him to be. It was like some of them had still been hoping he might turn things around or he might one day surprise them and switch sides once more. But after officially locking down Hogwarts, after allowing the Carrows to up their antics, and after allowing the Slytherins to take part and placing Miss Pelton in the Hospital Ward while he allowed Death Eaters to raid their school medical supplies and food reserves, they seemed to finally realize they were in the middle of hell and he was their own personal devil that would not let them leave.
Except McGonagall.
That blasted witch still met his gaze. She still looked at him and sometimes he got the feeling that she suspected something – and that was a problem. He just wasn’t sure how to deal with it.
Snape sighed as he set down the brown paper bag on the kitchen table and mentally checked the time, she would be here any minute, and he hoped that she didn’t come bearing more news of unexpected losses. He had not properly spoken to Nasir since the 18th – the dark wizard had turned up only for a brief second to collect some potions and to grab some recipes, but they’d not talked because Snape had been summoned and had to leave. So, he had no idea what the man was up to or if he had been working to dismantle any other aspects of the Dark Lord’s operations without his knowledge.
Snape had just grabbed a few spare stirring rods from the large cabinet drawer in his kitchen and pocketed them when he felt his wards tingle with the familiar presence of his guest. He flicked his finger towards the hall to open the door before she could bother to knock.
“Severus?” Narcissa’s voice called out, and he heard her shoes clicking on the hardwoods in the hall.
“In the kitchen,” he answered flatly, shifting back to the table and pulling out the bag of potions from his robes that he had packed for her. His eyes glanced up when he heard her enter the room and he nodded stiffly before returning his gaze to his task.
“I have more ingredients for you,” Narcissa said quietly as she placed the bag she was holding on the table. She stood across from him and he could practically feel the tension radiating out from her even though her voice remained calm and level. He nodded again and he saw her shift uncomfortably from the peripheral of his vision as he finished laying out the items he’d brought. Silence rang for a long moment before she cleared her throat and spoke once more. “The Dark Lord was calmer today – there haven’t been any other unexpected losses aside from the captured muggles unexpectantly dying three days ago.”
“Good,” Snape said tightly, finally looking up to meet her blue eyes. She was looking at him in the strange way she always seemed to look at him now – whenever they were alone – like she was waiting. Waiting for what he wasn’t sure. If she was waiting for him to tell her what he was doing, what had happened the morning that she found him half-dead on her laneway, or if she was waiting for him to reveal any secrets she would be waiting until her death bed. But ever since she had saved his life and ever since she had clutched his robes outside the Manor in the rain, he had been trying to push her further away – because whatever had shifted between them was dangerous. He would continue to try and protect her and keep her safe, but he would do it from a distance, like how he handled everything else in his life. “These are the potions that you requested – I added some extra vials of calming draught and dittany and I’ve put together the other items the Dark Lord requested.”
“Thank you,” Narcissa nodded before she shifted forward and took the brown bag and the packages he had set out for her. Her hand slowed as she reached for the last one and she met his gaze once more. “Severus – how is Draco?”
“He’s fine,” Snape said evenly, opening the bag of potion ingredients she brought him and quickly scanning his eyes over the contents. “He’s joined in with the patrols.”
“Naturally,” Narcissa said and then her impassive façade seemed to falter a fraction and her voice dropped quieter as her face grew serious. “I told him to join – to blend in. But I also told him to be ready for anything and to do whatever it is that you tell him.”
“What?” Snape’s body stilled and his eyes locked to Narcissa’s unreadable ones. Her jaw was set tight, her eyes were determined, and it felt like she was almost challenging him – daring him to ask the real questions that had floated to his mind at her words.
“I told him to listen to you,” she said slowly, a firm edge to her voice. She had clearly decided that this, whatever this was, was happening. She must have been planning this confrontation for a while because she stood up straighter and seemed to speak as if she had rehearsed it. “I told him that our plans are changing and that he is to do whatever you might ask of him, and he is to do it without question.”
Snape stared at her hard, his muscles tense as he took in everything unspoken that this woman had just said.
Don’t do this.
He knew she suspected him of not being entirely loyal to the Dark Lord. He knew that she knew that he was playing multiple roles in this war and was a part of something larger. And while yes, she had offered her help to him before, this was entirely different. This was her outright claiming her stance in the war and officially abandoning the Dark Lord’s regime – this, was her confirming that she was on his side no matter what and regardless of whose side he might actually be on because she had now involved her son – and Draco was the only thing in the world that this woman truly cared about.
She had been slowly stacking her hand, watching, waiting – collecting and gathering information. She had been playing her part and checking her odds, calculating and setting herself up to make a move – and now, she was starting to play her hand no holds barred. She had just taken a step down the very path he had been trying to keep her off and if she continued this way there would be no going back. If he failed and she got caught – she would die right along side him.
“And how exactly did you manage to tell him that,” Snape said carefully, fighting to keep his voice level as he watched her determined face. He could feel his anger and panic and stress starting to grow. This was not part of his plan. This was an entirely new risk and his self-control was slipping under the pressure. “The wards at Hogwarts are closed and the letters that come in are monitored. Do you realize what would happen if your messages were ever intercepted by the Carrows or one of the other Death Eaters that occasionally roam the school halls and check the post? Do you realize what you could have done – what risk you’ve taken by saying something so foolish? Do you understand what those directions would sound like to a member of the Dark Lord’s forces? You’re talking about treason at the highest level, Narcissa – do you understand the danger that you’ve just put yourself in? The danger you’ve put Draco in?!”
His fists were clenched tightly at his sides. His voice had risen despite his best efforts to remain calm but Narcissa only scoffed and nearly rolled her eyes at him.
“Please, Severus – do you forget my family lineage? You don’t seriously think I’d be stupid enough to write that down on paper.” Her eyes narrowed at him. “I know better than most just how smart of a man you are Severus, but you have got to stop thinking that everyone else around you is incompetent – though I grant you, most of them are.”
“How did you tell him?” Snape asked tightly, the tension crawling down his spine like a sickening whisper.
“You’re not the only one with secrets,” Narcissa said as she finally pocketed the last package from the table and then carefully crossed her arms over her chest. “No one knows about the direction I gave to Draco, Severus – just you and that’s only because I told you.”
“You don’t know that.” Snape’s eyes narrowed a fraction as he stepped around the table towards her and closed the distance between them. “What if Draco is pulled in for interrogation? And he very well could be, you know that. What else did you say to him?”
“Draco’s occlumency is sound,” Narcissa said stiffly.
“Draco is a boy, Narcissa!” Snape spat as he towered over her. “If the Dark Lord ever truly wanted to know what was in his head he would get it.”
“Really?” Narcissa’s back had tensed, her face had grown more pale than usual but her eyes seemed to harden. “Well, evidence suggests otherwise, Severus – because he still to this day has not given up Potter or the Granger girl and I can assure you that the Dark Lord was thorough in his questioning that day.”
She stared at him hard, her jaw clenching before her voice dropped lower and she held her chin higher.
“I didn’t tell him anything – not that I have anything to tell him anyway because you have never told me anything,” Narcissa said sharply, her eyes still fixed in a glare at him. “I simply told Draco that he is to follow me and my direction, and he is to trust you completely and do as you say without question. I don’t know what you’re doing Severus, but I will follow you through it – I am going to follow you, whether you want me to or not. I don’t serve the Dark Lord – I have never served the Dark Lord and my son will not serve him either. We are purebloods – we are Blacks – my family lineage dates back to the 13th century and Blacks do not serve anyone! I serve my family and my family alone and I am tired of watching my life get ripped apart and dragged through the mud over a war that I’ve never cared about! This is not the life that I wanted! We used to have pride and we used to be strong and this is not a life I will allow my son to take part in any longer! We – are – done.”
She annunciated each of her last words with a vicious venom as she stepped into his space and prodded his chest with one of her perfectly manicured nails.
“The others may be blinded by his words and stupid enough to believe them. They might not see it yet, but I see it, Severus,” her blue eyes were flashing and her voice continued to rise as her finger dug harder into his chest and she seemed to unleash everything that she had been holding back for the last year. “I see exactly where this is headed and I know exactly the kind of life our family will lead if he wins. That demon treats his own no better than the muggles that he makes me keep in my basement. I’ve watched him slaughter purebloods on my floor and waste their blood like it was dirty water – allowing it to pour out and blend in with all the rest like it held no value whatsoever, after he made them serve him like dogs! This is not a war that will liberate us – this is not a war for purebloods, it is a war of oppression for all people that will put a tyrant in charge!
“This was never about blood status,” Narcissa’s voice dropped low and her eyes hardened into something filled with rage. “This was never about purity or saving our culture and our ways of life. This was never about dignity or tradition or preventing the muggleborns from seeping in and polluting our world. This is, and has only ever been about him and about power – and Draco and I are done.”
Snape stood there stiff as a board as silence rang out between them. Narcissa looked like an entirely different person before him. Fierce, angry, dangerous – much more like the girl he remembered from Hogwarts and not at all like Lucius Malfoy's quiet and perfectly proper wife.
“And what about Lucius?” Snape asked quietly, his eyes never leaving hers.
“What about Lucius?" Narcissa practically spat and her eyes only hardened deeper. “Because of him, my son has a dark mark on his arm that burns nearly constantly. Because of him my home has become a living nightmare, eighteen of my house elves have been slaughtered, I’ve been asked to starve muggle and magical children in my basement, my family is in so deep we’re practically drowning and he still doesn’t see what the Dark Lord truly is! He is still blinded by some idiotic fantasy of a better world and he has become so cowardly he won’t even protect his son!”
Narcissa swallowed hard and her hand pressing into his chest started to tremble.
“Or his wife,” her voice shook as she dropped her gaze from him and stared at his chest. Silence split between them again and Narcissa lowered her hand back to her side before her low voice sounded once more. “I don’t want to hear your warnings about how this is dangerous – it doesn’t matter what we do anymore, Severus – it’s all dangerous. I don’t want to know if you’re working alone or working for someone else because I don’t care. I just want you to know that Draco and I support you. We will follow you. So you might as well use us if you can because we’re going to do it whether you want us to or not.”
“Narcissa,” Snape said tightly but she cut him off with a hard glare and a firm voice.
“You’ve done enough on your own. This isn’t your decision – you can’t control every single piece of this war like I know you’re trying to. So don’t bother trying to convince me otherwise. I’ve spent the last year living with the Dark Lord, Severus I know exactly what will happen to me if this goes wrong,” she took a step back and seemed to school her face into its usual impassive look. “I’ve been working to get some portkeys made – using an old contact of mine from a long-forgotten time, but it is proving to be a challenge. Hopefully, I will have them soon and then we can use them as a means to escape if and when everything falls apart. But until then – and while we still have a chance to rectify this problem, I will follow your orders – should you choose to give them. In the meantime, I am going to do everything that I can to pass you more information that might be helpful and I will keep the Dark Lord focused on anything that isn’t you. Draco will continue to blend in at Hogwarts, but he will be waiting for your direction.”
Snape felt like his mind had short-circuited as he rapidly ran through everything this woman had just said and tried to wrap his head around it.
“I have to get back to the Manor – I’ve already pushed my time limit here,” Narcissa said quietly as she met his gaze once more. “Is there anything I can do today?”
He stared at her for a long silent second, his hand twitched at his side as the runes grew heavy once more and he worked through the options in his mind. This was not his plan. This was a new risk and a new problem. If Narcissa or Draco were ever properly interrogated they would expose him if he did not end this now and everything would fall apart. On the other hand – they could potentially be useful and right now the Dark Lord was on the hunt for Nasir and wasn’t paying as close attention to his own ranks. So the risk was slightly less than it would have been a month ago to accept their involvement.
His reflexive instinct was to obliviate the bloody hell out of her mind and wipe this conversation from existence and then apparate back to Hogwarts and do the same to Draco. He hadn't said anything damming – but he’d not denied her claims either and if the Dark Lord ever saw this conversation, he would at the very least be brought in for questioning. Though it was much more likely that he would be outright murdered on suspicion alone because of the Dark Lord's paranoia.
But the question was, should he do it? A huge part of him wanted to and yet another part of him refused. She had made this decision on her own and of her own free will. She had figured this out on her own and he'd had nothing to do with it. Obliviating her would be to take away her right to make her own decisions and frankly it felt like something Dumbledore would tell him to do in order to stick to a plan that realistically didn’t exist.
Everything was changing in this war and it was shifting so fast he could no longer keep up. If Narcissa Malfoy no longer wanted to support the Dark Lord it wasn’t his place to tell her otherwise and something about her determination to go down her own path resonated so deeply with him he couldn’t ignore it. But her choosing to support him, her willingly deciding to risk her life to aid him and to outright state it?
Well, that was a different story.
He could feel a tension headache forming at the back of his skull as he let out a quiet breath and closed his eyes for a second as if hoping it might help him breathe.
It didn’t. His chest was still constricting like a boa and his runes felt like lead as he opened his eyes and looked at her again. The agony of this situation was frankly on the cusp of what he could bear, and he wasn’t sure what the fuck he was supposed to do. He could not accept her help under any circumstances. His hand shifted to his robes and she watched him, her eyes cautious as if she suspected that he might pull his wand out and attempt to obliviate her.
But he didn’t.
And his brain felt like it was fracturing. He couldn’t accept her help – but he also could not take away her right to choose her place in this world. If he did that, he was no better than the Dark Lord, or Dumbledore. He might be a monster, he might have done horrible things and lied to every single person that he knew as he watched those around him get hurt. But he refused to be part of the bigger problem, and he refused to become the thing that he was trying to stop.
Yet his body was rejecting his motions.
Snape felt his insides twist with a tight nauseous tension as he pulled out four additional small vials from his pocket. Two were dark crimson red and two were black and cold as ice. He hesitated a moment and then held them out to her. He could feel his panic starting to grow as his mind started to race with the realization of what he was doing. She eyed them for a second before reaching out and taking them from him.
“What are these for?” Narcissa asked quietly, her face barely containing the nervousness that was starting to course through her now that she realized he was not going to obliviate her. Now that she realized this was happening, and this was his version of accepting her help. “I still have some potion 47 left.”
“Not from this batch you don’t,” Snape said quietly, forcing his voice to remain level and fighting to keep the inner turmoil from showing on his face. He was failing at it and he knew it. “I made some adjustments – these two vials are not to be wasted, they are for you to keep on you at all times.”
“What for?”
“I don’t know yet.” Snape’s jaw tightened as he looked at her. He had no plan – whatever he had thought was going to happen here today didn’t and this was entirely new ground and he was still seconds away from changing his mind and pulling out his wand. “But they will keep you from dying even if you’re a hair’s breadth away from it and they’re about four times more potent than the batch you have so save them until you need them.”
“Alright,” she nodded tightly, rolling the vials over in her hand before she pocketed them and then her eyes refocused on the black vials in hand. “And what of these? I’ve not seen them before.”
“You’ve never had any use for them before,” Snape said quietly, as he stared at the vials in her pale white hand. “That is potion 21, it will nearly kill you – and I mean that. Don’t take it unless you have no other option. With it, you can feign death and avoid detection spells but your body will be slow and sluggish. It’s difficult to maneuver when it’s in effect. Keep them with you.”
“Okay,” she swallowed and nodded, pocketing the vials and meeting his gaze once more. He could see the curiosity there behind her eyes now that he had given her an inch. She was fighting against her urge to ask him more questions – questions that were surely loaded and damming to his precarious position in the war. And he felt his anxiety continue to grow as she shifted before him and spoke in an almost hesitant voice. “Can I ask you something, Severus?”
He felt his body stiffen once more. He didn’t nod but he didn’t turn her away either because the truth was, in this moment, he didn’t know what he was doing anymore. It was like his ability to rationalize and make critical decisions had just crashed and he was floating in the ocean in a middle of a storm. Instead, he just stared at her in silence as she continued to watch him carefully.
“As I said before,” Narcissa pushed on, taking his silence as consent but keeping her voice carefully calm as if she sensed that he was on the verge of changing his mind about her any second. “I don’t need to know the details around your efforts because they don’t matter to me. I will support you either way because you are the only person that I trust. But – what happened that night at the Manor last month, when Granger and the Potter boy were there, and I gave you her wand.”
She hesitated and her eyes seemed to be searching his face.
“Should a similar situation ever arise and I find myself in the same position – do I take the same action?” she asked quietly, and her voice dropped incredibly low. “Do I help them?”
His chest started to constrict, the panic that had been slowly building like a wave was now threatening to drown him and smother him alive.
How did it come to this?
How had he let it get this far? How the fuck did he not see this coming? And why the fuck hadn’t he intervened before she had gotten mixed up in this?
He shouldn't have helped her.
He shouldn’t have reached out to hold her hand the day that Peter died or given her any whiff of a hint that he might be anything other than a vile Death Eater void of emotion and entirely destitute like the rest of them. He shouldn't have helped her – he shouldn’t have.
And yet he had – because he couldn’t leave her alone to fight through this when he had known that dreadful morning that if she had flinched one more time in the presence of the Dark Lord she would have died right there on the floor next to the bloody remains of Peter. And against his better judgement, he hadn’t been able to let that happen. She wasn’t a bad person; she wasn't a good one either, but she didn’t deserve to die and she didn’t deserve all this. He hadn’t been able to stand by and watch her fall apart. Maybe it was because it felt like the rest of the war was spiralling out of his control in one hot flaming mess and she was a tiny part that he might actually be able to save.
He didn’t fucking know anymore.
He didn’t even know why he had done it. He’d let his emotions get in the way, his pathetic need to try and not be entirely heartless had taken hold and he’d attempted to ‘do the right thing’. But helping her hadn’t been the right thing – because now she was involved and this was a fucking disaster. His mind raced as he tried to work through every scenario and figure out a solution to the situation, to find a way to climb out of the hole he’d dug himself but he couldn’t seem to do it.
There was no solution.
There was no right answer, no better option or clever move he could make. Every single fucking option sucked and no matter what he did now, he was fucked.
His heart started to race painfully in his chest. He could feel it grinding like it was pumping blood that was too thick and was littered with debris. His left arm started to tingle as his mind began to spiral with panic. He had been a spy for nearly twenty years. He had lied in the face of the Dark Lord and weaselled himself out of every situation and now, only feet from the finish line, he’d finally failed and gotten himself caught in his own web of lies and deceit.
What the fuck was he supposed to do now? He’d done this to himself and now he had no way out.
Snape felt like the weight of the world was crashing down on his shoulders as he stared at the woman before him. If he said yes, it would be outwardly admitting he was working against the Dark Lord and it would be an open and dangerous loose end. It would be evidence that could condemn him to death. But if he said no, he was not only losing a potential resource, he was putting Narcissa and Draco in danger and he was hurting his end goal. The reality was he knew he couldn’t always be there to help Potter, he was stretched thinner than he could manage and he couldn’t necessarily rely on Nasir. But this was dangerous – there was no good answer.
Fuck!
He could taste the bile at the back of his throat as his stomach churned and a sharp pain began to radiate from his chest.
I should have just obliviated her.
I should obliviate her.
His headache amplified as his hands clenched at his sides once more and Narcissa took a step closer.
“Severus,” she whispered slowly, her face once again showing more emotion than she normally allowed. Her eyes were practically pleading with him to give her something – anything – just some tiny morsel of information that could help guide her to know what she should be doing to help him. “I don’t want to make things harder on you, but I don't want to put you at risk by acting in the opposite direction to what you need. If I have the opportunity to help them – to help any of them – do I do it?”
He was going to be sick.
He was going to be physically sick and he was going to die in the mess he had created.
“I’m on your side, Severus – I just need to know what you want me to do.”
She was standing too close.
Her eyes were too blue.
How had he let this happen?
“You don’t even need to say it,” she nearly whispered. “Just nod if I should. Please, Severus – please.”
Snape’s jaw clenched tighter than it ever had in his life and he felt a tooth crack under the pressure. His heart was racing beyond dangerously fast. He could feel his already tight chest constricting even tighter as every muscle in his body stiffened in rejection and indecision. Sickness washed through him like burning lava as he tilted his head in an almost imperceptible nod.
-x-x-
“FUCK!”
Snape kicked the desk the second that he had fully apparated back into his office and immediately tangled his hands into his hair. The papers on top of the wooden surface jostled at the harsh movement and his foot throbbed with pain but he didn’t fucking care. It felt like his heart was going to explode in his chest as a fresh wave of rage and panic split through his soul. In fact, it was quite possible that his heart would explode given the state of his body.
“FUCKING – FUCK!!”
He kicked the desk a second time and struggled to breathe as he tilted his head back to the ceiling and fought back the urge to puke.
What the fuck have I done.
What the fuck have I just done?!?!?!
He’d just nodded.
He’d just fucking nodded and all but outright told Narcissa Malfoy of all people that he was helping stupid fucking Potter and that annoying Granger brat!
One veritaserum dose – only one fucking drop down her throat and the Dark Lord would know he was not loyal. The demon would summon him to the Manor and kill Narcissa in front of him before dismembering Draco. Then he would skin Snape alive as he tore into his mind and ripped it to shreds. That demon would waste every single potion that he had to ensure that Snape lived through it as he tried to pry out anything and everything from his mind. And despite his best efforts, the Dark Lord would get something – and then this would be over. The Order would fall, Potter would fail, and the last twenty years of his life will have been for nothing and he would die like the useless failure he’d always known he was.
He would die as the reason why the war was lost.
A wave of nausea hit him so hard he gagged and doubled over in pain.
What had he just done?
He couldn’t breathe, he tried to force his lungs to inhale but nothing was coming in. In the 38 years of his life, he had never lost control. After everything that he’d been through, all the torture, the stress, the pain, the agony, the danger – he had never lost control like this and he didn’t know how to handle it. He didn’t know what to do.
He needed to fix this. He needed to go to the Manor, now, grab Narcissa and obviate her. Why the hell had he let her leave? Why the bloody hell had he let this happen? How fucking worn down was he? He’d known that his body was falling apart and his control was starting to crack but this was the stupidest and most short-sighted irresponsible thing he had done in years.
“FUCK!!” he screamed as the air finally left his lungs. He made to straighten himself but stiffened at the loud baritone that sounded behind him.
“You need to breathe, Severus.”
Snape whirled around, stumbling on his shaking legs as his eyes latched to the tall, unnerving man that was currently standing before his bookshelf. It looked like he’d just been casually browsing the contents of the shelf until he was interrupted by Snape’s loud and violent entry.
“What the fuck are you doing here?!” Snape somehow managed to spit as his rampant emotions flared beyond any means of control. The pain in his chest had just seemed to double and a low groan crept from his lips as he clutched the front of his robes tight. It was constricting again – but tighter this time and sharp stabbing pains were shooting through his back, cutting across his chest and radiating down his arm like daggers as sweat broke out across his body. He couldn’t feel his left arm anymore, he felt sick and the pains began to creep up his neck as he struggled to make himself breathe once more.
Fucking Merlin I’m having a heart attack, the realization hit him like a brick and he had to fight against the urge to roll his eyes.
“I came by to check-in and pick up whatever potions you have available,” Nasir said far too calmly as he twisted around to face him and began shifting across the room toward him. His eyes raked over Snape’s hunched form before he stopped two feet from the desk between them and raised a brow. “You’re having a heart attack, Severus – I suggest you sit down.”
“I know – I’m having a – heart attack,” Snape spat each word with venom between his laboured breathing. But despite the defiance in his eyes he shifted toward the chair and collapsed into it before slumping across the desk. His head hit the surface hard as his heart rate became erratic and he groaned out in pain.
“Severus,” Phineas’ hoarse and worried voice rang out and Snape rolled his head to look at the portrait as he heard Nasir approach him from the right. “Severus – are you okay?! Should I get Madam Pomfrey?”
“No,” Snape ground out between clenched teeth. There was nothing the witch could do for him that he couldn’t do himself – this was, after all, not the first time that this had happened. When you played with potions as he did on a regular basis you had to face the consequences. Though this was the first time that it had happened purely as a result of stress and anxiety. Usually it was a combination of more than that. He fought to breathe as his heart started to skip beats and he prepared to cast the spell as annoyance filled him. This was just further confirmation that his body was failing him and he was cracking under the pressure.
“You’re pushing yourself too hard,” Nasir’s deep voice sounded before Snape felt a warm hand on his back through his robes. There was a single hard tap and Snape knew what was coming before it even hit him because he’d been about to do it himself. His body clenched and his eyes shot wide with pain as a shock pulsed through his heart – forcing it into submission and regulating it into a steady normal pace. He’d never met another person who knew this spell, but he wasn’t able to say anything because his jaw clenched shut in pain. “Eventually these spells won’t cut it anymore. That organ is going to give out.”
A long agonizing minute ticked by as Snape pressed his forehead hard into the desk and let the magic control his heart. It took an entire second minute for his body to finally regulate enough that the spell was satisfied and it stopped shocking him.
“I know,” Snape hissed through clenched teeth, finally able to breathe and open his mouth. He forced himself to sit upright in his chair and he glared at the tall man beside him as he wrenched open the small drawer on his right to grab a bottle of calming draught. Nasir seemed indifferent and impassive – watching him quietly as he bit the stopper out with his teeth and then downed the entire bottle. “But that hardly matters – I just need it to last until this war is over.”
Snape paused, still holding the bottle in his shaking right hand as his eyes narrowed at Nasir.
“How long have you been here?”
“Half an hour give or take,” Nasir said calmly, shifting around the desk to sit in the chair before Snape. His eyes shifted over the papers that littered the large wooden surface before they landed on the smoke-filled glass jar that Snape had trapped the firework in back in October – and his eyes seemed to darken with what looked like amusement. “Are you a fan of Weasley products, Severus?”
Snape scowled, putting the empty vial back on the desk and leaning further into his chair. He could feel the calming draught kicking in, relaxing his muscles and forcing his body and mind to compose itself.
“You’re familiar with their work?”
“I’ve spoken to them about their products. Though they never mentioned that they had a perpetual firework. You must be special,” Nasir said evenly before his dark gaze shifted to meet Snape’s eyes once more. He looked Snape up and down again, taking in his slumped posture and angry and agitated expression – then his eyes darkened with amusement once more. “Here I was thinking that my difficulty in dealing with your emotions was simply due to being out of practice – but it would seem that you struggle with them too. What has you all worked up this evening, Severus?”
Asshole.
Snape’s brow twitched and he felt his jaw tighten, but Nasir only continued to look at him as if amused. He’d become a hell of a lot cheekier since getting a soul – and apparently, he had a twisted sense of humour and enjoyed irking people. Or maybe that was just his own soul and personality seeping through… Snape frowned. He wasn’t sure and he could never be sure because he had never known Nasir before he became a Revenant but either way, it appeared that the man found Snape’s suffering slightly amusing.
“Nothing,” Snape said as his scowl deepened and he brushed the question aside.
There was no way in hell he was going to tell this man what had just happened and he sure as fuck wasn’t going to mention it in front of Dumbledore and give that old man even more ammunition to attack him with. He let out a low pained sigh as he ran his hand over his face and forced himself to relax into the calm induced by the potion. The damage with Narcissa was done. Unless he apparated to the Manor tonight and obliviated her mind there was no point in wasting his energy raging out over it here. He either fixed it later or he accepted the situation for what it was – but right now, he needed to get himself under control and focus.
He needed to talk to this man and get an update.
He sunk deeper into his chair, his eyes flicking to Phineas as he silently vanished the sweat that still lingered on his body. The portrait was watching him with concern, Phineas’ eyes were glued to him as if he was expecting him to keel over any minute. With a low heavy sigh, Snape gave the dead wizard a nod of reassurance and Phineas nodded back – though his hand was still clutching his frame tightly. There was probably nothing that Snape could say to the portrait to make him believe that he was okay – and the reality was, he wasn’t okay.
He closed his eyes and let out one more slow breath and that was when he noticed the silence – or more aptly put – he felt it like a grating on his nerves. Or a lack of grating on his nerves as he realized that the usual and familiar sound of Dumbledore’s ranting was void from the room. His eyes flicked open and locked onto Dumbledore’s portrait. The old man’s mouth was moving rapidly but no sound was coming out and Snape stilled in his chair.
“Did you silence his portrait?” Snape asked quietly as he turned back to look at Nasir in disbelief. The man’s expression had shifted back to its usual impassive look and the amusement had faded from his eyes, though they were still glinting slightly.
“Ah yes, about that,” Nasir said calmly, sitting back in the guest chair and looking both incredibly unnatural in the movement and yet incredibly close to human. It almost hurt Snape’s brain to watch the man when he was being normal – because the movements and gestures were all there, but something about it was still off and his brain seemed to reject it as a false reality. Like the man was a wolf in sheep’s clothing trying to hide in the herd but Snape’s instincts managed to pick him out as unearthly no matter how hard he tried. “Phineas and I were trying to have a conversation and it was… proving difficult to maintain. It’s just a simple silencing spell – you can remove it, or it will wear off in half an hour.”
“Let it wear off,” Snape said without hesitation, his eyes flicking back to Phineas. The man looked abnormally calm about Nasir’s statement. He seemed stressed about what had just happened to Snape but remarkably unbothered for having just spent the last half an hour with this man alone. He would have to ask him about that later but for now, he needed to get down to business so that he could go to sleep and let his body heal – or at a minimum so he could talk to this man before he was summoned away again unexpectantly. “The potions are ready. I improved batch 47 but I warn you not to use it unless you truly need it. It will eat through your kidneys and it hardens the muscles in your heart at least six times more quickly than the last batch I gave you.”
Snape sighed as he forced himself to lean forward once more and opened the bottom desk drawer to pull out the bag he’d preassembled before going to Spinner’s End.
“Not to mention the lasting sensory damage,” Snape muttered as he hauled the bag from the drawer and set it on the desk before Nasir. He pinned Nasir with a flat look as he arched a brow. “I don’t suppose you told them about any of that though – did you?”
Nasir didn’t say anything, he simply arched a brow in return and then pulled the bag closer to look inside.
“I thought not,” Snape muttered, clenching and unclenching his left hand now that he could feel the arm again.
“You’ve been busy,” Nasir said before closing the bag once more. “I’ve made a few of my own in my spare time but this will help. Thank you.”
Snape felt his body tense at the words of appreciation and he instinctively glanced at Phineas who seemed to be looking rather smug at the ongoing exchange. As if the portrait had just been proven correct in his previous statements about the Revenant – as if this one polite thank you somehow changed things or proved the that Nasir ‘wasn’t so bad’. He rolled his eyes at the portrait and pushed past the praise as if it had never even been uttered.
“Speaking of spare time,” Snape said slowly, fixing Nasir with a curious gaze. “How do you find time to brew when you’re so busy training Potter and Granger – and blowing up the Dark Lord’s storage locations.”
“It was only one storage location,” Nasir said indifferently but his eyes were glinting once more. “And it didn’t take that long – the defenses were surprisingly minimal given the number of goods in there.”
“Evidently,” Snape said flatly, his eyes narrowing at the man once more. “So how much of it did you burn? Or did you steal it all and just burn the building?”
“I wouldn’t call it stealing,” Nasir said as he slowly began to unfold himself from the guest chair and stood to his full height once more. His eyes locked to Snape’s and his lips twitched as if he was holding back a smile. “Tom was the one who stole it, I simply repurposed it.”
“For your own needs? Or under Shacklebolt’s directions?” Snape asked through a clenched jaw as he forced himself to stand. His legs shook a bit beneath him, and he had to lean against the desk for support. Even with the calming draught coursing through his veins and forcing his body to remain grounded he could feel the panic creeping back in. What if this man was acting alone? What if he was going to take the Dark Lord’s position?
“Does that matter?” Nasir asked, his dark eyes flicking over Snape’s slightly hunched form. He shifted a step closer and Snape resisted the urge to step back and continued to lean against the desk and meet the man’s gaze. “The impact on Tom is the same either way. Besides, it’s dangerous for one man to have all the information, Severus – you know that. You keep enough secrets as it is, perhaps you don’t need to keep this one.”
“And it’s dangerous when you make attacks without giving me any warning,” Snape said tightly, his jaw clenching further. “This war is like a chess match – you make one move, he makes another. That loss didn’t go unnoticed by his followers and now it has impacted this school – it’s put the students at risk and our medical supplies have been all but been entirely raided because the Dark Lord is trying to make a statement and he needs to remain strong in the aftermath of what you did. Each time you attack him you are putting hundreds of students at risk! So if you don’t want to tell me who’s calling the shots then fine – at least fucking tell me the next time you plan to do something so I can try to prevent the unnecessary deaths of children!”
Nasir stared at him, his dark gaze piercing as silence rang out through the office once more. Snape was gripping the desk so tightly now his knuckles were stark white.
“This is war, Severus,” Nasir said quietly, his eyes seeming to grow darker as something unrecognizable shifted behind them. “People are going to die, you know that better than most and age has nothing to do with it. The attack was calculated, the potential results of it were weighed and deemed worth the risk – I can tell you that much. The impact on the school was suspected, though I admit it happened sooner than anticipated.”
Snape felt his heart sinking in his chest. Was this man really going to sacrifice this school and all the people in it to defeat the Dark Lord? If Shacklebolt was involved, was he seriously going to allow children to be tortured and potentially killed just to cut off a supply chain?
“Hogwarts has not been abandoned,” Nasir said quietly as if he had just read his thoughts. “You don’t know what was in that building, Severus – it wasn’t just supplies. I promise you the attack was worth it.”
“Will there be others?” Snape said tightly, his legs starting to shake harder now.
“No,” Nasir said, and his eyes almost seemed to soften. “There are no other attacks planned – just the one on the 1st that you are already aware of. Get some rest, Severus – you need it. The 1st is coming, and things are going to get much worse before this is over.”
May 1, 1998
Hogwarts, 8:31 am
Nothing about the morning had felt abnormal.
Not the weather, not the pathetic breakfast or the tight tension that sat thick and heavy throughout the Great Hall.
Snape had been missing from the Head table – but that was normal and to be expected nowadays. The hint of fear and lack of sleep that haunted the professor’s eyes – normal, the way that Slughorn had looked drunk even though it hadn’t even been 9 am – also normal.
Everything about the way the day had started was entirely unremarkable.
Ginny had woken to her morning alarm still curled into Susan’s arms and kissed her before hauling herself from bed and forcing herself to get ready. They had travelled in large groups to breakfast, heads down, eyes glued to the floor and completely silent as they carefully maneuvered the halls and then sat in random positions across their three tables while ignoring everything that went on around them. More students had been tortured this week, more boxes of goods had left Hogwarts property and more text littered their skin. Colin had a black eye. Neville’s shoulder was still seeping thick lines of blood because whenever he moved too much the scars broke open and Lavender was doing her best to hide the limp in her left leg from a DADA incident the day before that Madam Pomfrey hadn’t gotten to yet.
But those were minor.
Anthony Goldstein had lost his left arm yesterday and was currently in the Hospital Wing with Madam Pomfrey.
And Padma was still trembling after being hit with the Carrows’ cruciatus.
They’d eaten in silence, watching as the post was delivered and each of them silently crossing their fingers and hoping that the letters would be fewer – but they weren’t.
A good number of them were dropped across the tables and student’s faces paled as they opened them and tried not to react to the news they received. It was hard to stay positive, hard to stay strong when things were getting worse and the update from the Order had been so vague. Fred and George had sent them a bunch of useful supplies and indicated that they were all training and working hard – that Harry and Hermione were still with them and that they had a plan. But they never gave them any specifics, they never gave them any details as to what they might be doing or when things might change.
She understood why – it was too risky to send those sorts of details to the school even though they coded the messages. The only tiny thing that made her feel a bit better was the coded letter she’d received from her dad that had promised her – they were coming.
The Order was working hard to find a way to evacuate the school and like she knew he would, he promised to never give up.
But everything about that, about the week, about the breakfast, about all of it – had been normal.
What wasn’t normal and what hadn’t been unremarkable – was the way that Maisey, her dormmate, had utterly snapped and lost her shit in the hallway after breakfast.
Ginny had been worried about the girl, but there was also no warning that she was on the brink of losing her self-control. Yes, Maisey had been visibly tired, stressed and anxious – but everyone was. That was to be expected and there was nothing to indicate that the girl was going to fucking lose it – yet ‘lose it’ she had. They’d been making their way out of the Great Hall and down the corridor towards their first class of the day – potions – where she knew they would do nothing but organize the limited ingredients the school had left or possibly read from their books. There wasn’t enough to actually brew anything, there hadn’t been for months and Slughorn had largely given up on trying to teach them anything.
And a small group of Slytherins had been following them, which was not out of the ordinary, and they were taunting them about the Ministry letters they’d received that week. Neville’s jaw was clenched tight, Susan seemed agitated but in control, Colin was doing his best to ignore it and Maisey’s eyes were creased with strain. Ginny could practically feel the tension in her friends’ bodies as they fought to ignore the gross comments and continue on their way.
But then, as the cruel words regarding Maisey’s aunt had left Zabini’s mouth behind them – the girl had visibly bristled and froze on spot. It was like his voice had physically shot through her body and the girl’s eyes had gone cold with hate before she twisted on her heel and rapidly drew her wand. Maisey had hit Zabini with a hex so violent Ginny heard his leg snap as he collided with the wall behind him and it bent the wrong way and crumpled beneath him as he fell to the ground.
And just like that, their calm, unremarkable, normal morning had turned into an all-out war as Ginny’s heartbeat skyrocketed in panic.
Neville acted first, throwing up a shield between the two groups as Susan pulled out her wand and charmed the armour nearby to act as a distraction and add to their defense. Goyle was yelling for the Carrows, Parkinson was unleashing a string of hexes that Ginny ducked under as she yelled at Maisey to pull back. She drew her own wand, hexing Millicent before she reached out for Maisey. Crabbe screamed something, the wall behind them exploded as Malfoy scrambled to grab his wand – he looked anxious and stressed as if this whole thing had taken him completely by surprise and he wasn’t sure what to do.
But before Ginny was able to get her hands on Maisey and pull the raging girl back she sent a return blast at the group of Slytherins and all hell broke out.
Armour was flying everywhere, clanging into the walls as stone from the explosion Maisey unleashed shattered across the hall. Parkinson nearly cut off Colin’s head with a vicious curse as Ginny desperately threw up another shield and Neville sent out a round of hexes. The Carrows rushed in, Maisey was hit with two simultaneous rounds of cruciatus – her screams and shrieks cut through the air and twisted down Ginny’s spine like acid as she physically cringed at the sound.
She tried to send an attack at the others as Susan began pulling back to grab Colin – it was too loud, too loud and too small. There wasn’t enough room and the Slytherins were unleashing hex after hex as if this was the very moment they’d been waiting for – as if their dreams of finally having an excuse to fight them had happened and they were all bloody ecstatic. But all Ginny wanted to do at that moment was stop the screaming and get everyone out to safety
But there was nowhere to go and nothing to do except dodge and attack and hope to Merlin that this was not her last moment alive. Her heart was exploding in her chest as she saw Malfoy raise his wand from the corner of her vision, Crabbe slashed his own through the air as Maisey’s shrieks seemed to double and rattle the hall until suddenly she was thrown against the wall with a hard thump, everything went silent – and she couldn’t move.
And then she realized nothing was moving.
Not even the Carrows – they were motionless as they stood near the Slytherins who were unaffected by the blast that had thrown her to the ground with the others on her side.
Her eyes flicked to her right where she saw Susan’s temple was split open and Maisey looked like she wasn’t breathing in the middle of the hallway floor. Then her eyes flicked to the tall black-clad figure that had suddenly appeared in the thick of it all and she felt her body grow numb.
They were dead.
Snape had apparated directly into the center of the chaos and stopped it in its entirely.
Her eyes met his for a split second as the armour suits fell to the ground with a clang at the flick of his finger and she felt her blood run cold. He hadn’t been at breakfast that morning, and he hadn’t been at dinner the night before – where he’d come from or how he’d known what was going on she had no idea. But she was fairly certain she had never seen him look this angry before in her life. Rage was pouring off of him in waves so thick she could practically see it. The stench of death clung to his robes – it smelled like burnt flesh – and a smear of blood that didn’t appear to be his was coating the sleeve of his left arm. He stalked through the broken rock toward the still standing Slytherins and grabbed Malfoy roughly by the front of his robes.
“Get – out,” the words were so low they felt like a rumble but in the silence that echoed in the hallway, he might as well have been screaming. With a jerk of his hand, Malfoy stumbled backward then turned on his heel and fled as the other Slytherin’s followed, barely remembering to grab Zabini before they left – leaving her and her friends alone with Snape and the still motionless Carrows. Snape’s attention turned to the two of them and they seemed to stiffen further under his glare. “Incompetent.”
His harsh word cut through them and made them flinch.
“You have one job,” Snape’s voice was deadly as he shifted closer to them and Alecto started to visibly quiver. “One – maintain control, punish those who need it and stop blowing up the hallways because the Dark Lord sees this place as valuable. Does anything about this look like you have the situation under control?”
The Carrows didn’t answer, they just stood there silently as Snape’s dark eyes pierced into them.
“Perhaps this task is beyond your capabilities,” Snape said slowly, his voice so dark it was almost painful to hear. “Need I remind you what happened to the others who failed the tasks assigned to them?”
The Carrows still hadn’t shifted from their spot, but Ginny saw Amycus’ head move in a nearly imperceptible shake as Neville groaned to her left and started to roll over. And then, to her horror, Snape turned to them. His eyes moved over them slowly, contempt and hostility burning in his gaze like fire – they were nothing, nothing to him and he was going to kill them.
She was going to die here.
“Weasley,” his voice was hollow and she flinched and scuttled back as he approached her – but she didn’t get very far before he grabbed her and hauled her up from the ground by the back scruff of her robes as if she were a dog.
He did it far too easily, and he lifted her so high her toes barely touched the ground as he held her before him like she weighed nothing. Terror coursed through her. She could feel her eyes growing wide with panic as she struggled to breathe and took in the sight of him. Barely controlled tension laced his face, his jaw was tight with rage and his pupils were dilated so large it shouldn’t be physically possible – but before her mind could even process that thought his grip on her robes tightened and he jerked her closer.
“Clearly – detention with Hagrid and the Carrows has proved ineffective,” he said slowly, his voice dangerously low.
Her heart was beating too quickly, she still hadn’t breathed. She could hear the others shuffling on the ground behind her in the rubble, but she knew that they could do nothing.
“So tonight, you and your friends will serve your detention with me – and maybe this time, you will learn something. You will meet me in the defense corridor at 9:00 pm tonight or I will find you, break both your legs and drag you there – do you understand? And if I catch you in the middle of something like this again,” he paused, his black eyes boring into her like an inescapable promise of death. “It will be the last thing that you ever do, Weasley – and they will never find your body. Have I made myself clear?”
She nodded, at least she thought she nodded – she honestly wasn’t sure if her body had done what she’d told it to. Terror was coursing through her so deeply she wasn’t sure how she’d managed to not pass out. He stared into her eyes for a moment longer before he spoke three more words so low, they were barely a whisper.
“Now get – out.”
He dropped her to the ground with a thud and she crumpled on the floor. A painful rasp left her lungs as she inhaled sharply, her eyes blearing slightly as she looked up to see Madam Pomfrey rushing into the Hallway with panic on her face.
“Get that girl out of here before I throw her body in the lake!” Snape snapped at the older woman, his vile words coming out like a violent hiss. Ginny scrambled to her feet as Susan grabbed Colin from the floor beside her. Snape shifted to face the Carrows, his eyes narrowing in rage once more. “Clean up this hall – now.”
But she didn’t wait to see if the Carrows agreed.
She didn’t wait to see what came next.
She just grabbed Neville, helping him up from the floor and slinging his arm over her shoulder. Blood from the letters on his back had already stained through his school shirt and his cheekbone was bruised. She could tell from the sharp stabbing sensation in her leg that she was injured too but she ignored it – pushing down the pain and forcing her body to move. They took off down the hall – Susan in the lead at a full-on sprint. Neville doing his best to support his own weight and help Ginny as they sped along behind her. Her breath came in pants, there was a stitch forming on her right side – it felt like the world had just come apart at the seams and any hope that they had had getting through this alive was gone.
Snape would never just give them detention.
He would torture them.
He would make a spectacle out of them.
This would be their end and they couldn’t even hide from it because there was nowhere to go.
She’d not doubted a single word that man had said. If she didn’t show up tonight – he would make it a thousand times worse. But if they did go, they might be walking to their death. Sickness curled in the pit of her stomach and her eyes started to burn.
How had it come to this?
How had things gotten this bad?
Her feet slammed hard against the ground as she ran, her burning eyes locked to Susan and her heart aching in her chest. She didn’t even see the flash of movement to her right as they cut across a hall intersection and headed back to the Gryffindor tower.
Hello there Dunk_Flowers….. I’m honoured to join your AO3 collection. Thank you, it means a lot – here’s to hoping you still think this story is good enough once it is completed <3
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A dull ringing began to echo in Hermione’s ears. He’d not shown her everything, she knew he’d cut out most of it – but she’d seen Voldemort’s face, she’d heard his voice, she’d smelled the death that clung to his body as he exploded in a fit of terror and rage at Malfoy Manor.
Harry wasn’t lying.
If they wanted any chance at getting the last Horcrux and any shot at winning this war they had to leave now – Voldemort was assembling his people and he was going to storm the castle grounds. And he would do exactly what Harry said – he would destroy and burn that entire school and all its inhabitants to dust if they did not get there first.
Stealth was out the window.
Secrecy was no longer an option.
They had officially run out of time.
The war was upon them whether they liked it or not – whether they were ready or not, and they were about to go face it head-on.
She felt a cold chill run down her spine.
They were going into battle.
The ringing which had started as a low hum deep within her ears grew, and suddenly, it felt like a great raging river was flooding through her mind.
It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.
She didn’t know how any of this was supposed to have happened but, nevertheless, she couldn’t help but feel like it wasn't supposed to be like this. She was supposed to talk to Harry, they were supposed to go to sleep and come up with a plan tomorrow morning. They were supposed to have more time – they were supposed to train longer, harder, work to dismantle Voldemort from the shadows and continue to increase their odds of success. She could see Ron and Bill closing the distance toward them from the corner of her eye as Nasir opened his mouth and began asking Harry a string of questions about what he’d seen. She could hear Harry responding, but his words sounded distorted and warped as if her head had just been shoved underwater, and the rushing in her ears continued to grow louder.
This wasn’t what she wanted.
She wasn’t ready.
They were not ready – none of them were. The Order wasn’t prepared for all-out war and they were still injured for fuck's sake!
Injured and exhausted, worn thin and ready to crash. They'd just broken into Gringotts and destroyed a fucking Horcrux – they needed to rest. They needed to repair, regroup, rethink – plan.
But that wasn't how their life worked. It was never how their life worked and she should have been expecting this. She should have somehow known that this would happen because they could never catch a break and assuming anything else anymore was naïve and foolish of her because life was determined to ask too much. To push too hard, to test just how much they could bend before they broke. She could feel her jaw clenching tight as the deep ache in her chest seemed to double while the rune above her heart grew heavier than it’d been since the day it was first carved into her flesh.
This was happening.
And there was nothing she could do about it.
A cold chill had settled into her bones. The images and fragments of memory that Harry had sent her seemed to cloud her senses. It was death, it was vile, and it was nearly all-consuming. How he had lived with this and how he had dealt with having Voldemort in his head for so long she would never understand. It was like a poison eating away at her soul. Sickening and dark and so terrifying it hurt. It felt as if her body had been plunged under ice-cold water. All the realizations and truths that came along with the fact that Voldemort was going to Hogwarts, and it was the location of the last Horcrux made her skin sting in pain. Because even through her panic, she knew what this meant, and she suspected that Harry did too.
But they had no other choice.
As Harry squeezed her arms hard one more time it was like being jolted back to life with a flicker of electricity. Nasir was turning to look at her - reality was calling her home. Regardless of how much she didn’t want to and no matter how much she hated this or how badly she wanted to reject it – Harry's touch was forcing the raging river in her mind to subside. The water was slowing, and the buzzing was starting to lessen.
And she knew there was no escaping this.
"We need to go now, Hermione," Harry repeated, the words sounding more clear than the last ones he’d spoken to Nasir as he took an unsteady step towards her. "We don't have time – I know we’re not ready, but we have to go."
Her feet shifted across the blackened sand independent of her control. Her lips were already starting to form words that her mind had yet to accept.
"I know," she whispered, her eyes shifting to meet his. Her voice was low and hoarse – laced with an agony that matched the look shining in Harry's eyes. She looked at him painfully, longingly, a silent understanding passing between them as she felt his emotions surge through the bond, and she shared her own. Then she forced her head to nod and her lungs to inhale. This was it, and they were both resigned to their fate in this war. She tore her eyes away from Harry to look at the two approaching redheads before glancing back to Nasir and nodding once more. Then, just like every other time they’d been faced with something terrible, something impossible and something so horrifying she wanted to abandon ship – she didn’t, and she forced her body to move. “I know – let’s go."
They took off for the cottage, rushing toward Bill and Ron’s approaching forms as they both helped Harry move. There was no other option – they couldn’t truly stop, they had to make every second count because their limited time was already running out. Their injuries no longer mattered because every minute they wasted meant people could die or their chances of getting to Hogwarts first would lessen. Hermione could feel the sickness growing in her gut as she forced her limbs to move and her mind to clear. There was no other choice – she had to push aside her fear and her doubt and all the inner anxiety that was crippling her as her heart ached for Harry.
They had no time.
She had no time.
And Nasir had been right – this was going to get worse before it was over. They’d reached the end and she needed to be mentally present. She had to force herself to focus no matter how difficult it was. They were in no shape to charge into battle and yet here they were about to do it. So, she couldn’t afford to allow herself to be distracted. She had to stay focused for Harry’s sake – or she would never be able to keep him safe.
"Harry! Hermione!" Bill shouted as he grew closer. His wand was out, and he looked ready to fight as Ron ran quickly by his side – both of them were moving as fast as they could. "What happened?! Nasir – are you okay? We saw the–"
"Call Arthur now – pull everyone in!” Hermione cut Bill off as she pulled dittany out from her purse while Nasir cast a diagnostic on Harry. They were mending him on the run – the three of them somehow unspokenly agreeing that they had no time to stop but that their injuries still needed to be healed after being blasted across the beach. “Get Ava and the others to the farm and get Fred and George here right now! We need to ask them about Hogwarts."
"What do you mean th–"
"There's no time Bill!" Harry yelled before he grimaced in pain. Nasir had just reached across his body and put his palm on Harry's chest to heal his cracked sternum. Hermione saw Ron's nose crinkle at the sound it made as it snapped back into place and the two redheads reached them. But thankfully Ron didn’t falter as he turned with Bill and they both began running back toward the cottage next to her. "He's going to Hogwarts – You Know Who is going there now. We have to go – we have to get there first!"
"To Hogwarts?" Bill's face went ashen as he shook his head in confusion. "Harry – how do you know and what the hell just happened out there?!"
"That was my doing Bill – I’ll explain later but right now you need to get everyone out and send for Shacklebolt," Nasir said darkly as his hands continued to rapidly shift over Harry's battered form. "We truly don't have time."
Hermione glanced at the diagnostic that was hovering over Harry’s shoulder and grimaced. All of these injuries couldn’t have been from the blast, he must have somehow been weakened or damaged from the Horcrux getting destroyed because he seemed twice as badly injured as she was.
"I saw it," Harry said hoarsely, his eyes meeting Bill's as Hermione pulled out burn paste and quickly smeared it over Harry's cheek. "Just like that time with Arthur in the Department of Mysteries – I saw him. It's over – the Order, the secret missions – they’re all over. This is it, Bill – he’s going to war."
“You’re sure?” Bill’s voice had gone hoarse and the look in his eyes was deep with concern. “You’re sure of what you saw? There’s no chance that this was intentional? That he wanted you to see this and he’s leading us into a trap?”
“No,” Harry’s voice grew low, his head shaking as his gait slowed and he turned to meet Bill’s gaze. Even in the darkness, Hermione could see the deep sadness that radiated from his usually bright green eyes. She could feel it through the bond like a cold brush against her mind. “I’m sure, Bill – this is real, this is it. He’s going to Hogwarts and he’s going to burn it to the ground unless we get there first.”
It must have been the tone of Harry’s voice. Or maybe it was the look in his eyes or the desperate and rapid way that Nasir was tending to him as they ran but Hermione saw Bill falter in his step before his face grew pale. His eyes locked to the three of them, shifting between them all rapidly before he nodded once and twisted toward Ron.
"Ron go back to the cottage and start the evacuation now – tell them it's a code red,” Bill said firmly as he re-holstered his wand and yanked up his sleeve.
"On it!" Ron didn't hesitate. The colour drained from his face at Bill’s command, but he took off at a full sprint, wand still out, as he darted ahead of them back to the cottage faster than Hermione had ever seen him move before in his life.
She felt the tag on her forearm tingle with a string of messages as Bill grabbed his forearm and began alerting the rest of the group. She handed Harry a calming draught and he downed it without question. They reached the cottage seconds later, chaos seeming to already be brewing inside as people were shifting everywhere and voices rang out. She barely noticed as hands touched her body and magic crept across her skin. She could feel several small cuts knitting themselves back together as dittany burned against her face and she summoned the extra potion packs from the side table before calling out to Harry.
“How much time do we have?” Hermione asked. She reached up and caught the bottles that Fleur was sending her from the cabinet in the corner. She wasn’t even sure who was healing her – she was pretty sure that it was Nasir, but her eyes were everywhere all at once and her mind was racing too quickly to process everything around her as adrenaline began to course through her veins. She was acting on instinct again, shoving the potion bottles into her purse pocket before turning to look at Harry in the flurry of activity that continued around them.
“He’ll be there in less than an hour!” Harry called as he grabbed some of the pre-packaged food and supply packs that they’d left in the living room. His eyes seemed focused once more, the calming draught having clearly taken effect. He’d somehow managed to push aside his disturbed panic and was now entirely focused and analyzing everything with a critical eye. It was a testament to his skill, his maturity – to just how much he’d grown over the last few months and it only made Hermione’s heart ache deeper. They shouldn’t be used to this; these situations shouldn’t feel normal. “He’s gathering his forces now – he thinks Nasir is headed there so he won’t waste any time, but he also won’t go un-prepared or alone – so he can’t get there immediately. He’s unstable but not stupid – he’s bringing everything he’s got, and he won’t hold back.”
“Drink this,” a vial of orange potion was thrust into her hand, as Nasir’s deep baritone rang out above her. “Harry – you too.”
She glanced up in time to see Nasir throw a vial toward Harry as she ripped the cork out of her own and downed it without hesitating. She recognized it as the same potion he’d given her at Gringotts to repair her damaged muscle tissues. She’d barely swallowed it before she heard two loud pops echo out and the door to the cottage was ripped open.
“We got the message – what’s going on?!” Fred’s voice echoed loud as he and George rushed in and froze in the door at the sight before them.
A diagnostic charm was floating over Hermione’s shoulder while Harry was pocketing supplies. Blood, ash and sand covered them both – their clothes still damp from the Thief's Downfall as Nasir healed a cut on Hermione’s forehead. Fleur was pulling out every single last potion they had from the kitchen cabinet and dividing them into piles on the table while Ron could be heard rushing around upstairs with Dean helping Ava, Liza, Colin, the goblins and Mr. Ollivander prepare to leave. Bill continued to send out communications as he darted around the cottage gathering the crated paperwork and files they’d prepackaged after the last false alarm. He was dumping them into a pile in the center of the table in preparation for portkeying them to the farm while Luna ran down the stairs carrying another two boxes of supplies to add to the lot.
Hermione watched as the panicked looks on the twin’s faces shifted into tight seriousness – it was a look one rarely saw them display. Their jaws clenched tight and they stepped fully into the cottage looking prepared for anything as they both pocketed their wands. But they barely made it in the door before a second loud crack rang out and Arthur practically stumbled into the cottage as he panted for breath.
“Boys! Thank Merlin, I was worried you’d get stuck in Diagon Alley – Hermione, Harry! What happened?! Shacklebolt messaged that the roof of the bank exploded but to hold because there’d been no word from you yet – and then I got the code red,” Arthur gasped for air as he rushed towards them. “I was worried you may have been hurt. Bill said we had to evacuate – are we under attack?!”
“No – well at least not for now,” Harry said as he threw a supply pack toward the twins and George caught it. “You Know Who is going to Hogwarts, Arthur – we have to get there before him.”
Hermione saw the older man’s jaw clench and she caught Harry’s eyes before he looked back to the redhead. They both knew that this would be hard for Arthur to hear given that Ginny was still at the school – but that wasn’t even the worst of it. They had more bad news. She’d not had a second to voice her concerns and all her thoughts to Harry, but she instinctively knew that they were aligned.
She knew that Harry must have come to the same conclusion as her, and it wasn’t good.
“Why Hogwarts?” Arthur said almost hoarsely, his body tensing tight.
“I can’t tell you,” Harry shook his head, his face pinching as he looked at Arthur. It was as if withholding the information was physically painful, but he didn’t stop moving to gather supplies.
“But you’re sure he’s going?” Arthur said quietly, his eyes flicking over the chaos inside the cottage.
“Yes,” Harry nodded, grabbing a supply pack and handing it out to Arthur. “I’m positive – he’s going there Arthur and we don’t have time to waste. He’ll be there in less than an hour.”
“This is about the thing you’ve been working on, isn’t it? What Dumbledore asked you to do,” Arthur said slowly as he took a step toward Harry.
“Yes,” Harry said firmly, finally pausing his movements and taking a moment to meet Arthur’s gaze fully. The supply pack remained in his outstretched hand between them. “This is about the mission that Hermione and I have been working on – the one that Dumbledore gave us and the one that will allow us to defeat him. This is it Arthur – this is where we have been headed since Dumbledore first sent us down this path – we just didn’t know it until now. But I promise you – we are so close. If we succeed tonight, we’ll stand a chance at killing him. We could win this war Arthur – we can end this – but we need your help and we have got to get there before him. I need you to trust me, I need you to trust that Hermione and I know what we’re doing – that this is the only way.”
“I do trust you, Harry,” Arthur said quietly, his jaw clenching tight as he finally took the supply pack that Harry was holding out and gripped it tightly. His eyes searched over Harry’s battered-looking form and Hermione could see that the man was forcing himself to remain calm, logical and in control. “I have always trusted you – what do you need us to do?”
“We need you to get everyone and anyone who supports the Order ready to fight – because I don’t think that Hermione and I are going to be able to do what we need to do before he shows up,” Harry said seriously. He remained motionless before the eldest Weasley. “We’re going to try – but we might run out of time so everyone needs to be ready to come to fend him off or he will obliterate the castle and everyone inside. And–“
Harry let out a low sigh and closed his eyes briefly as he shook his head. Hermione could see the strain on his face, she could feel his tension through the bond as he confessed the same concern she’d already considered. The horrible truth of their situation – the one that had left her cold and sick to her stomach.
“It’s complicated to explain without fully explaining it – but we need to wait to complete our task until he arrives. We need time before he gets there to locate something within the school, but once we do and once we have it, he’ll be weakened, and he might try to go into hiding again. If he does that, we might not be able to find him, and we might lose our chance at taking him out. So Hermione and I need to wait until he gets to the castle with all his followers to do what we need to do – because once he gets there he won’t leave. Tom will stay. He’ll fight it out until the end. He’s unstable right now, volatile – he wants this to be over, but if we act too soon and make our move before he gets there he’ll disappear because he’s figured out what we’re doing. So as disastrous as this all is – tonight is likely our only shot at taking him down.
“We need him to come to Hogwarts – but Hermione and I have to get there first to find what we need. Once we have it, we need support to end this once and for all,” Harry said solemnly. His eyes flicked over Arthur’s stone-faced expression. “I wish there was another way Arthur, I truly do, but there isn’t. This was what Dumbledore asked us to do – I don’t know if he meant for it to happen like this – for it to all come together at the school. I want to believe that he didn’t – I desperately want to believe he didn’t mean for it to go down like this but it’s where we are regardless. And the truth is, Hermione and I will probably run out of time before we find what we need. He will probably get there while we’re still looking, and we’ll need help defending the castle – we’ll need help getting everyone out.
“I don’t want the students caught in the crossfire,” Harry’s voice dropped lower, and his jaw clenched tight. “So I need everyone to focus, I need everyone on board so they can get out safely and we can finish this without putting them at risk. But we need to leave immediately, so what I need to know right now is how the hell we can get into Hogwarts.”
“Have you been in touch with Ginny since the 26th?” Hermione asked, looking to the twins, her eyes searching their faces. “Is Hogsmeade still out of the question?”
“It’s certainly not a good option,” George said quietly, finally pocketing the supplies that Harry had tossed him. He’d been standing motionless next to Fred as Harry had spoken, seemingly lost to his words as his face grew paler. But Hermione’s question had yanked him back to reality, and he pulled out two small bags from his pocket.
“It’s protected by the Caterwauling Charm. You can apparate in and use the tunnel from Aberforth’s, but the second you land in Hogsmeade alarms will be triggered and the Death Eaters will swarm the village,” Fred continued for his twin. He caught the spare potion pack that Hermione tossed to him without missing a beat. She knew this was hard for everyone, she knew that they were struggling but they’d already wasted precious minutes with an explanation that they did not have time to give. They had to get back on track, they had to pick up the pace and they had to get moving. So, she started forcing them back into motion by passing out the packs.
“If you do that – I doubt we will get anyone else in before they shut it down completely or start searching homes,” Bill said tightly as he continued to tap at his arm, no doubt sending messages to the rest of the team.
“The village is locked down nearly tighter than Azkaban,” Arthur nodded in stressed agreement. “We think the only reason why they’ve left it open for apparition at all is that they were hoping you two might show up at some point.”
“Here,” George said as he handed Harry the two small bags he’d pulled from his pockets. “A collection of fireworks and more darkness powder we designed specifically for you.”
“Thanks,” Harry nodded as he took the bags, pocketing one and tossing the other to Hermione.
“So, if we take the tunnel – we need to all go at once,” Fred said, glancing to his dad as he strapped the potion pack Hermione had thrown him to his thigh.
“Exactly,” Arthur nodded in agreement. “But we won’t get a second shot. It’s a one-time opportunity only – especially if You Know Who is already preparing to move on the school. The second we show up they will lock down the village – based on our last update from Ginny we think Severus might already suspect a connection from the school to the village. It’s possibly You Know Who has already added additional measures to counter any unexpected apparitions that we don’t know about.”
“We don’t have time to wait for everyone to assemble,” Hermione shook her head as the diagnostic above her shoulder finally disappeared.
She turned and cast one on Nasir as the tall man strapped one of the extra potion packs she’d handed him to his thigh. Her eyes scanned over the display, looking for any sign of injury as her mind raced to keep up with the now rapid-fire conversation. She felt like she was in the speed round of a trivia game but was trying to take it all in and analyze it simultaneously while coming up with a war plan. The whole of this was making her feel sick – it was exactly this kind of situation where people got hurt. This was how and why people died – because they were unprepared and trying to come up with a plan in a matter of seconds.
“We need to get there so we can start searching and we have to get the evacuation started now,” Hermione said as she reached out to Nasir’s forearm and healed the one small fracture in his wand arm that had shown on the diagnostic display. Her head twisted back to Harry and the Weasleys as she fused the bone back together. “We can’t wait here for Shacklebolt and Remus or anyone else – we have to try and get the students and the professors out before You Know Who arrives and attacks. Bill – how long until Shacklebolt gets here?”
“Fifteen minutes!” Bill called back quickly as he grabbed a portkey from the wall and fastened it to the boxes that he and Luna had been collecting. “He’s evacuating his team from the Ministry now but he was in a meeting when I sent the message so he’s been delayed – he couldn’t leave without making his situation worse so he can’t get here any sooner than that. Ready Luna? I’ll send this through, follow it and bring back the portkey.”
“He’ll want to alert the Prime Minister's contact too,” Arthur said tightly, shaking his head in frustration. The pile of goods on the table disappeared, and Luna nodded to Bill. She ran past them all, darting outside into the dark and disappearing with a faint pop. “Fifteen minutes is pushing it – he’ll probably need longer.”
“We can’t wait that long,” Harry shook his head, his eyes flicking back to meet Hermione’s gaze.
We don’t even know where to look for the diadem – it could be anywhere in that school, Harry’s voice slid into her mind like a whisper. I have a hunch based on what I saw but if we wait for everyone to assemble here, we’ll lose search time before he gets there, and we’ll never be able to get everyone out. We need to leave now. You and I go – everyone else can follow, we’ve already wasted too much time as it is.
She felt her stomach knotting once more. Harry was right – they were already wasting the precious little time they had. They might know what the Horcrux was, but they had no idea where it was and searching Hogwarts could take a lifetime that they just did not have. Not to mention the amount of time they needed to try and get an evacuation started – there were hundreds of students in that school and an evacuation would take time. So, she clenched her jaw and nodded to him in agreement.
“Harry’s right, we can’t wait that long,” Hermione dispelled her diagnostic and nodded to Nasir before turning back to the Weasleys. “We need to go ahead – the rest of you will have to follow. Is there any other way in?”
The twins looked at each other and she saw their faces fall before they both shook their heads.
“No – the wards are locked Hermione,” Fred said quickly. Another faint pop sounded, and Luna darted back into the cottage, running by Fred towards the stairs with the portkey in hand. “Snape closed them sometime this month and no one can get in or out without his approval. The tunnel is the only way to by-pass it. So even after we take it, we can’t get the students out because they’ll shut down the village behind us.”
“It’s why I’ve not evacuated them thus far,” Arthur said tightly, regret showing on his face in the form of deep worry lines around his eyes. He ran a hand through his thinning hair and let out a deep frustrated sigh. “Shacklebolt and I have been working on this since the new year, but it’s been an impossible task. Severus has had the wards controlled much more tightly than we thought for months – and we didn’t have the resources or the capacity to pull an operation that large to get all the students out quickly enough before the Death Eaters would have countered our actions. But now it’s virtually impossible – it’s the only reason why Ginny is still there. We don’t have an exit plan and we can’t find a way around it.”
“Fuck,” Hermione let out a sigh as she ran her faintly trembling hand through her hair.
The braid she’d placed it in earlier that day was still holding but a collection of tiny tendrils had slipped out around her face and most of them were coated in dried blood. Discomfort was shifting through her body like a wave as her still damp clothes began to cling to her body. She took a deep breath, finding it difficult to believe she was about to utter her next words – but she’d rapidly run through all the options and it was the only one left that was remotely viable.
“Then Harry and I take the tunnel, we find Snape and we make him open the wards – that way it doesn’t matter if Death Eaters swarm Hogsmeade because you’ll have a direct way in. We’ll signal you the all-clear and everyone can apparate directly to the castle front gates,” Hermione said slowly as she let out a deep exhale. It burned across her chest as she did so, and she could feel the tension start to tighten in her shoulders. She hated that this plan was baked about as well as raw cookie dough, but she didn’t know what the hell else she was supposed to do when they had only seconds to plan. Voldemort was coming whether they wanted him to or not and they had to do something, or they were going to lose this war. “If Snape controls the school then going in there is like walking into a death trap and we’ll be completely fucked. We cannot go there to defend the school, do what Harry and I need to do and get the students and professors out if he controls it – it’s too dangerous. He could directly let You Know Who and his forces in – no matter how we look at this we have to take him out first. We can’t send our resources in otherwise – if we do, we’re just asking for a massacre. Nasir – could you imperio him? Harry and I can probably take him out but he’s a gifted occlumens so I doubt we can sway his mind, could you do it?”
“I could,” Nasir nodded, his eyes glinting as he turned to meet her gaze. “And I may have an alternative to the tunnel. I think I can get you in.”
“How?” Harry asked at the same time that the twins did.
“It’s complicated,” Nasir said quietly as his dark eyes flicked to Harry. Hermione couldn’t help but feel like something unspoken passed between them, and Arthur was watching the tall dark-clad man somewhat warily, clearly uncomfortable with the vague response. “But it is a better option than using the tunnel and it shouldn’t impact the Caterwauling Charm which would buy you a little more time and allow the Order to follow us in if something goes wrong. I recommend that you let me try it, Harry – before you apparate to Hogsmeade.”
“Okay,” Harry nodded, casting a drying charm over his body as Hermione did the same. “We’ll try it – we’ll go now, and we’ll message when the wards are open.”
Nasir nodded and pulled a small bag from his pocket, holding it out to the twins.
“Give one of each of these to everyone here,” Nasir said quietly.
“Alright,” Fred nodded and took the bag.
“What are they?” George asked as he looked at the small crimson and yellow vials that Fred pulled from the bag.
“Think of the red ones like strength potions,” Nasir said calmly as he cast a drying charm over himself and vanished some of the blood and ash from his robes. “Except much more potent. Use them when you’re about to die and not a moment before – try not to take more than three if you can help it. The yellow ones are strength potions – try to limit yourselves to six.”
“What happens if we take more?” Arthur asked tensely as Fred began to add the bottles to the piles that Fleur was still making and stuffing into their potion packs.
“You die,” Nasir said flatly, his eyes shifting back to Harry and Hermione as he completely ignored the tight look that crossed over Arthur’s face. “We should leave now – do you both have everything you need?”
“Yes,” Harry said quickly, casting another spell over his clothes to remove some of the ash as Hermione nodded. She turned to look at Bill who had stopped collecting the last few items around the cottage to step towards them. He looked just as worn and ragged as they did, but the hard determination glinting in his eyes made him look anything but weak.
“We’ll let you know when the wards are open,” Hermione said quietly, her eyes flicking over everyone before her. She turned back to Bill and met his gaze. “Get everyone here ready and get them to the farm.”
“I will,” Bill nodded firmly. “We’ll make sure they’re safe.”
“Be careful,” Arthur said tightly, taking a step toward them. His eyes locked to Hermione’s and she felt her chest tighten as the rush of everything going on started to sink in. “We’ll be just minutes behind you – if we don’t hear from you within twenty-five minutes we’re coming anyway, and we’ll enter through Hogsmeade.”
“We will,” Hermione nodded, desperately trying to swallow the panic that was starting to grow across her chest. She could see Fleur’s hands slowing on the potion bottles she was sorting as her blue eyes watched them with concern. Her expression was pinched as if in pain and her jaw was clenched tight.
“Bring everyone and everything you have,” Harry said almost quietly as he stepped toward Arthur and met the older man’s gaze. “Tom’s weaker – he’s hurting Arthur, it’s why he’s going on the offensive. This is our shot – if we don’t win here, we’re never going to win. So bring everything you have and don’t forget to keep your shields on at all times. When I say he is bringing his forces I mean that he is bringing all of them. I couldn’t make out all the details from what I saw but – it’s not good Arthur.”
“We’ll be ready Harry,” Arthur said firmly, reaching out and gripping Harry’s shoulder tightly before turning to look at Hermione as well. “We’re all behind you – no matter what. We all knew this was coming, and maybe this isn’t how we planned it, but it was only a matter of time. We’ll all be there – that’s a promise.”
Hermione bit back the ache that radiated through her as Arthur pulled her into a quick tight hug before they stepped apart and she shifted next to Harry once more. She could feel the dread seeping back in through her body as she made her way toward the cottage door behind Nasir with Harry at her side. It felt almost anticlimactic, it was too rushed and unfinished – there were a million things left she wanted to say to everyone here, and a million things left she wanted to do before she headed to her fate. And she’d wanted to do them before she went to fight against the darkest wizard the world had seen since Grindelwald.
But life wasn’t like the movies.
It wasn’t like her childhood stories.
So here she was – exhausted, beaten, sore and tired – heading off to Hogwarts to try and save hundreds of lives. To try to find and kill another Horcrux so they had a shot at killing Voldemort when he inevitably arrived and reigned down destruction across the school grounds.
Her body slowed as they reached the cottage door and she turned back to look at those behind her. Her soul aching painfully as she took in the sight of them.
There wasn’t even time to say goodbye to them all.
“No matter what happens, no matter how this goes down – you all need to fight for your lives tonight,” Hermione said as she paused at the door and gave herself just a single heartbeat to look at everyone’s face one last time. Ron was standing at the base of the stairs with Ava, Liza and Colin behind him. Charlie was asleep in Ava’s arms and none the wiser to anything going on. Luna was helping Dean put on his potion pack and charming his clothes. Fleur was strapping one to her leg while Bill stood next to Arthur and Fred and George started to pass out the potions that Nasir had given them. But they all turned to look at her as she spoke. “Don’t grant anyone any mercy – because they won’t show you any. If this turns into a full-out war tonight, it is likely to be our only and final battle – so make it final. Don’t hesitate.”
She didn’t let herself linger another second longer and turned on her heel, shifting back out onto the sand and into the darkness by Harry’s side. She could feel the heart rates racing nervously in her mind as everyone in the Order was filled with anxious dread as they tried their best to prepare themselves for what was coming tonight. Even though she knew they could never be prepared – not for this. Not for outright war.
Yet oddly, hers, Harry’s and Nasir’s heart rates seemed steady and slow. Regardless of the fact that it felt like she’d eaten broken glass and her stomach was twisting something terrible, her heart continued to beat steady like a rock.
Maybe it was because she knew that regardless of whatever happened tonight, she would fight until the end – that she’d done her best and tried her hardest. That although, yes, she had dabbled in dark magic and marred her soul and very existence – she was at peace with herself. She was at peace with what she’d done. She accepted the burdens she carried and the lives that she’d taken in this fight.
She’d do it all again if she had to.
And even though she carried a myriad of unresolved items in her heart like battered scars and even though there was still more she wanted to do – she was, without a doubt, ready to fight next to Harry. She was ready to fight until the end for Harry – to stick this out no matter what happened and to die for him if and when the time came.
To save him.
She gripped Harry’s hand tightly, rapidly casting a collection of spells over her clothes as they shifted away from the cottage, following closely behind Nasir’s tall frame. She wouldn’t be able to repair the damage to her clothes caused by the Thief’s Downfall or reapply all the charm work that she’d carefully put in place that morning. There was no time – but she could at least add a few anti-rip charms, charm her boots and place a few well-positioned temperature regulating spells. She felt Harry do the same until they came to a stop in the dark and Nasir turned to face them.
“So how are we getting there?” Harry asked as Nasir stepped towards them both.
“Very carefully,” Nasir said quietly, his dark eyes glinting as they shifted between them. “I’ve not tried this yet, but I expect it should work. When we arrive, there will be no time for questions and no time for delays – we don’t stop. We locate Headmaster Snape and we locate what you need, evacuating the school comes secondary – understood?”
Hermione’s stomach knotted and she felt her chest constrict tighter.
“Understood,” she whispered, feeling Harry’s hand twitch within her own. She knew he wanted to evacuate the school – so did she, but Nasir’s assessment wasn’t wrong. Snape came first so the Order could get in and so Voldemort was kept out and, if they didn’t get the Horcrux, they were fucked. So as much as it pained her to admit it, they had to keep their priorities in check if they were to have any hope at being successful. She would not abandon the school or those inside it – but they would likely need to hand off the evacuation to the Order once they arrived – either that or the three of them would need to split up once they got there to cover both tasks. There was no way around it, they just didn’t have the time to do everything that they needed.
“Understood,” Harry said stiffly, his hand gripping hers tighter. She knew that he didn’t like Nasir’s orders, even without feeling his annoyance through the bond, she knew that Harry would struggle to prioritize what they had to do – they were all equally important tasks, and this was not going to be easy.
“Good,” Nasir nodded, and he took another step towards them.
She could feel the nervousness curling in the pit of her stomach as her mind began to race with possibilities as to what was about to happen. She had an idea, a suspicion – one that had started to fester since she first saw Nasir slip extra potions into her pack and she’d begun to contemplate the man’s existence and position in the war.
Despite his words being true she had a sneaking suspicion that they were less so about the dangers of their arrival at Hogwarts and more so a means to keep them from asking him about what he was about to do. She swallowed hard as the tall man took a final step towards them, then reached out his hand to hers – and she let him take it.
She felt like she knew what was coming and she had to force down the questions that were threatening to burst from her lips. She felt his warm hand curl around her free one, and she let her fingers slide between his before he gripped her tightly. His dark eyes shifted from Harry and he met her gaze once more.
“Remember to breathe,” he said darkly, his eyes practically burning in the night. “This will likely feel more forced than normal and whatever you do – don’t let go.”
There was a sharp hard jerk behind her navel – violent and rough – as if something was resisting the motion that Nasir was forcing with his magic. But despite the initial impedance, the apparition took hold and Hermione saw the world slowly distort before her eyes as her body was squeezed viciously through a tube that was desperately trying to clamp down on her body. It was taking too long – far too long – and it was pure agony. It wasn’t normal and it wasn’t right. Alarm bells went off in her head as it felt like someone was twisting her inside out as her lungs burned and screamed for air.
-x-x-
May 1, 1998
Hogwarts, 8:31 pm
“So, what are we going to do?” Susan asked quietly as Ginny finished wrapping a fresh bandage around Neville’s shoulder to cover the seeping letters.
“We’re going to go,” Ginny muttered, keeping her voice low as her eyes scanned out over the common room.
They’d commandeered one of the small unoccupied corners of Gryffindor tower and were huddled close together under a silencing spell. Yet despite this precaution, she couldn’t help but whisper her words as she spoke – after all, the room was packed, and her paranoia and fear had reached all-new levels today. She was struggling to remain calm, struggling to remain in control and struggling to keep it together. But she was, somehow, against all odds managing to do it.
After rushing back to the Gryffindor tower that morning, they’d tended to their injuries the best that they could and hid out the rest of the day, not daring to leave the tower or attend any of their classes. Perhaps it had been a risk – she and Neville had heavily debated if it was a good idea to skip but, in the end, Colin had point-blank refused to go to class and Susan had backed him. So, they’d all agreed to skip their classes and remain hidden in the Gryffindor common room for the remainder of the day to try and come up with a plan.
McGonagall had shown up minutes after their arrival – tendrils of hair falling out of her normally perfect, severe and tidy bun. She’d looked a right mess; she’d flown into the common room like a hurricane – cutting across the makeshift bunks and beds and dashing towards them. She’d checked over each one of them rapidly, stress lines showing deep near her eyes as she looked them over and then told them to stay there and wait for her directions before dashing back out. She’d been moving so quickly Ginny hadn’t even gotten the chance to speak to the woman or ask about Maisey.
Madam Pomfrey had shown up another twenty minutes later tight-lipped and pale. The old healer had tended to their injuries, fixing the fracture in Ginny’s left leg and healing the gash on Susan’s temple before healing Colin’s broken arm. She’d refused to say anything about Maisey when they questioned her, and she’d kept her jaw clenched tight as she worked. She’d looked at Neville’s shoulder wound with pain in her eyes before cleaning it and rebandaging it. She’d given Ginny another container of paste – told her to put it on every evening and rebandage it afterwards until the container ran out.
Then she’d left in a flurry just like McGonagall.
But they hadn’t heard anything since and mid-afternoon they found out why – Lavender rushed back to the common room to let them know that six Death Eaters had shown up and had all but entirely ransacked the school medical supplies. A second-year Hufflepuff had been so nervous and so sleep deprived he’d added the wrong ingredient to his cauldron and blown up the potions room. Slughorn had barely managed to get the students out and McGonagall was dealing with the fallout and attempting to deal with an incredibly livid Snape while the Carrows continued their aggressive torment of any student they could get their hands on. Two more of their peers had been pulled into quill detention and one Ravenclaw was hit with a nasty round of cruciatus before Flitwick stepped in and managed to get the student out.
It was a bloody nightmare.
And now, less than half an hour before they were supposed to go to ‘detention’ they’d still not heard a word from their Head of House because the woman was drowning in the chaos that was consuming the school.
“We have to,” Ginny said firmly as she glanced back at Susan. Her girlfriend nodded solemnly but Ginny could see the apprehension that radiated from her body. “We don’t have a choice.”
“I’m not going,” Colin’s voice cracked as it came out and his head started to shake. Ginny could see the panic that he’d barely been containing all day start to leech into his eye as his voice began to quiver. “I’m not fucking going! I’m not going to go die!”
“You’re going Colin,” Neville said before Ginny could even respond. He twisted to look at the younger boy but despite the firmness in his voice, his eyes were soft. “We have to go – if we don’t go, he’ll just come here and get us.”
“You don’t know that,” Colin’s head continued to shake as he shifted off the small footstool he’d been sitting on to stand. He started pacing before them, rubbing his left hand over his right arm where it had broken earlier that day. “Snape is busy – he doesn’t have time for us, you said so yourself. I’m not going to detention with him, he’s going to kill us.”
“He’s not going to kill us,” Ginny said tightly as she added a sticking charm to the bandage and then handed Neville back his shirt. She vanished the last of the healing paste from her hands with a cleaning charm and then gave Colin a look. “If he was going to kill us – he would have done it right then and there in the hallway.”
“Oh right – sorry,” Colin’s voice grew more strained as he sarcastically rolled his eyes. “My bad – what I meant was – he’s going to make a fucking spectacle out of us. So you’re right, maybe we won’t die, but he’ll make us wish we were dead! You said so yourself Ginny – he’ll use us as a means to control the rest of the students and the professors. He’ll use us to prove a point! You can’t seriously think that going there tonight is a good idea?!”
“Of course it’s not a good idea!” Ginny snapped, narrowing her eyes at Colin. She had to force herself to inhale and she ran her hand through her hair and urged herself to calm. She sincerely regretted voicing that concern in front of Colin earlier in the day when they’d been debating their options, but she had wanted to be transparent about what they might be facing. Yet despite intermittently discussing this all day they still had not agreed on an approach. They’d analyzed everything, assessed all their options and no matter how she looked at it she knew they had to go to their ‘detention’. “Look – Colin – nothing about any of this is a good situation. But if we don’t go there tonight, he will come get us. This isn’t like the other times where we left swamps in his hallway or annoyed the Carrows. Maisey blew up the hall and outright attacked the Carrows and the Slytherins. This is entirely different than anything we’ve done before, and Snape is going to make time for us. If we don’t go, he’ll come here and drag us out – he’s the Headmaster Colin, he’ll find us, he has access to everything in this school! There is no place we can go – there is no place we can hide to get away from him. You saw him today, Colin – this is fucking serious. If we don’t go, we’ll make it worse for ourselves and we’ll put the rest of our house in danger and we can’t afford to do that.”
“So we’re just going to go,” Colin’s face began to twist with pain and she could see his eyes starting to brim with unshed tears. “We’re just going to walk in there and die?”
“We’re not going to die,” Ginny said firmly as she let out another slow breath and forced herself to calm. The truth was she was just as anxious as Colin and she wanted nothing more than to scream and flip out or run away – but she knew that none of that would help them and it would only make their situation worse. “We won’t – we’ll go with Neville’s plan.”
Susan’s eyebrow quirked but she nodded slowly in agreement.
“Are you sure?” Neville twisted to look back at her as he did up the last few buttons of his shirt. “It’s risky – I mean, I still stand behind it, but it could go wrong. It debatably could make things worse.”
“I know,” Ginny nodded as she swallowed hard and met his gaze. “But it’s just a backup, ideally we won’t need it. We go and we do our best to handle whatever Snape gives us tonight and then come back here and hide out in the tower all weekend. Parvati and Padma will heal us and I’m sure that Pomfrey will come by to check on us. But if we can’t handle the detention – then we use the Peruvian darkness powder to get out and, if possible, we attack Snape and try to take him out.
“I’ll be honest with you I don’t like our chances,” Ginny said quietly, her eyes pinching slightly as she spoke. “That’s why this plan is a last resort – but if worse comes to worst and Snape is going to kill us it’s better to try than to die. At least the Carrows won’t be there – I sincerely doubt that he’ll have them there after what happened this morning, so our odds aren’t zero anymore. But again, if we can’t handle the torture the main goal is just to get out – attacking Snape is secondary because it’s probably not even possible. We take the South tunnel to the kitchens where Lavender will be waiting for our signal with the coins and we’ll start our evacuation into the forest. We have enough supplies and enough skills that we can last out there and if we follow Hagrid’s directions and move to the North, we could hide for a week without them finding us. The centaurs won’t bother us, we have the Thestrals waiting and we can wait it out until the Order comes for us.”
“We won’t all make it out,” Colin said quietly, a single tear finally breaking free from the corner of his eye. “There’s too many of us – some will get left behind in the school.”
“I know,” Ginny nodded, reaching out to grip his shoulder tightly. “Which is exactly why we have to try our damndest to get through this tonight – we have to withstand whatever he dishes out.”
“There’s a good chance we’ll manage, Colin,” Susan said softly as she pulled out the Peruvian darkness powder that they’d been debating taking with them. She handed them each a bag but stopped in front of Colin as she spoke. “If Snape truly wanted to make a spectacle out of us, he would have told us to meet him in the Great Hall and he would have called everyone in – think about it, Colin. Think about the post and how the Death Eaters have been handling everything so far. They’re constantly shoving things in our faces and putting everything on display. But he didn’t do that – there’s been no order for students to assemble tonight. He called us to the defence corridor – which is nowhere near the Great Hall or the house dormitories so there’s a chance he’s only interested in hurting us without turning it into a show. Or maybe he’s planning to question us with veritaserum to try and dismantle our efforts or see what we know about the Order – the truth is, we don’t know what he is going to do tonight Colin, but Ginny is right. He’s probably not going to kill us – he would have done it already if he was. And if that’s not the case–“
Susan sighed and placed the small bag in Colin’s hand, wrapping her own hands around his and squeezing it.
“Then as Ginny said – we implement Neville’s plan,” she squeezed Colin’s hand once more and her eyes shifted around the small group. “But for the sake of everyone else here, protecting the Order and buying time until they can find a way to extract us – we have to try to withstand it. Okay?”
Colin’s lip trembled slightly but Ginny saw the boy’s head start to nod.
“Okay,” Colin said quietly, his hoarse voice cracking as he clenched his jaw tight. “Okay, I’ll go.”
“Thank you,” Ginny said quietly, reaching out to grip the boy’s shoulder. She could feel the sharp angles of his bones through his robes and she fought back the urge to cringe. He’d lost way too much weight over the last month and while she couldn’t blame him – it was concerning. It was another item to add to her list of worries and another thing she would need to deal with later because right now, they had to go.
Ginny grabbed a bottle of dittany from their supply kit, stuffing it into her pocket just in case as Neville pulled on his jumper and Susan waved Lavender over to run through the details of their plan once more. She could see Padma hovering nearby nervously – she’d been alerted to their detention and knew that she needed to be ready to help Lavender and Seamus evacuate the tower if they gave the signal. But she also knew she needed to be ready to heal them if they managed to crawl their way back to the tower tonight alive. Ginny had seen her reviewing the healing books that Pomfrey had left and she knew that Parvati was already stationed outside the door for her shift on night watch and would be waiting for their return.
The rest of the tower didn’t know about their detention.
They hadn’t wanted to raise any concerns or cause any panic, so they’d kept it quiet for the most part – just a few other key members of the DA were aware of what was to come. As it was Ginny didn’t know if McGonagall knew about their detention or not – she suspected that she did, but then again, that morning had been so chaotic her memories seemed to all blur together. She couldn’t remember if Pomfrey had heard Snape say it or not or if the healer had spoken to their Head of House.
They might very well be going to this detention without any of the professors being aware.
She had no idea, that realization had hit her shortly after Pomfrey fluttered from the tower and it had left her feeling sick and nauseous. But there was nothing she could do about it now. They were out of time, they had to leave and trying to get in touch with one of the professors before going to see Snape would only put them at risk of being caught in the halls by the Carrows.
She saw Neville add a dittany bottle to his pocket before he nodded to her and, suddenly, it was time to go. The nervous sickness she’d been keeping locked in the pit of her stomach started to churn as she let Lavender hug her before the four of them made their way to the portrait hole. Colin moved stiffly at her side, but his eyes seemed clear and focused – his resolve to come with them apparently genuine even if he was terrified to his core. She could feel Susan walking behind her with Neville as they moved through the portrait hole out into the silent castle and time started to move all too quickly, yet too slowly all at once.
Her eyes felt like they were being ripped away from the warm glow of the Gryffindor common room as the portrait swung shut – her last glimpse taking in the worried faces of the Patil twins, Lavender and Seamus before her legs began to move. The halls blurred by around them as they shifted in silence, bodies tense and tight as they instinctively cast a silencing charm around themselves and a muffling spell on their feet.
Not that it mattered.
The castle seemed dead.
They walked by armour and statues, cutting around corners and walking by what felt like endless streams of portraits without running into another soul or hearing a single sound. She could feel her heart beating rapidly and loud in her ears, her panic growing as she fought to maintain her composure and show the strength that she’d demanded Colin and the others maintain. She had to. She’d told Colin he had to go so the least she could do was keep her shit together.
And yet when they turned into the large open defence corridor and she took in the sight of the tall black-clad figure half-way down the hall she felt her fear morph into panic, and she had to physically clench her jaw shut to keep herself from vomiting.
How had it come to this?
Her feet continued to move despite her terror and the palms of her hands began to sweat.
He was standing there silent and unmoving, his black eyes locked to the four of them as they closed the distance toward him. His tall frame like death itself, standing just before the large benched alcove that faced the windows. She could see that the blood on his sleeve was gone now, his robes were unmarked and pressed – as if he’d changed since that morning. The rage was no longer pouring from his body, but that didn’t make him any less intimidating. His face was gaunt, haunted, pale and sickly. Like the evil inside of him was starting to leech out, as if his body was no longer capable of containing it and it was showing across his skin and escaping through his eyes.
He didn’t move or speak as they grew closer.
And somehow that was worse.
She could taste the bile at the back of her throat as she fought against her instincts to run and forced her body to trust her mind. He wouldn’t kill them. Not here. Not like this. He would’ve done it this morning. He would have called an assembly and put on a show. He would never just kill them silently in a dark empty hallway with no audience.
He won’t, she thought firmly.
He won’t.
He won’t.
He won’t.
The words sounded like a loop in her mind as the space between them grew so small it felt like she was suffocating.
He won’t, she felt breathless even though she’d not exerted any energy at all. He won’t. It was turning into a plea as if she was mentally begging him – urging it to be true. She had to fight to keep her face impassive and calm.
Please.
The word quivered in her mind as they stopped five feet away from him. Silence echoed in the hall around them as no one seemed to breathe.
“This way,” his dark voice rang out as he gestured his head towards an old defence classroom that had not been used in years. His pupils were no longer dilated – she could tell from this distance – but his eyes were just as piercing and just as terrifying.
She swallowed hard and shifted to her right, slowly entering the empty dim classroom first and taking in the sight of four desks. They were stationed at the front, all of them angled to face the large dusty professor’s desk that sat before the boards. She could feel her legs begin to shake as she moved across the floor toward the desk on the left, standing behind the chair as Colin stood behind the one next to her, then Susan and Neville shifted behind the ones on the right. They all waited motionless as Snape shut the door, the soft clank ringing out like an axe hitting the chopping block as Snape shifted toward the front. She hoped it wasn’t a foreshadowing sound, she hoped she wasn’t going to have to step up to the block tonight.
As he shifted by them, she realized she couldn’t even hear him move – it was like his entire body was encased in a silencing spell so thick even the air didn’t shift around him. It was unnerving. He stopped before the large desk, turning to face them, his eyes shifting over them so slowly it was agonizing. And then, despite all her best efforts, she could feel her body start to tremble.
But he didn’t say anything.
He just stood there in silence for an immeasurable painful moment until it became unbearable and she could see Colin physically shaking from the corner of her eye. Her eye twitched and she realized she’d not inhaled yet. The room felt like it was crushing down around them, and she had to convince her own body to breathe.
“Take a seat,” Snape’s low voice finally broke through the heavy tension. But it provided absolutely no relief as her lungs burned and she sucked in a painful breath.
And that’s all this was.
Pain.
Even without doing anything to them, without physically touching them or lifting a finger to cast a spell, he was already causing them agony just from being in the same room as them and towering over them like the devil himself. Had her mind been less consumed by fear and less worried about surviving she would have found it mildly fascinating – that one man could be so absolutely terrifying and yet have done nothing at all.
Her hand trembled as she reached down and pulled out her chair. The others did the same beside her and she forced her knees to bend so she could lower into her seat. She tried not to shake or twitch as she made herself look up at him, fighting against her urge to look to Susan. His eyes were laced with so much hate it was sickening. She forced her back to straighten and her shoulders to lower, watching as the man summoned four sets of quills and parchment from the small shelf on their left. The items landed on the desks before them, but she couldn’t make herself look down at them – for her eyes were still fixed on the man before her. She was watching him with bated breath as he uncurled his arms from his chest and pulled out five small vials from his pocket.
They clinked as he set them down on the desk, his eyes never leaving them as the silence continued to echo dark and heavy.
“It would seem,” he said slowly, his black eyes shifting over each of them before they landed momentarily on Ginny. She cringed outwardly under his gaze, her hands clenching so tightly at her sides that her nails began to dig into the palm of her hands. She hated that she was so afraid, she hated that she felt like she could do nothing. “That the Carrows’ methods have been ineffective.”
Snape shifted, picking up one of the small vials from the desk and taking a step towards them.
“Bones,” his eyes flashed to Susan and Ginny heard the chair two away from her creak as her girlfriend jolted in her seat. “Tell me – do you recognize this potion?”
There was a long stretch of silence before Ginny heard Susan clear her throat, but the words still came out cracked and shaky.
“Veritaserum,” Susan whispered, the clear liquid looming before them and threatening to reveal all of their secrets. To ruin everything.
“Good,” Snape’s eyes narrowed a fraction, his face growing darker. “It seems that not all of you are entirely incompetent. Now tell me–“
He paused moving his hand to pick up one of the other four vials that he’d placed on the large desk. All four of them were the same and Ginny had the feeling that that was intentional – one for each of them. But these vials were smaller, about half the size of the veritaserum vial which wasn’t big to start with. The liquid inside looked dense, sluggish and warm. It was deep purple, and she’d never seen anything like it.
“Longbottom,” his dark eyes locked to Neville and the hatred on his face only seemed to grow. “Do you recognize this potion?”
The silence stretched as Ginny forced herself not to look toward her friend. She heard his chair creak as he shifted then his voice rang out.
“No, sir,” Neville said quietly, his voice stronger than Susan’s had been. “I don’t recognize it.”
“Unsurprising,” Snape said coldly, his eyes creasing slightly. “But no matter – today you’ll find out exactly what this potion is.”
Ginny felt her heart sink into her stomach as Snape picked up the other three vials and then shifted towards them. She knew the man was gifted with potions and while she had never spent any time looking into research or experimental brews she’d heard enough from her dad over the years and from Fred and George to know better than to be optimistic. There were potions to kill, potions to tame, potions that could save your life inches from death and even potions to make you incredibly lucky. But there were also potions that destroyed you from the inside out. Potions that messed with your mind, made you hallucinate or heightened your senses to unbearable levels. Her eyes dropped to the quill on the desk before her and the 12-inch roll of parchment.
She’d been in detention with the Carrows enough times to recognize their quills and she knew instantly that this was not one of theirs.
This was new.
And given that no ink bottles had been provided to them, she knew exactly where the ink would be coming from. Her eyes shot back up, latching to Snape once more as he moved across the row of desks, dropping one vial on the right corner of each of their desks. He looked at her as he stopped before her. His hand placed the small vial so carefully and so slowly on the corner that it didn’t make a noise. He didn’t say anything to her – but he didn’t have to. His eyes were narrowed, and his face was displaying more emotion than he usually showed – and it was vile.
She knew without a doubt in her mind that this would be the worst night of her life. Those vials would bring them pain, agony, and terror. By the time this was over, she doubted he would even need the veritaserum that sat on the desk behind him.
By the time this was over – he would have them begging for death.
She swallowed hard as he turned away and shifted back to the front of the room. Turning to face them once more with his hands crossed over his chest, he stared them all down.
“You will each drink the vial given to you,” Snape said slowly, his voice so low it was deathly. “Then you will each take the quill provided and write –“
But his voice cut off.
His mouth was still open, but his eyes creased, and his body seemed to tense. If she didn’t know any better, she’d have thought that he was frozen – or that he was desperately trying to stop himself from sneezing.
She stared at him confused, nervousness sliding down her spine as Snape remained motionless for another second longer and then – to her disbelief – his impassive face twitched. It was like watching a building collapse in slow motion. His brow furrowed, his eyes darkened, immense pain began to show across his features, and it was clear he was desperately trying to keep it at bay until he simply couldn’t keep it in any longer. His final thread of self-control snapped and his face broke – crumpling into a look of anguished pain. His right arm shot out, grabbing his left forearm in a death grip as a sickening sheen washed over his skin – and then, to her horror, he doubled over, and a ragged ear-splitting noise cut through the air.
Her whole body convulsed – she heard Colin drop to the floor with a thump at her side.
It was like someone had ripped through her chest and grabbed hold of her heart and lungs, squeezing the life out of them as the pressure in the room suddenly became so immense, she could hardly breathe. Her mind barely even grasped the fact that the noise was coming from Snape as she clutched at her own chest and saw him drop his hold on his left arm to cover both of his ears – as if trying to block out his own noise.
She couldn’t process it; she was lost to it as everything around them seemed to tighten and her mind screamed in pain. It seemed to last forever; she was sure she would be sick. She heard the sound of vomiting, but she couldn’t even tell if it was her or someone else. And then just when she thought she might black out it stopped, and silence rang through the room once more.
A deep cold settled in her body as she inhaled sharply, gasping for air and trembling in her chair that she’d somehow managed to remain seated in. Her eyes were bleary, her cheeks were damp – had she been crying? She could hear someone panting and her neck ached with pain as she turned her head to look toward the others. Colin was on the ground, a pile of vomit near his head. Neville was white as a ghost, his eyes fixed to his desk, but he had somehow also managed to stay in his seat. Susan had too and she’d gripped the edges of her desk so hard, Ginny could see blood against the surface as she stared vacantly out to her right.
If they’d just experienced what she had she wasn’t surprised by their ragged states. But as her eyes shifted slowly back to the front of the room nothing could have prepared her for what she saw. And it sank heavy as a stone in her chest as she looked at the hunched figure before her.
Snape was leaning against the desk, his right arm shaking as if he could barely hold himself up. His eyes were fixed to the floor and they were bloodshot and wider than she’d ever seen. Blood was trickling from his ear, he was silently panting, his left arm hanging limp at his side. But what unsettled her to her core was the expression on his face.
Because Snape, their Headmaster – the man that had tormented them for years and had encased the school in darkness… looked terrified.
-x-x-
May 1, 1998
Hogwarts, 9:25 pm
The ground rushed up beneath her feet – almost as if it was moving towards her and not the other way around. Her knees jarred, her spine compressed, and her legs crumpled beneath her until something gripped her body so tight it prevented her from collapsing in on herself. With a loud desperate cry, Hermione opened her mouth and inhaled the cool air in which they’d landed. But it wasn’t enough, she gasped, coughing and sputtering as the air she’d been denied for far too long came rushing in so painfully her eyes started to burn and water.
It was the worst apparition in the history of apparitions. It felt like her body had been reassembled in the wrong order – hell, maybe some of it had been left behind. She didn’t know, she just knew that nothing about it was right. She could hear Harry on her right coughing like he’d been punched in the gut – nearly doubled over as his fingernails cut into the skin of her hand. Before she could even process what had happened and where they were, she felt someone shift behind her and she was lifted up onto her feet again.
She swayed as she blinked, shaking her head and trying to force her brain to function as she breathed. Glancing around she saw a familiar old statue and her racing heart nearly stopped right then and there in her chest.
They were at Hogwarts.
Not at Hogsmeade.
Not outside of Hogwarts.
They were in Hogwarts.
The person holding the back of her jacket and keeping her upright took a small step back and circled around them. She felt his hand brush over her briefly before a diagnostic appeared – then he shifted to Harry to do the same. He was inspecting them – checking them over to see if they were indeed all there. She blinked again and looked up to meet his dark gaze, her eyes creasing slightly as the flood of questions she’d managed to suppress on the beach came surging forth.
How the fuck had he just apparated them inside of Hogwarts?!
Did it mean what she thought it did?
Was she right in her suspicion?
But before she could even formulate a thought or a question Nasir’s dark voice rang out.
“We need to find Headmaster Snape immediately,” his eyes flicked to Hermione and she saw the dark glint within them intensify. As if he could read her very thoughts and he knew exactly what she suspected. “We don’t have time for anything else. You’re both okay – so let’s go.”
Harry’s hand tightened its grip on hers and she turned to look at him. His face was laced with just as many questions as hers surely was, but he nodded once, squeezed her hand tight and then they both let go and pulled out their wands. They cast their shield charms in silence, waiting for the purple to encase their bodies before they added silencing spells and muffled their feet.
“Do you know where he is?” Harry asked beside her as they began making their way down the hall. It was dark, silent and eerie – like no one had travelled this way in ages. Like the warmth and light from the castle had been entirely snuffed out.
“No,” Nasir said deeply, his voice like a shadow in the dark. “But I have a suspicion.”
“We’ll need to take out the Carrows,” Hermione said quickly as they began moving faster down the hall. “They’ll defend Snape and cause us problems otherwise. It doesn’t matter who we come across first, but they need to be eliminated.”
She didn’t like how silent it was, it made her skin prickle and her stomach churn. Like they had indeed just walked into a trap. She paused at the first corner and waited for Harry to peer around the edge and cast a detection spell before they continued.
“And we need to start the evacuation,” Harry murmured as he cast the spell before them. Despite the eerie quiet of the castle, there were people up ahead – Nasir had landed them in a corridor with limited options. So, no matter which way they went they were going to run into someone. She felt Nasir shift at her side as Harry made to move around the corner, but the tall man grabbed the back of Harry’s jacket tightly – stopping him in his tracks.
“Harry,” Nasir’s voice was low, and his eyes were dark. “That comes last.”
“I know,” Harry twisted around to face the man and Hermione instinctively tensed. They didn’t have time to argue about this, and she didn’t want this to turn into a pissing match between the two men because the truth was, she was torn on what they needed to do. “But if we can locate McGonagall then she can get it started – she can assemble the students.”
“Harry,” Hermione said gently, keeping her voice calm as she met his gaze. She could feel her anxious nerves starting to twist in her gut – she did not want to have to take sides. “We don’t have time to go looking for her – not unless we split up.”
“I know,” Harry’s jaw tightened, and she saw his eyes crease ever so slightly. “After we find Snape you can go locate her – I’ll go get the Horcrux.”
“Harry,” Hermione said slowly, her face falling slightly as she scanned over his face and tried to reach out to him through the bond. But he was keeping his emotions locked away and aside from his vitals he was giving her nothing.
This wasn’t their plan – they were to go together. Always.
The nervous ball in her stomach doubled at the thought of sending him off on his own to go locate and kill a Horcrux. Was this his plan? Had this been his plan all along? To separate himself from her? To wait to say it until they had no time to discuss it and there was no choice or debate possible? Was he seriously going to make her choose between going with him or risking the lives of hundreds of students?
Or was she overthinking this and over-analyzing? Again – like she always did. Maybe Harry was just trying to do the right thing. Maybe he had accepted that he couldn’t do everything on his own and that Snape and the Horcrux truly were a priority over the students. Maybe this was just his maturity showing through. Maybe the pain on his face right now was because he hated this just as much as she did, but he knew they had no other option.
She knew it was possible, Harry had grown immeasurably over the last year.
And at the end of the day she loved this man – she trusted him. She had to because if she couldn’t trust him then who the hell could she trust? She and Harry were in this together until the end and she could not start questioning that now.
He reached out and grabbed her arm softly, giving it a reassuring squeeze.
“It’s the only way we can do both,” Harry said quietly, and she felt herself nodding even though she didn’t want to.
“Fine,” Nasir nodded in agreement before stepping around Harry to check the corner. “Let’s move.”
She turned and followed along behind them, holding her wand out steady before her and trying to force herself to calm. They had a lot to do and no time to do it in. They were working off a brittle sketch of a plan and doing the best that they could. She knew that Harry was only doing what he felt was right – only suggesting it because he felt like he had no other options…
But then why did it feel like she’d just stepped into something planned? Why couldn’t she shake the nagging suspicion growing in the back of her mind that made her chest ache and her stomach knot? Why, as she watched Harry and Nasir move before her, did it feel like she was somehow out of the loop?
But she had no time to question it.
She barely had time to question anything because there was a loud bang up ahead and voices rang out. She recognized them and she felt Harry’s heart rate spike in her head as their slow creep turned into a quick dash. Her eyes narrowed; her jaw clenching tight as she forced herself to lock away all the emotions that were running rampant in her head. There was no time for doubt, no time to question and no time to stop now. Her grip on her wand tightened, she felt Nasir shift closer to her side as Harry fell back to run on her right. The three of them rushed silently down the hall moving like a unit – strong, determined – focused.
Something was happening at Hogwarts.
And they were about to find out what.
-x-x-
May 1, 1998
Hogwarts, 9:24 pm
Fear radiated from his eyes.
It was like nothing Ginny had ever seen before, but it was gone before she could even blink. Because the second her eyes landed on the man his head snapped up and his bloodshot gaze met hers. His face twisted briefly as if he was swallowing down an ocean of pain before it hardened into impenetrable stone. And his eyes narrowed with hatred.
“Get – out.”
It was raspy and worn. Like he’d just been screaming for hours, and she supposed he very well might have been. She had no idea how long whatever had happened had gone on for and even though she had no fucking idea what had just happened – she knew that it was Snape who had been screaming. But she couldn’t move.
Her body was tense and rigid – she was stuck in her chair. Whether it was a result of what had just happened or the fear she felt she wasn’t sure. But she couldn’t stop looking at him, her eyes wide with terror as he slowly pushed himself back up to his full height and his eyes flared with burning rage.
“GET OUT!”
The words bellowed across the room in a snarl and she jerked in her chair, her limbs feeling foreign as she scrambled out of her seat and dropped to the floor to grab Colin. Neville was moving too, his expression laced with confusion and fear just like Susan’s as they nervously stumbled from their seats and began to shuffle towards the door of the old classroom. But evidently, they weren’t moving fast enough, because Snape shifted towards them as his face darkened into something evil. His body moved like a predator as his hand flew to his robes and he drew out his wand.
Survival instincts jolted to life and rushed through her veins like hot burning lava.
“Go!” Ginny yelled, the words coming out loud and strong as her muscle memory took over and she started to flee. The door to the classroom exploded, rock spewed out into the wide hallway as the door crashed through the glass windows of the large alcove across from the room. Neville grabbed Colin and they bolted for the opening, his voice ringing out as they ducked the next blast and all stumbled into the hallway.
“Miss Weasley!”
Ginny spun on her heel, barely managing to duck the curse that flew over her head as Snape followed after them. McGonagall was running down the corridor towards them, wand out and face tight as a loud crash echoed behind her. The Carrows stumbled into view not a second later. They were forty feet back with three armour suits and a furious looking Professor Flitwick hot on their heels as they rushed down the hall towards them. It seemed to be all they could manage to defend themselves against their four attackers as they tried to chase after McGonagall – who, Ginny assumed, must have been about to perform some kind of long-overdue coup or rescue.
“McGonagall!” Ginny grabbed Susan’s collar, pulling her head out of the way as Snape’s next spell missed her by an inch. She jerked her forward, slipping on the broken shards of rock and nearly losing her footing as she pulled her girlfriend to safety and Neville and Colin followed. They barely made it two feet before McGonagall froze on spot and her eyes narrowed into tiny slits of hate.
“Severus,” McGonagall’s voice was cold, and Ginny twisted around to see Snape stalk out into the massive hall.
His eyes were still red, blood was dripping down his neck from his ears and his wand was out, but it was hanging at his side. The older woman hesitated, stepping toward Ginny and raising her arm to point her wand directly at Snape’s chest.
“Severus,” she said again, her voice lower than before despite the racket that Flitwick was causing in the hall behind her. “I won’t hesitate to kill you if I have to – so tell me, once and for all – bloody well tell me, Severus – do I have to?”
Snape stood rigid and unmoving in the center of the huge corridor. His black eyes fixed on McGonagall as his wand hand twitched at his side. Silence rang out as the two professors seemed to stare each other down – as if something unspoken was shifting between them and Ginny continued to back towards McGonagall with Susan at her side. Her heart was racing like crazy; the truth was, she didn’t know if McGonagall could kill this man. Even after what she had just witnessed, even after seeing a flicker of weakness underneath his stone exterior – she doubted that they could do anything. Because what had just happened had only seemed to make him more dangerous, more volatile – more deadly.
His eyes stared almost lifelessly at their Head of House as Ginny dropped her hold on Susan to reach into her pocket. A beat of silence passed between then, then, his body moving as if possessed, Snape raised his wand and pointed it at McGonagall.
Ginny’s chest constricted, her panic growing and choking her as her fingers curled tightly around the Peruvian darkness powder she’d brought. McGonagall stiffened, her chin rising as she set her shoulders and something dark flashed across Snape’s eyes. Neville raised his wand, Susan pulled out her own and Ginny made to yank the powder from her pocket as Snape’s eyes narrowed – only for them all to freeze as a familiar voice rang out behind the monster before them.
“Don’t – move.”
Ginny’s eyes went wide, and her hand started to tremble as Snape’s body seemed to grow impossibly stiff before her. He shifted, impossibly slowly, his foot moving across the rubble covered floor, wand still pointed at McGonagall as he inched toward the alcove and twisted to look at the three figures that now stood behind him.
“Harry?”
This chapter is dedicated to Mario. You are a wonderful human being and I’m glad to have met you. Know that you make this world brighter and you are appreciated. Thank you for your kind words.
-x-x-
Despite this not being a Hermione/Harry POV chapter, I recommend that you read it. With all characters now operating on the same timeline, each and every chapter will contain plot critical information regardless of POV.
***************************************************************
“Don’t – move.”
Ginny’s eyes went wide, and her hand started to tremble as Snape’s body seemed to grow impossibly stiff before her. He shifted, slowly, his foot moving across the rubble covered floor, wand still pointed at McGonagall as he inched toward the alcove and twisted to look at the three figures that now stood behind him.
“Harry?”
The whisper had left Ginny’s lips before she’d even realized that she’d said it – but even as his name echoed out into the hall, she could hardly believe it. For when Snape had shifted toward the window, moving out of the way to reveal the three figures behind him, she found she didn’t recognize them.
How could she have?
He was tall – taller than he’d been when he’d left. Black smudges covered parts of his face, and dried blood was smeared across his cheek. She realized as she looked at the man that the dark shadow around his jaw might actually be stubble. His hair was different too – long on top but short on the sides. It looked like places had been cut too short, almost to the scalp, and his broad shoulders were tense, yet he didn’t look anxious at all.
He looked calm. He looked strong. He looked powerful.
Nothing about him looked anything like Harry Potter. Not his clothes, not his stance, not the dark look on his face, the strange glinting marks that covered his outstretched hand nor the dried blood or the dirt coating his clothing.
Nothing.
Not a thing.
In fact, Ginny knew for certain as her eyes traced over the tall dark-haired man who was standing in the center of the large hall with his wand raised, that if she had not heard him speak first – she wouldn’t have recognized him on sight. At least not right away. Even now her mind was struggling to fit the pieces together, struggling to accept that Harry’s voice had come from that body. If not for the bright green eyes that radiated behind dark-rimmed glasses, nothing about him would have been recognizable. Because nothing about him looked like her best friend, like the boy she’d obsessed over and the boy she loved like a brother.
Her eyes creased as they stared at him and she felt her stomach roll nervously. Even his familiar green eyes were somehow unfamiliar. They were cold, dark, and calculating. It was hard to look at him and yet incredibly difficult to look away. But she forced her gaze to leave his frame, shifting it to the girl at his side and she felt her eyes grow wider still.
“Hermione?”
She heard the familiar name come from Susan’s lips at her side. She could hear the disbelief, and it sat heavy with the tension that smothered the hall as Ginny’s spine began to stiffen with unease.
The girl looked wild.
Dangerous – almost feral.
They both did. Her hair was barely contained in a braid, blood coated her temple and was dried into her curls like cake batter. Once again, Ginny’s mind reeled in her head – unable to process what she was seeing. Fred and George had said in their letters that Harry and Hermione were different… but they’d not described this. If not for the curls and the deep brown eyes the woman before her would look nothing like Hermione.
She looked like a bringer of death.
An empty hollow darkness was leeching from her eyes and it rivalled the one that seemed to constantly be pouring from Snape’s very own dark gaze. They reeked of death. She could smell it on them even from here, the smell of charred skin and the uncomfortable unease that came from being around too much dark magic. It circled and wafted from them like a heavy cloud. It clung to them like a disease and she could feel her heart constricting in her chest with pain as her eyes creased further.
What happened to you?
It was the only thought that circled her mind as her eyes roved over them and she seemed incapable of closing her mouth. Then her eyes finally shifted to the tall man that stood just behind them. His eyes were dark and glinting, his frame unmoving and still – too still. She felt a shudder run down her spine as she looked at him. Her gaze sliding over the tanned skin of his face and his unnaturally dark gaze. Something about him made the hair on the back of her skull stand up and her skin prickle. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but something about him felt wrong and she felt Susan stiffen at her side.
She’d never seen this man before; she’d never heard her father mention him either. Nor had the twins written about him in their letters. But based on the close proximity he had to Harry and Hermione, the fact that his wand was out, and that his eyes were locked to Snape’s form – she figured that he was on their side. She knew that he must have come with Harry and Hermione even if she had no idea how the hell they’d gotten into the castle.
This was all too overwhelming. But just as her racing and rampant mind began to question how they got here Harry spoke again and her eyes latched to him once more.
“McGonagall,” Harry said slowly, his eyes never leaving Snape’s tense form. “I assume those are the Carrow’s behind you, yes?”
“Yes,” McGonagall’s voice came out cracked and hoarse. Ginny heard the woman shift towards them as a clang of armour rang out behind them.
“Go help Flitwick and take them out,” Harry said slowly, a dark edge laced within his voice.
“Potter,” McGonagall’s voice faltered, and Ginny heard the woman shuffle behind her once more. “Potter, what are you doing here?”
“He’s coming here professor,” Hermione spoke this time and Ginny couldn’t help but think that her voice was somehow different. Deeper? Rougher? She wasn’t sure how to describe it, but it didn’t sound quite like how she remembered it. Then again, the intensity at which Hermione was watching Snape was unfamiliar too. The girl’s eyes creased, and her gaze flicked rapidly to McGonagall before returning to the Headmaster. “You Know Who is coming here, we have to get the students out and we need your help to do that.”
“Granger?” McGonagall sounded like she was struggling. The disbelief came out like a choked wheeze as she stepped past Ginny and Susan towards the imposing trio. “Coming here? But – but – I can’t get them out, the wards – there is no–“
“I know,” Harry said calmly, his eyes still fixated on Snape as he cut off the older woman’s ramble. “Which is exactly why you–“
Harry paused, his eyes seeming to harden as he took a small step closer to the Headmaster. Ginny could have sworn that Snape’s tall frame seemed to stiffen further and that his grip on his wand tightened as he shifted it to aim toward Harry. The man was plainly stuck between his two confronters in the middle of the hall, but it was Harry’s direct approach towards him that seemed to stress him more than anything else.
“Are going to open the wards to the students and staff,” Harry said darkly, his voice dropping lower. “And you’re not going to say a thing about it to Tom – or you’ll never say anything ever again. Do you understand?”
Snape’s finger on his wand twitched, a fresh dribble of blood slowly making its way from his ear down his neck before disappearing into the black of his robes as he remained tense and unmoving. His eyes were shifting between the three of them, constantly circling back to the tall tan man behind Harry and Hermione while his jaw seemed to clench tighter. Ginny could hear the racket behind them growing closer, she could feel the tension from the others crawling across her skin as her chest grew tight with anticipation and stress.
She was having a hard time taking this all in, she could feel her mind stalling as her brow creased in confusion. Less than two minutes ago she was going to be tortured and punished. Less than two minutes ago she was stuck here with no way out, unsure if she was going to make it through the night and unsure how the hell she was going to continue. And now? Now McGonagall was staging a coup, the Headmaster was being held at wand point and she was staring at two of her very best friends – but they seemed like entirely different people. She struggled to inhale as her eyes darted across the hall and she fought to process what was going on.
Then Snape’s foot shifted.
The movement was ever so slight, but Hermione’s eyes instantly narrowed, and she stepped forward as the tall man behind her raised his wand. Then, as if the school itself could no longer handle the tension – it cracked, and everything happened at once. The whole hallway shook as a massive explosion split the wall open behind them. The Carrows’ yells cut through the air as Flitwick unleashed an attack and they attempted to counter. She saw Snape start to move, Harry shifting forward as McGonagall’s hand came up protectively before her and then Ginny’s legs shifted beneath her. She felt something latch through her body, connecting with her sternum and yanking her violently backwards as a flurry of colour erupted before her and filled the hall with light. She barely had time to process what was happening as she collided with the ground ten feet back next to Susan. She heard Neville grunt as he landed a few feet away with Colin at his side. Her vision blurred as she tried to look up at what was going on but it was impossible to track it all.
McGonagall’s wand was moving faster than Ginny had ever seen – fire from the torch on the wall cut across the ground and made to circle around Snape’s body as a stream of hexes shot from Harry’s wand. Hermione dodged under the dark wizard’s counterattack and rapidly sent her own string of counters as the fire morphed into a great black snake. The ceiling cracked, she heard a scream, and Ginny’s eyes shot wide as her vision finally cleared and she scrambled to her feet drawing out her wand. There was another crash, a wave of heat, her legs swayed beneath her as she made to rush forward only for something to catch across her sternum once more and hold her in place.
“HARRY!” Ginny screamed as Snape turned his wand toward him and unleashed another spell. But the man who was Harry had already moved. Before his name had even left her lips, he’d somehow already known the spell was coming and he’d moved. He was hurling a collection of magic Ginny had never seen before at the Headmaster as Hermione rushed forward, quickly closing the distance toward Snape. The tall man had shifted, somehow coming to stand just before McGonagall in time to yank her out of the way as a spell from the Carrows shot over Ginny’s shoulder and narrowly missed the older woman. Before she could breathe, the tall stranger fired two shots back over Ginny’s head, not missing a beat as he then twisted back to round on Snape.
It was all happening too fast – impossibly fucking fast and she couldn’t process it.
She’d never seen anything like this.
It was like the Department of Mysteries on steroids.
She saw Snape’s eyes widen, his face pinched in pain as he deflected Harry’s attack and stumbled backward to avoid Hermione’s rapidly approaching form. Then, his eyes hardened, his face went blank and before Ginny could even blink, he flicked his wand and wordlessly cast the spell that he’d used that morning to end the fight after breakfast. The sound of the explosion was deafening, her ears rang, she fell back hard against the ground once more as the blast radiated out around them. Debris scattered across the ground, her vision swam as she coughed and fought for air, covering her head with her arms as she heard Susan screaming her name.
“Susan!” Ginny groaned as she rolled onto her side and tried to force her vision to focus. She could see Susan just two feet away, she was crouched over Colin’s form, but she seemed to be okay. Ginny coughed, her head feeling dazed as she forced her burning lungs to inhale. She groaned in pain as she twisted, slowly sitting up to look back to where the others had been duelling – her stomach knotting in sickness as she anticipated a mess or a pile of bodies. But as her eyes finally focused and the dust started to fall, her brain faltered.
They’re still standing.
Four bodies stood amongst the rubble, the window of the alcove was blown wide open – and a jet-black stream of smoke was flying through the air away from the castle grounds.
-x-x-
Hermione’s jaw clenched tight as she slowly lowered her wand. Her heart was racing in her chest and her body was still shaking from adrenaline as she slowly twisted her head to look toward Harry. He was frowning, and she could feel through the bond that he was livid. This was not how they’d wanted this to go down. They hadn’t been expecting to run into Snape, McGonagall, Ginny, Neville, Susan, Colin – and the bloody Carrows and Flitwick all at once.
Fuck.
As much as she was happy to see them and as much as she was happy to have located the Gryffindor Head of House so that they could get the evacuation started – she had truly been hoping that she, Harry and Nasir would find Snape alone.
Because if they had, she doubted that this would have happened.
She had her suspicions about their old potions professor and as crazy as it might sound, she’d actually been hoping to attempt a conversation with the man before resorting to outright battle had they encountered him on their own. She knew that Nasir knew the man and while she still didn’t know who Snape was working for and she still didn’t know his motivations – both she and Harry had concluded that the man was not working for Voldemort. Yet obviously, for reasons she did not yet understand, he intended to make it seem like he was. Catching him in the hall surrounded by so many students and teachers when he’d already been in the middle of a stand-off had clearly left him feeling boxed in. Thus, removing any shot they’d had at having a conversation.
Hermione sighed as her shoulders dropped and she closed her eyes briefly.
They’d wanted to talk to him.
Failing that, they were going to imperio him and make him open the wards.
And now, he was gone.
She swallowed hard, releasing the sticking charms from her feet which had held her in place during the blast and she shifted toward Harry. She’d seen the briefest look of desperation on Snape’s face before he’d unleashed the explosion and fled through the window – and it left her feeling even more uneasy than she’d been before coming here.
She didn’t like this.
In fact, she fucking hated it.
She’d been fighting to keep her internal panic at bay since the moment Nasir exploded the Horcrux at Shell Cottage and Harry had told her that they’d run out of time. She’d been fighting to keep her stress in check and not worry about Harry. She was desperately trying not to panic about how the hell they were supposed to find the diadem, protect all these students and somehow end this war tonight – and now it just felt even more like she’d walked into a room of mirrors, lies, and random pieces of a puzzle that didn’t fit together. Because not a single one of Snape’s attacks were lethal.
Not. One.
She knew – and she knew that Harry knew it too.
The explosion down the hall from the Carrows had set everyone off – everyone reacted at once as Snape made to flee in the distraction. She and Harry had tried to stop him, but McGonagall had stepped in to attack and things had escalated. Yet even within the chaos, even though he was outnumbered four to one – Snape had not thrown a single solid punch.
Not even the explosion that he’d used before leaving would have caused lethal damage. She could tell just by looking at Harry’s face as he stared out at the black jet of smoke cutting across the sky toward Hogsmeade – he knew – Snape had, once again, barely attacked them. He’d let them go. This whole thing had been a fucking show, but it’d had no substance. She’d thrown nothing but simple hexes and disarming spells while Harry had, rather impressively, managed to keep his past feelings about the man in check and had refrained from outright killing him.
And from the look on Snape’s face, she figured he knew they were holding back.
Their eyes had met briefly while his wand had been pointed at Harry’s chest. They were cold.
Black.
Empty.
Laced with death, pain and anguish – yet oddly… familiar. The man was hollow. From one look she could tell that he’d seen and done things that most never had – and he was haunted by it. She could see it clear as day because the truth was, she knew that look. She saw it when she looked in the mirror and she felt it to her core. It was written across the man’s face and etched into his skin. She knew that if he had wanted to hurt them, he would have tried, and he could have put up a hell of a fight. He would lose in the end – strong as he was, the man was no match for the three of them, and with McGonagall there he wouldn’t have stood a chance. But he could have injured them. He could have attacked them.
But he didn’t.
Not really, his sole goal was to leave. And while a part of her had been expecting that behaviour based on everything that she and Harry had discussed and come to realize – witnessing it happen had been something else entirely. And it sat in her mind like a huge awkward unresolved hole.
“Harry,” Hermione said quietly as she reached his side and gently touched the fabric of his jacket.
“I know,” Harry said tightly, his eyes hard and his face almost painful as he let out a deep sigh and turned to look at her. She could feel his tension and unease through the bond. She knew that he was struggling to accept what Snape had just done and she knew he was pissed that the man had gotten away. “I know – and I still have no idea why.”
“Potter,” McGonagall’s voice was tense, and Hermione turned to look at the older woman as Nasir stepped away from holding her up through the blast. She looked utterly bewildered and dangerously thin. Dark rings circled her eyes and exhaustion clung to her like a visible heavy weight on her shoulders. She eyed Nasir warily before she steadied herself on her feet and glanced back to them once more. “Potter – Miss Granger, what the hell is going on?”
“Professor McGonagall,” Harry’s face shifted, quickly morphing back into the serious and slightly impassive look that had become his norm. Though Hermione saw his lips twist into a small sad smile as he glanced toward the confused older woman then lowered his voice so only Hermione could hear him. “We push on – we don’t have time for anything else.”
Hermione nodded and Harry reached for her, gripping her arm and squeezing it tight before shifting towards their old professor.
“I’m so glad to see you, Professor,” Harry said as he closed the distance towards the woman.
Hermione’s eyes shifted to look down the hall – forty feet away the wall had exploded. One of the Carrows was crushed beneath a large piece of stone, blood was pooling from the woman’s body and gathering in the rubble on the floor. Flitwick was standing over the other Carrow – it must have been Amycus – and a suit of armour was pressing a sword into the man’s chest as Flitwick’s wand remained poised at his temple. She didn’t know if the small professor would kill the man – but from the way Amycus was clutching his neck and gasping for air it seemed like he would die regardless. Blood was seeping down his robes and his throat was split wide open. Whether the wound was from the armour, from Flitwick or from the attack that Nasir had sent she had no idea – but unless someone stepped in with a large bottle of dittany and blood replenisher, he would die in a matter of seconds. And no one seemed interested in doing anything of the sort.
Hermione let out a sigh as her shoulders fell. They’d been here for all of five minutes and the bloodletting had already started – sure the Carrows deserved it, but it still sat heavily on her chest. Death seemed to follow them like the plague.
She turned to look toward the collection of students on the ground behind McGonagall’s tall form as Harry began to quickly ramble off an explanation for their presence to their old Head of House – but not before her gaze shifted across Nasir’s body and their eyes met.
You know, she thought flatly as she looked at him, taking in his familiar dark gaze while her mind continued to churn. She rapidly shifted towards him; her jaw clenching tight as she moved. She could feel the obscure puzzle pieces connecting in her mind, all her assumptions, her guesses, her doubts – all the information that she’d been carefully been collecting and logging away for later – it was all coming to a head. Not just the war with Voldemort this instant – everything. All the little pieces of this hell and all the unanswered questions that she’d had for months if not years, they were coming together here tonight.
And Nasir was right in the thick of it, tangled in the web with herself, Harry and the rest of them.
“When this is over, I have questions,” Hermione said quietly. She’d reached the tall man’s side in three quick strides and glanced up at him. She kept her voice low but her tone firm – uttering the words quickly as she heard Ginny and the others shifting on the ground to her right. He was staring at her wordlessly and she half expected him to give her one of his dark smiles, to deflect her words or turn away like he always did when she outright asked him things that he didn’t want to answer – but he didn’t. He just looked at her. “I know I said I didn’t care and that you didn’t have to answer – that still stands – but I would like you to answer them.”
He stared at her intently for a fraction of a second longer as Harry’s voice continued on to her left. Then, against all odds and defying all her doubtful expectations – he nodded.
“I know,” his low deep rumble was quiet, and he stepped a foot nearer to her as his hand reached out and grabbed her shoulder tight. “We’ll talk later – if there is a later. Until then keep your mind focused and remember what I said, Hermione. Now is not the time to get lost in your head – we have things to do.”
She nodded firmly as she looked up at the impossible man before her. Was he seriously planning to answer her questions when this was over? Why was he telling her this now? After everything, in the middle of the war, he’d finally decided he was willing to share?
She swallowed hard and forced her mind to push it all away – schooling her face under control. She could feel four sets of eyes burning into her now and she could hear Flitwick’s little feet colliding against the stone floor as he moved towards them.
Now was not the time. As Nasir had said back at the cottage – she needed to focus. She needed to trust him. For the sake of everyone here and to keep Harry alive she would need to deal with the details later. One thing at a time – and right now they had a Horcrux to find. She turned away from Nasir swiftly, releasing the four tethers that she’d rapidly cast to pull Ginny and the others out of the way when the duel broke out with Snape.
“Ginny,” she said, allowing a small smile to form on her lips as she quickly made her way over to the fiery redhead who was sitting on the ground and looking incredibly confused. She didn’t waste any time and reached out her hand to help the girl off the ground. “Are you okay?”
Ginny hesitated, her eyes flicking over Hermione, then flicking to Nasir, then to Harry and McGonagall and back to her as her brow furrowed.
“I think so,” she said slowly, a low groan leaving her lips as she reached up to grab Hermione’s hand and allowed her to pull her from the ground. Hermione didn’t miss the wide-eyed look Ginny made when Hermione easily yanked her from the ground in one swift pull. She steadied herself on her feet, her hand rubbing against her sternum where the tether had been a moment ago. “What the hell was that? What happened? How did you guys get here? Are you here to get us out?”
“Yes,” Hermione said quickly, reaching down to help Susan up as Nasir came to her side and extended his only hand to Neville. The boy looked at the tall strange man warily but accepted the hand and was quickly pulled up from the ground. “It’s a long story Ginny – and I promise to fill you in on the details later but right now I need you to trust me okay?”
“I do trust you,” Ginny nodded firmly, even though her eyes seemed unable to stop flicking around and glancing toward Harry who was talking to McGonagall – as if she was struggling to take them in. She looked dazed, confused – she’d probably hit her head in the fall and Hermione knew her appearance was probably a bit unnerving. At least compared to how she used to look. The redhead inhaled hard and shook her head. “Just – just give me like a ten-second summary here or something because I – I’m kind of struggling to keep up right now. And I just – I can’t – this is – you guys are–“
Ginny faltered, her eyes locking to the diagnostic charms that were now floating in the air above hers and Susan’s heads. Her eyes darted to Nasir who had cast his own diagnostics on Neville and Colin and was pulling several vials out of his pocket. Hermione could hear his deep baritone rumble as he rapidly directed them to drink the vials before mending Colin’s arm.
“I just don’t understand Hermione, you're – you're both,” Ginny faltered again, her eyes creasing as she looked back to Hermione in confusion. She didn’t pull away as Hermione quickly poured some dittany over the cut on her temple, but it seemed like months worth of stress and anxiety were finally breaking through her strong exterior. Her hand came up to her hair in a gesture that was so reminiscent of Arthur, Hermione felt her heart physically ache. “I never thought I’d see you again – I – w-we thought we were stuck here.”
“Ginny, look at me,” Hermione said firmly after she’d re-stoppered the dittany and returned it to her pocket. She grabbed Ginny by the shoulders and gripped her tightly. The girl’s hazy gaze locked to hers, and Hermione felt the rune on her chest grow heavy with worry. Ginny was really struggling – the others were too and a quick glance at their diagnostics hinted as to why. They’d been through hell and their bodies were littered with lingering damage. Hermione hadn’t gotten all the updates from Fred and George, but she’d known that things at Hogwarts were bad. Though it seemed like it was much worse than what the Weasley family had been made aware of. “You’re safe. You’re going to be okay – you hear me? We’re here now – your dad is coming–“
Ginny’s face cracked and before Hermione could even finish her sentence Ginny was grabbing her tight and squeezing her hard.
“I knew it,” Ginny whispered, her voice sounding thick. She didn’t even seem to notice the way that Hermione initially tensed under her hold. “I knew he was coming – I knew he wouldn’t leave us here. I knew you were coming – I knew it.”
“Everyone is coming,” Hermione said gently, catching Nasir’s eye over the redhead’s shoulder. The man tilted his head, gesturing down the hall and she knew what he was thinking. He obviously had zero issues with taking a few seconds to heal the students, but he’d already passed out his potions, mended Colin’s bones and it was now time to get moving again. And he wasn’t wrong. As painful as it was, they did not have time for a tearful reunion, so Hermione inhaled hard and squeezed Ginny tighter before letting go. “I promise this will all make sense later but right now I need you to focus and I need you to listen to me.”
Ginny nodded as Hermione stepped back and pulled a small vial from her pocket.
“First – drink this,” Hermione said, handing a small bottle of calming draught to Ginny before turning to scan the diagnostic she’d cast on Susan. The strawberry blonde didn’t seem to be faring much better than her redheaded friend. There was lingering muscle damage showing and her body was riddled with tension and stress. “Susan you too – half a bottle, okay? Then each of you needs to drink a third of this – it’ll help repair your muscle damage. Ginny – just stand still, there is a hairline fracture in your femur. Once it’s healed the pain in your leg should go away.”
“Potter, there is nothing I can do,” McGonagall’s voice was clearly audible as Harry and her moved closer to the group. Hermione glanced at them as she passed out the orange potion and then quickly got to work on Ginny’s leg. “Severus closed the wards – I cannot open them.”
“But aren’t you the deputy Headmistress,” Harry pressed as he quickly re-holstered his wand and Hermione held Ginny’s leg steady before tapping it with her wand.
McGonagall’s face pinched at Harry’s words and her lips pursed tightly.
“I was the deputy Headmistress,” McGonagall said bitterly as Ginny and Susan drained their potions. “He revoked that right a while ago – but even if I still had it, I would be unable to create specific ward entries. Only the Headmaster can do that. The most I can do as deputy Headmistress is open and close the wards – which would allow anyone in, Potter. You Know Who would be able to stroll right in. The only way out is through Hogsmeade from the tunnel but as you said we cannot use that more than once. Aberforth is a powerful wizard – we could collect the injured, perhaps a number of the first-year students and he could apparate them to safety. He could manage as much as two dozen in one go I expect, but that is the best we could hope for and we would need to seal the tunnel after that.”
“Then do it,” Harry said firmly as Flitwick’s approach grew near and Hermione stood to take the empty vials from the girls. “Gather as many as Aberforth can manage and take them to the tunnel – we’ll have to find another way out for everyone else.”
“What about the Order?” McGonagall asked, her voice sounding strained. “You said they were coming – that he is coming – Potter, I cannot hold this castle while it’s under siege. Not against You Know Who and definitely not while Severus is Headmaster.”
“I know,” Harry nodded, his voice steady and his eyes solemn. “That’s why we came here looking for him – our plan was to get him to open the wards. But there is nothing we can do about that now, he’s gone – so we have to come up with something else. Nasir–“
Harry turned and looked toward the tall man who was standing next to a confused looking Colin.
“Can you get the Order in?” Harry asked quickly, his voice growing tighter. “Could you go back for them?”
“Not without consequence,” Nasir’s low baritone filled the space just as Flitwick arrived and stepped to McGonagall’s side. “I’ve already pushed that limit quite severely and I cannot guarantee it would work again. Besides, it would take time that we do not have, Harry. The priority is finding what you need – you know this. We need to go now.”
“I know,” Harry nodded, his eyes shifting to meet Hermione’s gaze. “We’re going to have to split up.”
“Wait, what’s going on?” Flitwick asked, his eyes widening as he looked between Harry and Hermione – as if he’d only just realized who they were.
“Harry,” Hermione said tensely, stepping away from Ginny. “I don’t–“
“I know,” Harry cut her off, taking a step forward as his eyes creased with tension. “I know you don’t – but it’s the only way.”
He let out a deep sigh and turned to look at everyone, his eyes rapidly flicking over each person.
“Voldemort is coming here,” Harry said quietly, his expression growing serious once more. Flitwick flinched at the name and McGonagall’s face tensed but Harry shook his head, his mouth tightening into a grim line as he quickly summarized their situation. “He already knows we’re here so I’m going to use his name. He’s going to be here in a matter of minutes, not days, not hours – minutes. And he is bringing everything he has. Look – I know this is hard. I know you’ve not been given any time to come to terms with this and I know I’m asking a lot but I’m asking you to trust me and to trust the Order because we just don’t have time to explain everything right now.
"Hermione and I came here to locate something in the castle," Harry continued, his eyes flicking around the group. "We need it to kill him and without it, we can never win this war. Voldemort is coming here to try and stop us from locating what we need and once he arrives this will be our only chance to take him out. The Order knows we’re here and they know what we’re doing – Arthur, Shacklebolt – they all know. They’re coming here with backup to help us defend the castle, but we need to find them a way in. The reality is we have four things that need to be done and I cannot do them all alone – but I refuse to sacrifice students’ lives in the process. So, I need your help.”
“What do you need?” McGonagall asked quietly, her voice level though her face was still tense.
“I need you to buy me time to search the castle,” Harry said quickly, his gaze turning back to McGonagall’s. “As much time as you can give me. But I also need you to find a way to get the Order in and start evacuating the students before Voldemort gets here. Then we need to defend the school and prepare for an outright battle.”
Harry let out a sigh as his gaze shifted to Hermione and she felt a wave of pain through the bond. He was hurting right now; he was hiding it visibly from the others, but he was showing her – because he wanted her to know that he didn’t like this either.
“And the only way we’re going to be able to do this is if we split up,” his voice was low, and his eyes never left hers as he spoke. “You know this, Hermione. You know it’s the only way. I’ll go look for what we need – you stay here with them. Get the castle ready, get the students out, find a way to get Arthur and the others in. If anyone can figure this out it’s you. We don’t have time to argue – and we need to do this right now or a lot of people are going to die tonight.”
Silence echoed in the hall as a cool breeze from the broken alcove window shifted around them. She couldn’t feel her hands, but she knew that they were clenched at her sides so tightly they’d gone numb. She knew that her eyes were creased in pain, that her jaw was clenched so hard it physically hurt and that she was fighting to keep her barely concealed panic at bay. It was spinning in her gut, it hurt to breathe, and she could feel her rune growing heavier – like it was a lead weight physically sinking into her chest as it burned her heart with agony.
But she also knew he was right.
And her next words made her sick to her stomach.
“I know,” Hermione’s voice came out rough and heavy, but she forced her face to remain impassive as she swallowed. “I know – but when you find it, I’m going to do it.”
“Fine,” Harry nodded, ignoring the curious looks from those standing around them. It was like they weren’t even there as she stepped towards Harry, meeting his gaze hard as she fully opened the bond between them and let her emotions flow. She wouldn’t show them in front of all these people – but she needed him to know.
'You’re not destroying that Horcrux alone – the second you know where it is you tell me, and I’ll be there. So keep this bond open.'
'I will,' his words whispered into her head.
'I mean it,' she pressed, her jaw clenching tighter. 'We both need to be there when it happens and we both need to be ready for what will come after. I’ll go help get some defences set-up – we’ll find a way to get the students out and the Order in and then as soon as that happens, I’m coming back to you.'
'I know,' his lip twitched, and his eyes softened a fraction. 'I wouldn’t expect anything less. Be careful, Hermione.'
“I will,” Hermione said, nodding once despite the fact that every muscle in her body wanted to reject this plan and never leave his side. “You too.”
“I will,” Harry nodded, his eyes lingering on her for a second longer before he moved toward her in two quick steps. He pulled her into a tight hug as his lips grazed her ear. “I love you.”
The words were whispered, and it made her heart burn.
“I love you too,” she whispered as she squeezed him as hard as she physically could.
She forced herself to swallow down the wave of emotion that was threatening to break from her chest before he let go and she begrudgingly let him step back. She hated that she was letting him go, she hated that this was happening. She could feel Nasir and the others watching them as they stepped apart and Harry schooled his face back into its serious and nearly impassive look before he finally turned back to the others.
“Nasir,” Harry’s eyes darted to the tall man. “Go with her.”
It was spoken like an order and she half expected Nasir to outright refute it or to, at the very least, stare at him silently while remaining unmoving. But to her surprise the man simply nodded, stepping away from Colin to shift closer to her side as Harry turned to look back at McGonagall and a slow curl of unease crept down her spine as she watched Nasir take his usual place at her side.
“Hermione and I have tags to communicate so we can talk to everyone in the Order. She can explain it to you later but if you need to reach anyone just let us know,” Harry said to their old Head of House before turning to finally look at the redhead who had been silently watching the conversation with a curious look on her face. “Ginny – I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Harry,” Ginny hesitated, her head shaking slightly as she looked him up and down. “Harry, I can’t believe it’s you.”
“It’s me,” Harry’s lips twitched into an almost smile and Ginny’s face seemed to crumple. Before Harry could blink Ginny had closed the distance between them and pulled him into a tight hug.
“I never thought I’d see you again,” she mumbled as Harry hugged her back.
“I know,” he said quietly before stepping back and grabbing both her shoulders much like how Hermione had done only moments ago. “And I wish I had more time to explain – when this is over, I promise Ginny, I’ll tell you everything. But until then stick with Hermione and you’ll be okay – alright?”
Ginny nodded as Harry squeezed her shoulders tight before letting go and turning to nod at Neville, Susan and Colin.
“I can’t even begin to tell you all how happy I am to see you,” Harry said quickly, his voice growing tighter as he looked at them. “I wish we had more time – but we don’t and I’m sorry about that, but I have to go. Please be careful, stay with the Order and follow what they say. We are fighting for our lives tonight – and this is our last and only stand against him.”
McGonagall’s back straightened and her chin lifted higher at his words.
“Go get what you need, Potter,” the older woman said firmly, her grip on her wand tightening. “Leave the rest to us.”
“Thank you,” Harry nodded, then hesitated before shifting his gaze to Flitwick. “Professor Flitwick – where does the Grey Lady usually stay?”
“The Grey Lady?” Flitwick’s brow furrowed at the question. The poor wizard had seemed confused by everything going on and his head had been darting between everyone as he watched the conversation intently and tried to keep up. “She – well she is usually down by the courtyard near the spare classrooms on the other side of the school. Near the Ravenclaw common room and Filch’s office.”
“Alright,” Harry nodded, pulling out his wand. “Thanks!”
“Why do you want to find her?” Flitwick asked, but Harry was already turning on his heel and running toward the exploded hallway.
'Be careful!' Hermione called as she turned to watch him go. Her heart raced as he took off full speed, jumping over the broken bits of rubble and ignoring the two dead bodies that laid against the cold stone floor.
'I will .'
His voice rang out clear and calm in her mind and she forced herself to breathe. Taking one deep solid breath before she closed her eyes, straightened her spine and turned off her emotions so she could focus on her tasks. She refused to fail now. Not after everything they’d been through and she refused to let people die on her watch.
“Is there anyone else in the castle that we need to be concerned about?” Hermione asked as she turned to face the others once more and quickly checked the time. They only had a few minutes before the Order would be apparating to Hogsmeade to enter the school through the tunnel if she wasn’t able to find an alternative way in. They needed to decide now how they were going to make this work.
“There was a Death Eater guarding the hospital wing,” McGonagall said. “Though Pomfrey drugged him before we came for Miss Weasley – so he shouldn’t be an issue.”
“There’s the Slytherins,” Neville said, stepping forward and brushing some of the dust from his robes. “The Carrows enlisted their help a while back with watching the halls – they’re not all involved but I’m sure most of them will put up a fight.”
“Okay,” Hermione nodded then turned to look at McGonagall. “Round them up, knock them out and leave them in a room somewhere – can you get someone to do that.”
“Yes,” McGonagall nodded, rolling up her sleeves as her eyes seemed to harden. “I’ll send Rolanda and Septima after them – they should all be in their common room right now so we might just be able to seal them in.”
“Take Hannah and Padma,” Susan said, her eyes looked focused now that she’d downed the potions Hermione had given her. “They can help – they know all the school tunnels and their disillusionments are particularly good. I’ll message them now and tell them to head to Madam Hooch’s office.”
“Good,” Hermione nodded, rapidly stuffing her hand into her pocket and summoning out several bottles as Susan pulled a coin from her robes. She recognized it – it was one of the ones that she’d created for the DA. It wasn’t capable of sending full messages, yet Susan tapped it several times with her wand just the same. They must have developed a code, Hermione thought as she held out several bottles. “Here, take these – all of you. They’re labelled and will help you in a bind. Do you know how to confirm blood replenishing dosages?”
Her eyes darted up again to see them all nodding.
“Pomfrey taught us,” Ginny said as she grabbed the bottles from Hermione and started passing them out. She too appeared to be calmer, her eyes were sharply looking over the bottles and her attention was on task. “What are these ones?”
“Strength potions,” Hermione said as she glanced at the yellow bottle Ginny had held up. “Don’t take more than six – or you die. Our priority is getting the Order in. Then fortifying the castle and getting the youngest students out first. Professor–“
Hermione glanced up to McGonagall who was quickly pocketing the potions that she’d been handed.
“Is there anything you can do? Anything we can do to seal the castle?”
“Yes,” McGonagall nodded though her face was grim. “I’m limited without my deputy status but there are some things I can do. We can add a protection spell to the castle from inside the wards – I might be able to charm some of the armour and ward the gates as well, but it will be a struggle.”
“Professor Sprout can open the greenhouses,” Neville added, pocketing his own potions. “She has a rather nasty Venomous Tentacula – not to mention the Devil’s Snare. It’s dark enough we could let it outside.”
“Good – we’ll have her do just that. It will take care of the North-East corner of the grounds rather well,” McGonagall agreed, straightening her robes and furrowing her brow in concentration. “Mipsy.”
A crack cut through the air and a small timid house elf appeared before the older witch.
“Yes missus – what can Mipsy be doing for you?” the house elf asked, nervously looking around at the collection of people standing in the destroyed hall.
“Mipsy, I need you to go tell Septima and Rolanda to seal the Slytherin students in their dormitory. They’re to take Miss Patil and Miss Abbott with them. Tell them the Slytherins are to be kept in at any cost – if they have to knock them out to do it, then do it. Then go tell the other Professors to gather in the main courtyard immediately – tell them that–“
McGonagall swallowed and then raised her chin higher.
“Tell them that Voldemort is coming, and we need to defend the school,” McGonagall said firmly, ignoring the way the elf flinched at her use of his name. “Now, please.”
“Yes, missus Deputy Headmistress,” Mipsy bowed, her long nose nearly touching the ground before a crack split the air and she disappeared from sight.
Hermione faltered and her eyes widened as she looked back to McGonagall and saw the surprised expression on the woman’s face.
“Wait,” Hermione said slowly, her chest tightening as her heart began to race once more. “She just said – are you? Professor, can you feel the wards? Have you been reinstated?”
“I – I don’t,” McGonagall’s brow furrowed in confusion as her jaw tightened then she seemed to concentrate really hard for a moment before her eyes grew wide. “They’re there – the wards! I can open them!”
“Do it,” Hermione said firmly, yanking up her sleeve to place her fingers over the tag on her arm and sending out a string of messages to Bill to ask for their status update. It had been buzzing throughout the battle with communications between the group, but the messages had slowed, signalling the Order’s assembly. “Do it now.”
“But they’ll be open to everyone,” McGonagall said, her head shaking in confusion as her eyes turned toward the blown-out window. “I don’t understand – why would he reinstate it?”
“The castle likely defaulted back to you because he abandoned the school,” Flitwick said, nodding to himself as he recited the information. “There is old magic defending these grounds. The Headmaster is required to defend Hogwarts against an attack – not to assist in leading one. Severus has defected, Minerva – he has failed his obligation as Headmaster and the castle no doubt registered it the very moment he left the school grounds. You’re the highest-ranking professor teaching at this school, so you’re naturally next in line.”
McGonagall’s lips pursed and her gaze flicked from the small wizard back to Hermione – the doubt behind her eyes was obvious.
“Regardless, even if that is so – if I open the wards anyone can get through,” she said sternly. “We still can’t use it as an evacuation method – it will leave us defenceless from all sides.”
“I know,” Hermione said nodding in understanding. Hogwarts was capable of defending itself – she’d read enough books to know that, but even still she found it hard to believe Flitwick’s words and she mirrored McGonagall’s doubt. Her gaze turned to Nasir and she felt her jaw clench tight. He was staring at her intently, his eyes glinting knowingly – as if he knew exactly what she was thinking, but she pushed on. “We won’t use it for the evacuation. I’ll tell the Order their window, we open the wards the second they land outside the gates and then close them the moment they enter the grounds.”
“What about the students?” McGonagall asked, the tension visible across her body. “Assuming we can get them out where will we even send them?”
“The Order has safehouses we can use,” Hermione said as she re-checked the time and quickly checked the vitals of everyone in the Order. They were all okay – but they were all incredibly stressed and nervous.
“The safehouses are already prepared to receive students,” Nasir’s low baritone rumbled by her side as he stepped a fraction closer. “But our top priority is getting the Order in – the evacuation comes secondary.”
McGonagall’s eyes creased as she looked at the tall man once more. “I’m sorry – and who are you?”
“This is Nasir,” Hermione said quickly gesturing to the man on her left. Nasir nodded to McGonagall but remained motionless at her side. “He is a member of the Order. Without him – we never would have gotten here. He’s a close friend of Shacklebolt’s, he’s helped us run several missions and he’s my mentor – and he is right. We have to get the others in or we’re going to be sitting ducks. As for the students – until we can find another way out, we send them through Hogsmeade. We send as many as we can manage. Gather the first years – send any upper year students that can apparate along with them and have them all leave from Aberforth’s at the same time. Then we seal the tunnel behind them. The rest–”
Hermione inhaled deeply, ignoring the way that Flitwick’s face had turned into a shocked scowl at her words as she pushed the stray curls back from her face. Her mind was racing, rapidly assessing all their remaining options until she exhaled hard and dropped her hand back to her side.
“We find somewhere safe for them to hide here,” her voice dropped lower, and her jaw set into a grim line. “Anyone who can fight, and who wants to fight can help us defend the castle. We just have to hope that we can fend him off until Harry returns and we’ll just have to keep trying. Maybe we can let them out through the wards in waves from strategic points. Voldemort’s not here yet so we have some time before the wards need to be sealed or maybe–“
Hermione faltered, her eyes darting back to the ground where Mipsy had just stood.
“The house elves,” Hermione’s voice was quiet, but she could feel her heart racing. “The house elves – they can apparate in and out of Hogwarts – could they side apparate the students out?”
“Yes – well, maybe. At least they could theoretically,” McGonagall said as she let out a sigh and seemed to consider the possibility. “But whether or not they would is a different question entirely. They serve the Headmaster, not the deputy, we professors can only use them for minor errands – but I can certainly try.”
“Do it,” Hermione nodded, her eyes glancing down at her arm to read the latest incoming message from Bill. “Because the Order is ready. They’re leaving in 3 minutes and I’m going to tell them to come to the main gate.”
-x-x-
May 1, 1998
The Tonks’ Family Home, 9:35 pm
“Absolutely not,” Remus’ voice was tight as he stared at the woman before him. He couldn’t believe he was even having this conversation let alone that it had gone on this long. His hand gripped the doorknob tightly and he fought to keep calm. His wife was positively unmanageable. She was stubborn, irrational, loyal to a fault and the most incredible woman that he knew.
But sometimes… sometimes she was just downright unreasonable.
She’d just had a baby – she’d just given birth to their son who was sleeping in the room next to them. She was still recovering from her labour and here she was asking to come with him to Hogwarts.
He didn’t have all the details about what was going on but from the string of messages he’d received on his arm, he knew it was bad. In fact, he knew it was worse than bad. The war had gone from silent and covert to open and blazing in a matter of seconds. You Know Who was on his way to Hogwarts, he was going to destroy the school and everyone in it. He needed to go, he had to leave for Shell Cottage so that he could join the others and go defend the school. He had a role to play, he was a father, he’d been a teacher – he was a member of the Order. He had responsibilities and yet here he was arguing with Dora because she wanted to come too.
“Teddy needs you Dora – and you haven’t had the same training as everyone else,” Remus said as exasperation leaked into his voice. “This is going to be dangerous – he’s going to the school with the sole intent of destroying it. You’re not coming.”
“Excuse me,” Dora said, crossing her arms over her chest as her hair started to shift. He could see it turning red as her eyes narrowed into tight little slits. “You’re telling me I can’t go?”
“No, I’m begging you not to go,” Remus said as he dropped his hand from the door and closed the distance to his wife. He could feel the panic and fear spinning in his gut as he grabbed her shoulders and fought to keep his emotions under control. “I know you can go, and I know there is nothing I can do or say to stop you from doing what you think is right but I am asking you not to – please, please Dora – stay here. Stay here with Teddy.”
“And what about everyone else,” Dora said tightly, shrugging off his hands and taking a step back from him as her voice started to rise. “It’s equally dangerous for everyone – if this is it – if this is the final battle like you’ve said it is then you need all the help you can get! It isn’t right that I sit on the sidelines and wait it out! You want me to just sit and watch? Protect myself while everyone else suffers? You’re seriously going to ask that of me, Remus? You’re going to ask me to watch my friends, my husband, the father of my child go into battle while I sit here and do nothing?! I’m not a coward, Remus!”
Her last words were yelled with pain and they echoed through the large empty hall. Remus felt his jaw tighten, his hands dropped to his sides and clenched into fists.
He hated this.
He hated everything about this.
“No, you’re not a coward,” Remus said painfully, his voice nearly hoarse as his eyes pinched in agony. “I am.”
“What?” Dora’s brow furrowed in confusion and Remus took a step toward her once more.
“I’m a coward Dora,” Remus repeated quietly, his head shaking as a sickness started to curl in his stomach. “I always have been. I ran away from our world after school. I ran away from you when you chased me – and now that I have you, I’m terrified of losing you. I never thought I would ever be happy, I never thought I would ever find someone. That I’d have a family. I’ve run away from it for so long and I’ve been so terrified of letting myself have it that I – I can’t lose this now.”
Dora’s face faltered, her hair shifting back to the dark brown it’d been only moments ago as he tentatively reached for her again. His thumb grazed along her cheek, the sickness in his stomach building like a storm in his chest as he fought to keep himself composed.
“I can’t lose you,” he said it so quietly that it was nearly a whisper. “I’m being selfish Dora – I’m being a coward and I’m being selfish. I’m asking you – I’m begging you, to please stay home. If you come along and something happens, I’ll never be able to forgive myself. I can’t do this without you and Teddy needs his mother. I know that this war affects us all, I know that you feel like you have a responsibility to help and I know that what I’m asking you is unfair – I know that. But I’m asking you anyway. Please.”
Remus shifted another step closer, leaning down to his wife’s face and placing a small kiss on her lips.
“Please stay here.”
“You’re not a coward, Remus,” Dora whispered against his lips, kissing him softly before pulling back to look in his eyes. “You’re a good man, and a good father – you’re just trying to protect your family.”
She watched him wordlessly for a moment as his eyes raked over her face. Then her brow crumpled, and her eyes grew painfully sad.
“I’m just trying to do the same, Remus,” she whispered hoarsely, her hand coming up to stroke the side of his face. “I want to protect my family – I want to protect you.”
“Dora –” he opened his mouth to speak again but the tag on his arm buzzed violently and his eyes dropped to read the words.
Bill was ready, Shacklebolt was there and the Order was ready to go. He could feel his heart dropping into his stomach like a stone as he forced himself to move – forced his legs to shift as he stepped back from his wife and felt his soul fill with agony.
“I have to go,” Remus whispered, and Dora nodded as her hands fell to her sides. “I love you.”
“I love you too, Remus,” she said, her arms wrapping tightly around her middle as she watched him walk away.
He let himself look at her, taking just one extra second of the time he did not have to try and memorize every detail of her face as he stood before the door – because he knew it might be the last time he ever saw her.
-x-x-
May 1, 1998
Shell Cottage, 9:23 pm
A loud crack split through the air, echoing across the beach and into the cottage through the open door. Arthur’s head jerked up to look out into the darkness as his spine stiffened at the sound. He’d watched Hermione and Harry follow Nasir outside onto the beach but had forced himself to look away to send a message to Thomas at the Ministry through his charmed pen as they stalked out onto the sand. He didn’t know how they would be leaving, how they would be getting into Hogwarts, or what Nasir planned to do – but he did know that Nasir’s apparitions were silent and creepily still just like the man himself. And that disappearance had been anything but silent. It sounded like something massive had just vanished from the beach, and sure enough, as his eyes scanned the darkness beyond the doorway, there was no shadow of them in sight.
What in Merlin’s name did he just do?
“Dad?”
“Yes,” Arthur forced his eyes away from the darkness and back to the warm light of the cottage. Bill was looking at him, his eyes questioning and waiting. But Arthur had completely missed what he’d said. “I’m sorry, son – what was that?”
“I said Shacklebolt confirmed he is 15 minutes out,” Bill repeated, pocketing the portkey that Luna had brought back to him and extending the second one to Arthur. “The cottage is empty – we’ve finished the evac and all that’s left is the personnel. Fleur is going to take Mr. Ollivander to the farm – the goblins are staying here because Griphook can’t be moved and Ragnok refuses to leave without him. Ron will take Colin and Luna is taking Liza. Fleur will then take Ava and Charlie and after that, I’ll ward and lock the cottage. We’re ready, dad. Once the cottage is locked, we’re ready to go. Are you?”
Arthur nodded, taking the second portkey from Bill and stuffing it into his pocket. They were keyed to the barn at the farm and might be useful for evacuation if they could manage to get the students outside of the wards.
“Yes,” Arthur said as he reached out to grab his son’s shoulder tightly, his mouth twisting into a grim smile. “Yes, I’m ready. Your mother will be here in ten minutes – she was just locking down the Burrow. I’ve messaged Thomas and he is gathering additional supplies and support – I’m not sure how he or his contacts are going to get into the school after us but they’re coming to help.”
“Okay,” Bill nodded, his own face growing tight as he gripped Arthur’s arm firmly then shifted back toward the table where a few potions remained set-out. “Fleur, can you move Ollivander? I’m going start setting the additional protections around the cottage.”
“On it,” Fleur nodded, pocketing the last of the potions that Fred had given her and then rushing toward the stairs to apparate the old wandmaker to safety.
“Come on,” Ron’s voice carried across the room as he all but dragged Colin towards the door. The man looked stressed. His eyes were creased with panic and his jaw was clenched tight as he followed Ron toward the door while his eyes darted around the bustling cottage.
“Are we going to die?” Colin’s words ghosted past Arthur as his youngest son led the man outside. “I – I don’t want to die.”
“You’re not going to die,” Ron’s voice was steady even though Arthur could see the strain around his eyes as he passed by. “Not if we can help it.”
“Fred – George,” Arthur turned to his twins, rolling up his sleeves before pulling out a small old teacup from his robes. “Take this.”
“What is it?” Fred asked as he stepped toward Arthur and took the cup. A loud crack split through the air again as Ron and Colin disappeared from the beach and Fleur came bustling down the stairs with a frail-looking Ollivander gripping her arm for support.
“It’s the portkey keyed to the Burrow – the one your mother used to leave the Ministry during the werewolf operation. I’m not sure if it will be of any use but take it – I have one keyed to the barn and your brother has the other. We’ll spread them out across us in case they may be of use.”
“Got it,” George nodded as his twin pocketed the teacup and Arthur pulled out his pen to read the incoming stream of messages from Thomas.
A second crack split across the air as Ron returned and came rushing back into the cottage only for a third crack to echo quietly as Fleur disappeared with Mr. Ollivander.
“Does everyone have a potion pack!?” Ron called out as he made his way back into the kitchen and looked around the room at the nodding heads. “Yes? Good, okay, Bill – what can I help with?”
“Set the detection spells just outside the door,” Bill called back in between the muttered protection spells he was casting. He was walking along the edge of the inside of the cottage and strategically tapping locations that he’d previously charmed to activate a network of security. “Remember it’s left two, right three –“
“Left five – up one – down four, swish then tap six times – yeah I got it!” Ron nodded already running out the door and pulling out his wand.
“Okay all set,” Luna nodded to herself as she stepped away from Dean and turned to face Liza who was still standing at the bottom of the stairs next to Ava and watching the chaos unfold. Arthur glanced up from his pen and took in the young girl’s tense frame – she looked anxious, but her eyes were sharp as ever and they were entirely focused. “Time to go Liza, are you ready?”
“No,” Liza’s body was tense, but her voice rang out calm as the twins turned to look at her. A crack rang through the air and Fleur came darting back into the cottage.
“Okay – Mr. Ollivander is secured, zat just leaves Ava, Liza and Charlie,” Fleur panted as she made her way over to the stairs. “Are you ready?”
“I’m not going,” Liza said calmly, her eyes shifting to meet Fleur’s. She was clutching the purse that Hermione had given her tightly in her hands and her back seemed to straighten in defiance as she stared at the blonde.
“What?” Fleur’s brow furrowed as Ron came darting back into the cottage.
“The door’s all set, Bill!” Ron called.
“What do you mean zat you’re not going,” Fleur stepped toward the girl, her head shaking softly. “Liza – we ‘ave talked about zis. You are going to ze barn with Ava and Charlie, yes? Once zis is over I will come and get you.”
“No,” Liza’s jaw set tight and her eyes seemed to harden. “I want to go with you. I want to help.”
“Liza,” Fleur’s voice softened but Arthur saw the woman’s jaw tighten as he finished sending off a reply to Thomas. “We do not ‘ave time to argue – zis is going to be dangerous.”
“I know – so what happens if you don’t come back?” Liza’s voice grew tight. “I already lost my family – I don’t want to lose you too! I want to come help – I can help – I won’t get in the way I promise. Please – I know some magic now; I can help without causing you any trouble.”
Arthur felt his heart clench as he stared at the small girl, she looked so determined, so innocent and yet so mature for her age all at once. He understood her desire and he knew that she had the best intentions, but the truth was this war was no place for her. She was only a child; she couldn’t compete with the level of magic and the danger that would be encasing Hogwarts. Yes, she’d been through a lot and yes, she’d seen some of what Hermione and Harry could do – she’d seen them practice and she’d seen learned some magic.
But the girl had no idea what You Know Who was capable of.
She had no idea what was about to happen and just how bad things were going to get.
“Liza,” Arthur said slowly as he finally pocketed his pen and shifted towards the girl. He knew Dean was watching the conversation unfold silently while the twins watched from the corner of their eyes and silently charmed each other’s clothes with protections. “I appreciate you wanting to help – we all do – but it is too dangerous.”
“So, doesn’t that mean you need all the help you can get?” Liza’s eyes had darted to his, but they remained just as determined. “I can help, Arthur – I know I can.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Arthur said warmly as his forearm burned with another message from Shacklebolt and his mouth tightened into another grim smile. “And right now, the best way for you to do that is to go to the farm with Ava.”
“Arthur,” Ava said quietly, her eyes flicking to him as Bill continued to charm the cottage around them. He could see the stress curling across her face, her eyes pinching painfully as she looked at him but underneath it, there was just sadness. “I’ve spoken to Fleur about this… she’s already told me. There is no back-up plan if you lose. Once you take us to the farm we can’t leave because of the wards. There are supplies and food there sure, we can last a year – maybe a bit longer with the wolfsbane potion that you’ve left us but after that – then what? When we run out of supplies – then what?
“I’m a werewolf Arthur, unbanded and unable to care for Charlie when I change and I already know that Mr. Ollivander won’t last that long,” Ava’s hand came to rest on Liza’s shoulder, and she squeezed it tight. “Does anyone even know that we’re there outside of this group? Who is going to make sure the wards don’t fail – that we don’t escape and go on a rampage? The truth is – if you fail, we die.”
Her words hung heavy in the air as Bill finally lowered his wand and Fleur’s expression crumpled. They’d talked about this at length and Ava wasn’t wrong. If they lost the war tonight, there would be no one left to help them. Augusta Longbottom knew about the farm – as did Thomas and a select few other people. But if tonight went poorly, if they died – no one would be able to help them. He’d not told Ava yet, he’d left a note at the farm outlining how it worked, but he’d adjusted the exterior wards on the farm so that she could come and go as she pleased but that would not solve the issue of them being werewolves with no access to wolfsbane potion.
The wards around the barnyard would hold – but they wouldn’t hold forever. In a few years they would need to be repaired and re-set, and eventually the girls would become a danger not only to themselves but to the city nearby. Arthur could feel his own face falter and yet surprisingly – Ava’s didn’t. Her face broke out into a pained smile as a cracked laugh left her lips.
“Yet despite that, I’ll still never be able to thank you all for what you’ve done. I’ll never be able to repay you for saving my life – for giving me back a life, for rescuing my son and welcoming us into your home. If this war is as bad as you’ve said it is and this man – this Dark Lord – is as terrible as you’ve claimed, then he’s our problem too, Arthur. He’s everyone’s problem. Let us help,” Ava said softly, pulling Charlie closer to her chest as her back straightened and her chin lifted higher. “Maybe we can’t go with you and maybe we’re no match for him and his people but if you die, we die – if you fail, we fail. We’re in this together whether we want to be or not so let us help. Please. There has to be something that we can do – even if it’s from the farm.”
“You can ‘elp ze injured,” Fleur said softly as her lips twisted into a pained smile. “Liza – you know ‘ow to cast ze diagnostic. Ava you ‘ave medical training. We ‘ope to evacuate ze students to ze farm and some of zem may be injured. If you and Ava can attend to zem it would save us time in ze field and allow us to get zem out more quickly.”
“We can do that,” Ava nodded firmly, looking down to Liza and squeezing her shoulder once more. “What do you think Liza?”
Liza’s jaw clenched tight, her eyes were fixed on Arthur and he knew that she did not like the assignment that Fleur had just given them – but she conceded.
“Fine,” Liza said tightly, her eyes narrowing with barely contained frustration as her eyes flicked back to Fleur.
Without a word she pulled the drawstring of the purse she was holding – extending the thin cord twice as long before she looped it around her neck and tucked it into her grey Hogwarts sweater. Without hesitating she stepped away from Ava, shifting toward the large cupboard in the kitchen and ripping the middle drawer open with more force than necessary. Arthur watched as she pulled out the light-coloured wand that Nasir had given her – she slipped it into the calf holster that Luna had helped her make the day before and then shifted back towards them. Only she froze mid-step then moved to the table, snatching the last potion pack off the surface angrily before aggressively attaching it to her left leg. Her jaw remained clenched tight as she strapped it on then marched back towards Fleur.
“I’m ready now,” Liza said tightly as she rolled up her sleeves and fixed Fleur with a serious stare. “Make sure you come back.”
“I will,” Fleur nodded, shifting to pull the small girl into a hug before turning to Luna. “Luna – are you ready?”
“Yes,” Luna nodded, moving towards Liza with her hand outstretched. “Come on – let’s go.”
“Once you leave, we’ll seal the cottage,” Bill said as Fleur began to lead Ava and Liza outside. “Then we’ll wait for you outside.”
Fleur nodded, leaving the cottage first with Ava holding Charlie behind her and Luna and Liza bringing up the rear. Liza hesitated as she approached the twins, her steps slowing before she stopped and dropped Luna’s hand.
“Be careful,” Liza’s voice was quiet, and Arthur watched as Fred and George both smiled at the girl.
“We always are, Liza,” George said as he reached out to ruffle the girl’s hair.
“Don’t worry,” Fred hugged her, gripping her tight before he stepped back and leaned down to her eye-level. “I’ll see you soon.”
Arthur’s pen buzzed and he pulled it out to read the message from Thomas as the girls left the cottage and made their way outside. The update was positive and yet it did nothing to calm his nerves. Thomas had managed to evacuate himself and his contacts from the Ministry. He was positioned in his safehouse in Diagon Alley and was awaiting orders. He’d managed to collect up some additional supplies and was planning to join them at the castle with another half a dozen people once they figured out a way in – but it somehow only made Arthur’s stress increase. It was just more people putting their lives on the line
Two quiet cracks cut through the cottage as Luna and Fleur disappeared from sight – taking Liza, Ava and Charlie with them.
“Alright,” Bill nodded, moving to grab the last few potions from the table and quickly sending an update through the tags. “We’re ready – let’s go, everyone outside and I’ll activate the final ward.”
A crack cut across the sand once more as Mrs. Weasley appeared just outside the door clutching the hand of Arthur’s second-oldest son.
“Charlie!?” Fred rushed forward; George hot on his heels as they darted to the door.
“Fred! George!” Charlie’s eyes lit up as he dropped his hold on Mrs. Weasley’s hand and rushed to meet them at the threshold.
“How did you get here?” George asked him as he pulled out some potions from his pocket and handed the vials to his older brother.
“Mum messaged me,” Charlie said quickly as he took the bottles offered and stuffed them into his leather jacket. “Dad set up a communicator for me and my pen glowed red. I came back from Romania a few weeks ago under Shacklebolt’s direction when things were getting worse. I’ve been hiding out at the Northern safehouse keeping a low profile and helping with some recon work.”
“Charlie! Good, you’re here – okay outside,” Bill called, waving his hands to get everyone to move. “Outside now, Shacklebolt will be here in five minutes and Remus is on his way. We’re leaving in six so get yourselves ready!”
Arthur watched as his eldest son directed everyone outside. His messy hair was tied into a sloppy ponytail at the back of his head and his face was still littered with flecks of blood and soot from his mission at Gringotts. He could feel his heart clenching in his chest as he moved toward the door. His wife had always hated Bill’s hair, but if he was being honest, he’d always rather liked it. It was just so Bill and it suited him. Arthur’s eyes swept over the twins who were quietly muttering with Charlie and holding their wands tightly. They’d caused him so much stress and anxiety over the years. They’d caused him so much trouble – they were likely singlehandedly responsible for his grey hairs and they were definitely responsible for countless hours of lost sleep. Yet all of that felt like nothing compared to now, those past nights of worrying felt like a dull smouldering flicker compared to the turmoil that was starting to course through his body.
He could feel that his heart was racing in his chest. His muscles were tense and tight and he felt sick to his stomach with what they were about to do.
How many of them would be injured tonight?
How many of his children might die?
He’d tried to push the thoughts away. He’d tried to bury it and snuff it out because he knew it was a distraction and yet it was all his mind seemed capable of thinking about as he looked at his children. His eyes wandered to Ron as the boy stepped outside and then began to help Bill close down the cottage. For all the boy’s faults, for all his shortcomings and his struggles he was still his son. He was a good person, a good boy – he’d just lost his way and struggled to find his place in the world. And after months of depression, loneliness and heartbreak it seemed like he’d finally found it. It felt like Ron had finally accepted himself and had managed to grow into someone Arthur was proud to call his son.
He was proud of all of his children. Even Percy – in his own way that boy was determined and hardworking even if his judgement was misplaced. He was proud to call these kids his own and he was proud that they didn’t even question picking up their wands and preparing to go into battle.
Yet it killed him.
It positively killed him that they had too.
Why was it that it took a war for people to let go of their anger and self-doubt? Why had it taken this for his family to finally come together – to stop arguing and to work together more seamlessly than ever before. He felt Mrs. Weasley approach his side and his hand naturally wrapped around her waist as two cracks rang out and Luna and Fleur rushed over to join their group. He could feel a tightness in the back of his throat, a terror curling deep in his soul as he watched them all congregate on the sand, standing in the dark and setting their jaws tight as they tried to prepare for what was to come.
They would never be ready.
He knew this.
His eyes skimmed over Dean; the boy was only barely holding it together. Luna looked nervous. She was standing by Dean’s side anxiously but the idea of telling them that they couldn’t come was just as impossible as accepting that they would be joining him. He could feel his wife’s arm circle around him and grip him tightly. He didn’t need to look down at her to know she was struggling – to know that she was terrified and scared for her children and their family. They’d already talked about this at length and he already knew how she felt. They’d argued countless times well into the middle of the night about what they would do if it ever came down to war. And regardless of how much it pained him, he’d stood his ground and told her that the kids would fight with them.
They were of age.
There was nothing he could do.
But more than that – he understood that this was something that they had to do. Just like how Liza and Ava had wanted to help – his kids wanted to participate. They needed to help. It didn’t matter that they were scared, it didn’t matter that they knew they might get hurt – they were a part of this world and part of this war whether he liked it or not. They wanted to fight for what was right, they wanted to protect their world and they wanted to put an end to this madness.
And for that – he’d never been prouder.
How could he deny them that when it embodied the very essence of everything right that he’d tried to teach his children? Even when they arrived at the school and if he somehow managed to find Ginny – he wouldn’t tell her to evacuate with the others. Molly would be livid, and he knew she would throw a fit. She’d only barely come to terms with her son’s participation in the war and there was legally nothing she could do to stop them from being involved. But with Ginny being underage it was a different story and in Molly’s mind her involvement was unacceptable. But Arthur knew better. He knew Ginny would never listen to him and the truth was he knew she needed to be there too.
He just hoped to Merlin this was the right decision and he wouldn’t come to regret it later. That he’d raised his kids right, prepared them – that they were ready, and they would be safe. His eyes dropped down to look at his wife, she was glancing around the group tensely, worrying her bottom lip as she looked at each one of her children and seemed to be fighting to keep her words at bay.
Another crack split across the beach and Shacklebolt appeared, the tall wizard not bothering to dampen his apparition at all, landing hard and then making his way over to them.
“Shacklebolt,” Arthur nodded, as Bill sent another update through the tag.
“Arthur – everyone,” Shacklebolt nodded in greeting as he made his way across the sand. He took the potion pack that Fleur held out and began to fasten it to his leg. “Have you heard anything from them – are we entering through Hogsmeade?”
“I just told them we’re ready in three,” Bill said as he glanced at his arm. “Remus should be here – but they haven’t given us the all-clear yet.”
“Okay,” Shacklebolt nodded, his expression tight. “I’ve alerted Augusta – she is preparing to join us and has sent out word to the remainder of our supporters. I’ve told her to have anyone who can come apparate to the front gate of the school or to Hogsmeade – I’ll message her once we get more details but for now, that is the best we can do. We’ll just have to hope Harry, Hermione and Nasir can find them a way in.”
Arthur nodded as a final crack cut out through the dark and Remus appeared. The man looked ragged. Dark rings circled his eyes, his face was pinched tight and his shoulders were tense as if he was carrying the weight of the world.
“Remus,” Arthur said quietly, taking a step towards the greying man. “Is everything okay? Has Tonks locked down the wards?”
“She’ll be doing that now,” Remus nodded his eyes not quite meeting Arthur’s. “Andromeda is with them to help – but has offered to come if we need her. She’ll wait for our signal.”
“Good,” Arthur nodded, but he wasn’t sure if he believed him. “She’ll be alright, Remus.”
Remus nodded again but his eyes seemed to be locked to some far-off spot in the darkness that surrounded them. Arthur knew the man well enough to know he wasn’t okay – and he knew Tonks. That woman would never agree to stay home and avoid the war easily. He suspected that they’d argued and that perhaps things had not ended well between them – but there was no time to get into it because his arm buzzed violently, his eyes dropped to read the text from Hermione and his eyes went wide.
“I don’t believe it,” Arthur whispered, his hand once again reaching out to Mrs. Weasley and he gripped her hand tight. He looked up to see a wave of disbelief and surprise rolling across the group until his eyes locked with Shacklebolt’s. “They did it.”
The tall man nodded, his eyes becoming serious and focused as he stood up straighter and looked around the group.
“The wards will be open in two minutes – per Hermione’s instruction, we are to apparate to the main gates of Hogwarts and enter immediately,” Shacklebolt’s deep voice rang out into silence as everyone watched him. Hermione’s message had stilled the whole group and wrapped them in a collective bubble of nervous terror. Fred and George stood silent next to Charlie, no longer chatting or charming their clothes as Ron remained motionless and pale-faced by Bill’s side. “We don’t know what will be there when we arrive – Hermione has indicated that they do not think his forces are there yet – but I’m not taking any chances. Put your shields on now if you can create one, apparate in pairs and the second you land you get inside the castle wards. Understood? They’re only going to be open for thirty seconds. Is everyone ready?”
Everyone nodded, but no one spoke.
“Good,” Shacklebolt nodded as he pulled out his wand. “Then cast your shield now. We leave on her signal.”
This chapter is dedicated to Invieri – who tolerates my pesterings, my ramblings and who has been kind enough to listen to me babble on for extended periods of time while I try to sort out my thoughts, ramble on about nothing, or simply need to empty my brain in order to think. Thank you for listening to me. Thank you for sharing with me. Thank you for joining me and indulging in our interest over he who will not be named. Thank you for talking me down off the ledge (on more than one occasion) and thank you for being such a wonderful person. I’m sorry for wasting so much of your time… but, not really ;) I’m pretty sure it’s mutual.
Thanks for being such a great friend.
-x-x-
Warnings:
This chapter contains: blood, violence, descriptions of gruesome injuries including but not limited to burns, loss of limbs, melting skin and other not so awesome things. If you are squeamish be wary.
*******************************************
May 1, 1998
Hogwarts, 9:39 pm
“So how does this work?” McGonagall asked, her eyes carefully watching Hermione’s hands as they rapidly attached a thin light green tag to her forearm.
Susan had just sent word to Lavender to start the evacuation of the two dormitories and to gather the youngest students. They would be sent with a few upper years who could apparate to the Room of Requirements with Professor Trelawney to head through the tunnel and meet Aberforth in Hogsmeade. The rest, if they were old enough, would help defend the castle while the others were sent to the kitchens for safety.
“You just touch it and think of the words that you want to send,” Hermione said quickly, as she finished adhering the tag to the older woman’s arm and began syncing it with her vitals. The idea of having another set of vitals to manage within her mind was overwhelming – but the thought of not tagging Professor McGonagall was even worse. She was the only one able to control the wards and maintaining communication with this woman would be critical to their success so she just had to suck it up. “It will vibrate when a message is received, and the text scrolls across the tag so you can read it.”
Hermione quickly smoothed the tag in place, running her fingers over the paper to make sure that the edges were flush. The last thing she wanted was for it to fall off during battle. If she had the time and the tags, she would tag every single person here to keep tabs on them. But she didn’t. She only had a few left and their time was running out – she would just need to rely on the Order spreading out amongst the others once they arrived and have them manage the communication between groups.
“There,” Hermione said as she let go of the older woman’s arm and felt her vitals flicker to life in her mind. “All set, it should work. We have two minutes on the clock until the Order apparates to the main gate – I’ve told them that the wards will be open at exactly 9:42 pm for thirty seconds. Are you ready?”
“Yes,” McGonagall nodded, briefly looking at the tag on her left arm before meeting Hermione’s gaze once more. “I’m ready.”
“Good,” Hermione nodded back, pulling out her wand again and setting a quick mental timer. With Harry off to find the Grey Lady to try to determine the location of the diadem, the Slytherins being locked up by Madam Hooch and Professor Vector, the Order on their way to the main gate and the evacuation started – there was only one thing left to do now. “We need to start locking down and protecting the school.”
“There are a few defences that I can activate,” McGonagall said, her lips pursing as she thought. Her brow was still furrowed with concern from having realized her Deputy Headmistress status had been reinstated and it was clear that the woman was struggling to process everything going on. Hermione could feel the stress through her vitals as they registered in her mind – but McGonagall was doing an incredible job at remaining focused and keeping her inner turmoil at bay. It was a testament to how strong her Head of House truly was. Hermione had no doubt this woman had been through hell over the last year and was hanging on by a thread – but that thread was tough as diamonds. “Though I must admit Hogwarts largely relies on the wards for safety, its other defences are minimal. There are statues by the Great Hall and armour by the main courtyard that I can mobilize – they will defend the grounds regardless of whatever orders they’re given.”
“I should be able to strengthen the castle walls,” Flitwick said, his eyes shifting between them. “It will take a bit of time but the charmwork is sound and it will hold.”
“We don’t have time to fortify the castle,” Nasir said quietly, his gaze shifting over McGonagall before sweeping down the hall. His dark eyes were glinting and seemed to be flickering with rapid thought in the low light. Hermione knew he’d been assessing their situation just like she had been from the moment Harry left and when his eyes met hers once more, she knew they’d come to the same conclusion. “And we don’t have time for elaborate defences – it would be a wasted effort. Tom is going to push through anything that we set-up regardless of how sound the charmwork is.”
“What are you saying?” Flitwick asked tightly, his eyes narrowing at the tall man. “That it’s not worth doing anything? We just agreed that we won’t be able to get all the students out of the school and that the remainder are going to be moved to the kitchens because it’s the safest location for them – but they won’t be safe anywhere if You Know Who gets inside the school – and there is no guarantee that the house elves will help us get them out. We have to do something.”
“You’re right we do,” Hermione nodded before checking the time and glancing around the small group once more. She could see the frustration on Flitwick’s face as he glared up at Nasir. “And we will – but right now we’re just a distraction.”
Flitwick frowned but she saw McGonagall’s jaw tighten in immediate understanding as Ginny, Susan, Neville and Colin all watched the exchange intently.
“The goal is to delay Tom from entering the school,” Nasir said quietly, his dark eyes fixed on Flitwick’s tiny irritated form. “Not to stop him from doing so. Right now, Severus may still be able to control the wards – which leaves us defenceless. Our priority is setting up a layer of protection from within the wards because we cannot rely on the wards to keep anything out. But ultimately, anything we do is a means to an end. Our objective is to buy Harry more time and to keep the castle secured for as long as possible. Tom and his forces will get through – it’s only a matter of time, so we need to be strategic in our efforts and save our energy for when we really need it.”
“He’s right,” Hermione nodded again and let out a low sigh. “This is about biding time – we’re not trying to make the castle impenetrable and we don’t want to fight all out just yet because the real battle won’t start until Harry returns.”
“Wait,” Neville said slowly, his brow furrowing in confusion. “So, you want him to get in – you came here knowing that You Know Who would get into the school and you actually want that to happen? I thought you came here to keep him out and to evacuate us.”
“It’s complicated,” Hermione said quickly, knowing that she was running out of time and her next words would be hard to hear and would probably generate a lot of questions. Harry had hinted at it, but he’d not outright said it before leaving and she didn’t have the time to get into this in detail. But she couldn’t exactly skip over it either – they had a right to know what was about to happen. She could feel her stress creeping down her spine as she grit her teeth and pushed out the quickest explanation she could come up with. “We did come here to get you out. And we had a plan to do it that would have worked but it flew out the window with Snape when he left so right now, I admit, we’re trying to figure this out as we go and we’re just doing the best that we can. But yes, Neville, we knew Voldemort would breach the castle walls and the truth is we need him to because once Harry finds what we came here for we’re switching tactics and we’re going on the offensive.”
“You’re going to attack him,” Ginny said flatly, her voice almost disbelieving. “You’re going to attack You Know Who.”
“Yes,” Hermione said as the muscles in her jaw grew tight. She tried to ignore the sickness that was curling in the pit of her stomach as she thought about what she was saying – as she thought about what those words meant and what she and Harry were planning to do once they had the diadem. “This is our only opportunity to take him out once and for all. We can’t risk him going back into hiding again or we may never find him, and he’ll only grow stronger once more – so we need him to attack the castle. We need him committed to this battle and prepared to fight until the end. He’s vulnerable right now and he’s unstable – once he engages, he won’t leave because he’s desperate. We need him to break in, we just can’t have it happen until we’re ready.”
“So, your strategy is defence in depth,” McGonagall said quietly, her shoulders growing stiff as she shook her head incredulously. “Except that we don’t have any resources to flank his forces when they attack – we’re going to be outnumbered and boxed in with nowhere to retreat while we simply hold our position for as long as we can. Then once Potter has found whatever it is that you need, you’re going to have us fall back and then attack him outright.”
“Exactly,” Hermione nodded as she took in the strained expressions of those around her. She knew how crazy this sounded and she knew that they were asking everyone here to risk their lives – and the thought made her rune grow heavy as a stone in her chest. “Though honestly, chances are he will get in before that point so what we need to do right now is identify the best places to set up defences that will buy us the most time, conserve our energy and limit our casualties while we continue to try and evacuate the students. I’d hoped that we would have them out before he got here–“
Hermione faltered and she swallowed hard.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” she shook her head as her eyes shifted over the group and she felt her stomach knot in pain. She hoped that they believed her. She hoped that someday they might forgive her for asking them to fight with her. She hoped that they knew – that they’d tried, that she and Harry had fought so hard to keep the war away from them. “We didn’t want it to happen like this. We didn’t want to involve everyone at Hogwarts, and I didn’t want to have to ask you all to fight with me tonight – but he is coming here regardless of what we do now, there’s no way around this. And as much as it pains me to say it, we cannot afford to lose this opportunity. This war is ending tonight one way or another.”
“Miss Granger,” McGonagall said quietly, her eyes clouding with a deep sadness. “We’ve always been involved – all of us. Whether you came here tonight or not this is everyone’s fight and if this is what we must do to end this, then so be it. It was never yours or Mister Potter’s responsibility to shoulder the brunt of this war or end it on our behalf.”
She turned to look at Flitwick, her back straightening with resolve once more.
“They’re right, Filius,” McGonagall said as her brow pinched tight. “I’m sorry – but I will not trust the student’s safety to old Hogwarts lore and the assumption that Severus has been rejected by the school’s magic. Whether Severus abandoned the school or not it is still possible that he may be able to control the wards and if we play a game of ‘wards-open wards-closed’ I’m going to lose. I cannot compete with the Headmaster’s orders if they do not align with my own. We cannot help the situation we’ve been dealt. We just have to manage it – this has been a long time coming and it is our responsibility collectively to do what needs to be done.
“Charming the castle would take you well over two hours, Filius – Potter said that Voldemort is gathering his people in Hogsmeade and we have no idea when he will arrive,” McGonagall continued as she seemed to rapidly analyze the situation and all their options. “We can’t assume that we have that time – we can’t assume that he isn’t already here. We need to focus on the bridge and the Eastern front, they’re our most vulnerable points. If he moves his forces through the forest, he will surround the school rather quickly and we’ll be bombarded on all sides. We won’t be able to hold out against an attack like that for long.”
Ginny and the others nodded as the woman spoke. It was clear that Flitwick was still displeased – but he didn’t argue with her.
“It’s time,” Hermione said as the alarm in her head went off and she felt her arm buzz with an update from Bill. Her eyes glanced down to read the text as McGonagall nodded and closed her eyes. “They’re apparating in five seconds – four seconds – three seconds – two seconds – one –“
“The wards are open,” McGonagall said tightly, her brow creasing with concentration as she opened the wards – monitoring them and silently praying to Merlin that no one else slipped through. Hermione could feel the strain that using the wards had on the older woman’s body as her vitals flared within her head. Then she felt the heart rates of the Order members spike as all twelve of them apparated to the main gate.
“They’ve landed,” Hermione could feel the tension growing around them as everyone seemed to hold their breath. “They’re moving – they’re through!”
“I’ve shut them,” McGonagall said as she exhaled hard. The deep creases around her eyes crinkling with pain from the effort of working the wards a second time. “There was no one else – I didn’t feel anything else pass through.”
“Good,” Hermione nodded, the tension in her body only seeming to grow tighter as she glanced down at the next message from Arthur. “They’re on their way toward the main courtyard – Professor, you need to go there anyway to mobilize the statues and armour, so you can meet them there. You said our weakest points are the bridge and the Eastern side of the school, right?”
“Yes,” McGonagall nodded. “As Mr. Longbottom said we can cover the South-Eastern section by the greenhouses and use the plants – but the North-East and Eastern side are completely exposed to the Forbidden forest. Voldemort could send waves through there up the main path and there is little cover, it’s just open lawn.”
“We should split the Eastern front into two groups,” Nasir said as his eyes shifted to Neville. “You and your professor can lead the South-Eastern group by the greenhouses. Take those with you that understand the plants and can work around them – the last thing we need is our own people getting poisoned or eaten.”
“I can do that,” Neville nodded, pulling out his coin. “I’ll message the DA and tell Parvati, Anthony and Michael to meet us there. Once the Order reaches the school, they can send us more people.”
“Take Horace as well,” McGonagall said quickly as Neville turned to leave. “He’s spent many a day creeping around those greenhouses for potion supplies. He knows those plants – he’ll be with Pomfrey in the Hospital Wing, grab him on your way there.”
“Wait – here,” Hermione said, her mind racing before she quickly reached down and removed the spare potion pack from her leg. She ignored the look that Nasir gave her, knowing that he would prefer she kept it for herself and she tossed it over to Neville. She’d already given each of them some potions from her purse supplies but it wouldn’t be nearly enough and the idea of sending Neville to the South-Eastern front with nothing but a few vials made her sick to her stomach. She was already struggling to keep her panic in check as it was – she knew they didn’t have enough supplies; they didn’t have enough people and they didn’t have enough time. This was at least something that she could do to help him before she watched him head off to fight. It might save his or someone else’s life. “Put that on – you’ll need it on the Eastern front. Go, now – start getting ready, we’ll have the Order send people over to you.”
“On it,” Neville nodded as he caught the potion pack, quickly strapping it to his thigh before turning away from them once more and sprinting down the hall the same way Harry had minutes ago. She could see a dark stain on the back of his shirt over his shoulder blade and she grimaced. He must have gotten hurt during the stand-off when she’d tethered him out of the way – if she didn’t die tonight, she would apologize to him later.
“The North-East and Eastern sides are the most open. They are our weakest points and will need the most people – so send anyone else you have there,” Nasir said as his eyes shifted to McGonagall once more. “Ideally Professors and the Order. Only send students that have skill with disillusionment – tell them to keep themselves hidden at all costs. The rest can gather in the main courtyard to act as a second line of defence and provide back-up for the frontlines, otherwise they will be slaughtered when he breaks through.”
McGonagall nodded grimly and gestured for Susan to send the message out to the DA with the coin. But the strawberry-blonde paused when Colin grabbed her hand, shaking his head as he stepped forward.
“My disillusionment is pretty good,” Colin said quietly, his voice shaking with nervousness. Hermione watched as he set his jaw tight, raised his chin a little higher and pulled out his own coin. The boy was clearly terrified but was refusing to let it get the better of him. “I’ll take the Eastern front and send word to the DA. I’ll have Lavender and a few others to meet me there – they should already have a good start on the evac so anyone not leaving through the tunnel or going to the kitchens can gather in the main courtyard to help.”
“I’ll move the armour over there as well,” McGonagall nodded in agreement, though her eyes looked worried and Hermione could feel her stress level soaring. “I’ll send for Hagrid too, and get Septima and Rolanda over there as soon as they are done with the Slytherins. Go ahead Colin – go get started. I’ll tell Shacklebolt it’s where we need the Order most. I might be able to transfigure some of the other statues to try and create a choke point but there is only so much I can do.”
“Before that, we need to shield the school,” Nasir said firmly as Colin took off toward the main courtyard, taping on his coin while he ran. “I can help you with that – so can Shacklebolt.”
“Okay,” Hermione breathed out, running her hand over her braided hair as her mind raced through their patchwork plan.
These decisions were being made rapid-fire – they were ill-informed and stabs in the dark at best. She fought down the wave of nausea that was curling in her stomach as she forced her mind to keep up and keep processing every little detail about the school she had stored in her mind.
“Do what you can for the Eastern front to add more defences once the shield is up, but the Northern bridge is the biggest priority aside from the shield. It’s the closest to Hogsmeade and the most direct way onto school grounds,” Hermione said quickly. “I don’t know what Voldemort has gathered to make up his forces but surely not all of his allies can apparate and they won’t all be at the same level of skill – they’ll know that the Forbidden Forest is dangerous. Travelling around the gorge, over the river and through the woods to get to the Eastern side will take them time – so he’s bound to attack the North first and it’ll act like a highway from his main point of operations right into the school. If we lose control of that bridge he will surround us completely. We have to take out that bridge or we’re fucked.”
“You’re going to need to blow it up from the six main supports using some kind of explosive charge,” Flitwick said tightly, his brow furrowing as he spoke. “That bridge has been charmed from top to bottom. We can’t just use bombarda, even fiendfyre won’t take it down. It’s been protected against nearly all magic since the founders first created it and the Ministry had the Unspeakables reinforce it after the fiasco that happened in 1864. There’s no record of the charmwork and even I’m not sure how they did it. And since then – Dumbledore has added even more protections after the Triwizard Tournament. You’re going to need time to take it down – it’s not a quick task, but once it’s gone there will be no way to cross the gorge on the North and they’ll be forced to move all the way around. It will buy us more time.”
“Then that’s where I’m going first,” Hermione said firmly as she felt Nasir’s gaze burn into her temple.
She got the feeling that he hadn’t been planning to leave her side during this battle and he was not entirely comfortable with her decision to go lead the bridge team. Yet he also couldn’t argue with her strategy – because he knew it made sense. They needed to split up now for the same reason that Harry had left them to go find the diadem – there was just too much ground to cover. She couldn’t help with the shield, she didn’t know the spell but Nasir did, and the Northern bridge was the second top priority. Both tasks needed to be taken care of simultaneously so it made sense for her to go blow up the bridge while he helped shield the school.
Anything else would be inefficient and a massive waste of time.
Besides, aside from Flitwick – no one else at this school had enough experience with fighting to watch their backs while they set the charges. She didn’t trust leaving the task to a bunch of students or anyone else in the Order. Until the bridge came down the North was the most dangerous front. The East might be the most exposed, but on that side at least they had time to set-up and get into position while Voldemort moved through the Forest. Whereas with the bridge – for all she knew, Voldemort might already be there. He could be sending his troops down the hillside to cross it as they spoke.
And with the Order still making their way up the castle grounds, she was the closest person capable of leading this mission.
“It’s the only way,” Hermione said as her eyes met Nasir’s burning gaze. It felt like it was piercing into her mind and she didn’t doubt that the man knew exactly what she was thinking. “It’s the most dangerous front, Nasir – we can’t leave it to anyone else, they’re not prepared. I have to do this – once the bridge is down and the North is secured, I’ll come back to the main courtyard and meet you there to help with the Eastern front.”
Nasir slowly nodded, his dark eyes never leaving her face and she saw the muscles in his jaw twitch as he clenched his teeth.
“I’ll go with you,” Flitwick said quietly, stepping forward. “You’ll need help to bring it down Miss Granger, and I know which supports we need to remove.”
“We’ll come too,” Ginny said firmly, gesturing toward Susan. Hermione glanced to her, her brow furrowing in concern as panic erupted in her stomach once more, but Ginny simply shook her head in defiance and drew out her wand. “We don’t have time to argue and I’m not going to get into a debate with you over my age or my place in this war, Hermione. I’m coming. Harry said to stick with you and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Besides, this way we can set the charges and you can cover us. The more people we have the faster it will go – we’ll send for Seamus and have him bring some of the extra Weasley explosives.”
“Fine,” Hermione said through clenched teeth as an uneasy feeling swept through her body and all her muscles tensed.
She hated this.
She hated everything about this. She could taste bile at the back of her throat again as images of Arthur getting injured at the werewolf den flashed behind her eyes. If something happened to Ginny, he would never forgive her. If something happened to Ginny or Susan – she would never forgive herself. Yet having them with her might actually be the safest place for them aside from leaving them with Nasir or Harry – or sending them as far away from this fucking school as possible. Which wasn’t an option.
She let out a heavy sigh.
This was quite possibly the worst plan that she’d ever made – even worse than their Gringotts escape plan and now the stakes were infinitely higher. A part of her considered pushing the issues and telling Ginny and Susan to go with Nasir – but the logical part of her knew that she and Flitwick needed the help and they were the closest resources available to take care of the bridge. They didn’t have time to wait for the Order to come and help them.
They had to get started.
Checking the time once more Hermione inhaled hard and fought down the urge to vomit. She closed her eyes, exhaling slowly and forcing her mind to focus before looking to the others once more.
“We need to get moving,” Hermione said quietly, fighting to remain in control of her fear. “We can’t spend anymore time here – use the tags to communicate with me and have Arthur and Shacklebolt split the Order members across the grounds at the three locations. We’ll meet you back at the courtyard when we’re done with the bridge.”
She hesitated, swallowing hard as her eyes roamed over the small group.
“Be careful,” she said finally, her panic morphing into a heavy hollow emptiness in her chest as everyone muttered a similar sentiment then began turning away and moving toward their designated stations. She felt the tag on her arm buzz as McGonagall instantly began sending out communications, notifying the Order of the locations they needed to defend and telling them to split across the grounds as she turned and made her way down the hall.
Hermione twisted, turning toward the Northern corridor with Ginny, Susan and Flitwick – taking three steps before a strong arm grabbed her shoulder and stopped her in her tracks.
“Hermione,” Nasir’s low voice rumbled behind her and she felt the prickle of a silencing spell encasing her body as she quickly turned to look up at him. “Be careful.”
“I will,” Hermione nodded as she felt the others stop and hesitate behind her.
“The Northern front is the most dangerous. Do what you need to do as quickly as you can and then get out of there. If something goes wrong, you fall back immediately – this is not the main fight. Harry cannot take Tom on alone so don’t sacrifice yourself in a side skirmish. Everyone here knows the risks and it is not your responsibility to save them,” Nasir said darkly, his low words coming out quickly as he dropped his hold on her shoulder to reach inside his robes. She watched as he quickly pulled out a small piece of paper, shrinking it down so it was less than an inch before his gaze met hers once more. “And this is non-negotiable.”
Before she could even blink his blunt hand reached out to push her head to the side, shifting her braid out of the way as his left hand reached out and pressed the small piece of paper against the side of her neck. As the paper touched her skin – it burned. The sensation rippled through her body and shot down her spine in a flash of painful heat. But it was over before she could even react to it and he was pulling away from her once more.
“Nasir – what the fuck?” Hermione groaned as her hand shot up to her neck and her fingers traced over the paper that was now melded with her skin. She could feel the smooth texture of it but there were no edges – it was perfectly adhered just like the tags she’d put on everyone else.
“It’s a tag,” Nasir said quietly, taking a step back and meeting her gaze once more. “I’ll remove it when the war is over but until then it stays.”
“Bullshit – you know I would have let you tag me if you’d asked,” Hermione said tightly as she dropped her hand back to her side and narrowed her eyes at him. “That was more than just a tag.”
“Maybe,” Nasir said quietly. His voice was void of any emotion but she could see his eyes crease as his lips twitched in amusement. He hesitated a second longer before she felt the silencing charm around them drop and he began to turn away. “I’ll see you soon, Hermione.”
“See you soon,” Hermione echoed, watching his tall dark form rapidly shift towards McGonagall’s distant one before she turned back to the others.
She ignored their curious gazes, giving them all a strained smile as she inhaled deeply and tried to lock up the remainder of her doubt and emotions. It didn’t matter that there was a storm raging in her chest. It didn’t matter that she was terrified or that her rune felt heavier than ever. It didn’t matter that her heart felt like it was breaking as Harry’s irritation and stress flared through the bond as he desperately tried to find the Grey Lady.
She had to focus.
She had to shut it all out and detach herself or she would drown in her own terror and they’d never make it through this alive.
“Everything okay?” Ginny asked, her eyes darting between her and Nasir’s retreating form as Hermione stepped toward them once more. The hasty and silenced 20-second exchange evidently had the redhead concerned.
“Yeah, everything is fine,” Hermione replied, attempting and failing at making her smile look less strained. “He just gave me a tag so he can keep an eye on us – in case we need help. I won’t lie to you Ginny; this is going to be dangerous and if Voldemort does attack, we’re at the most vulnerable point. We’ll be directly in the line of fire, so we need to move as quickly as possible.”
She stepped around them, moving down the large corridor that led to the Northern staircase. She didn’t know if what she’d said about the tag was true – she assumed it was. She hadn’t had time to ask Nasir for details and frankly, she doubted that he would have told her even if they’d had the time. She knew the tag was different from the ones she’d made – she figured it did more than just relay her vitals back to him based on the burning sensation that had flooded her body when it touched her skin. But it was just one more thing she didn’t have time to think about as she forced her legs to move and she picked up the pace.
“Stay behind me at all times,” Hermione said, as her feet collided silently with the stone floors. She glanced over her shoulder to see the two girls and Flitwick sprinting along behind her and fighting to catch up. “Keep up, and if you can’t, speak up – I’m not having anyone fall behind. Keep your eyes open and pay attention to your surroundings. Once we get outside onto the grounds, everyone disillusions and muffles, we’re not taking any chances. Let’s go – we don’t have time to waste.”
They tore down the corridor as quickly as possible. Twice Hermione had to adjust her speed so that Flitwick could keep up – she contemplated just grabbing him and carrying him so they could move faster, but the truth was, Nasir was right. This wasn’t the real fight. The battle wouldn’t truly start until Harry found the diadem. She needed to conserve as much energy as she could because engaging in battle with Voldemort directly would be the fight of her life. She knew Harry couldn’t do it alone and she knew that killing that demon would take everything that they had – and even then, she wasn’t sure if they would be successful.
So right now she was forced to dance on the delicate line of doing this as quickly as possible versus saving her energy for what she knew was coming.
She reached the first flight of stairs, jumping down them six at a time and ignoring the groaning pain of the muscles in her legs. Aside from perhaps Neville, who had to run all the way through the school down to the Southern greenhouses, she and her group had the greatest distance to travel and would be the last ones to reach their destination – and she could already tell it would feel like the longest run of her life.
She tried her hardest to ignore the panic that was starting to burn in her lungs as she forced herself not to think about what was still to come. A dull ache was starting to form in her feet – even with the potions that Nasir and Harry had all but poured down her throat at Shell Cottage she was running on fumes. Gringotts had worn her out. The fight on the carts had been exhausting and she felt more spent than ever before. This was not how she’d wanted to go into battle, and she felt entirely unprepared.
Jumping down to the landing Hermione grabbed the railing, using it to pull herself down the next set of stairs even faster. She could hear the girls panting behind her and Flitwick struggling to keep up. They were tired too – but everyone was tired, and some of them were still injured. She clenched her jaw tighter, ignoring the pain that shot up her leg as the muscles in her calf spasmed. If she had to – she would take the crimson potions she had stored in her purse and use them to force her body to work.
She just didn’t want to.
Not yet.
She would only be able to take a maximum of three, and that was pushing it, so she wanted to save them for when she truly needed them – for now, she would just ignore the pain. Halfway down the staircase she felt her arm buzz and glanced at it to read Nasir’s update – he’d reached the main courtyard with McGonagall and they were setting up the shield. The older woman had called for Mipsy and asked her to get the house elves to help with the evacuation – but that was still up in the air and they didn’t know if the elves would help them.
Hermione grimaced, knowing that there was little else they could do for the evacuation at this point besides trying to sneak another batch of students out through the wards. So she shouted the update over her shoulder to the others and then continued racing down the next flight.
Hermione’s arm buzzed again when she finally reached the bottom and she paused briefly – waiting for the others to catch up as she read the text scrolling across the tag.
“What’s the update?” Susan yelled, racing down the final flight of stairs only seconds behind Ginny.
“It’s Shacklebolt,” Hermione said, forcing her breathing to regulate as she glanced up at her friends. Flitwick was nearly at the bottom now and Ginny and Susan were less than ten feet away. “He’s helping with the shield – the others are spreading out across the Eastern front. He’s already sent Luna, Dean and Charlie over to help us – they’re cutting across the grounds to meet us at the bridge so they should get there just after us.”
“Good,” Ginny panted, reaching Hermione’s side and twisting around to see Flitwick closing the distance at an impressive speed. “Seamus is on the way, he’s right behind us – he should get there about the same time as the others.”
“Alright,” Hermione nodded, her eyes darting back up to Flitwick. “You doing okay professor?”
“I might be older than you lot,” Flitwick puffed out as he finally reached them, not stopping to join them and instead blowing right past them and heading to the large wooden doors. They burst open with a flick of his wand and he only seemed to speed up. “But I’m not that old – don’t worry about me! I’ll keep up, just keep going!”
“Let’s go,” Hermione said as she turned on her heel once more and darted after the little wizard.
It didn’t take long for her, Ginny and Susan to surpass him, running out into the Northern courtyard and cutting across the cobblestone in the cool night air. It was dark, the stars were visible, and the air was crisp and quiet – but everything about it just made her more uneasy.
She gripped her wand tighter, nervousness flooding through her as she thought about what Shacklebolt had just done. Charlie Weasley had not been trained and Dean wouldn’t be useful if they ran into any enemies. It wasn’t personal – it was just the cold hard truth; the boy wasn’t the same after Malfoy Manor and he was barely holding it together. Not that she blamed him – he’d been through hell. It was frankly amazing that he was as healthy as he was after everything that had happened. But he would add nearly no value in a fight, sending him to the Northern front was a questionable call.
And yet – she understood Shacklebolt’s decision to send them. And somehow that only made the sickness in her gut worsen.
Shacklebolt clearly knew these grounds well. He knew that they needed their best members on the Eastern front because when it did get hit it was going to be a massacre. The Eastern grounds were entirely open, there was no shelter, no cover – no nothing. There was no good place to set up a defence and there was nowhere for them to retreat except for back up to the main courtyard if they got bombarded. Voldemort would be able to unleash endless streams of attacks on them and because the land between the castle and the forest dipped lower – it would naturally become a killing pit.
The North was less open. There was plenty of cover, the land narrowed by the bridge into a choke point and it would be easier to defend. The only thing that made the Northern front more dangerous was its proximity to Hogsmeade. As long as they got there before Voldemort struck and took out the bridge, they would be fine – in fact, it would be safer than being stationed on the Eastern front.
And Shacklebolt knew this.
She knew he did because she’d spent enough time with the man over the last month to know that he could be cold and calculating. She knew from the way he didn’t question their use of dark magic, the way he instantly picked up sectumsempra and from the way he conducted himself in meetings that he’d made tough calls in the past and he understood that sacrifice, risk and tough choices were a part of war. He was the one who engaged Nasir and brought him in to help – so evidently, he was more comfortable with toeing the line and stepping into the grey than he let on.
Distributing their limited resources to protect and defend the school was an impossible task. Each decision could make or break them, and they wouldn’t know if they’d made the right choice until the battle ended, the dust settled, and they’d counted the bodies.
Shacklebolt knew this.
He understood what was at stake and he’d made the decision he thought was best. But at the end of the day, the call had been a gamble on his part – but he’d decided to trust her to get the job done and keep the others safe at the bridge. And right now, if she was being truthful, with all information from the tags wreaking havoc in her brain, with the weight of the rune crushing down on her chest and with the fear she felt over being separated from Harry while she agonized over him being a Horcrux – she was just glad that she wasn’t the one assigning people to tasks. Because she wasn’t sure if she could entirely trust her own judgement right now. She was compromised, both emotionally and physically and she was biased toward keeping Harry safe.
But more than anything… she hoped Shacklebolt was right.
She hoped his gamble paid off and that he’d picked the right people. There was nothing she could do about it now – all she could do was push harder, run faster and try to get to the bridge as quickly as possible while hoping the others could hold their ground.
Hermione glanced over her shoulder as she ran, looking back at the castle and seeing five streams of gold flowing up into the night. They were joining together in the sky a hundred feet over the school, weaving and twisting like a spider web and expanding out through the air like a bubble. It was moving fast, growing outwards in all directions as it crept down towards the ground.
“The shield is up!” Hermione called out over her shoulder, darting past the last column of the courtyard and out onto the grounds. She could see the gold web creeping down the sky before them hundreds of feet away as it encompassed the bridge and enclosed the school just inside the wards until it faded from sight into an invisible wall. “Alright – disillusionments now! Don’t forget to muffle your feet – I’m tethering us together so no one gets left behind, we’re not taking any chances!”
She didn’t bother to stop as she turned, running sideways momentarily as she tethered the two girls and Flitwick to her waist before wordlessly casting the disillusionment spell over her body. The familiar feel of an egg being cracked over her head ran down her spine as her body faded from view and she raced out across the grass toward the path. Her shield was still holding, it would be good for another ten minutes or so at least and hopefully, by then, they would be at the bridge. The sound of the others’ footsteps fell away as they cast their muffling spells and continued running along behind her into the night.
They’d just passed by the Whomping Willow and were approaching the path to the bridge when Harry’s heart rate doubled, and his panic spiked through the bond. She nearly tripped over her own feet as his voice all but shouted in her head.
‘Hermione !!’
‘Harry?!’ she called out to him, rapidly checking over his vitals while trying to keep her own from flaring in panic. ‘Harry what’s wrong?! What happened?!’
‘Hermione he’s here! He’s already here!’
‘WHAT?!’
Panic flooded through her body like a tidal wave, she could feel every muscle tense as her heart rate increased and suddenly it was hard to breathe.
‘What do you mean he’s here?’ she forced herself to ask as her legs somehow kept moving even though they’d gone numb beneath her. ‘Did you see it? What happened?! How do you know?’
‘I saw it,’ his words whispered into her mind, but they were tight and strained. She could feel his anxiety through the bond – she’d confirmed that he wasn’t injured but she knew that he was desperate and trying not to panic. She felt her arm start to buzz once more and she slowed, removing her disillusionment charm to look at her tag as she read Harry’s text and listened to his voice in her mind.
H– Voldemort is already here. The text scrolled across the light green tag as she felt Ginny, Susan and Flitwick slow behind her.
‘I’m still looking for the Grey Lady. She wasn’t in the courtyard, so I have no idea where the diadem is yet – but he’s here, Hermione. After Nasir destroyed the Hufflepuff cup at Shell Cottage images from his mind have been drifting in and out of my head, but they’re scattered and disjointed.’
Harry’s words came across the bond in a rush, the information and his anguish flooding into her mind, and bombarding her senses. Her legs slowed to a stop as she struggled to process it all with the panic that was now surging in through the tags in her head. She had to force herself to breathe through the overload as her eyes squinted in pain.
‘I thought it would take him longer to gather his people – I thought we had more time but we don’t. He’s been here for a while; he might have gotten here at the same time we did. I saw him directing his forces through the forest, I know he’s already moved some of them. Hermione I – I don’t know how long I’m going to need, and I don’t know what he’s done or where he’s sent them. The images are just flashes and I can’t be sure of it.’
Her arm buzzed again as Ginny, Susan and Flitwick stopped at her side, each of them flickering back into view as Hermione forced her eyes to focus on the incoming text.
H– He’s in Hogsmeade and he’s ready.
Several heart rates in her mind doubled, a wave of stress and anxiety washing through the Order as they all read Harry’s words. The buzzing continued, a collection of messages rapidly flicking across the light green tag in a matter of seconds.
H– He has already moved some of his forces
S– Where?
H– Into the forest, not sure where
H– I don’t know where he is going to attack first, I just know he is ready.
S– How many?
H– I couldn’t get a count, but it was a lot – well over 300
N– What does he have?
H– Minimum of snatcher, trolls and acromantula
H– But likely more
S– We’ll hold them off as long as we can
Mg– Get what you need Potter
H– Be careful
Hermione felt every muscle in her body tense as she stared at the words that ran across her arm and instantly understood all the unspoken implications of their situation. The vitals in her mind were screaming with fear, Dean’s anxiety was borderline crippling and Mrs. Weasley seemed about ready to have a heart attack. Arthur’s blood pressure had shot up and Remus’ stress levels were through the roof. The only people who seemed entirely in control of their emotions were Shacklebolt and Nasir – but even their heart rates had risen.
“Hermione?” Ginny’s voice rang out on her left, but the words sounded like a dull hollow echo as Hermione’s mind began to spin. She could taste the vomit at the back of her throat again, the signals in her brain were throbbing like a migraine at the base of her skull. “What’s going on?”
“He’s here,” Hermione said hoarsely, forcing her eyes up to meet the redhead’s gaze.
Ginny stiffened, her brow furrowing in confusion.
“What do you mean he’s here?” Flitwick panted, his face growing tense.
She opened her mouth to answer but Harry’s voice rang out in her mind once more and she froze.
‘Hermione, where are you?’ Harry’s words sounded desperate and she felt the nausea in her stomach twist violently. ‘You stayed with Nasir, right? You went with him?’
‘No,’ Hermione whispered into their connection, instantly feeling his dread through the bond as his heart seemed to break with her words. ‘I went to the Northern bridge to take it out.’
‘FUCK!’
The word hit her mind so violently she physically flinched, her eyes pinching in pain as Harry’s anguish began to leach through to her. His control was slipping, his emotions were running rampant and they were entering her head faster than she could process them.
‘That’s probably the first place he’ll come.’
‘I know,’ Hermione pushed the words to him, fighting to remain in control of her own turmoil as she tried not to panic. She felt his control falter once more, his panic flashing out like a wave of remorse and doubt through the bond. His thoughts slipped through with it and she tensed as his internal debate about coming to find her came into view.
‘Don’t you dare,’ Hermione said harshly, the words low and cold as her jaw clenched tight and her eyes narrowed into slits.
She felt her fingernails digging into the palms of her hands as she forced her legs to move once more and carry her toward the small path. They didn’t have time for this, she’d already wasted critical seconds with the exchange. She wasn’t going to argue with him. This was the only way – they both knew that.
So she took her broken heart and stuffed it into a box, burying her fear and anguish under the ocean-sized rune that sat on her chest until she could no longer feel it as she clamped down on the bond within her mind. Squeezing it tight, forcing herself to detach as she all but screamed her next words at him.
‘Don’t even fucking think about it, Harry!’ she seethed, as her legs moved quicker, robotically – she could feel the others begin to follow her once more as they stared at her in confusion. ‘We both know the bridge needs to come down and we both know no one else here is prepared to defend against an attack while we set the charges! If he does attack the North first, they’ll need my help! We can’t end this war without that Horcrux, Harry, so find that fucking diadem so we can end this! Don’t even think about coming up here! This war is bigger than me, we both knew the risks going into this – if you want to help protect me then focus, complete your task and find that god damn Horcrux!’
She inhaled sharply, her jaw clenching tight.
‘We don’t have time to argue, Harry – I’m not coming back until this is done. Nasir knows where I am – he’ll back us up if we need it but if we move fast enough, we might still be able to get out before Voldemort makes his move.’
She felt his pain grow and his irritation surge – the bond rippling in her mind as if Harry had literally punched a wall in anger and she’d felt it. A long second of silence passed until his voice rang out once more and it was barely controlled.
‘Fine,’ his whisper was dark and filled with rage.
She knew it wasn’t directed at her. At least not entirely – she knew he was just overwhelmed with everything going on and she knew he was likely feeling responsible for not knowing that Voldemort was here sooner than they’d expected, even though it wasn’t his fault. Destroying that cup had hurt him in a way she didn’t fully understand but she’d seen it on his face when she’d ran to him on the beach.
Harry was struggling.
She knew he was in pain even though he tried to hide it and she knew it was because the piece of Voldemort living inside him had been damaged by the destruction and it was currently on a rampage.
But his harsh tone still hurt.
‘Harry,’ Hermione forced herself to breathe, controlling her tone and keeping her words calm. ‘I’m going to be alright – I promise.’
The silence rang out for another long second before his voice echoed once more.
‘Use detection spells and if anything comes up abandon the bridge and get back to the castle.’
‘I will,’ Hermione nodded even though she knew he couldn’t see it.
‘And for god’s sake be careful. I’m not losing you in this.’
‘I will,’ she repeated, swallowing hard. ‘I love you.’
‘I love you too.’
Letting out a breath she forced herself to inhale deeply once more – packaging up the last of her emotions and suffocating them into silence.
“Voldemort is already here,” Hermione said calmly, twisting around to look at Ginny, Susan and Flitwick once more as she continued her brisk pace across the grounds. She saw them tense, Susan’s eyes growing wide as Ginny’s jaw clenched shut and Flitwick faltered. But she couldn’t give them time to overthink this, she couldn’t allow them to be swallowed up by their fear. So, she pushed on, tearing off the metaphorical band-aid and keeping her voice level and clinical as she spoke. “He’s been here for a while – I don’t know all the details. I just know that he got here sooner than we expected. He’s already moved some of his forces through the forest, we don’t know where he plans to attack first or how far they’ve gotten but he might already be at the bridge. And it’s possible that some of his people might have gotten through the wards and been sealed inside the shield so I’m going to be using detection spells from here on out. We move as a unit and we don’t move until I give the all-clear, understood?”
She watched as they all nodded, not even Flitwick questioned her as they reached the small stone path and began shifting along its rough surface.
“Good,” her eyes scanned over them as she shortened the tethers between their bodies, and she saw them pick up the pace as she all but tugged them closer. “We need to hope that he hasn’t moved on this front and that we can get the bridge removed before the shield falls. I’m going to be moving fast and you’re going to keep up. You’ll stay behind me at all times. You’ll do exactly what I say when I say it, and if I tell you to run, you’ll make your way back up to the castle and you won’t stop for anything or anyone – are we clear?”
They nodded again.
“Good,” Hermione said as she twisted back to face the path, setting off at a rapid jog and throwing out a collection of detection spells. She left her disillusionment off so they could see her, it was too risky otherwise and she couldn’t afford to accidentally hurt one of them if something happened. They needed to know where each other were and a disillusionment would do nothing to shield them from acromantula. “Let’s go – we have a bridge to blow up.”
-x-x-
They’d made it nearly a third of the way down the stone path toward the bridge when Voldemort made his first move. She heard the explosion before she felt the buzz on her arm and then the heartbeats in her head rocked with terror. The shield around the school rippled, the gold webbing becoming visible once more as the explosion vibrated through the dome and spread out across its surface. She could see it shuddering as a second and third explosion sounded behind them – there was a brief pause, and then it was like a barrage of artillery against the shield as the dull thunder of blasts echoed through the air.
It was the Eastern front.
She felt her chest constrict as she read the incoming updates from Remus and Shacklebolt – there were trolls and acromantula pouring from the woods. Dementors were attacking by the greenhouses and snatchers were leading the charge. They were striking at two points along the Eastern front and they were relentless. McGonagall and the others were doing everything that they could to set up defences inside the shield and prepare for a breach but the numbers streaming from the forest seemed to be endless and it didn’t look promising. She felt her stomach knot as she called out the update over her shoulder to her group and continued running forward.
Voldemort had attacked the Eastern front first.
He’d purposely moved his forces through the Forbidden Forest to the East because he knew it was their weakest point. He knew it was open – it didn’t have the same choke point that the North did, and it gave them the most access to the school. In a battle based sheerly on numbers, he would win the fight on the Eastern front – and he knew it. She sent out another detection spell, her skin crawling with unease as it came back showing absolutely nothing but mice, squirrels and the occasional owl.
There was nothing here.
Aside from Seamus who now showed up on the radar behind them, they were entirely alone. And she didn’t like it.
It felt wrong.
Everything about it felt wrong. Yes, the bridge was a funnel that they could use to pick off his forces and it gave them a strategic advantage, but was he seriously going to abandon it completely and not bother attacking it? Had they been entirely wrong about his tactics? Or did he simply not have any because he was so volatile? Or had he expected that they would send most of their forces to the North because it was nearest to the village? Maybe Voldemort thought they’d rigged the bridge already and he didn’t trust it?
She knew he was paranoid and bordered on insane. Maybe in his weakened state he was acting out of fear. Or maybe he’d finally lost it.
Or maybe they were running headlong into a trap.
She couldn’t rule out the possibility of them having found a way to by-pass detection spells, so she sent out six more and strained her eyes into the darkness. Her mind was racing with endless possibilities as the barrage of attacks continued behind them. The gold glow of the shield cast an eerie light in the sky, each blast against its surface making it glow brighter as the noises grew louder and the shield shook violently.
Hold, she thought as she glanced up at it and clenched her fists tight. She strained her ears to hear past the racket that raged behind them and focus on the seemingly endless dark path before them. Please hold – please!
Half-way down the path, she picked up Dean, Luna and Charlie on her radar – they were gaining ground fast, catching up to Seamus and making their way down the stone path toward them. The fitness routine at Shell Cottage had paid off; they were in better shape than she’d realized and they were gaining ground at an incredible pace. She could hear Susan and Ginny panting along behind her, Flitwick’s tiny feet moving so fast it should have been physically impossible – he must have been using a charm. Either that or she had severely underestimated him, but either way, they would reach the bridge soon.
She felt her tag buzz once more, glancing down to see McGonagall’s update scroll by.
Mg– Youngest students evacuated, the tunnel is sealed
“The students are out,” Hermione panted, glancing over her shoulder at the others before sending out another string of detection spells.
She heard Susan mutter ‘Oh thank Merlin’ as they twisted to the left and began going down the small hill as the shield continued to glow and quake above them. She knew there were still hundreds of students left within the school all hiding in the kitchens and there was no update on the house elves involvement – but at least this was something.
She pushed her legs harder, feeling the tether between her and the others tug against her waist as she forced them to go faster. Usually, this walk took over an hour – getting to Hogsmeade by foot had always been exhausting as a student and now she was running the distance at over double the pace and she was barely breaking a sweat.
“Almost there!” she panted, feeling her lungs burning within her chest as her calf muscle spasmed for the third time. “Only a third more to go!”
Just as soon as the words had left her mouth her tag buzzed again and McGonagall’s words scrolled by quickly.
Mg– Severus opened the wards, I cannot close them
She felt her heart plummet into her stomach, the sickness threatening to spill out of the box she’d shut it in. She didn’t know what the fuck that man was doing or whose side he was on but now that the wards were open the only thing keeping Voldemort out was the shield – which was currently shuddering dangerously above them.
Shacklebolt buzzed through next. Reinforcements were ready – Augusta Longbottom had gathered more people and was ready to come help but there was nowhere for them to apparate. Hermione swallowed hard, her legs pumping quickly as they continued to race down the final stretch of path into the clearing and the bridge came into the view. She forced her legs to slow, holding out her arm to signal the others and keep them behind her as she led them off to the side near the cover and sent out a stream of detections. Susan was wheezing, Ginny was gasping and Flitwick sounded like he was struggling to breathe. Yet she forced her mind to tune them out, focusing her eyes on the dark seemingly abandoned bridge as she assessed the results of her spell.
“Is – is he – here?” Ginny stuttered, clutching her side as she kept low to the ground by Hermione’s right flank.
“No,” Hermione whispered, her voice low as her eyes narrowed and she tried to force them to see through the dark. It was hard to make anything out, the only light they had was the dull flashes of gold that fluttered across the ground each time the shield above them was bombarded – but she refused to light her wand. As far as she could tell they’d managed to make it here undetected and nothing was lurking nearby. If Voldemort had abandoned this front, she wasn’t going to give him any reason to come back to it. “It’s clear – for now. Keep low and don’t use any light. Stay behind me and we’ll work our way across the bridge. If something does come up, fall back to this side, I’ll use it as a choke point to buy you time to get out. Susan – tell Seamus to keep his wand off, I’ll tell Luna. Alright, let’s go.”
She shifted away from the trees, moving slowly toward the bridge in a half-crouch and sending out another round of detection spells as she sent the message to Luna and alerted the Order that they’d made it to the bridge. She heard Susan pulling a bag of Weasley products from her pocket, handing out tiny black boxes to Ginny and Flitwick as Hermione reached the bridge and paused. A faint breeze was blowing through the gorge, she could feel the chill of the river in the air as it drifted over her skin and rustled the trees nearby. Her back stiffened anxiously, her eyes darting down the long wooden expanse and trying to see the end of it as she placed her foot warily on the first wooden board.
Nothing happened.
And she let out a breath she’d not even realized she was holding. Gesturing with her head she inched forward, taking one of the black boxes Susan handed her and untethering the group so she could move down the bridge ahead of them to the pillar that Flitwick pointed to.
“Place them at the base right below the board on the outside edge,” the small wizard said quietly as he pulled out his wand. “They won’t work on their own – I’ll need to enchant them with the colassis charm and tie them all together. I’ll make it so they can ignite from either side. Three taps of your wand and the words Totum Ignitionem Statuto will set it off.”
They set to work in the dark, Hermione moving cautiously forward each time they finished setting a Weasley explosive and Flitwick charmed it. The small wizard was right – it did take time. They’d only managed to get a third of the way across the bridge when Seamus showed up with Dean, Luna and Charlie. The extra hands and explosives made it go faster but with Flitwick being the only one who knew the charmwork they were still moving slower than she would have liked.
She abandoned setting the charges entirely, resetting her shield and handing the task off to Dean and Luna as she moved forward along the bridge ahead of the group while she continued to send out an endless stream of detection spells. Charlie followed along behind her, lingering two feet to her right and sending out his own collection of spells. She’d never worked with Charlie directly – but truth be told she found she felt better with him at her back. His eyes were keen – they darted around rapidly, locking on to the smallest sounds while his body moved silently and effortlessly across the creaking wooden bridge. He clearly had experience with infiltration, and he was evidently very skilled at being quiet.
Whether or not the skill came from working with dragons or from something else she wasn’t sure. But she caught his eye as he moved seamlessly beside her, he nodded, motioning for her to continue taking point – and she couldn’t help but feel like he’d done something like this before. And he seemed to know exactly where to move around her and exactly what she wanted him to do.
When they finally reached the end of the bridge she ducked down into a crouch beside the left pillar, Charlie taking the right without question. Her eyes trailed over the abandoned hillside, scanning along the treeline for any sign of movement or any indication that Voldemort or his people had been here.
But there was none.
The only thing that moved was the trees, the only sound she heard was the barrage of attacks to the South and the muffled noise of her team setting charges along the bridge behind her. She swallowed hard, the unease growing in the back of her mind as she scanned the treeline once more, her eyes flashing up the hill to the top and willing herself to see something that wasn’t there.
She didn’t like this.
She could feel her skin prickle as the cool breeze ghosted over her skin once more.
“Do you see anything?” she whispered; her voice so low it was barely audible.
“No,” Charlie whispered back, his eyes never leaving the hillside as he squinted into the darkness. She could feel his tension. Without even looking at him or having his vitals in her mind she knew that he was just as uneasy about this as she was. “Nothing.”
They stared into the darkness in silence, the minutes ticking by.
The explosions behind them grew louder and louder as the golden shield seemed to bend and buckle. She was just about to glance up at it when her eyes caught the faintest hint of movement at the top of the distant hillside and her heart turned to stone.
“Shit.”
The word barely left her mouth before a succession of loud cracks erupted across the hillside and a massive burst of silver light shot through the air. It was like someone was open firing live ammunition across the hill as crack after crack cut through the air and it was all she could do not to cover her ears as a massive explosion sounded to the South. Panic shot down her spine as time seemed to slow and everything happened at once.
The dark outline of figures appeared across the hillside, hundreds upon hundreds of them popping up as if they’d crawled right out of the ground. She could barely make it out but there were people across the top of the hill now too and she knew instinctively that they were the Death Eaters – they were the higher ranking members and she knew in her gut that the blast of silver light colliding with the surface of the shield was Voldemort.
The ground shook beneath her as the silver light collided with the shield and a monstrous crack rocked through the air. Her hands shot up to her ears, her vision blurring as her eardrums threatened to rupture. She could smell something burning as she struggled to stay upright and keep her eyes open. Her heart nearly stopped in her chest as the cracking of shattering glass echoed above them and the golden shield glowed red.
No, she could feel her heart rate rising as every single vital sign in her mind jolted with terror. No – not yet! Not yet!
But the shield was breaking.
Their only wall of security was failing. She could see the cracks cutting across the dome as pieces of it burned and fell away. The tag on her arm began to buzz, Remus’ blood pressure soared, and everyone’s stress levels flew off the charts as flashes of colour lit up the night’s sky behind them. She knew without even looking at the tag that the Eastern front had just been breached.
“GET THOSE CHARGES ON NOW!” she screamed out, forcing her shaking legs to lift her weary body from the ground as she turned to look over her shoulder. Dean and Seamus were farthest back on the bridge, Luna, Ginny and Susan were two sections from the end with Flitwick. “THE EASTERN SIDE JUST FELL!”
Her words seemed to hit them like a shock of electricity, each of them scrambling to increase their speed as Ginny and Susan bolted down the bridge toward her to set the charges on the final column. Hermione turned back around, her eyes skimming over Charlie who was standing just a few feet before her, his wand held steady in his hand as his eyes roved over the hillside. She ran toward him, stopping at his side as her gaze quickly took everything in. There were hundreds of figures rushing down the hillside and pouring from the forest to their right.
Hundreds.
Whatever had just appeared was moving quickly and if it reached them, they would never be able to stop it by themselves. Her grip on her wand tightened, her heart racing so fast she thought it might give out as she tried not to focus on the pain and agony that was coming through the tag signals in her mind.
“We can’t take all these on,” Charlie said darkly, his voice was low and calm but his body tense. “How many are left?”
“They’re on the last post,” Hermione said quickly, her eyes glancing back behind her once more to the bridge. “SEAMUS – DEAN – HEAD BACK NOW!”
She watched the boys falter before they threw two final charges to the girls and then began running back down the bridge. Her eyes jerked back to face the hill, a cold chill running down her spine as her eyes flicked over the top of the hillside where the Death Eaters remained motionless.
They were just standing there – like ghostly shadows against the skyline.
She sent out another stream of detection spells – but there was nothing nearby. The only thing moving their way was the horde that was rushing down the hill and they were still too far away to register. Her brow furrowed, her muscles growing tight with strain once more as she scanned the treeline and tried to figure out what the hell he was doing.
“What are they waiting for?” Hermione whispered, stepping closer to Charlie as she heard Flitwick start charming the final post. “Why are they just standing there?”
“They might be waiting to see what happens,” Charlie said quietly, his wand hand twitching nervously at his side. “He uses disposable people, Hermione – he’s testing the ground with those he’s willing to lose first. He’s saving the ones that he values most for when he needs them.”
“It doesn’t feel right,” Hermione said, shaking her head as her skin prickled once more. She scanned across the treeline again, looking for something out of place. The horde of figures was moving quickly but they were still several hundred feet away. “Why didn’t he attack this front sooner?”
“Maybe he couldn’t,” Charlie said quietly, his eyes narrowing as he took a slow step forward. “Or maybe we’ve missed something – but you’re right, this doesn’t feel right.”
“Hermione – the charges are set!” Susan yelled, running a few feet off the bridge and panting hard. “Flitwick’s charming the last one and then–“
But she never finished her sentence.
A series of cracks erupted to her left just inside the treeline as vicious snarls broke out through the air. Before Hermione could even blink Susan was mauled to the ground and thrown fifteen feet away as something immense and hairy grabbed her by the shoulder.
“SUSAN!!!” Ginny’s voice shrieked out as Hermione raised her wand.
It was a flurry of fur and colour as spells erupted into the air and snatchers poured from the trees on their left. They’d been flanked – and they’d bypassed her detections. Her body reacted instinctively, pulling out her dagger as she ducked and rolled across the ground while trying to take out anything that wasn’t human and anything that wasn’t her group. But the bodies just kept coming and she was forced to roll back away from the bridge toward the open hillside as they were entirely sidelined and pushed away from the edge of the gorge.
“GET BACK ACROSS THE BRIDGE!” Hermione screamed, driving her dagger through the chest of the nearest snatcher before turning to decapitate a werewolf. She could see Charlie fighting through a mob of them as he tried to get to his sister. Flitwick was battling six to her right as a flash of blonde hair cut across the center of the mob and Luna disappeared into the chaos. “NOW!!”
She could feel the blonde’s heart rate racing, Dean’s terror was almost paralyzing as she fought her way through the oncoming stream while trying not to hit any of her allies.
How the fuck did they get so close?!
Her mind was spinning, she could feel the sickness in her stomach leaching back out as she cut off another man’s head and felt his blood spatter across her face.
How did they apparate so fucking close?!
Even with the wards opened they shouldn’t have been able to apparate into the woods inside Hogwarts’ grounds – only the Headmaster could do that. Or had those cracks not been apparitions? Had they been something else? Had the snatchers just lurked their way down the hill on the left through the trees and managed to evade her detections? She dropped to her knees, rolling under a stream of hexes and dodging the chains that flew toward her body as she rapidly touched the tag on her arm to let the others know the North had been breached.
Too many – there are too many.
She heard Charlie yelling to her as another three werewolves darted from the Western treeline. The redhead was pulling something massive away from Susan’s body. Ginny was ten feet to the left of him, battling a snatcher and struggling to hold her own. The girl somehow managed to hex the snatcher over the edge of the gorge but then three more ran at her. Hermione could see Seamus through the chaos lingering on the bridge with his wand shaking in his hand – he’d come back despite her direct order to leave but now he was frozen in fear.
“SEAMUS GO!!” she screamed, her voice breaking as she sent a collection of spells toward the edge of the forest and exploded the next batch of snatchers that were trying to flank them. She couldn’t keep tabs on where everyone was – they’d all been pushed back from the bridge and the skirmish was a mob right in front of it spanning thirty feet out with herself and the others all fighting to get through the center back to their only exit. If she let loose and outright attacked, not only would she be expending energy that she just didn’t have, she could kill Luna or Dean or any number of her allies. If she used her fiendfyre now she would risk killing everyone – she wasn’t as controlled with it as Nasir was. She couldn’t weave it through crowds of people and pick and choose who she disintegrated.
She turned and fired a shield charm over Flitwick’s body when she caught sight of him to her left – he was even further away from the bridge than she was. The purple barely encased him before he was bombarded by a stream of hexes. She glanced back at Seamus, the boy’s eyes met hers over the crowd momentarily, the terror shining through his gaze before he finally turned on his heel and ran as two werewolves shot out of the exploded edge of the Western woods and darted down the bridge after him.
Hermione ducked around her next attacker, letting his spell catch her across the chest and groaning in pain from the impact but knowing that her shield would take the blow as she pushed her way back to the bridge and holstered her dagger. The horde coming down the hill was getting closer, and now there were snatchers running down the bridge behind the werewolves and everything had gone to shit.
We’re never going to make it, the thought hit her hard as she felt Remus’ vitals explode with agony. It felt like the man was dying and his pain stabbed along her spine like daggers.
“CHARLIE!” she screamed his name, finding him in the chaos to the left of the bridge and catching his attention.
He was the nearest to the bridge and he was duelling three snatchers. His wand was moving rapidly but the right side of his body was sagging. She could just see the top of Luna’s head darting to her right as the girl fended off a werewolf that was attacking Dean.
FUCK.
Dean had come back too, and he was right in the thick of it. She shoved herself forward, killing another two men and closing the distance to the bridge to less that twenty feet as she made it to the center of the mob. Her jaw clenched painfully as she slaughtered another werewolf and screamed out to Charlie once more.
“BLOW IT UP!” Hermione yelled, ducking another attack and firing off a counter. “BLOW IT UP NOW!!!”
She saw him nod, he started to move – taking a single step before his eyes went wide at the same moment she felt something collide hard with the right half of her body. The wind was crushed from her lungs as her face was shoved into the ground. She felt her spine compress and her body shake like a rag doll as something grabbed her neck tight and shook the ever-loving crap out of her. Without pausing to think she cast the most violent sectumsempra she’d ever cast in her life and aimed it behind her – she heard a whine behind her head along with the sound of tearing flesh as something hot and wet spilled out onto her back.
Her legs and arms strained as she pushed herself from the ground. Her mind was spinning out of control, the tag on her arm was buzzing with a vengeance and her eyes were blurry and unfocused as she tried to stand up straight. She could hear the pieces of something large and heavy falling from her back and landing on the ground as she stumbled, inhaling sharply as her lungs wheezed in pain. She turned her head toward Charlie, her eyes swimming in and out of focus as her left arm began to shake at her side. He’d just reached the end of the bridge as she staggered toward him. Then the ground beneath her feet exploded and she was thrown into the air before hitting the ground hard once more.
Her eyes fluttered open, blinking rapidly as she inhaled and groaned.
Everything hurt.
Her ears were ringing, her vision was spotting with black. She coughed and she saw blood spatter across the ground as she hauled herself up to her knees. Her lungs screamed in misery as she forced herself to breathe and looked out before her at the carnage across the ground. It was as if someone had detonated a bomb right in the middle of the fight – and the ground before the bridge was scorched and broken.
Ginny was crouched over Susan’s body twenty-five feet to her right along the edge of the gorge and much too far from the bridge. The girl’s hands were rapidly wrapping a sweater around Susan’s thigh – because the leg beneath it was missing. Blood was pouring from the redhead’s face, a huge gash cut across her features, but she didn’t even seem to notice it as she poured a vial of dittany over her girlfriend’s wounds and began trying to drag her toward Hermione and the bridge. Dean was motionless on the ground to her left near the Western treeline; his limbs were bent in all the wrong directions and his vitals had flatlined in her head. She could see Charlie’s boot and a piece of his leg sticking up from the ground in the middle of the battle zone – at least she thought it was his.
But it was impossible to know. There were bits and pieces of everything, everywhere.
Whoever had set off the explosion had taken out most of their own people – but she doubted that they’d cared. And she knew that her shield had been the only thing that saved her as she was blasted into the air and landed just to the West of the bridge near the gorge. The sickness in her stomach rolled as she forced herself to stand, she could taste the bile at the back of her throat as her eyes continued to scan and her brain began to rapidly assess their situation – taking everything in within seconds as the pain in her heart grew unbearable.
Charlie was dead.
Dean was dead.
The girls were injured.
She felt her emotions surge within her chest, and she gagged as she tried to force them back down.
Focus!
Flitwick was still standing. He’d been the farthest away from the center of the attack, but he looked battered and worn – and he was going-out in a blaze of glory. His wand was moving so rapidly she could barely see it as he took on over a dozen of the remaining snatchers and pushed them back from the bridge.
She was nearest to it now.
She could light it up. She could take it down. They would die here – but it would seal the Northern front and give the Eastern one a fighting chance. After she blew it they could jump into the gorge, hedge their bets and hope that they landed in the river – then try to swim to the other side. But Ginny and Susan would never survive the fall. Her eyes darted to the horde that was rushing down the hill – they were almost upon them, she didn’t have time to waste. Her legs shook as she forced herself to move but as her eyes shifted away from the rushing horde she faltered.
Something about the way they were moving wasn’t right.
She glanced back at them once more, squinting hard and casting a rapid detection spell until she realized what it was that was wrong with them and then terror filled her mind.
Inferi.
The realization shot through her body with a shudder, her eyes growing wide with panic as she finally understood what Voldemort had planned. And it hit her like a bludger.
He didn’t need the bridge.
He’d never needed the bridge. As he had done with the locket in the grotto, he’d surrounded his Horcrux with inferi for protection. He’d buried them in the grounds of Hogsmeade and scattered them along the hillside. His plan was to send waves of them down the hill across the gorge and into the school – because inferi didn’t need a bridge.
Inferi didn’t stop.
Inferi never stopped.
They were dead, animated corpses, and they didn’t stop moving until you ripped them to pieces or burned them to ash. They would crawl across the fucking gorge, through the river and scale the other side without batting an eye, without stopping, or questioning a thing because they were nothing but dead tissue. They did what they were told. They weren’t restricted by normal human limitations – they had no fear, no hesitation and no morals. They didn’t think, they didn’t breathe, and they never stopped.
Inferi would drag themselves across the ground by one hand even if the rest of their body was missing to get to their destination and like werewolves, acromantula and trolls – killing them was beyond the skill level of most witches and wizards. It was a long-held wizarding belief that these abominations were what inspired the creation of muggle ‘zombies’ – that muggles had seen inferi hundreds of years ago and had passed the stories of their existence down through the generations. But they’d always just been stories, something of a nightmare and something that no muggle truly believed. Which was for the best, because inferi were so much worse than they realized and the damage and disease they wrought was devastating.
For all she knew, there were more of them buried around the school. And even if McGonagall did somehow regain control of the wards, the inferi might be able to breach through them because they wouldn’t register as living tissue. He was using them to avoid the natural choke point of the Northern front because they were expendable and because it didn’t matter if it took them time to climb up the other side. They would get there eventually and it would allow him to take the bridge without any losses.
Her legs trembled beneath her and her wand shook in her tightly clenched hand. This had been a mistake. Coming here had been a mistake – they would never be able to take them all out. They were never even going to get the chance to battle Voldemort outright because he just had too many people and too many resources. He would wear them down and slaughter them all under a wave of massive numbers. She staggered toward the bridge, her eyes shifting to her left and landing on Luna just in time to see the blonde raise her wand – choosing to blast a lonely lingering snatcher that was headed for Ginny over the edge of the gorge before casting a shield over the redhead instead of defending herself against the attack that collided with her chest. Hermione’s mouth opened, her body reacting instantly as she raised her wand and fired off a rapid succession of spells.
But it was already too late.
She felt her heart plummet into her stomach as her attack shot over Fenrir Greyback’s shoulder, missing him by less than an inch. The werewolf’s teeth sank into Luna’s neck as his wand slashed through the air and he ripped Luna to the ground. Blood splattered, arching into the night like fireworks and spilling across the ground as Luna’s body was torn in half.
“LUNA!!”
She heard herself screaming.
It was wretched and detached – as if the sounds were coming from someone else as pain tore through her body and her legs began to move on their own accord. She was running, shifting away from the bridge to stand between Ginny and Susan, and Fenrir’s hunched form. The vitals in her mind were ringing like a nuclear power plant during a meltdown as Luna’s signals fell into darkness.
George’s heart rate tripled, Fred was going into shock, she felt Ron’s pulse double before his vitals flatlined – and he joined the hollow empty in her mind.
Fenrir stood, wiping the blood from his mouth across the back of his hand as his eyes turned toward her.
He looked pleased.
He was drenched in red, covered in Luna’s blood and grinning like a crazed psychopath. He was having the time of his life and as his gaze met hers and his smile widened – she felt something deep within her core snap. It crept down her spine like a cold poison as something dark and terrifying filled her heart.
She skidded to a stop twenty feet before Fenrir and raised her wand, her feet instinctively shifting against the broken ground to take the stance that she’d practiced a hundred times over upon the blackened beach at Shell Cottage.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Flitwick go down, his body dropping with a heavy thud as more snatchers burst from the woods and acromantula scurried out behind them. She could see the inferi closing the gap. They would easily cross the gorge and tear the castle apart – if they hit the school grounds this war was over. They couldn’t hold both fronts and they didn’t have the people or the skill to combat such a massive attack. The North would fall, the East would fall, and everyone in this school would die.
The war would be lost, and they would have accomplished nothing.
Her arm trembled as she lifted her chin higher, raising her gaze to meet the imaginary skyline like Nasir had shown her. Her body naturally sunk into the pose; her exhausted muscles working robotically from memory. She was in no condition to use this. She’d been saving it for later and truth be told she was terrified of what would happen if she let it out without Nasir there to help stop it.
But there was no other choice.
Even if she blew up the bridge it would do nothing to stop the inferi. Nasir had been right that this was not the real fight and that she needed to stay safe and reserve her energy for the end. But he hadn’t known about the inferi. He didn’t know what was pouring down the hill toward them and none of them had known that Voldemort had moved his troops through the woods to surround them when they came up with this skeleton plan.
What was the point of saving her energy for a battle against Voldemort if the battle was never going to happen? They were about to be overrun and ripped apart. They didn’t stand a chance – they were already losing, and with this wave they would be obliterated. They wouldn’t even have the opportunity to get anywhere near that demon if those inferi reached the school. This had been Voldemort’s trump card all along and he was playing it ruthlessly with the intent of annihilating everything inside that castle.
Her jaw clenched tight.
Dying in an uncontrollable blaze while taking out that horde was a better solution than doing nothing. Even if it meant leaving Harry on his own to handle the rest. At least, in this case, there would be an after. There would be something left for Harry to finish.
She swallowed hard and forced herself to close down the bond with Harry. Using fiendfyre was painful on a good day and she knew this time would be nothing like her practice. Because this time, it would be real. It would be slaughter. It would claim countless lives and even though these people were abhorrent and had done unimaginably despicable things – the burden of their death would still fall directly on her shoulders. She would still be forced to carry the weight of it and bear the burden of the dark magic that she’d used to wipe them from this earth.
So she shut him out. Closing down the bond so Harry wouldn’t feel what she felt. So he wouldn’t have to endure her agony as she ignited the fire that terrified her to her core and forced herself not to look at the bodies of her friends that littered the ground around her.
“Dæmonia Coruscare.”
The words came out hoarse and broken. She didn’t even recognize her own voice as a tiny flame ignited at the end of her wand and spun out onto the ground. It was barely anything and she could already feel the strain of the magic on her body. She heard Fenrir laugh, his head tilting back in amusement as the swarm behind him grew closer and her pathetically small flame circled the ground before him.
Focus.
“Go ahead and try,” Fenrir spat, his dark eyes like pools of death as he licked his lips and drew out his wand once more. “You got lucky at the Manor.”
Fleur’s vitals flickered in her mind and her chest constricted.
Focus.
“You seriously think you can use that?”
Bill’s heart rate skyrocketed, his stress levels shooting so high it felt like they were digging into her skull.
Focus!
Arthur’s heartbeat flatlined – and she felt her body go numb.
No.
Her arm started to tremble.
No.
Her eyes pinched in pain as she swallowed down a sob that was threatening to break from her lips.
Not him.
But the silence of Arthur’s tag was deafening in her mind. It was inescapable. It was hollow. It was empty.
He was gone, and she could feel the chaos within her growing unsteady as the box she’d buried beneath her rune started to crack.
“You’re mine bitch,” Fenrir laughed as he moved toward her, raising his wand as he walked.
The heat of the chaos burning within her diaphragm became suffocating, she could feel it scalding up her throat and threatening to eat her alive as every emotion she’d pushed down began to burst from the box she’d stuffed it in.
“The Dark Lord is all-powerful,” Fenrir growled, his dark eyes watching her like prey. Like she was the dessert to his entrée and she didn’t stand a chance. “He always gets what he wants. You’re all dead, one way or another – it’s just a matter of time. The Dark Lord is coming witch and you’re just prolonging your pain.”
No.
The word was hollow, empty, and cold in her mind, and with it, the final thread of her self-control snapped. Her spine stiffened, her legs stilled as agony raced through her veins, scorching her body as the darkness she’d kept carefully contained within her soul finally seemed to reach the very center of her being and ruptured.
And with one rapid inhale she let it all out – screaming in rage as the flames before her ignited into a massive blaze.
“AND WHERE THE FUCK IS YOUR DARK LORD NOW!?”
The small flame circling the ground exploded as she screamed, instantly growing hotter as the fire rushed out across the grass and scalded the air. She could feel it in her lungs as she forced them to inhale. She could feel it across her skin as the air blistered around her.
It felt like she was breaking.
It felt like she was being torn apart from the inside out and ripped into tiny fragmented pieces as memory after memory flashed behind her eyes. The flames tripled in size, devouring Fenrir in seconds before racing across the battered ground and rushing up into the sky. The chaos surged through her chest, twisting down her arm and erupting from her wand as the blaze shot up like a wall.
It burned.
She could feel tears streaking down her face from the heat. She could feel her body shaking as the fire swirled and began to take out the nearest inferi. Her face pinched in pain as the deafening sound of the raging firestorm filled her ears and drowned out the screams of the snatchers as her fire ripped through them and vanished them from this earth.
She could feel it.
Every single one of them as their lives snuffed out and the fire ravaged the land. It ate through them like tissue paper, taking out body after body as it spread and the flames grew larger.
But it wasn’t enough.
The inferi kept coming and even if she obliterated them all it would never be enough.
Voldemort had taken nearly everything from her. Her naivety, her safety, her family, her friends, her youth – his people had ruined her body and damaged her soul. He’d taken her childhood. He’d tried to eject her from the magical world simply because she wasn’t pure. He’d fundamentally destroyed who she was, he’d ruined her – she would never be the same again, and now he was trying to take and break the few remaining pieces she had left.
Bigger.
The hatred in her core began to leak out as she ripped opened the tap she used to control her fire.
It needs to be bigger.
The ground shook as the fire surged. Her body went numb. The signals in her mind faded away, smothered by the roaring flames and empty hollow cold that settled in her head. It was all she could see. It was all she could feel. The heat, the fire, the rage, the chaos – it consumed her as the flames morphed and spread out across the ground. She could see it forming, she could see it coming to life in the center of the blaze as the flames grew higher. A spiked tail whipped through the air, colliding with the Western treeline and setting it on fire. Four massive paws emerged, digging into the earth, burning so hot the flames turned white and melted the ground beneath them as a violent growl split through the air and everything rumbled.
She couldn’t breathe.
She watched with awe and horror as the beast raised its head – and her Nundu let out an ear-splitting roar. The rattle of its inhale made her bones shake. She felt a single tear trailing down her cheek and then she smashed the tap on her control and broke off the handle.
More.
The magic shuddered through her body so violently she felt her arm break and her legs buckled as the Nundu snarled and cut across the grass. Its spiked tail dragging through the ground and melting everything in its wake as the beast unleashed its fury. Raging blue flames poured from its mouth burning everything in sight and lighting up the entire hillside as it obliterated everything in its path. The dark night turned to napalm skies – red, orange, yellow and blue dancing through the blackness as the sound of her firestorm reverberated across the land. The ground shook beneath her feet. The smell of burning flesh filling her nose as body after body was vaporized in the inferno.
Hermione could feel the skin of her hand burning away as her shield charm began to fail. Her lungs were searing with each desperate gulp of air she took. She could taste the death, she could hear the rage – she could feel the dark magic searing into her skin, marking her body and scaring her already blackened soul with every life that she vanquished.
Her rune was heavier than an ocean. Unbearable, unshakable – so heavy surely her ribcage would shatter.
The Nundu exhaled once more, breathing death across the grass and wielding flames hotter than a wildfire. It melted the inferi. It scorched the land beyond recognition as everything burned and the few remaining snatchers tried to flee back to the woods. But the beast only grew larger. Its ferocity endless, its brutality knowing no bounds as its shoulders rose over a hundred feet in the air. It tore through the horde and reached the far end of the hillside, setting the Eastern edge of the forest ablaze and taking every single snatcher and acromantula with it.
The heat of the inferno had wrapped around her so tightly she could no longer breathe. She couldn’t feel her body. She didn’t even know if it was there. It was possible she was already burning to death because it felt like she’d already died.
She saw the beast turning toward the top of the hill, its claws digging into the ground as it lunged forward, obliterating the last of the inferi and destroying the hillside. Its spiked mane flared, its eyes burning like comets in the sky that promised the complete eradication of life as it let out a deafening roar. Fire poured from its mouth once more, searing the blackened ground, liquefying everything as its body began to burn hotter and the flames shifted to blue. It would destroy everything.
And Hermione knew in her heart – that soon, very soon, it would take her too.
Because she couldn’t stop this.
Her eyes were burning.
Her heart was so broken it would never be mended.
She was so far gone there was no return. Consumed by death and destruction – and all of it was crushing down on her soul like a caustic plague as it suffocated her alive. She would die here, with the rest of them, in the hellfire that she’d created.
She deserved to – after everything that she’d done in this war. After all the lives that she’d taken.
But she didn’t regret it.
She’d do it all again.
Her only regret was Harry… leaving him alone to finish what they’d started and never getting to say goodbye.
But at least the Northern front was sealed. At least the inferi were gone and the school stood a fighting chance. At least Harry would be safe – he would live. She knew he would never forgive her for this – but he could still finish this war. He could destroy the diadem; he could work with the others and he could kill Voldemort on his own. She knew he could. He had to.
And she had to believe that he could.
Because as the flames crept up her arm and burned into her lungs – she knew that she wouldn’t be joining him.
This chapter is dedicated to Athena.
Your live reacts to my chapters brought me so much joy I could hardly even handle it. Thank you for reading, thank you for doing that, and thank you for being such a kind and wonderful person. I’m truly glad to have met you and I am so thankful that you joined the discord and have graced us with your beautiful presence.
-x-x
Despite this not being a Hermione/Harry POV chapter, I recommend that you read it. With all characters now operating on the same timeline, each and every chapter will contain plot critical information regardless of POV.
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May 1, 1998
Hogwarts, 9:49 pm
Minerva McGonagall had never been one to panic. She’d never allowed her emotions to cloud her judgement – despite the fact that she had been sorted into Gryffindor which was known for being illogically brash at times she always maintained her composure. It was the one thing about her that had never aligned with her house. She had always been in control. She had always been logical. She had always acted based on the information before her and she often removed her emotions from the situation when making a decision.
Which was, likely, why she and the love of her life Dougal McGregor had never been anything more than friends.
As a muggle sheep farmer, the man had been simple – content to live out his life in the Scottish countryside near her childhood family home. He’d never had any big dreams – which in a way, Minerva had always admired. He was kind, caring, and thoughtful – and she had been, for a long time, head over heels in love with the man. They’d met after she'd graduated Hogwarts before she moved to London to start her career. They’d always been very fond of one another, they argued fiercely and had incredibly clever conversations about the world – and by the end of the summer he’d proposed to her on a ploughed field and she’d accepted.
Yet nothing had become of it and in the end, she’d broken off the engagement and moved to London when autumn came. She’d broken her own heart that day and at the time she wasn’t sure if she would ever recover from it – but she’d feared that if she married him, she would have to give up on her life’s ambitions. She’d worried that she would become like her own mother and be nothing but a housewife. She worried that she would have to leave her position within the Department of Magical Law Enforcement in order to marry him, and she would never have the career or the life that she’d wanted.
Perhaps, had she been born in a later decade, things would have been different. But back then the expectations were traditional if not outright old-fashioned. The societal pressures were different, and it was harder to maintain a career while being a wife. She’d always known that Dougal wanted a family – which she never would have been able to give him while pursuing her own goals. There was a very high chance that any children they would have had together would have been magical – and she knew from experience (her father being a muggle) that it was dangerous to leave a magical child at home alone with a muggle parent. Love her as he did, her father had not been capable of dealing with her magical outbursts and as a result, her mother had had to ensure that she was always there.
This would have, undoubtedly, meant that Minerva would need to give up her career and dreams to start a life with Dougal.
So, she’d pushed those emotions away. She’d followed her mind instead of her heart and she’d pursued a productive and thoroughly fulfilling life at the Ministry – and in the end, Dougal had married the daughter of another farmer. Yet even though the news had devastated her, and even though she had cried – she didn’t regret it. Her heart had wanted the life she had chosen and her career just as much as it had wanted Dougal so even now, she refused to think that she’d made a mistake.
In the end, she’d married Elphinstone Urquart, a pureblood whom she’d known for several years. She’d always liked the man. They’d met at the Ministry and they’d gotten along amicably. The two of them had had a lot in common and being with him had been easy. Though she had not been able to accept Elphinstone’s proposal until after Dougal died because somehow it had felt like a betrayal – it had felt like a lie. She’d turned the poor man down several times over the years and even after she finally did accept, and they’d married, she’d always known that she was not head over heels in love with him. She cared for him – she truly did, she loved him in her own way, but she knew that a part of her heart would always belong to Dougal.
Despite this – they’d had a happy marriage for two years until Elphinstone tragically died of poison from a bite wound from one of those damn Venomous Tentaculas. How the hell Pomona could adore those plants like she did Minerva would never understand. She hated those stupid plants with a seething quiet vengeance even if she never did speak of it and pretended to be comfortable in the greenhouses. After Elphinstone’s death, she’d sold their small home in Hogsmeade and permanently returned to live at the castle full-time while burying herself in her work. She never left, save for the summer when she returned to her family home in Northern Scotland which she had inherited upon her parents’ deaths – but her visits seemed to be growing shorter and shorter as the years went by and she was finding it more and more impractical to move between locations.
It was, yet again, just another example of how she put her brain before anything else. How she always opted to pursue the practical and the sensible option over anything else – and moving between two homes for just a few short months was, in her opinion, rather impractical.
Even as a small child she had been abnormally severe and serious. Her parents used to tease her about it and tell her to lighten up. Her brothers used to hate it because she never let them get away with any nonsense and it had always left her as somewhat of an outcast among her peers.
Had there been moments in her life when she had been brash, or acted out in bravery when the situation called for it in order to do what needed to be done? Yes, absolutely. But even when Minerva was behaving like a traditional Gryffindor, she never lost her control and she always thought first before acting. She supposed it was the ‘Ravenclaw’ part of her – she had been a two-way hatstall after all. She’d sat on that dammed stool for over five minutes before the stupid dusty topper had made its decision – and she’d come very close to ending up with the ‘witty’ students.
She often scoffed when she thought about it. She’d never been a big fan of sorting the students into houses based on their most dominant personality trait or grouping such similar students together for seven years. The concept was ludicrous and archaic when one thought about it because no person was only one set of traits – people were complicated and displayed a wide-ranging array of personality components that were complex and layered.
She was proof enough of that. She may be brave, she may be daring and chivalrous, and she may have nerves of steel and courage in her heart, but she was also rational, logical, witty, loyal and even at times when the situation called for it – she was cunning, ambitious, determined and resourceful. She was, just like everyone else, a collection of many different personality traits that came from each of the four Hogwarts houses. But unlike most of her peers, she had not tried to squash out the ones that did not align with her school colours.
She had graduated top of her class, getting nearly all O’s across her OWLs and NEWTs and she’d even been Prefect and Head Girl. She’d defied the academic expectations of her house all while playing Quidditch, becoming an Animagus and maintaining her cool composure and serious if not slightly stern external appearance.
But it was that seriousness and that stern-faced approach to reality that had led her to become one of the best Head of Houses that Hogwarts had ever seen. It was that combination of all of her personality traits working in harmony that had enabled her to become so tremendously successful. She’d been the winner of the Transfiguration Today Most Promising Newcomer award, she’d worked at the Ministry of Magic, excelled and been given a prestigious promotion. She’d turned it down to return home to Scotland and become a professor but then she’d had a long and successful teaching career at Hogwarts.
She’d taught thousands of students; she’d dealt with any and all issues imaginable including fighting through the first wizarding war and dealing with all the shenanigans that the Weasley twins caused. Then she’d spent the last seven years since Harry Potter showed up protecting the boy while the school became a hot spot for Death Eaters, trouble and absolute chaos. And through it all, she had remained confident, strong, calm and unshaken. She had kept her composure and she had never faltered – not even once. She’d remained, as she always was, confident in her ability to do what needed to be done without panicking and she’d managed to successfully keep her emotions from getting in the way of her logic.
That was, at least, up until now.
In all 62 years of her life never had she been this shaken – never had she been this terrified, this confused, this exhausted and this utterly out of control. For the first time ever, she didn’t know what to do. As her feet raced across the stone floors of Hogwarts and she rushed towards the main courtyard she was faced with the very real and very horrifying truth that she was afraid.
No, she thought as she turned the last corner and all but sprinted toward the main door of the castle. She could hear the students rushing through the halls around her. She could hear the older ones who were part of Dumbledore’s Army calling out directions as they tried to separate the students into two groups for the evacuation – sending the youngest and the injured with Sybill while the remainder were sent to the kitchens. I’m not afraid – I’m terrified.
She wasn’t prepared.
They weren’t prepared.
She’d staged the coup with Filius and the other professors after what had happened that morning in the hallway because it had been the final straw. It had been what had broken the metaphorical camel’s back. She and Filius had been talking for months about what to do. Planning, evaluating, coming up with idea after idea while trying to figure out how the hell they could regain control of the castle while ensuring that no harm came to the students. They had an endless number of schemes, but they’d never been able to figure out what to do about Severus.
She wasn’t afraid to hurt the man or attack him – that wasn’t the issue.
The issue was whether or not they would be able to do it successfully before he called in reinforcements or summoned You Know Who to the castle. That had always been the crux of the situation, the one thing that had prevented them from taking action and the one thing that the students had not understood. She knew that her students were frustrated with them. She knew that they felt abandoned, alone, and scared – they felt like the professors had done nothing to help them and that they were enduring torture at the hands of Severus and the Carrows because of her inaction.
But that wasn’t the truth – well it was, but she and the other professors hadn’t remained silent and complacent for no reason. They’d remained silent and complacent because they’d had no choice. They had nowhere to go. They had nowhere to evacuate the students and the second she, Filius or the other professors were gone there would be no one left to protect the students, so they had to be careful about what actions they took especially since Severus had ransacked the school’s supplies and left them high and dry on medical potions. Taking out the Carrows was never an issue – between her and Filius they could easily take them both down and permanently resolve the situation.
But again, that hadn’t been the issue. The issue was and always had been, Severus Snape.
The man was dangerous. He could outduel her, and she knew it. The man could have outduelled Filius too even though the little wizard would never admit it. On top of that, the man was watching everything going on in the castle like a hawk. He had full control of the school and the wards and he could shut them down at any time and let in whomever he wanted. If she and Filius had attacked the Carrows outright Severus would have just called in more people. They would have been quickly overwhelmed and Merlin forbid he actually did summon You Know Who directly – everyone in the castle would be in grave danger and there would be nothing that she could do to protect them.
So, they’d been biding their time.
They’d been doing what they could do to help quietly, and they’d been communicating with Arthur and the Order through the Weasley supply shipments. They’d continued to make countless plans for every imaginable situation. They had been hoping, patiently enduring and waiting for the Order to come up with some way of helping them and some way of getting them out – but after months of no progress and when the hallway had erupted into chaos that morning, she knew they had run out of time. They couldn’t wait any longer.
Because Maisey had died.
Poppy had done everything that she could for the girl but the simultaneous rounds of cruciatus that the Carrows had thrown at her had proven to be too much for her heart and the organ had failed. Minerva had stood there by her bed, her hand gripping the girl’s pale lifeless one as something terrible and sickening shifted through her heart.
She had failed.
They had all failed.
It was a professor’s duty and obligation to protect their students and she had entirely failed. Countless numbers of them had been injured that year but now one had died on her watch because of their inaction and because they’d failed to come up with a viable plan that would work. Even now, hours later as she pushed open the doors to the main courtyard and ran outside, she could still see the girl’s lifeless eyes in her mind. She could still feel the nauseating pain that had twisted in her stomach and it was that feeling, along with knowing that the Order was not coming – that had led her to Filius’ office eight hours ago, where she told the small wizard that they had to take action tonight.
So, they’d executed the only plan that they both deemed feasible. Filius went after the Carrows while she went after Severus. The goal had been to get the students safely from the room while Rolanda, Pomona, Aurora and Horace all waited for the signal to come and aid her and Filius in taking out Severus and starting an evacuation into the forest. She had been prepared to fight for her life, prepared to die to get her students away from that man and she’d been ready for whatever consequences came as a result of their coup.
But a small part of her – a tiny little part that she wasn’t sure she trusted, wasn’t sure if they would need to fight him at all. Because the truth was, she wasn’t sure who the bloody hell Severus was any more or what the hell he was doing. As of 10 am that morning she’d been set to kill him – she’d been set to take him out completely and ready to unleash everything that she had on him. But when she stopped by the Hospital Wing that afternoon to alert Poppy of their plans – the healer had pulled her into her office, layered it with silencing charms and then whispered in a barely audible voice to her that Miss Pelton was in a magically induced coma.
She’d been there for nearly a week unconscious and unmoving. They’d originally thought that the girl had been cursed by the Carrows during her detention – and when Severus had brought her unconscious body to the Hospital Wing last week, Minerva had had to clutch at her robes to keep herself from attacking the man right then and there. The way his lifeless dead eyes had seemed entirely unphased as he’d unceremoniously dropped the levitated girl onto one of the beds and then turned away without a care had made her sick to her stomach and boiling with rage. She and Poppy had spent several evenings trying to figure out what was wrong with Miss Pelton – trying different diagnostic charms and remedies to no luck.
Poppy was working with limited supplies which made things even more difficult and no matter what they did the girl wouldn’t wake. She remained unresponsive and pale – her body barely functioning and her brain activity so low it was deeply concerning. They honestly weren’t sure what had happened to her and they couldn’t just ask Severus about it because the man would never tell them – but – as it turned out, that afternoon Poppy had finally discovered what was wrong.
Nothing was wrong.
They’d spent all their time testing for curses and looking for injuries that it had never even occurred to the healer to consider looking to see if the girl was alright. So, when the thought finally struck Poppy that afternoon, she’d completed a very complex set of old diagnostics which were no longer in practice and she’d determined that the girl was, in fact, entirely fine.
She was literally just unconscious.
Someone had placed her in a magical coma and drastically slowed down her metabolism. It was so low Miss Pelton could, hypothetically, stay that way nearly indefinitely. And Poppy had specifically noted during their urgently whispered conversation that it had to have been done intentionally and there was no possible way it had been a mistake.
And – it had been done on purpose, because magical comas do not show up on current diagnostics.
Healers had long ago abandoned the practice of using magical comas in favour of potions because potions did show up on diagnostics and thus made it easier to monitor the patient and keep track of what magic was affecting their body during the healing process. Potions made it possible for multiple healers to step in and treat patients without keeping lengthy paper charts or documentation. Potions required less care; they were easier to use and they had significantly less risk associated with them. Had Miss Pelton been placed under stasis or given any sort of potion it would have been obvious to Poppy the second the girl came in – but this level of magic was not only archaic and had been out of practice for decades because it was dangerous and required an immense amount of skill and knowledge.
So, when Minerva had confronted Severus in the hallway tonight, she had faltered – because in the back of her mind, way, way deep down she felt like she knew. The only person in this school who might be capable of putting someone in a magical coma aside from Poppy – was Severus Snape. And she didn’t know what to do with that information.
She had meant to attack him outright without any hesitation the second that she saw him but something about the way he was looking at her and that nagging bit of information that Poppy had given to her had stopped her from doing so. It had made her wonder if maybe there was more going on – it had been what had driven her to ask him one last and final time if she needed to kill him. But in the end – it hadn’t mattered. She’d attacked him nearly in full once Potter and Miss Granger showed up because Severus had raised his wand and she’d refused to allow another student to die on her watch. She’d refused to go easy on him when Miss Weasley, Miss Bones, Longbottom and Creevey were there and were liable to get hurt.
But now, as she made her way out to the center of the main courtyard to where the Creevey boy was standing – she was once again entirely lost.
Why had Severus reinstated her Deputy Headmistress Status?
She didn’t give a flying bandicoot’s bottom what Filius said, she refused to believe that the castle had decided to void his Headmaster status. Yes, the castle had its own magic, and in many ways, the building had become nearly sentient over the centuries, but she just could not accept that it was the sole explanation for what had happened. Though really – at this point she had no idea what had happened and to her shock, based on what they had said, it seemed like Miss Granger and Potter had their doubts regarding Severus as well. Given the extensive history between that man and those children, she would have assumed that they would fight like cats and dogs the second an opportunity was granted to them, and yet they hadn’t – and Miss Granger had seemed almost displeased that they’d resorted to fighting at all.
Minerva was confused – to say the least.
Exhausted. Scared out of her wits and absolutely terrified that her students were going to die tonight.
She’d been barely keeping herself together as it was and then the appearance of Potter and Miss Granger and the battle in the hallway had positively shaken her. She had no idea who the bloody hell those two people were, but they had not been the Potter or Granger that she knew. Then the discussion – the things they’d said and the fact that they were going to war – she swallowed hard. Shaking her head and forcing herself to push down the emotional wave that was building in her chest. She was already compromised physically after months of unbearable stress; she could not allow herself to be compromised mentally as well – even though she knew she was. She knew that she was vulnerable right now but despite that, she still had to do her best.
She could feel the strange man that Miss Granger had said was named Nasir following along behind her rapid pace as she closed the distance toward Creevey. It hadn’t taken him long to find and catch up to her in the hallway after lingering behind with Miss Granger when the separated ways – even despite the fact that she’d taken a shortcut and gone down a small side hallway to quickly activate a set of armour to send down to the greenhouses. How he knew which way to go to find her, she wasn’t sure. There was something about him that made her uneasy. Something about him that set her teeth on edge and made her skin prickle uncomfortably.
She couldn’t place what it was, but she had little time to question it – she just had to trust that Miss Granger knew what she was doing, and that Potter wouldn’t have brought the man along with them if he could not be trusted. This man was, allegedly anyways, a friend of Shacklebolt and a member of the Order after all. So, she pushed aside her worry and pulled out her wand as the tall mysterious man spoke.
“I’ll start warding the area,” his deep voice seemed to reverberate around them as he quickly shifted off to her left and began charming the pillars and setting up defences.
He clearly suspected, as did she, that they would not be able to hold the Eastern grounds and that You Know Who and his forces might make it into the courtyard. When and if the breach happened, their attackers would be funnelled through the large stone space, but the courtyard was too open to provide much of an advantage. So, he was strategically selecting pillars to manipulate, closing gaps while opening others and setting up protective wards. She forced her eyes away from the man as she came to stop before the blonde boy who was waiting for her in the center.
“Creevey,” Minerva said briskly, her steady voice hiding the turmoil that was festering inside her chest. “Has anyone moved to the North-Eastern front yet?”
“Yes, Professor,” the boy nodded in reply, his eyes shining with nervousness as he glanced up at her. “I was just waiting here for you before heading there myself – Lavender is already down there with Terry Boot, Ernie Macmillan and a bunch of others. They’re all disillusioned like that man suggested and they’re working to try and set-up some traps and defences along the open grounds.”
“Good,” McGonagall nodded, biting back the sickness in her throat at the idea of allowing her students to participate. If she could, she would send them all to the kitchens – but she wasn’t naive enough to think that she and the other professors could do this alone.
“Neville messaged me too,” Creevey added quickly, his wand twitching in his hand. “He and Professor Sprout are almost at the greenhouses – he managed to find Professor Slughorn, so he brought him along with Parvati, Anthony Goldstein and Michael Corner.”
Minerva clenched her jaw. It was indeed the right selection of students to send to the greenhouses based on their Herbology capabilities, but Anthony Goldstein had only just been released from the Hospital Wing after losing a finger and being hit with a nasty hex from the Carrows that affected his lungs. She didn’t like the idea of him being on the front lines, but she also didn’t really have a choice.
“Very good,” Minerva said tightly, nodding to the nervous boy. He’d always been quiet; he’d always followed the lead of others and yet here he was directing people and doing his best to be brave.
“Shacklebolt has already sent some members of the Order toward the greenhouses – they should be there soon,” Minerva continued quickly. “Go down to the front grounds and tell Miss Brown and the others to pull back as close to the castle as they can. Add tripping jinxes, false ground confundments, proximity hexes, and anything else you can think of that might slow attackers down as they cut across the lawn. Get Macmillan to transfigure any spare junk he has in his pockets into objects large enough to provide cover and scatter them across the grounds right before the slope on the castle side. I’ll send the statues down in a moment but keep an eye out for the Order and make sure that they don’t run into any of the stuff that you’ve set up – they should be making their way up the grounds now from the main path. Go – work as quickly as you can.”
The Creevey boy nodded, turning on his heel and racing across the courtyard towards the North-Eastern grounds as McGonagall glanced back to the tall, tanned man who had just finished setting up what looked to be a rather nasty set of time-delayed hexes across the far side of the courtyard and she cleared her throat.
“Mipsy!” McGonagall called, her eyes immediately darting to the small house elf that appeared to her right with a faint crack.
“Yes missus Deputy Headmistress, what can Mipsy be doing for you?” the small elf asked as she bowed low to the ground.
“Did you alert the staff of what’s going on? Where are Rolanda, Aurora and Septima?” McGonagall asked quickly, her eyes shifting to look back at the doors of the school as they opened loudly. A few upper year students had burst out, cutting across the courtyard and darting in the same direction that Creevey had run – no doubt following the directions they’d received through their DA coins.
“Yes missus,” the elf nodded, her eyes nervously shifting to watch the students run by. It was clear she was uncomfortable with the commotion and was unsure of what was going on. “Mipsy has been telling them – they is coming. There was trouble by the Slytherin house, and some got away. They was looking for them but Mipsy told them to come here instead as you asked.”
“Good,” Minerva said as her mouth tightened into a thin line. She wasn’t surprised about the news – she’d figured that sealing the Slytherins into their dormitory wouldn’t be a clean or simple task, but she had been hoping to avoid having any Slytherins wandering free throughout the castle. The last thing they needed was attackers inside the school while they were being bombarded externally. “Which Slytherins got away?”
“Mipsy is not knowing missus,” the elf said quietly, her large brown eyes turning back to look at Minerva. “Mipsy thinks it was the Malfoy boy and some of his friends but Mipsy did not see them – Mipsy only heard the broom lady cursing – she was saying awful things about it.”
“I bet she was,” Minerva muttered biting back a sigh.
Rolanda had always had a mouth on her and the woman barely managed to contain it while acting as the Quidditch referee and flying instructor. Now that the school was falling apart under this chaos it was not surprising that the woman had dropped her filter and was speaking freely without concern for the ears of the students around her. Her eyes shifted to see that the tall man was now making his way back towards her – apparently done setting up the defences around the main entrance to the school. His dark eyes were focused, empty and cold – and she noted that his wand seemed to be held abnormally loose in his left hand, while his right hand was entirely missing.
“Alright,” Minerva said quietly, letting out another breath. She forced her mind to refocus as she fixed the elf with a firm and rather stern look. “I’ll direct them once they get here – now I need you to go and help Sybill with the evacuation. Mipsy, I need you and the other elves to help her get as many of the students out through the tunnel to Hogsmeade as possible – it is not safe here anymore. We are under attack and the school and the students are in grave danger. If we do not get them out people are going to die – do you understand?”
The elf nodded slowly, but her eyes looked confused and wary as she glanced between Minerva and Nasir’s rapidly approaching figure.
“Mipsy,” Minerva said quietly, bending slightly at the waist and dropping her tone to a low and serious note. “I need you to apparate the students out of the school and I need you to get the other elves to help you. Take them from the kitchens and apparate them to the Order safe house – do you understand? Take as many as you can, make as many trips as it takes – get them out of the school.”
Mipsy seemed to hesitate, her brow creasing as her head shook slightly.
“Taking students out of Hogwarts is against the rules missus,” Mipsy said slowly, her gaze nervously glancing to Nasir once more as he came to a stop just a few feet away. “Mipsy mustn’t be doin’ that without the Headmaster’s permission.”
Minerva felt her jaw tighten. She could already sense that this was a lost cause, and that the elf was never going to concede. Yet in many ways it wasn’t even Mipsy’s fault – the house elves might be sworn to aid the school and serve the students and professors, but they were also governed by many layers of convoluted rules and magic that had been cast and established throughout the ages. Once the attack started the house elves might change their tune but even then, they were faced with a stalemate. There was no way for them to win in this situation.
If they apparated the students out of the school, they were breaching their obligation and breaking rules they were sworn to uphold – but if they didn’t aid the students and allowed them to stay in the kitchens during an attack they were also breaching their obligation. It was a lose-lose situation and in all honesty, Minerva expected that the majority of the elves would just stand around in the kitchen bashing their heads against any surface available to them as they struggled to deal with the conundrum. It was very much like tugging the poor creatures in two directions.
No matter how she looked at it – she did not see this ending well.
“The Headmaster has abandoned this school, Mipsy,” Minerva said quietly, her low voice nearly a whisper as she bent lower to look the elf right in the eyes. She knew nothing she said would matter at this point, but she had to at least try before sending the elf away to go help Sybill. “He is helping lead the attack on this school. I don’t care what the rules say – just like the professors it is your duty to protect the students – so protect them. Take them to the safe house that I told you about – or evacuate them to the Northern coast – or bring them to my family home – I don’t care where you take them, just get them out of this school. Please, Mipsy – please. I am asking you to do this for me because I need your help.”
Mipsy’s ears drooped, her warm brown eyes creasing as her mouth fell open and she struggled to respond. There was a small tremble running through her body – as if she was struggling physically just as much as she was mentally to decide what to do.
“Missus,” Mipsy started slowly, her head shaking as her tiny hands shook at her sides. “Mipsy can’t –“
But her voice cut off as she was interrupted.
“You should listen to your Deputy Headmistress, Mipsy,” Nasir’s deep baritone cut through the air and the small elf’s mouth snapped shut. She turned to look up at him, her body shuddering as her eyes narrowed at him almost suspiciously. “Do as she says. Minerva–“
Nasir turned to look at her, his dark eyes showing not a single hint of emotion as he took a step towards her.
“We can’t waste any more time – activate the remaining armour and the statues,” Nasir said as he nodded toward the main castle door. “We need to start the shield, now.”
Minerva’s eyes narrowed, her jaw clenching as she stood to her full height once more and nodded. She could feel her skin prickling, an uneasy feeling sliding through her body at the man’s flat tone as he continued to look entirely unphased by the situation. She didn’t like it – and yet she could not argue with him because he wasn’t wrong. Talking to Mipsy any longer was a waste of time and they had to get the shield started. Biting her tongue, she glanced back down to the small elf who was still watching the tall man uneasily, her eyes were still narrowed but now her body seemed tight with tension.
“Mipsy, go assist Sybill with evacuating the students,” Minerva said, her voice flat and even once more. “Let me know when they’re out and then apparate the remaining students out to safety if you can.”
The small elf nodded, the crack of her disapparation ringing out across the courtyard as Minerva rapidly made her way back up to the castle. She tried to ignore the sickness curling in her stomach as she opened the doors and raised her wand – aiming it at the large stone statues that had remained motionless and silent for the last 600 years.
As Deputy Headmistress she had been required to learn this spell. As Head of the Transfiguration Department – she was one of the few Deputy Headmasters in the history of Hogwarts that was actually capable of performing it. But never in her 42 years of teaching had she ever expected to see this spell used – let alone, to be the one to cast it. A nervous excitement fluttered through her veins. Her heart was nearly pounding in her chest as she inhaled deeply and executed the series of complex wand movements with flawless precision.
“Piertotum Locomotor!”
A loud groan rumbled through the castle. An eerie crack rattled through the air as the walls practically rippled and the castle seemed to shudder in response to her magic.
She could hardly breathe. She couldn’t move. She watched in awe as the massive stone statues that were embedded into the wall of the main entrance shifted. Each one of them breaking loose from their station, their bodies moving robotically – the noise of if nearly deafening as they were forced to life and began dropping to the ground one by one.
It was like nothing she had ever seen. The ground shook beneath her feet, the vibrations shaking up her legs and through her chest as they jumped from the wall – axes, pikes and swords in hand. She’d seen them nearly every day since she first started teaching and yet somehow – they were so much larger than she’d realized. They towered above her, their thick bodies shifting to make room for the others that dropped down behind them as the calm ambience that had always seemed to encompass Hogwarts fizzled out like a fire doused with water and was replaced with something dangerous, strong and defiant.
“Hogwarts is threatened!” she felt the words leaving her mouth before she’d even realized she was speaking them. Her body growing tense with resolve as something deep and unfaltering smothered over the nervousness that was spinning in her stomach. Her head lifted higher, her voice became steady and unwavering as she shouted her next words and gripped her wand tighter. “Man the Eastern front, protect us, do your duty to our school!”
-x-x-
May 1, 1998
Hogwarts, 9:54 pm
His legs ached.
His lungs burned.
Sharp pains were shooting through his muscles all the way from his shoulders down to the very tips of his toes – but he ignored them and continued to force his legs to move faster than they’d ever moved before as he dashed up the grounds of the castle surrounded by the other members of the Order. He could barely see the group that had split off to his right only moments ago – Luna, Dean and Charlie, they’d taken off at a rapid and relentless sprint the second that Shacklebolt directed them to go to the Northern front to aid with the bridge. How they could move that fast he would never know. He’d expected it from his son Charlie – the boy had always been in incredible shape – but he’d had no idea that the young blonde and her schoolmate Dean were capable of such speeds especially after everything that they’d been through in the last month.
Arthur’s eyes shifted to the left as his lungs puffed painfully and he watched as Fleur and Bill darted into the darkness across the grounds in the opposite direction. They’d been sent to the greenhouses and would be meeting Neville Longbottom and Pomona Sprout, according to Minerva’s note. He hated that they were splitting up – he could feel his heart aching as he watched his oldest son and his wife fading into the darkness, moving just as quickly as those that had gone to the bridge. But he knew they had no choice.
He knew that Shacklebolt didn’t like this any better than he did and that the decisions of who went where had to be made quickly with little room for debate. They’d been bombarded with messages from Minerva only moments after they crossed through the gates of Hogwarts and began running up the main path across the grounds towards the school. The witch had rapidly informed them of the defence strategy – taking full advantage of the tag that Hermione had clearly given to her to coordinate and issue directions to them. Which made Arthur wonder where Hermione was and whether or not she was with the older witch – but regardless of that detail Shacklebolt had taken the lead for their group and responded. The man had read the messages as they ran and had instantly split the group into three clean sections – then sent them off to their destinations.
He’d felt Mrs. Weasley tense at his side when their pace slowed while Shacklebolt called out the orders – he knew without looking at her that his wife did not like the plan. She did not like the idea of her children being spread out across the school grounds away from her watchful eye. Yet, surprisingly, the woman had held her tongue and had watched silently as her children darted off while they and the rest of the group increased their speed once more and continued to run straight up the middle path directly to the main courtyard.
He wasn’t foolish enough to think that her silence was acceptance or any form of agreement. They’d been together long enough for him to know that his wife was on the verge of blowing her top. He knew damn well that she was wavering on the edge of an outburst and it was all she could do to contain it as they all sped up yet again and closed the remaining distance to the school. He just hoped to Merlin that she could keep herself controlled because now was not the time to lose focus or throw a fit.
And to be honest – he wasn’t sure if he would have the patience to deal with her calmly if she did lose it. Love her as he did – there were times when her antics got under his skin too and sometimes it was as if the woman forgot that their children were his too. She forgot that he was struggling just as much as she was. Just because he didn’t yell or get angry, and just because he accepted Shacklebolt’s directions didn’t mean that he liked this. It didn’t mean that he wanted his kids to fight in this war. He hated this just as much as she did. He just knew that losing his mind over it wasn’t going to help anyone – and it wasn’t going to change anything. So, he bore his anguish in silence.
He just hoped that his wife managed to keep a level head and keep her mind focused until this was over – because Merlin forbid she lost it and made him lose his composure too.
He inhaled sharply, his lungs screaming in pain as Shacklebolt’s voice rang out once more.
“Once we get to the courtyard the main priority is getting the shield set up!” Shacklebolt called as he continued to lead the pack of them across the open grounds. They were halfway across the low point and he could hear his wife and Remus panting at his sides as Ron and the twins easily ran ahead of them just behind Shacklebolt. “Second to that is defences and scattering across this open front!”
No one responded, but Arthur could see them all nodding as they continued to push forward at their ridiculously fast pace. They’d only just neared the start of the incline towards the school when a voice called out and they all immediately slowed.
“WAIT!!”
The voice was female, and Arthur felt his grip instinctively tighten on his wand before his mind finally placed it and he realized that he recognized it. A girl flickered into view as she came sprinting down the slope towards them. Her long blonde hair bounced in a sloppy ponytail as she jumped and shifted across the ground as if avoiding specific locations.
“Wait!” she called out again, panting as she rapidly ran toward them. She held up her hand as if trying to physically stop them. “Stop – hold on!”
They slowed to a stop as she quickly closed the distance.
“We set-up traps and hexes!” she called out as she closed the final space between them and slowed to a stop just a few feet before them. She inhaled sharply, gesturing over her shoulder with her thumb. “And Ernie and Colin are working on cover.”
Arthur glanced past the girl and saw two boys who were now visible rapidly transfiguring what looked to be books and quills and other small objects into large blocks of wood and stone. They were carefully setting them out across the incline to act as cover.
“Lavender?” Ron’s voice came out hoarse even though he wasn’t out of breath. Arthur could see his son’s face creasing with surprise and concern as he looked at his ex-girlfriend and took in her worn and weary-looking frame.
“Hey Ron,” the girl said almost awkwardly, giving him a tight smile as her breathing regulated. Her eyes darted to the twins and she greeted them quickly with a nod before turning back to Shacklebolt.
She didn’t look like how Arthur remembered her. On the one occasion that Arthur had met the girl, she had been bubbly and animated – so much so that it had bordered on the edge of annoying. Yet now the girl just looked tired and there was something serious and detached in her eyes. In the low light he could see a thin scar that dragged down her jaw from ear to chin and another that looked oddly like text peeking out from the collar of her shirt.
“Mr. Shacklebolt,” Lavender said quickly, her eyes growing even more serious as she spoke. “Professor McGonagall sent us down here to get started – the statues are on their way. We just started setting up the defences, but she said she’ll need help with the shield. Here follow me – we marked a path through the traps with a revealing charm so if you get stuck down here you can use it to find your way out. Watch your feet.”
The girl turned and quickly began darting her way across the last of the low point and back up the incline towards the boys. They followed along behind her, naturally shifting into a single file as they raced up the gentle hill and carefully followed each step she took.
“We’re trying to avoid using the reveal though because we don’t want anyone else to see the path through – this area is already heavily layered with a bunch of spells,” Lavender said as she led them to the left and then back to the right as she gestured to the grounds around them. “And stay away from the Southern side past the low point there –”
Lavender pointed over her shoulder to a particularly low section of ground on her left.
“I added a bunch of tripping jinxes and tied them to a collection of your fireworks,” she glanced back at the twins, a small if not slightly nervous smile on her lips. “You don’t want to be in there when it goes off.”
“Is McGonagall in the courtyard?” Shacklebolt asked as they shifted up the hill and neared the boys and a collection of other students who had all removed their disillusionments so they were visible to the Order. They were all working in tense silence, setting up cover and making their way down to the low point to add more traps. Arthur felt Mrs. Weasley tense at his side once more, and he knew that she was probably physically biting her tongue to refrain from lashing out in protest at the idea of the students being involved.
“Yes,” Lavender nodded, pointing up the path that led to the courtyard. “She was just getting the statues and–“
There was a loud rumble. A groan shook through the earth and it was as if Hogwarts itself had just shifted. Almost immediately afterwards the sound of heavy footsteps pounding against stone filled the air and Arthur felt his heart rate increase as rows upon rows of stone soldiers came into view, marching their way down the path towards the Eastern front.
“It looks like she got them,” Lavender said almost breathlessly as she looked up at the statues that were making their way towards them. She seemed to be lost to the image of them, her eyes wide with awe but sparkling with fear.
“Indeed, she did,” Shacklebolt nodded before turning back to Lavender once more. The man inhaled quickly, swallowing once before carefully placing a hand on the girl’s shoulder and squeezing it gently. The contact seemed to pull the girl from her daze, and she met his warm but serious stare with focused eyes once more. “You did good Miss Brown – you and the others, you’ve done well. Keep working on the defences and continue setting up cover. While you work – I want you to get a count of how many students are down here and if possible, their names as well, okay?”
Lavender nodded, forcing herself to refocus as Shacklebolt dropped his grip on her shoulder and turned back to the group. His eyes scanned over them rapidly, and Arthur knew he was calculating – quickly weighing the skills of everyone there and deciding their next move. How the man could do it so swiftly was beyond him, but before Arthur could even blink the man had opened his mouth once more and was giving directions.
“Remus, Ron, Fred, George – you all stay here. Lay down as many defences as you can and help them get cover set up because we’re going to need it. Remus, you take the lead at the front with the statues. Fred and George – you go with him, do what he says and follow his instructions. Ron – you, Lavender and the other students will take the rear behind the secondary set of cover halfway up the incline once the defences are set. If you have time, add a third row of cover for the students who are least prepared. You’ll provide back-up and long-range support only. Stay disillusioned no matter what as that will give you an advantage. Don’t forget to shield and move around to prevent them from figuring out where you and the attacks are coming from. Do not engage on the front line unless Remus directs you to do so – and if our enemy breaks through and makes it beyond the low point and past the first line of cover you fall back to the courtyard with the rest of the students, understood? We can use it as a pinch point if necessary – it’s not ideal, but it will work.
“Arthur, Molly,” Shacklebolt said as he turned to look at them once Ron and Lavender had nodded in understanding, the man’s eyes seemed to harden and then he turned on his heel and gestured for them to follow. “You’re with me – we need to get the shield set-up and you both know the spell. Once that is established, we will split across the Eastern front to help the others – let’s go.”
Arthur didn’t hesitate. His body moved after Shacklebolt and he didn’t even pause as he walked past his sons. There was no time for goodbyes. No time to say all the things that he wanted to, and he knew if he started, he would never be able to stop. So he simply nodded to them as he passed, his hand quickly patting each of them on the shoulder as he nodded to Remus and all but dragged Mrs. Weasley along at his side.
“Be safe,” Arthur said, his voice nearly cracking as he glanced over his shoulder at his family once more. His feet continued to carry him up the gentle incline towards the quickly approaching statues. “Be careful.”
“We will,” Fred nodded, the boy’s spine stiffening as he spoke.
“You too,” George said as he pulled a small bag from his pocket and turned to follow Remus and Ron down the hill.
Arthur nodded – his heart practically clenching in his chest as he turned back to look at the courtyard and saw two streams of gold shooting up into the air. They had already started – he couldn’t waste any time, so he tightened his grip on Mrs. Weasley’s hand and ran the rest of the way up the path behind Shacklebolt.
They shifted carefully around the stone foot soldiers, not stopping or slowing down for anything – not even when Madam Hooch, Professor Sinistra and Professor Vector all darted down the hill toward the group that they had just left. They exchanged nothing but a quick nod, running past each other like strangers on the street because there was no time for anything else.
They continued until they reached the courtyard, racing to the middle and skidding to a stop behind Shacklebolt as he paused just a few feet away from Nasir and McGonagall. They were standing in the center of the courtyard, their wands outstretched to the sky as they both muttered the protection spell and cast it up into the air. He raised his own wand, holding it high and forcing it steady.
“Protego horribilis,” Arthur whispered, watching as a gold stream burst from his wand and twirled up into the night sky above him.
He could hear Mrs. Weasley muttering the spell at his side, her wand quivering in the air beside him as Shacklebolt’s remained steady and unmoving just like Nasir’s. He focused on the spell, pushing all his energy into the magic that Dumbledore had taught them two years ago as his eyes darted around and took in his surroundings.
The school was still very much the Hogwarts that he remembered, and yet tonight it looked nothing like he could have ever imagined. The distant sound of the stone statues marching their way across the ground echoed into the night. Faint lights were coming from the South near the greenhouses where he knew that Neville, Professor Sprout, Bill, Fleur and a handful of students were preparing for war. The sky was glinting with gold, the shield was warping and expanding above them to encase the whole school. It made the place look beautiful and haunted – eerie and deadly. Shadows from the tower shifted across the ground as the golden light filled the air and the shield began to weave down to the ground like a spider’s web.
He’d never heard of a shield being cast this large and truth be told he wasn’t sure if it was going to hold. He wasn’t sure if it was going to be enough – and even if it did somehow resist the pending attack – he knew it wouldn’t last forever. He tried to ignore the sickening curl in the pit of his stomach as his eyes drifted to Minerva and he felt his heart clench with pain once more.
The woman looked old.
The creases around her eyes were deep and concerning. She was thin too – but it didn’t look healthy, it looked frail. His eyes shifted to Nasir, but the man’s expression was, like always, blank and indifferent. His eyes were focused on the sky as he quietly cast the spell and he stood impossibly still. Shacklebolt was nearly just as detached – and if not for the tight crease between his brow, Arthur would have wondered if the man was occluding in order to deal with the stress of the situation. And as his eyes shifted to Mrs. Weasley at his side, he felt himself swallow as a hard lump began to form in his throat.
The woman looked exhausted.
She looked battered.
The dark rings under his wife’s eyes had never before been so prominent and he could tell by the tight clench of her jaw she was barely holding it together. He’d just dragged her away from her children and not given her the chance to say goodbye – and that fact killed him inside. But he didn’t stop. He didn’t falter. He continued to work, muttering the spell in silent unison with the others until the golden web finally encased the entire school and formed a solid dome over their heads before flickering out of sight. He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding as he lowered his wand and Shacklebolt spoke once more.
“Bill and Fleur should have reached the greenhouses by now. I sent Charlie, Luna and Dean to assist with the North – Remus, Ron, Fred and George are on the main Eastern front,” Shacklebolt quickly summarized, his eyes glancing between Nasir and Minerva. “Have you activated all the castle defences?”
“I’ve activated everything that I can,” Minerva said tightly, her jaw clenching as she spoke. “I sent all of the armour to the greenhouses and the statues to the Eastern front along with Rolanda, Aurora and Septima.”
“Yes, we passed them on the way up,” Shacklebolt nodded as he continued to speak quickly. “What about the doors? Can we ward any closed to prevent them from getting in? And how about the students? How many did you get out?”
“I can’t do anything about the doors,” Minerva shook her head solemnly, her eyes creasing as if in pain. “But your colleague has already warded this courtyard so we can use it as a fallback. Those at the greenhouses can retreat to the southern entrance if they get overwhelmed, the armour can help hold the doors and Horace will be able to charm them closed temporarily but like everything else, it won’t last, and they cannot be sealed – only the Headmaster could manage that. Sybill is still working to get the students out through Hogsmeade with Aberforth – they’re going to return once they get the students to safety, but they won’t be able to get back in to help us unless I open the wards for them.”
“Don’t – leave them closed,” Shacklebolt shook his head again, his eyes darting across the courtyard as he examined their defensive options. “It’s too risky to open the wards again without having eyes on the borders. We have more back-up coming from the Ministry and they have the same problem – they won’t be able to get in.”
“We might be better off having them hold until the shield falls,” Nasir said evenly, his eyes flicking to Shacklebolt as the man nodded in agreement.
“Until the shield falls?” Mrs. Weasley said quietly, her voice wavering a fraction as she turned to look at Shacklebolt in confusion. McGonagall was nodding in understanding like himself, but it was clear that his wife had not yet picked up on what Nasir and Shacklebolt meant.
“Yes, Molly,” Shacklebolt said carefully, his voice becoming low once more as he glanced at her. “The shield will fall – it can’t withstand an attack forever and Voldemort is more than capable of taking it down if he feels like expending the effort. Once it fails and the wards are breached, we can have our backup along with Sybill and Aberforth land on the North-East side to flank our attackers. We might be able to use them to create a break in the wave and help drive the attack back long enough so that we can reset the shield or make a diversion to get some of the students out. Until then they hold – it’s too risky to try and get them inside the wards now. Besides, we have limited resources, and we need to be strategic – having everyone inside the shield doesn’t help us. We’re boxed in with nowhere to go and we need an exit strategy – and that means keeping people on the outside until the time is right.”
Arthur saw his wife’s face tighten at the response but Shacklebolt didn’t give her the chance to say anything else because he turned back to Nasir and Minerva, and he pushed the conversation forward once more.
“Aberforth and Sybill won’t be able to get all the students out,” Shacklebolt said knowingly, the crease around his eyes deepening as he looked at Minerva with concern. “What are you doing with the rest of them?”
“I’ve ordered them to the kitchens for safety,” Minerva said quickly. “Everyone fifth year and younger are headed there now and the Slytherins have been locked in their dormitory.”
“Fifth year and younger,” Mrs. Weasley repeated in a whisper. Her voice was low with tension and Arthur could see the gears rapidly turning in her head, but Minerva pushed on, not giving her the chance to ask the question that Arthur knew was burning in her mind.
“I have enlisted the aid of the house elves too,” Minerva continued, her brow creasing once more. “Though at this time it is unclear if they will actually provide any assistance. But as a back-up there is a door from the kitchens to the Southern lawn – it’s discrete and not many know of it. If the school is breached the students will evacuate out to the Forbidden Forest and head to the South along the path that Hagrid showed them. They’ve already stashed some supplies in the woods and Hagrid brought the thestrals to a clearing just a few miles away – they can use them to escape if the wards are opened – I’ve told them to head North to the coast and that someone would meet them there.”
“Good,” Shacklebolt nodded. His gaze shifted to Nasir and his brow furrowed. “Where are Harry and Hermione?”
“Harry is searching the castle,” Nasir said calmly, his dark eyes meeting Shacklebolt’s curious gaze. “And Hermione is leading the team to the Northern bridge. Once they have taken it out, they will come back here to support us on the Eastern front.”
“How much time does he need?” Arthur asked tightly as he met Nasir’s dark gaze. He didn’t know all the details of what the duo had come here to find, but he knew that the man before him would not have left those two alone unless it was absolutely necessary. Over the last few weeks, it had become abundantly clear to him that this man, for whatever reason, had truly decided to help them and he followed Harry and Hermione like a shadow. And Arthur knew, like the others did, that this ‘fight’ was really about biding time until Harry found what he was looking for.
“As much time as we can give him,” Nasir said quietly. There was something behind his eyes that made the nervousness in Arthur’s stomach knot with unease, but just as he opened his mouth to speak again the doors to the castle burst open and they all jerked to look toward it.
A group of nervous-looking students rushed from the main entrance. They were all gripping their wands tightly, their faces tense, their eyes flashing with fear, their ties askew and their uniforms rumpled – but they were all following the tall thin girl before them who looked the exact opposite. She was clearly leading the charge; her shoulders were set back with determination and her eyes were focused and serious. The group halted when she stopped momentarily, her dark brown eyes locking to Minerva and the other adults before she shifted once more and began making her way over to them.
“Professor Trelawney has the group assembled – they’re going through the tunnel now!” the girl called out as she quickly closed the distance towards them. The large group of students behind her loyally followed her motions, despite their obvious terror. “The rest are nearly all in the kitchens – we’re ready.”
“Thank you, Miss Patil,” Minerva said, as her voice filled with heavy sorrow. The anguished look on the woman’s face felt like a punch in the gut and he could feel Mrs. Weasley stiffen tightly at his side again as her eyes flicked over all the students. He knew that she was scanning the crowd and looking for Ginny. He couldn’t deny that he had done the same thing as the students had walked outside but he knew that his wife was also agonizing over their involvement given their obvious young age. “Good work – I’ve asked Mipsy to let me know when the students are clear.”
“Great,” Padma nodded, her feet slowing as she reached them. Her eyes flicked over the group of them before she glanced back to Minerva. “What do we need to do next? Colin messaged us and said we needed more numbers on the East so I gathered more people – should we split out across the grounds then?”
“No, Padma,” Minerva said quickly, her face pinching into a strained smile. “You and the others are to stay here in the courtyard for support.”
“Okay,” Padma nodded, her wand rolling anxiously in her hand as she glanced around them once more. Like Lavender, the girl was thin, her eyes looked exhausted and there was a visible scar on the back of her hand that ran down three of her fingers. “What about the greenhouses? Do they need any more people?”
“Shacklebolt,” Mrs. Weasley said tightly, her voice sounding hoarse. She stepped away from Arthur’s side to approach the man, but he didn’t answer her as their tags began to buzz and Arthur dropped his eyes to yank up his sleeve and read the incoming messages.
H– Voldemort is already here.
Arthur felt his blood run cold as his body stiffened and a dull ringing began to echo in his ears. He could feel his heart rate escalating as another buzz vibrated through his arm and more text scrolled across.
H– He’s in Hogsmeade and he’s ready.
H– He has already moved some of his forces
Arthur swallowed, his eyes darting up to look at Shacklebolt who was staring at the tag on his arm with a tight and pinched expression. A moment of silence lingered through the group as the students watched them curiously and then Shacklebolt moved, his index finger pressing to the tag and it vibrated once more.
S– Where?
Harry’s response came quickly, scrolling across the light green paper and filling his heart with dread.
H– Into the forest, not sure where
H– I don’t know where he is going to attack first, I just know he is ready.
Shacklebolt let out a tight exhale, his brow creasing once more as he tapped his tag again.
S– How many?
H– I couldn’t get a count, but it was a lot – well over 300
Nasir moved next, his finger calmly tapping against the tag on his forearm while his expression remained blank.
N– What does he have?
H– Minimum of snatcher, trolls and acromantula
H– But likely more
Another tight silence passed through the group as Shacklebolt glanced up toward them. His jaw was clenched tight and his eyes were radiating with a horrible mixture of pain, concern, terror and resolve. He seemed to be steeling himself – forcing himself not to panic and forcing himself to focus. Then his gaze hardened and his jaw clenched tighter as he tapped the tag once more.
S– We’ll hold them off as long as we can
Minerva moved next, her lips pursing as she too tapped the tag and sent out a response.
Mg– Get what you need Potter
H– Be careful
Arthur watched as Harry’s reply came through across the tags, and then he tugged down his sleeve like the others and forced himself to meet Shacklebolt’s gaze. Every internal fear he had was echoed in the man’s eyes. Yet Shacklebolt quickly buried it under his immense self-control and forced his face to relax. The tall man nodded, set his shoulders back and then turned to look at the group of students once more.
“Yes, Miss Patil,” Shacklebolt said calmly, ignoring the extremely tense look that Mrs. Weasley was giving him as he picked up the conversation where it had been left hanging before Harry’s message came through. “Pick the ten of you with the most herbology experience and send them to the greenhouses now – but stay inside the school at the Southern doors. You’re going to provide support for them, but you are not to engage in the fight. The rest of you will stay here in the courtyard as Minerva said – you will do exactly what we tell you to do when we tell you to do it, and you will do it without question – is that clear?”
They all nodded, their eyes glancing nervously between the adults as if trying to figure out what the hell had just transpired with the tags.
“Shacklebolt,” Mrs. Weasley repeated, her tone dangerously low. “You can’t be serious.”
“Of course I’m serious,” Shacklebolt said tightly as his eyes shifted to glance at her.
“This isn’t a game!” Mrs. Weasley all but exploded, her voice growing shrill. “They should be inside! Did you not just read the message that Harry sent!? He is here! He is already here!”
“I know,” Shacklebolt said sadly as he turned to look at Mrs. Weasley fully. His eyes were creased in pain and Arthur could see that the man was struggling. “You’re right Molly – this isn’t a game. This is war. By all accounts none of them should even be here right now, they shouldn’t be inside either – they should be a thousand miles away from this school and hiding somewhere safe.”
“Send them back inside,” Mrs. Weasley said darkly, her voice so low it was practically vibrating.
“They’re all of age, Molly,” Shacklebolt said tightly, swallowing hard as his head started to shake. “And if they’re not, they’re close enough to it. At 16 I cannot force them to do anything if they absolutely don’t want to do it. They’re considered mature minors by law and they’re allowed to make their own decisions. Merlin – if they wanted to, they could legally protest for emancipation and request to be granted early ‘of age’ status. Legally speaking, if we had the time, they could fight me on this and they could demand to be present. You know that – the laws are clear but I’m not about to argue with you or anyone else when we are minutes away from being attacked. Especially when I already know that they’re all going to fight me on it and they’re never going to listen to me.”
Shacklebolt’s jaw clenched as he inhaled deeply and let out a tense breath. The man looked like he was in agony as he turned back to face the group of students and fixed them all with a level stare.
“Voldemort is already here,” Shacklebolt said calmly, despite the obvious tension that was creeping through his body and the torment that was haunting him as he spoke his next words. “He is making his way around the school and preparing to attack us. And Mrs. Weasley here is right – this is not a game. This is, very, very real.”
Not a single student seemed to breathe as he addressed them. Aside from flinching at You Know Who’s name – they didn’t move.
“I’m going to be honest with you all,” Shacklebolt said slowly, his deep voice level as he watched to make sure that each and every student was listening to what he said. “I’m not going to sugar coat this or pretend like everything is going to be fine because the truth is – it isn’t. We are about to be attacked. It is going to be brutal; it is going to be vicious and dangerous and dark and bloody and I honestly don’t know if we’re going to be able to win this.”
Silence echoed around them as he took a small step toward the group and straightened to his full height.
“I’m not your parent or your legal guardian. I’m not going to tell you what to do tonight – you’re all either 17 or damn near close to it and the truth is I don’t have time to babysit you. I don’t have time to send you back inside and ensure that you stay there – none of us do. So I’ll say this once and I will be explicitly clear. If you don’t want to participate – go back inside now and go to the kitchens,” Shacklebolt said firmly, as each student watched him in silence. “This is not a joke. Voldemort is here and he will not stop attacking until he reaches this school and burns it to the ground. You are all in danger no matter where you go but if you choose to stay here and fight – if you choose to help – you will undoubtedly be at the most risk.
“This is a war. I cannot stress that to you enough – we are going to do everything that we can to keep you safe, but the truth is – a lot of us are going to die tonight and that includes many of you. And there is no guarantee that the kitchens will be safer. There is no guarantee that any of us are going to make it out of here alive and I cannot guarantee that I or any of your professors are going to be able to protect you. I know a lot of you are looking to us for answers, you’re looking to us for reassurance, but honestly – I don’t have any,” Shacklebolt said quietly, his hands clenching at his sides. “I can’t give you that. I can’t promise you anything. We’ve been fighting this war for years and although we have called out to our allies for aid tonight the reality is – we are largely abandoned, and we will be facing this alone. We have no idea what’s coming – your professors and I are going to do our best and I will fight to the death to protect you, but I cannot promise you that you’ll be safe. So I’m not going to lie to you or speak to you like you’re children when you’re in this whether you like it or not. If you stay here and help – there is a very good chance that it will be the last thing you ever do, and you will die.
“So if you can’t handle that – go back to the kitchens, now,” Shacklebolt ordered, his eyes hard as they traced over the group before him.
He met each of their gazes, waiting in the silence as if he half expected them to turn and flee – but not a single one of them moved. They remained motionless before him; their eyes locked to his as Mrs. Weasley’s head began to shake. She desperately looked between the group of students and the rest of the adults – urgently looking for an ally who would take her side. When it became clear that none of the students were going to leave and no one else was going to speak up to reject Shacklebolt’s words she turned back to Arthur. Her gaze was desperate and angry as she glared up at him, silently begging him to help her.
But he didn’t.
Arthur continued to stare at the students and Shacklebolt as the man finally nodded and then spoke again.
“Alright,” Shacklebolt said slowly, turning to glance at Minerva, who looked both exceptionally proud and entirely devastated by her student’s bravery. “Then sort yourselves out as I said – split the group, send ten to the South entrance by the greenhouses, and I’ll let Bill Weasley know you’re on the way. He is in charge of the Southern front and you will do exactly as he says. Those of you staying here in the courtyard are to be disillusioned – if you can’t do it yourself, get someone else to do it for you. You will stay here no matter what you hear or see until either myself, Minerva, or Arthur calls for you – is that clear?”
The group nodded again, and Arthur could feel the burning rage of his wife’s stare cutting into his temple as he refused to look at her and continued to watch Shacklebolt address the group.
“Miss Patil – you’re in charge of this group. If we call for a fallback, you lead them into the castle and down to the kitchens, understood?” Shacklebolt said as his gaze shifted back to the girl who had led the group outside. She nodded to him, her back straightening as she gripped her wand tighter. “Alright – let’s go, we need to get back down to the Eastern front.”
Shacklebolt turned on his heel, the students quickly forming a cluster behind him and muttering quietly as they rapidly began to select ten people to send to the Southern entrance. Nasir shifted almost immediately in step with the man, turning to follow him as Minerva hesitated a moment, looking back at her students once more before nodding and following after them. Arthur followed too, pushing his legs to move as his wife’s death glare dug a hole into the back of his skull.
“Arthur!” Mrs. Weasley called sharply as they all rapidly made their way across the stone courtyard to the path that led back to the Eastern front. “Arthur! You cannot seriously agree with this?! We’re just going to leave them up here in the courtyard?!”
“Molly,” Arthur said tightly, the muscles in his shoulders tensing as her rampant anger continued to spew from her mouth unrestrained. He could feel the nausea twisting in his gut at the tone of her voice as he tried to force himself to remain calm. He wasn’t sure he could handle her exploding right now because he was barely holding himself together – and yet she seemed determined to do it anyway.
“You cannot be serious, Arthur! Have you lost your bloody mind?!” Mrs. Weasley practically screamed as she grabbed hold of his arm and jerked him hard. “And what about Ginny?! Where is Ginny?! Where is our daughter?! Have you even thought about that?!”
“Of course I’ve thought about that!” Arthur snapped, his eyes finally shifting to meet his wife’s gaze as they continued to make their way down the path.
He knew that she was upset.
He knew that she was struggling.
He genuinely felt for his wife and he wanted nothing more than to take her side and to haul all the kids from the courtyard back into the school, but the truth was, as much as he hated it and as much as it made him sick to his stomach, the logical part of his brain agreed with Shacklebolt. They didn’t have time to haul hundreds of students back inside and even if they did, they could not guarantee that the kids would listen and stay inside.
They were better off being honest with them. They were better off letting those who were going to sneak away from the kitchens to come join in the battle anyway join them upfront after being made aware of what was going to happen and what they were about to face. They couldn’t spare anyone to go babysit and keep them in the kitchens – they just had to hope to Merlin that they could hold off the attack long enough that a full evacuation could be figured out or Harry could find what they needed.
He swallowed, his voice growing hard as he looked down at his desperate wife once more.
“It is nearly all I can think about, Molly,” Arthur said tightly as he forced his legs to keep moving. “It is the only thing going through my mind.”
“Then why aren’t you doing something?!” Mrs. Weasley hissed, her voice growing louder as she yanked on his arm once more. Her eyes shifted to Minerva who was only a few paces before them. “She wasn’t in that group – Minerva – is she in the kitchens?!”
“Your daughter is at the Northern front with Hermione,” Nasir’s deep voice responded, his dark gaze flicking back to look at the frantic woman as they continued their way down the path. “She is aiding in the removal of the bridge along with Miss Bones, another boy and Filius Flitwick.”
Mrs. Weasley’s body stiffened, her feet halting mid-step as her grip on Arthur’s arm grew tighter than a vice and she forced him to stop too.
“What,” the word came out sharp but hoarse, her eyes latching to the tall man as he slowed to a stop with the others and they turned back to look at her and Arthur. He could see Minerva tensing, her body growing rigid as her eyes darted between Mrs. Weasley and Nasir.
“She is at the Northern front,” Nasir repeated calmly, his eyes shifting to meet Arthur’s gaze as a cold knot formed in the pit of his stomach. “They will be back once the bridge is removed.”
“You sent my daughter to the Northern front,” Mrs. Weasley’s voice was like death, her eyes were burning with rage as she glared at the tall man then turned to look at Minerva with absolute disgust. “You let her go to the Northern front?! To the most vulnerable side! To the side that is nearest to Hogsmeade when You Know Who is already here?! HAS EVERYONE HERE LOST THEIR BLOODY MINDS?!”
Arthur nearly flinched at the decibel his wife reached as she screamed, and everyone stood motionless halfway down the path.
“Yes, we sent her,” Nasir said flatly, his brow arching as his gaze returned to Mrs. Weasley. “It was either that or she went to the greenhouses, but Hermione needed the extra hands.”
“SHE SHOULD BE IN THE KITCHENS!” Mrs. Weasley screeched, her gaze turning back to Arthur in rage as he felt his own barely controlled anger and anxiety starting to crack and leak out. “Arthur! Arthur, you cannot possibly support this?! You cannot possibly be okay with this! Arthur, we cannot leave her there! We have to –“
“We have to do what?!” Arthur snapped again, but this time his voice broke and it felt like his heart was breaking in his chest as he finally lost his composure. “What is it that you want me to do, Molly?! You want me to leave this front to go get her? You want me to drag her away from the bridge and force her into the kitchens?! Is that it?! Please tell me – tell me exactly what it is that you think I should do about this because I am out of ideas! You know damn well that she would never listen to me! You know damn well that I’d have to hex her or knock her out to get her to stay inside the school and not help!
“And of course I’m not okay with this!” Arthur practically screamed, his breaths coming in sharp pants as it felt like his entire world was crumbling around him. Mrs. Weasley dropped her hold on his arm and took a step back to glare up at him as the words came pouring out of his mouth in a desperate rush of anger, panic and despair. “Nothing about this is okay, Molly! Nothing about this is right! But what the hell am I supposed to do about it now?! If I could go back in time and change this – I would. But I can’t! The idea that Ginny – that Ron, Fred, George, Charlie, Bill – you – everyone – that our family is here right now and fighting in this war – it’s killing me! It’s all I can think about and it makes me sick to my stomach but what the bloody hell am I supposed to do about it?!”
He could feel his chest constricting in pain as he looked down at his wife and fought to get his emotions under control.
“I am barely dealing with this just like you are! But I’m burying it down because I cannot afford to be distracted! I hate this as much as you do but I cannot allow myself to think about it for another second longer or I’m going to go insane with worry and I’m going to put people at risk!” Arthur said tightly, his voice cracking once more. He could feel his eyes prickling with tears, but he refused to let them fall as the devastation he’d been supressing flooded his body. “I can’t lose focus, Molly. We HAVE to keep ourselves together or we’re never going to make it out of this alive. The only thing that is keeping me going is knowing that we raised good kids – that they’re smart, resourceful, talented – that they genuinely stand a chance at surviving so long as we all keep it together and stay focused. And the only reason I’m not storming to the Northern front to grab Ginny myself right now is that I know it would be a waste of time. I know she’ll never abandon her friends or her school in this war and that at least – thank Merlin – she is there with Hermione and Charlie, and those two will keep our daughter safe!”
“And that’s enough?” Mrs. Weasley whispered hoarsely, her head shaking as her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “That’s enough for you – that she’s a good fighter and she’s there with Hermione and Charlie?”
“Of course it’s not enough,” Arthur said almost desperately, his throat closing as he shook his head and his brow furrowed in pain. “But it’s going to have to be – because we don’t have any other choice and I can’t let myself drown in this or none of us will stand a chance. I have to believe that she will be okay – I have to believe that everyone will be okay, or we’ve already lost.”
A loud explosion rang out from the South and the ground shook beneath his feet as gold light scattered through the air. The shield became visible once more, vibrating and shaking above them as his arm buzzed furiously. He had to force himself to rip his eyes away from his wife to read the incoming messages from Bill and he felt his anxiety spike once more.
“The wards by the greenhouses are being attacked,” Shacklebolt said quietly, pushing his sleeve back down and glancing up toward them. “At least one troll, possibly dementors and definitely acromantula – look, I know this is hard on everyone and for that I am sorry – but we don’t have time for this. If he is attacking there he’s probably already moving on the main Eastern front. We need to get down there now – Molly, if you want to go back up to the courtyard to stay with the students then do it. I can’t have you on the front lines if you’re distracted – besides, it might be useful to have eyes up there. You can keep us updated on what you see from both fronts and you can tend to any wounded that we send up the path. The rest of you – Arthur – let’s go.”
The man wasted no time in turning away and continuing down the path at a brisk run. Minerva and Nasir twisted to follow along behind him, neither one of them glancing back toward them as Arthur stood motionless before his wife.
She was still glaring at him. He could see the heartbreak in her eyes, and he knew that she was on the verge of breaking entirely. He could feel his own heart shattering in his chest as the South-East edge of the shield was bombarded with a string of attacks that lit up the night’s sky.
“I have to go,” Arthur said hoarsely, his hand clenching around his wand. Yet he found he could not move as he stared down at her and felt his face pinch with pain.
How did it come to this?
The words seemed to echo in his mind as he stared at his wife and felt a deep aching agony cutting through his soul. He could hear the others disappearing down the path and he knew that he was wasting valuable time just standing there.
And yet he couldn’t move.
He couldn’t leave.
Not like this. Not without saying something. Not without trying to patch the gaping hole that seemed to be ripping through his heart.
“You know that I love you, Molly,” Arthur said quietly, his low voice nearly a whisper between them as he swallowed hard. He forced himself to take a step back, the distance between them growing as the hole in his heart seemed to widen. “You know that I love my family, that I would do anything to protect them – and that is exactly what I am going to do.”
She didn’t say anything, but he could see her eyes creasing with pain as he forced himself to take yet another step away from her.
“Please believe me when I say that I don’t like this any more than you do – and that this isn’t how I wanted things to go,” Arthur whispered hoarsely, his throat threatening to close on him once more. “If I saw another way, I would take it – but I have no control over the time we are given. I can only choose how to use it – I can only do what needs to be done.”
He took yet another step backwards and her clenched jaw started to tremble.
“Go keep the students safe,” he said quietly, his voice almost soft now. She looked furious and heartbroken but there was nothing else he could do at this moment. He forced his eyes away from hers. He couldn’t waste any more time here no matter how much it hurt to leave, so he turned on his heel to make his way down the path toward Shacklebolt and the others. “They’ll need you up there.”
He made it seven steps before he stopped once more as Mrs. Weasley’s voice cut through the air.
“Arthur Weasley!” she called out, her voice wavering as she spoke.
He turned to look back at her, and he felt his heart ache in his chest as he did so. His wife’s red hair was blowing in the cool breeze, the golden shadows of the shield were tracing across her face and making her look angelic as she stood against the ominous background – shoulders stiff, back straight and chin lifted high. Pain was still radiating from her eyes, but they’d creased in that way that they always did when she’d forgiven him – even though she didn’t really want to. It was the look she got when she loved him more than anything but was frustrated beyond belief with him. That bizarre expression that only a wife could have for her husband after thirty years of marriage – the one of unconditional and undying love mixed with annoyance, irritation and respect.
And every time he saw it, it made his soul ache. Every time he saw her do it – it made him wonder how in Merlin’s name he had been so lucky in life. To have met her, to have married her, to have had a family with her – it had been more than he’d ever dreamed.
“Come back to me,” she said firmly, her chin lifting higher as she swallowed hard. “You come back to me, Arthur Weasley – or I swear to Merlin, I will find a way to resurrect you so that I can throttle you to death myself.”
Arthur felt his lip twitch as his chest clenched tight.
“I will.”
This chapter is dedicated to Austin,
Aka Doc, aka Daddy, aka Father, aka BarbusBalor, aka a superb human being. Thank you for always bringing joy to the discord group, for making me smile, for making me laugh and for not throwing a shoe at me [yet]. You have been a constant source of support, an absolutely wonderful friend, and the best ‘dad’ that anyone could have asked for. I am so happy to have met you.
Thank you for letting me be a part of your life.
-x-x-
Despite this not being a Hermione/Harry POV chapter, I recommend that you read it. With all characters now operating on the same timeline, each and every chapter will contain plot critical information regardless of POV.
Warnings:
This chapter contains: DEATH, blood, extreme violence, descriptions of gruesome injuries and events including but not limited to burns, loss of limbs, loss of skin, decapitations, explosions, war and other not so awesome things. If you are squeamish, be wary.
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By the time Arthur reached the bottom of the main Eastern front, it was already being attacked and his ears were ringing from the explosions that rattled against the shield. As a fan of muggle history, muggle inventions and well, frankly, muggle anything – Arthur knew that this was a war tactic and he wondered if You Know Who was doing it on purpose. As Shacklebolt had said, You Know Who was capable of tearing through this shield if he felt like expending the effort – so the question was, why wasn’t he doing it?
The only answer to that question that made any sense was that this was intentional – and that You Know Who was both allowing and instructing the attack to occur in this manner on purpose. Yet as for the reason why Arthur wasn’t sure. He was either waiting for something, trying to drive them insane with terror or was saving his energy for something else – possibly a combination of the three options. Perhaps he was hoping that his forces might be able to weaken the shield so that it would be easier for him to remove it and it would require less effort? Or maybe he thought his forces might actually be able to take it down themselves?
Arthur wasn’t sure if that was possible.
But he knew that many of the students and professors who were unfamiliar with warfare tactics – particularly muggle ones – were probably incredibly confused and terrified at the moment. Battles in magical history were few and far between and as far as Arthur knew this tactic had never been used. Each time the shield was hit a loud hollow bang would radiate through the air, the sky would light up with gold and everyone under the dome would flinch in fear. The rapid succession of blows against its surface sounded like bombs going off and they compounded and echoed endlessly. It was unnerving and it made his stress levels rise each and every time it happened.
Like nails on a chalkboard, the attack against the shield grated on their sanity and it was wearing down the fragile bits of hope and confidence that he had.
But that was what the attack was intended to do. It was very similar to a strategy that the muggles had used in their ‘World Wars’. He knew because he’d read about it in Science Focus – the muggle magazine that Hermione had subscribed him to. The muggles would attack their enemies through the day and night with a constant barrage of artillery. The noise of it was exhausting, it kept the soldiers from sleeping, the stress of it was devastating and it drove some men nearly mad.
It was cruel – but it was a tactic and nothing more. So he wouldn’t let it get the better of him. As long as the shield held, they were safe. And that knowledge helped to keep him calm as he raced between the stone soldiers that now lined the back two rows of cover where he knew countless students were positioned and hidden under their disillusionment charms. He caught a glimpse of several shiny reflections of light as he ran past. Not all of their charm work was flawless and the golden light that diffused through the air from the shield rippled off their hidden bodies and gave away their positions. It was far from perfect – but it was still better than them sitting there with no disillusionments at all. He tried to ignore the unease that filled his heart as he thought about the fact that Ron was among them, hiding in the group – because that was another thought that killed him.
That was yet another thing he had to bury – or he knew he wouldn’t make it through the night.
He swallowed hard. Weaving his way down the long slow incline through the next few rows of statues. He forced himself to push the conversation with Mrs. Weasley and his stray worrying thoughts to the back of his mind as he ignored the sickness churning in his stomach. The statues were increasing in number. Their positions grew closer and closer together as he got nearer and nearer to the bottom of the gentle incline. He could see Remus standing at the front behind the first row of cover as his pulse naturally started to quicken with his growing anxiety. Remus looked tense, and he was talking to Shacklebolt rather rapidly. Behind the man, on the opposite side of the low point of the school grounds, the golden shield was vibrating and glowing. It was much too far away for Arthur to be able to see what was attacking it, but he could tell from the width of the bursting gold light along the surface of the shield that whatever was hitting it – it was no small army.
The attack on the shield was either orchestrated by something massive, or by a very large collection of smaller attackers. And neither of those options was a good thing.
His eyes darted across the front line once more as he closed the distance towards his friends – he tried to take it all in. To memorize it. Where each block of cover was and approximately how much space they had along the front line and in between the three rows of defensive cover. What he wouldn’t give to have a photographic memory at this moment. But hell, if he was wishing for things – he’d just wish they weren’t here, that everyone was safe and that they didn’t have to fight this war.
He was jolted from his thoughts as a massive explosion to the South sent a wave of light through the air and everyone flinched at the noise. He could just make out Fred, George and Minerva to the right in the fresh wave of light – the older woman covered her ears as the explosion rang out and his twins seemed to shudder in pain. The three professors to his left all jerked at the sound, their heads tipping to the sky as the golden light lit up the grounds and cascaded through the air. The only person he didn’t see anywhere along the five large blocks that made up their front row of cover was Nasir – the tall man was nowhere in sight as Arthur rapidly closed the final stretch of distance to the front line.
“Remus!” Arthur called out as he darted through the last two lines of stone statues that stood between the second line of cover and the first. He raced toward the two men who stood firmly behind the middle block of their first defensive line and raised his voice so he could be heard over the next explosion. “Shacklebolt – did you complete the defences?”
“Arthur,” Remus looked up at him as he closed the last few feet. The man looked tired and worn, but whatever had been distracting him at the cottage seemed to be a distant memory now as his clear and focused gaze met Arthur’s. “Yes – we spent the last little while laying out more defences with the students while you cast the shield. We added protection charms to each piece of cover too but once the attack by the greenhouses started, I ordered them to fall back. Whatever you do – do not go out past that rock.”
Remus turned and pointed to a stone fifty feet away that sat just before the low point. It had definitely not been there upon their arrival and they had clearly added it as a marker of sorts.
“The ground is positively loaded with explosives and hexes beyond that point. We’re hoping that when the attack breaks through the shield the first wave of bodies will end up adding to our defences,” Remus said quickly as he turned back to face Arthur once more. “Fred and George added enough explosives down there with Lavender and Ron that it should blow a pretty sizable hole in the ground. Your sons added another layer above that which activates some sticking jinxes to try and slow them down and it will keep them in place for the explosion. It will make the attacks much more effective and once the bodies pile up it will make navigating the grounds more difficult for them. It will buy us time and make it easier to pick them off. There are explosives tied to each block of cover as well – so if we need to fall back, we can blow them up as we retreat.”
“Excellent,” Arthur nodded, his eyes scanning across the grounds once more.
Nothing about the expanse of grass before them looked suspicious. Whatever they’d done had been completely hidden and their attackers would have no reason to think it dangerous to charge toward the front line once they broke through. He felt a small smile tug at the corner of his lips – leave it to Fred and George to come up with a second layer sticking jinx. Who would have thought that all their years of pranks and experimentation would make them such valuable war assets?
“I have Fred, George and Minerva covering our Southern side – Rolanda, Aurora and Septima are covering the Northern one,” Remus added, gesturing to each side with his hand before his face turned into a grimace. “Ron, Lavender, Colin and a group of the more adept students have taken the second line of defence behind us and the rest of the students are back behind the third line nearest to the school. There isn’t much else we can do defence-wise with this terrain – I’m afraid it’s just a matter of waiting until they breach the shield and hoping to Merlin that we can actually hold this line for long enough.”
“I know,” Arthur nodded, his small momentary smile fading back into a frown.
What they had managed to accomplish in such a short amount of time was astounding – but as Remus said, with the way that the Eastern front was laid out there was little else they could do. While the slight incline was helpful and it gave them the high ground there was no bottleneck – no natural cover and no other advantage to exploit. There were only so many explosives and hexes that they could set out in advance before it stopped adding value and they put themselves at risk of falling into their own traps. The cold hard truth was that holding this side of the castle would largely depend on their skill level and their ability to duel.
Because he knew they would be outnumbered, there was no question about that – the question was by how many. And the answer would then dictate how long they would be able to hold and whether or not their initial traps would even put a dent in the attack.
“Do we have any idea what we’re facing on our side?” Arthur asked, his eyes shifting to Shacklebolt. “Any idea on the numbers?”
“At least six trolls, a large horde of acromantula, two dozen werewolves, over one hundred snatchers and what looks to be a rather impressive collection of dementors on the main Eastern front,” Nasir’s deep voice responded.
He had appeared on Arthur’s right and it was as if the man had shown up out of thin air. Arthur’s heart jolted in surprise and he saw Remus flinch and grip his wand tighter as they all turned to look at him.
“There are undoubtedly more in the woods though,” Nasir said calmly, his body impossibly still and his face entirely indifferent to their tense reactions. “So it is impossible to get a clear picture of how many more might be coming.”
“Alright,” Shacklebolt sighed, running his hand over his face as his eyes creased in concentration. He was the only one who seemed unphased by Nasir’s sudden appearance and it made Arthur wonder just how much time Shacklebolt had spent with this man for him to be so unbothered by his still demeanour, his indifference and his ability to show up right next to people without making a noise. Either Shacklebolt spent a great deal of time with him – or he was just much more unperturbed by things than Arthur had realized. “I’ll see if Bill can get us a count by the greenhouses – they only have a few hundred feet between them and the shield so they may be able to see more than us.”
Shacklebolt quickly tapped his arm and Arthur felt his tag buzz before the tall man turned his thoughtful gaze back to them.
“The top priority on this side is for us to take out the trolls and the werewolves,” Shacklebolt said slowly, his eyes shifting between the three of them. “Most of the students won’t be able to defend themselves against them if they get past the first line – so if that happens, we’ll be in trouble. The amount of damage that those creatures can cause is extensive and disproportionate to their numbers. The snatchers and acromantula will be a problem too simply due to their numbers, but depending on the size of the spiders most of the students stand a chance at handling them if they slip through the front line. The snatchers will be the most susceptible to long-range attacks – that’s an advantage we’re going to exploit with the aid of the second and third line. Ron knows and once the attackers are in range he, Lavender and Colin are going to direct their groups to lob attacks into the low point.”
Remus nodded in agreement, his eyes shifting to look out at the shield before them as a particularly loud explosion rocked against its surface.
“If You Know Who brought dementors here they will be hunting for souls,” Remus said slowly, his eyes shifting back to look at them once more. “They’re not going to just hover around tormenting people or draining them of energy. They’ll sweep in from above and they’ll pick off anyone alone. We’re going to need to do something about the students behind us – maybe send a Patronus to linger above them.”
“That will only alert the other attackers to their presence,” Nasir said evenly, his eyes shifting to look behind them. From the way that his gaze darted across the grounds and lingered on particular blocks of cover Arthur almost wondered if the man could see through the students’ disillusionment charms. “We’re better off waiting until the dementors cross the line and the defence is truly needed – how many of the students can perform a Patronus?”
“Ron, Fred and George can,” Arthur said quietly, his eyes flicking to Remus.
“Yes,” Remus nodded, his eyes shifting back to Nasir. “So can Lavender and Colin from what I recall – but I’m not sure about the rest. I can go check.”
“I’ll go find out,” Nasir said quietly, stepping past them before Remus could move as the shield continued to rattle under the barrage of attacks. Remus frowned as the man walked away, his body tensing as if he was contemplating going with him – but when his arm buzzed and Shacklebolt spoke again he faltered and remained where he was.
“Bill can’t get a count,” Shacklebolt sighed in frustration, looking at the text that scrolled across his arm. “But Hagrid has joined them now.”
Arthur frowned at the update, forcing himself to look away from Nasir’s quickly retreating form. He had no idea why the man had readily offered to ‘go check’ for them or why Shacklebolt had nodded easily in agreement without question – but the tall man continued on as if the entire exchange had been normal.
“He can make out what appears to be at least fifty acromantula though,” Shacklebolt continued, reading the next incoming message with a careful expression. “And he’s pretty sure that there are two trolls – not one. Their snatcher count is comparable to our side but with the forest being so close to them they have the same problem – it’s impossible to know how many are lingering out of sight or what else Voldemort might be holding back.”
“You Know Who won’t send anyone of value,” Remus said quietly as his brow furrowed in thought. “Not initially anyway. He’ll keep them for later – for when he needs them. So whatever he sends through – we need to be ready to face at least just as much in a second wave.”
“Possibly even a third,” Shacklebolt said grimly, nodding in agreement. “They said he brought everything he had.”
The man let out a quiet sigh, a hint of exhaustion showing behind his eyes as he rolled up his sleeves completely to leave the tag exposed. Arthur couldn’t even begin to imagine what was going on inside that man’s head – or how the hell he was coping with being in charge and with being responsible for the massive number of decisions that he’d already made tonight. He watched as Shacklebolt’s brow creased and he sent out a quick message to the Order listing the priorities before he glanced up at the shield as the attacks continued to thunder against it.
“Now we wait,” Shacklebolt said quietly, his eyes shifting back out to the open grounds before them. And hope to Merlin that Harry finds what he needs fast.”
It felt surreal to be standing there. Talking almost calmly then standing in silence next to his friends as the school was bombarded and the minutes ticked by unmeasured. He knew he could check the time if he wanted to – but he didn’t. Because at the end of the day it really didn’t change anything. He knew that the itching feeling growing in the back of his mind was a result of the assault on the shield and it was exactly what You Know Who wanted. He wanted them to squirm. He wanted them to sweat. He wanted them to be uncomfortable, to feel like time was dragging on endlessly as the thundering sounds against the shield drilled into their minds.
What he wanted – was for them to make mistakes and to let their fear get the better of them. So, as if in defiance of it, Arthur refused to check the time – and he suspected that the others hadn’t done it either.
They stood there in silence, watching the shield flicker as the ground continued to shake and the golden light flashed across the darkened ground. Every so often he glanced to his right to look at Fred and George – he couldn’t help himself. He may be in a war and he may be a member of the Order, but he couldn’t switch off being a father. His children were standing mostly still, speaking quietly with Minerva as they flinched on occasion at the explosions against the shield but otherwise, they seemed to be doing alright.
Yet that did little to settle the sickness in his stomach.
He didn’t know how long they stood there motionless, or how long it had been since anyone had spoken but when the tag on his arm buzzed and Minerva let them know that the youngest students had been successfully evacuated there was an audible sigh of relief between the three men. Shacklebolt shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose and letting out a sigh as Arthur ran a trembling hand through his thinning hair and Remus murmured something inaudible.
It wasn’t much, but it was something, and for the first time in what felt like hours Arthur breathed a sigh of relief. Approximately fifty students had gotten to safety through that tunnel – and that mattered because it was fifty lives now secure at the Northern safehouse. Fifty lives that would make it through this night and live to see the sunrise. And fifty lives less that he and the others needed to worry about.
Though aside from exchanging relieved looks none of them spoke. They continued to stand in silence as if they were worried that speaking might somehow make the situation worse or that it would make the tight tension that hung in the air even more unbearable. It wasn’t until they heard Nasir approaching once more that they all shifted and sprung back to life. Almost as if they were gratified for his arrival because it gave them something else to focus on instead of the unbearable wait they’d been lost in before. They each turned to look back at the tall man as he made his way down the hill towards them.
“Six of them are capable of producing a corporeal Patronus,” Nasir stated emotionlessly as he made his way across the final stretch of distance between them, shifting through the last row of stone statues with ease. “Three more can use the spell – but not effectively. They know to keep an eye out for dementors and the second that the temperature drops they will cast a round of Patronus’ to keep themselves safe. If we see any dementors bypassing us, I’ve told them that we will send up red sparks to give them warning. If they fail to succeed at casting the charm, they will send up yellow sparks to request assistance and you three will need to intervene.”
Shacklebolt nodded but Remus’ eyes narrowed at the remark. Arthur could see the muscles in the man’s jaw tightening as his head tilted to the side. He seemed to be contemplating something as he watched Nasir come to a stop at their side once more.
“We three will need to intervene,” Remus repeated, his expression growing more curious if not slightly concerned as his eyes shifted over Nasir’s indifferent expression. Arthur instantly picked up on what Remus seemed to be struggling with.
“Yes,” Nasir said flatly, his gaze fixed on the open grounds before them.
“Are you not planning to help if the dementors attack them?” Remus pressed, his brow creasing as he continued to watch the enigmatic man.
Nasir shifted, his dark gaze flicking to Remus as the shield was hit with another rapid barrage of attacks. Shacklebolt’s eyes darted between the two men, clearly aware of something that the others were not as he shifted almost uncomfortably on his feet. The movement was so small he doubted Remus had caught it, but Arthur was sure it had happened.
“No,” Nasir said flatly, the dark glint returning to his eyes as he met Remus’ gaze. “I’m not.”
“I’m sorry – what?” Remus asked, his voice faltering as his concern and confusion grew. Arthur felt his own muscles tense as he looked between Nasir and Shacklebolt with concern. “If dementors attack you’re going to do nothing?”
“Remus,” Shacklebolt said quietly, his voice low and diplomatic – but Nasir’s eyes had narrowed, and he’d already shifted to turn and face Remus directly.
“I’m going to do nothing,” Nasir said slowly, his voice so low it was practically vibrating in the small space between them. “Because there is nothing that I can do.”
And as his words filled the air Arthur realized what he meant. Remus’ expression shifted to one of understanding, his mouth fell open in surprise and by the look in his eyes he seemed to regret the incorrect assumption that he’d just made.
“Oh,” Remus said quietly, his surprised gaze flicking over Nasir’s face once more. “Sorry I – I didn’t realize that you couldn’t cast a Patronus. I – I just assumed given your skill that–“
“And it was a reasonable assumption,” Nasir said quietly, his dark eyes glinting in the night as he interrupted Remus and cut off the man’s awkward apology. Arthur could feel the hairs on the back of his skull prickle and Remus swallowed uncomfortably. “However, it was incorrect. No – I cannot. If there are dementors on the other side of that shield I’m afraid that you and the others capable of using one will be responsible for protecting the students and each other as I cannot help you – nor did I want you to assume that I would. Hence, why I said you three specifically.”
“We’ll help you,” Remus said quietly, the unspoken apology and peace offering ringing out in his voice. He flinched as the attacks against the shield began to quicken and the sound became almost deafening, but he didn’t look away from the tall man before him. “We’ll keep them away from you as well, Nasir.”
“They won’t bother me,” Nasir said darkly, his gaze shifting back to look out at the open ground before them. “So you won’t need to worry about that. Keep your attention on the students. There is a good chance that they’ll panic and their attempts to cast the charm will fail. I’ll go tell the other professors of the plan. Let the rest of the Order know.”
Nasir left them once more, his body moving silently to the left towards the three untagged professors as Remus watched him go. An uncomfortable silence filled the air as Remus swallowed once more and turned back to look at Shacklebolt whose gaze was following Nasir’s retreating form.
“I didn’t realize,” Remus said slowly, his brow creasing as he spoke. “I hope I didn’t insult him, I didn’t mean to – I shouldn’t have assumed anything differently. It’s just – after everything that I’ve seen him do, I never even considered it a possibility that he couldn’t cast it.”
“You didn’t insult him,” Shacklebolt said quietly, his eyes still locked to Nasir’s retreating form. “He doesn’t talk about it – but, he needed you to know that you can’t rely on him for help if we are swarmed by dementors.”
“Why can’t he cast one?” Arthur asked, the words leaving his lips like a whisper before he could stop himself as he looked back to Shacklebolt.
It was none of his business – he knew this. He normally would never have asked something so blunt or blatantly personal, especially to a third party. If Arthur ever wanted to know something, he tended to ask people directly like he had back at the Northern safe house. But somehow, at this moment, he didn’t care. Perhaps it was the lingering threat of death behind the shield that made the words slip so easily from his mouth. But whatever the reason for him outwardly asking it, he knew it was because his curiosity and concern regarding the tall mysterious man was still something that he struggled with even if he had decided to accept the man’s help.
And Remus was right.
Given the man’s experience, his capabilities and his expansive repertoire of knowledge it was incredibly odd that he could not cast the spell. And given what Arthur knew about him – he wondered if Nasir’s silence on the matter and even his choice of words to convey the information were related to the runes on his neck. He’d not outright said that he couldn’t cast a Patronus, he’d simply stated Remus’ assumption was wrong and he’d vaguely stated that he couldn’t without referencing the confirmation back to anything directly.
“No idea,” Shacklebolt said quietly, turning his eyes back to the tag on his arm and alerting the others of the plan regarding the dementors. Yet even though there was nothing about his expression to hint otherwise – Arthur got the distinct impression that his friend was lying. “He’s just never been able to use it for as long as I’ve known him. Alright, the others know the plan – they will keep an eye out for yellow sparks. They’re waiting to cast their individual shields until the grounds are breached but otherwise they’re ready. I’m afraid there is nothing else we can do now but continue to wait it out.”
They nodded in agreement, shifting nervously as another series of attacks began to rock against the surface of the shield. It was several long minutes until Nasir returned to them, and the man didn’t speak as he took his place next to Shacklebolt and stared out at the open grounds. Arthur could see Remus glancing at the man from the corner of his eye, a thoughtful if not slightly concerned expression lingering on his face. He knew exactly why his friend was concerned – but he was glad that Remus wisely chose not to say anything.
The last thing that they needed right now when faced with incredibly low odds and near-certain death was to panic and start questioning their own ranks. Because as far as Arthur knew, and he knew Remus was thinking it, the only wizards with that high of a skill level that could not cast a Patronus – were Death Eaters. He tried to ignore the discomfort that shifted down his spine as the thought crossed his mind. He tried to focus on the fact that he had personally seen Nasir’s forearms and could confirm that the man definitely did not have the Dark Mark. He reminded himself that Nasir had risked his life to blow up the werewolf den and had done absolutely nothing but aid them from the second he’d showed up.
It was possible, Arthur rationalized, that the man could not cast it because he didn’t have enough happy memories to sustain the charm. He’d been an Unspeakable after all and from what little was known of their lives it was common knowledge that their existences were generally unpleasant. It was also possible that the man had just dabbled in too much dark magic to be able to use something so pure – Arthur wasn’t stupid. He may not have said anything because he trusted Shacklebolt, but he’d worked at the Ministry long enough and seen enough tampered with muggle artifacts to recognize the lingering hints of dark magic when he saw them – and Nasir was positively drowning in it.
It was half of what made the man so unnerving. It was layered so thick around him it was all but a physical tarnish on his body. That man used dark mark, and Arthur knew exactly what sorts of things he’d been teaching Hermione and Harry on the beach at Shell Cottage.
He may not know the exact spells because he himself had never touched it – but it was clear as day to anyone who knew anything about dark magic that the man utilized it with a comfort that could have only come from decades of experience with handling it. Yet despite this, and even though he was just as aware of it as Arthur was – Shacklebolt trusted him, and Shacklebolt had urged Arthur, Remus and the others to trust him too. Mrs. Weasley still didn’t. And he knew several of the others were still incredibly unnerved by the man but to Arthur’s surprise, despite his discomfort over it and despite his reservations, he felt like he was starting to.
It was almost hard not to – because even though the man had nothing to gain from it, Nasir was helping them. He was standing unflinchingly by their side tonight on the front line of war and he was following Shacklebolt’s directions without hesitation.
Arthur knew it was always possible that he was wrong. That he was simply losing his edge or had become so desperate in the war that he was foolish enough to begin to think that this man was truly helping them. It was always possible that the man could simply be biding his time and waiting them out – or that maybe there was something else going on that he was unaware of. Maybe he had some kind of deal or arrangement with Shacklebolt that was keeping him here.
Arthur wasn’t sure.
But now wasn’t the time to start questioning it, so he pushed the doubts aside and continued to watch the Eastern front.
A few minutes later Minerva notified them that Severus had opened the wards and he felt the tension in the air triple as everyone watched the shield rumble and shake. It was the only thing protecting them now and the only barrier between them and certain bloodshed. The attacks continued relentlessly. The noise of it was unbearable and Arthur’s shoulders started to tense as each vibration from the earth seemed to shoot directly down his spine. As the attacks started to increase Shacklebolt informed them that their back-up from the Ministry was ready – but he placed them on standby with Aberforth and Sybill just like he’d said he would back in the courtyard.
They continued to stand in silence, fighting against the terror that was growing in their minds and the discomfort that was shifting through their weary bodies. He knew this was psychological as much as it was physical and contrary to what most people thought – war was more than just the battle. It was more than just fighting. It was a collection of trials and tribulations that would test the very limits of your humanity, push the boundaries of your capabilities and question your mental fortitude.
So he set his jaw tight, forced his shoulder back and remained resolute and silent as the attacks continued and the shield rumbled above them.
Yet as the night continued to grow late and the light only seemed to grow brighter – Arthur’s false calm began to fracture. The shield was positively shaking, and the grounds were all but entirely lit up with gold as the earth rumbled beneath their feet. A headache had started to form at the base of his skull and a part of him wondered if You Know Who intended to keep this up all night. Maybe that had been the plan all along? Make them panic, make them scramble – bombard them relentlessly so that they feared leaving the safety of their cover and they stopped trying to set up additional defences.
He didn’t know.
Just like everything else about tonight – he truly didn’t know, and he hated it. It felt more and more like an unwanted mantra in his mind as each painful minute passed by and the fear turned into a string of I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. It was utter agony standing there with his wand clenched tight in his hand, his body wracked with exhaustion and his muscles growing stiff with pain as he stared at the shield while not having a clue how long these attacks would last.
He was struggling to stay focused. It was difficult to keep his mind on task and to stop it from wandering and wondering where Charlie was – if he and Ginny were still safe, or how Bill was faring to the South and if Harry had had any luck finding what he needed. He had to force himself to breathe as he glanced nervously over his shoulder – looking to see if any of the students were panicking or shifting around. But the grounds behind him were still and appeared entirely vacant and calm. He couldn’t even see the shimmering reflections of gold light off their disillusionments anymore – yet there was zero indication that any of them had gone back up the path to the castle and Mrs. Weasley hadn’t notified them to say that any students had returned – nor had Ron messaged to indicate that anyone had left.
His eyes narrowed suspiciously as he scanned – looking to the third line of cover and once again, he did not see a single flicker of gold there either. He glanced toward Nasir who stood motionless, and expressionless, with his eyes locked to the open grounds. The man had spent several long minutes up there figuring out who could cast a Patronus. Either he’d recast the disillusionment charms for the weaker students, the older students had recast them for their peers, or he’d set up some sort of shield to hide them from view.
It was impossible to say – but he knew there was no way in hell that the students had abandoned their post. Those kids were far more prepared than anyone had given them credit for, and they were far braver than anyone could have ever anticipated. There was no way that they’d left and even though it made him sick to his stomach he knew the only way they would leave was if he ordered them to fall back – or if they gave their lives defending their school.
He forced himself to return his gaze to the open minefield before them. He saw Remus shifting at his side, the man’s body growing tense as the attack on the shield seemed to triple and the golden web started to buckle and warp. He could feel his heart starting to race, the terror in his gut taking hold as he watched their only line of defence begin to deform and twist in the air above them. He knew it wouldn’t hold. He knew it wouldn’t last. But he gripped his wand tighter and forced himself to believe that it would last at least another few moments.
Minutes.
Seconds.
Anything.
Merlin please, Arthur swallowed hard. Please let it hold.
He forced himself to believe that this wasn’t it – that they still had time. And for a moment, he almost believed it.
That was, at least, until an explosion along the main Eastern front went off and it rocked the ground so violently, he actually stumbled. The entire shield lit up from ground to sky, his hands flew over his ears as an enormous bang echoed through the dome and then the entire thing shuttered as the sound of something cracking and sizzling rang out to his left. His gaze shifted to the North – his eyes growing wide with fear as a massive bolt of silver light collided with the Northern edge of their defence and the force of it rocked through the grounds and rattled through his bones.
He could hear Shacklebolt cursing.
He could hear screams ringing out behind them as the students were startled and jolted against their blocks of cover. A second explosion went off by the greenhouses. A third along the main Eastern front. A barrage of attacks let loose as the silver light sliced through the shield and the entire thing glowed red.
It was You Know Who.
And their time had officially run out.
He knew it in his soul. No other being could have managed such a feat and he felt his heart race in terror as he watched the shield crack. The sound of breaking glass and the smell of burning filled the air as their only protection began to disintegrate and crumble to pieces. And just like that, the waiting was over. The eerie and unbearable tightness that had encompassed the school was shattered with chaos as the first wave of attackers broke through the shield and made their way towards the school.
It happened all at once and the pandemonium was impossible to track.
Shacklebolt and Nasir shifted to take position behind the large wooden block to his right while Remus stayed with him and took the left edge of their rock. The tag on his arm began to buzz with fury as Bill and Mrs. Weasley sent updates and colours exploded in the air and across the grounds. The shadows of golden light from the attack on the shield had been nothing in comparison to the light now – it was like the entire Eastern front and the sky above them was lit on fire as their attackers raced up the grounds and unleashed a hailstorm of hexes. He could feel the ground rumbling as the trolls took off at a run – his eyes darted along the grounds to survey the attack before he quickly ducked behind his block of cover and cast a shield charm over his body.
There were eight trolls on the Eastern front – not six.
And four of them were running across the grounds at full speed as if someone had dosed them with a stimulant. He fired a rapid collection of hexes around the edge of his defence, aiming to take out anything that he could reach from the long-range distance. He took out the acromantula first as they rapidly scuttled across the ground between the troll’s legs and became the first thing in range. He could see a constant stream of spells coming from his left and his right as everyone on the first defensive line began their attack and the grounds were overwhelmed with magic.
The distance between their line and the shield that had, only moments ago, seemed massive was now suddenly entirely too small. You Know Who’s army closed the distance at a ridiculously rapid pace. He could hear the snarls of the werewolves before he could see them, and the spiders were so fast they were nearly impossible to spot in the confusion. Before he knew it the ground exploded to the left, a large acromantula having set off the first set of hexes and all hell broke loose. Bits and pieces flew through the air as a giant hole was blasted into the ground and the entire Eastern front was transformed into a warzone.
One troll went down – its legs had gotten stuck to the ground and they were blown clean off its body as it ran over the next trap and set off another explosion.
He took out six more acromantula that managed to dart over the traps down the center of the lawn as the stone soldiers started to move and made their way out past the line of cover. He didn’t know if Minerva was controlling them or if they moved autonomously but they stayed behind the marker and began attacking anything and everything that bypassed the defences with a violent and vicious assault. He could see acromantula getting split in two as their swords cut through the air and crushed them into the ground. Two werewolves were taken out by someone on his right and one of the smaller trolls was hit with a pike to the face.
The right side exploded next.
He heard Fred yelling out to them in warning as a pack of werewolves that was trying to sideline them ran over the low point that Lavender had warned them about on their way up to the castle. His son screamed for them to take cover as George sent the warning through the tag and Arthur’s arm buzzed violently with the message. He barely managed to duck behind his rock and cover his head as the fireworks that Lavender had buried in the ground ignited into a blazing fireball. Streams of gold, blue, red, green and yellow shot through the air as hundreds of fireworks exploded and littered the ground with sparks and limbs. It was all he could do not to cover his ears as hundreds of explosions went off like rockets. He could hear the screaming of snatchers as the first onslaught of them trailing behind the werewolves fought to get through the insanity and tried to avoid getting hit. Several were set on fire and three were crushed under the foot of a troll that had been blinded by the explosion and was left flailing in confused rage.
He ducked as a severed arm flew past his head and the ground beneath the troll fully exploded as it stumbled into the next trap and was blasted into the air. Blood rained down across the shattered grounds, drenching Fred, George and Minerva and the right side of their line as the ground shook. The detonation had been deafening. Debris flew into the night’s sky and the sound of bits and pieces colliding with the ground around them filled the air. Remus barely managed to duck an acromantula leg before firing off another round of hexes from behind their cover as the stone statues began to make their way to the newly exploded crater on their right – picking off anything that dared crawl out of the hole as the fireworks continued to burn across the ground and spark towards the Forbidden Forest.
Arthur wiped his sleeve across his face, trying not to think about what had just spattered across it as he forced himself to breathe and checked his shield. Once he was sure it was secure, he leaned around the rock once more and began attacking the smaller troll that was approaching the crater on the right. He felt his arm buzz in warning as Nasir shot three sets of red sparks up into the air before slaughtering a round of acromantula that had made it through the warzone. The man joined in with Shacklebolt to help take down the troll as Arthur’s heart flooded with panic. He turned to look behind him but to his surprise, three streams of silver were already shooting up into the air from the second row of cover as the students cast their Patronus’ and then began to fire long-range hexes over the front line into the insanity.
An explosion erupted from the greenhouses, a blaze of fire shot up into the air as some sort of bomb went off and the ground rumbled beneath their feet once more. He tried not to think about it – he tried not to panic as his arm buzzed and his stomach twisted with sickness because there was no time to even read the messages anymore. He just had to trust that Bill was okay – that those at the greenhouses were safe. He sent off attack after attack, ducking behind his cover to avoid getting hit only to pop back out and unleash more spells.
Contrary to what they had originally assumed, the biggest problem was the acromantula. The small ones were too quick and too dexterous to set off the defences they’d laid out and some of them were even managing to bypass the stone statues that were covering the ground between the low point and their first line of cover. He took out as many as he could – rapidly picking them off and slicing them to pieces but he knew that some were slipping by and making their way up to the students. He just hoped to Merlin that they would be okay and could cover what got through the cracks because he and the others on the front line barely had time to breathe let alone turn around and check or defend their rear. As much as it pained him to admit it, he was relying on Ron, Lavender, Colin and the others to keep him safe from anything that might have slipped by and he needed them to fend for themselves.
He swallowed hard as he heard a growl to the right and he glanced to see Fred taking on two werewolves with Minerva and three statues. They made quick work of it – slicing off the one’s head as the statues impaled the other and crushed its skull into the bloodied earth. He let out a quick sigh of relief but as his eyes slid toward the left, he felt his blood run cold.
“REMUS!” Arthur yelled as he dodged a spell fired from one of the snatchers that were hurling hexes at anything and everything from across the low point. They seemed to have finally realized that the ground was loaded, and they were all hanging back and unleashing spells from afar as the acromantula, trolls and werewolves continued on before them. Remus ducked back behind their cover, breathing hard as his gaze shifted to Arthur. “TROLLS ON THE LEFT – HELP TAKE THEM DOWN!”
Remus nodded, he’d barely heard Arthur above the racket but he quickly shifted to the empty block of cover on his left to aid the three professors who were currently unleashing a plethora of spells at the two massive trolls that were struggling their way through the giant hole on the left. The two creatures were clambering across the broken earth and trying to climb over the dead body of the one that had set off the explosion. They were making good progress and were quickly closing the distance to the front line.
Arthur heard a rumble behind him as the next three rows of stone statues took action. They marched past the first line of defence to join the others and split out across the grounds. The trolls groaned out in rage as they were bombarded with hexes – Remus managed to cut off one’s entire arm with a violent Sectumsempra while Madam Hooch blinded the other and the stone statues hacked at its leg and threw their pikes at the trolls’ heads.
He’d never seen anything like it. The statues battled with a ferocity that he’d never before associated with Hogwarts and even if they lost their weapons the soldiers continued to brawl their way across the grounds, stomping and smashing and grabbing anything that tried to run past their feet with their large stone hands. From the corner of his eye, he saw one statue snatch a smaller werewolf from the air mid-jump as it made for Madam Hooch and it crushed the creature’s skull between its hands like an egg. The statue exploded a second later from a snatcher’s spell, but its place was quickly taken by the next statue which carried on the fight.
Arthur continued to man the center stone cover himself as Remus aided the professors with the left. He took out three snatchers across the low point with well-placed hexes, then ducked back to reset his shield as a dark cold settled into his bones. Without even pausing to blink or confirm it, he raised his wand – casting his Patronus and sending it up into the air. The weasel swirled above him, acting as a protective shield for the front line as he sent off a round of red sparks in warning.
The response was immediate.
He chanced a glance over his shoulder and saw four more rounds of silver streaking into the air behind him as the students heeded his warning. A warm flicker of pride shot through his heart as he saw the streams take shape and he recognized one as Ron’s – the terrier raced through the air above the second row of cover, working with a boar to chase off a dementor that had tried to descend from their right. Past that – far up by the school – he could just make out the shape of a large brown bear prowling in a circle above the stone courtyard, and he felt his heart clench.
Molly.
His lips tipped into a tight smile as he turned back to the front and took out three more spiders. It almost didn’t make any sense and he wasn’t sure if a year ago he would have believed it possible. Yet somehow, despite all the madness and despite the fact that their rear ranks were children – they were managing. He could see the odd acromantula continue to creep through the front line and yes, three werewolves had indeed gotten dangerously close to squeaking by before Nasir and Shacklebolt took them out – and yes, there were still four more trolls to attend to – but still, they were holding their ground.
They hadn’t lost an inch.
Not yet – and that was more than he could have ever expected.
He was well aware that this was still only the first wave – which meant that they were likely the weakest and easiest enemies. And he knew that they’d been successful thus far because of the explosions, because of the fireworks, the traps, the pre-laid hexes and the massive caverns that they’d blown into the grounds. Yet even knowing this and even knowing that they were going to be in for the fight of their life when their ground defences were spent and the second wave hit – his heart was racing with the most terrible and unsettling mixture of anguish and pride.
He hoped they knew.
He hoped that the students understood how proud of them he was. How brave they were. That they not only had his respect, but they had the respect and admiration of everyone here. That they were good kids, incredible kids and that they were doing more than what anyone could have possibly anticipated – and they were giving more than they owed. Regardless of whatever happened here tonight they wouldn't be forgotten. He would never forget them and if he somehow made it through this night, he would make sure that these kids were remembered and that everyone in the wizarding world knew what they had sacrificed.
He fought with everything that he had as the hexes and spells continued to pour out into the low point from the students behind him. He saw three more werewolves go down, another small cluster of acromantula obliterated before two snatchers lost their heads. But he could tell that their pre-set defenses were thinning, and as his eyes shifted to look at the stone statues that scattered across the grounds before them, he felt his stomach twist nervously.
There weren’t enough.
The shattered remains of countless statues littered the small space before the low point and they sat like broken rocks near the edges of the craters. They were tough and strong – but not immune to attack and they were limited in number. He bit back a groan of exhaustion as he dodged another attack and sent out a counter. His body was damn near shaking from fatigue already and he could tell just by glancing at those around him that they were tired too.
They wouldn’t be able to keep this up forever and as he ducked behind his cover to avoid another attack once more, he heard the center of the Eastern front explode – signalling the last of their defensive measures having been spent.
Dirt and clumps of clay sprayed through the air. Remus ducked for cover, his hands flying over his head as he made his way back toward Arthur and tried not to get hit by the debris. More fireworks went off and Arthur could see that the Eastern edge of the forest had caught fire. Without stopping to think about it he pulled one of the strength potions from his potion pack, downed half of it and handed the vial to Remus. The man drank it without question, vanishing the empty vial before turning to the left as Arthur turned to the right and they unleashed their next wave of attacks to pick off the stragglers that were trying to crawl away from the ruined earth.
And as the last werewolf fell on the edge of the newest and final crater – there was a short moment of silence. Arthur felt his body tense as the air grew still. There wasn’t a single sign of movement. Not a hint of noise outside of the explosions by the greenhouses.
His spine stiffened. He could see the others downing potions, applying bandages, healing, resetting their shields and preparing themselves as the dust hung heavy and lingered in the air around them. He forced himself to breathe, resetting his own shield before he shifted to look out at the ruined landscape.
It was… a bloodbath.
His limbs trembled with renewed energy from the potion as he stared at the massacre that was once the Hogwarts Eastern grounds. There was a fire burning on the ground to the right – snatcher corpses motionless in the dirt as unidentifiable limbs lay roasting and smoking across the grass. There was a pile of dead troll bodies to the left and approximately 75 feet of torn, ruined and muddied lawn littered with limbs and debris before their line of cover where the final remains of their stone statue defences stood guard. The ruined ground dropped sharply into a giant trench that spanned across the Eastern front. It was so deep he couldn’t see the bottom and it stretched at least 30 feet wide toward the Forbidden Forest.
He felt the wind ruffle his hair. The thick cloud of dust before them started to settle, and a cold shiver ran down his spine as the stone statues stopped moving and everything went still. He heard Remus inhale. He saw Shacklebolt shift from the corner of his eye, and then, just when he’d opened his mouth to speak – his arm buzzed, his gaze dropped to read the note from Hermione and his blood ran cold with fear.
Hr- the Northern front has been breached
And just as the air of his tight exhale left his lungs – the world before him exploded into chaos once more.
A massive second wave rushed the Eastern front. The remaining trolls that had been held back began to tear across the grounds and more snatchers and werewolves began to pour from the woods.
It was anarchy.
It was insanity.
He tried not to think about Ginny or Charlie as the statues resumed their fighting stance, hexes soared over their heads out into the low point from the rows behind them, and blood poured out onto the ground. He couldn’t keep track of it. He couldn’t take it all in or process what was happening. He had no idea how bad the attack on the North was and he couldn’t even begin to think about it because he could barely manage what was happening before his very eyes.
He heard screaming as he unleashed a flurry of spells around their block of cover and tried to take out anything attempting to cross the trench. The students behind him sent up a new round of Patronus as they continued to unleash a hailstorm of hexes upon the warzone so thick, he could barely make sense of it. He heard something snarling as an endless wave of bodies and legs and fur flooded the grounds and made their way to cross the trench. He picked off anything he could see – not stopping to question his morals and not even hesitating for a second as he decapitated two snatchers then exploded a cluster of acromantula.
But it wasn’t enough.
The sheer volume of the oncoming wave was simply too large and they weren’t even putting a dent into it as the snatchers put up shields against the students’ attacks and began to unleash their own storm of hexes aimed at the incline.
He could see Nasir shifting through the statues – the man had entirely abandoned his cover and was wading into the anarchy cutting down everything and anything that wasn’t made of stone as he made his way towards the trolls approaching the left. Arthur heard someone yelling his name and felt the familiar tug of a tether latching through his chest and yanking him out onto the grounds a second before his stone cover exploded. He groaned out in pain, struggling to his feet as Shacklebolt nodded to him and he twisted to see Remus hauling himself up from the ground to the left.
There was a deafening crunch as a troll reached the front line, smashing the cover the other professors were using before the stone statues took it down with their pikes. Arthur ducked another attack, blood splattered across his chest, he barely managed to evade a werewolf that lunged at him before a spell from the second line severed its head clean off and he looked up to see Ron standing just ahead of the second line with his wand out.
More were coming.
He could feel the ground rocking beneath his feet and then Shacklebolt’s voice rang out as the tag on his arm buzzed.
“FALL BACK ONE ROW!” Shacklebolt yelled, his voice nearly inaudible in the disarray as he helped Arthur take down two more werewolves. He was way too far to be heard and Ron was too busy taking on the acromantula that had slipped by to read the tag. Shacklebolt darted towards Arthur, yelling out to him through the chaos. “ARTHUR – THE STUDENTS – THIRD ROW TO THE COURTYARD, NOW!”
Arthur nodded, ducking another attack and then shifting up the incline toward his son as Shacklebolt shifted back into the thick of it behind Nasir.
“RON!” Arthur screamed, continuing to fend off what he could hit as he yelled out to his son. “RON – GET THE THIRD ROW OUT NOW! FALL BACK BY ONE!”
He caught a glimpse of his boy taking out three more acromantula that had bypassed his left side with Lavender’s help. The two were working as a pair and catching anything that came down the middle to prevent it from getting to the second line or attacking Arthur and the others’ backs. The boy nodded, turning back to the second row of cover and sending up a stream of glowing green sparks.
“FALL BACK ONE ROW!” Ron screamed, turning back around to cover their rear as Lavender started screaming the order as well. Arthur caught sight of Colin as the boy flickered into view along the right, sending up his own stream of green sparks before he began to usher the second row students up the incline. “FALL BACK – ONE ROW, NOW!! ”
Arthur’s head jerked up to the third line of cover – most of the students were missing their disillusionments now, some of them were darting back up the hill to the courtyard while others were only slowly backing away as they continued to rain down attacks on the approaching second wave. He turned back around, taking out another werewolf that had slipped through the statues and then he started pushing his way toward the left again to take out more snatchers that were crossing the trench.
They were losing ground – and their attackers knew it.
Their advantages were spent and there was nothing left to stop the wave aside from their own attacks. And they simply could not compete with the numbers.
Retreating back one row was all they could do but even then, he knew it wouldn’t work for long. They’d continue to lose ground and they’d eventually need to retreat to the courtyard in full. He took out the snatchers that were trying to gain ground as they began their retreat to the second line. He could see George helping Minerva up the incline – the woman was limping, but she was still fighting and covering their rear as George aided her and Fred blew up their original block of cover then darted up the hill after them. The explosion took out a werewolf, blasting another small hole in the ground and leaving a bright red fire in its wake.
Remus and Nasir shifted across the ground to attack the next troll that was bombarding the professors on the left. Someone got hit – he couldn’t tell who it was, but they were instantly crushed by the troll before Nasir managed to cut off the creature’s head. Remus grabbed one of the remaining professors who was limping, hauling them away from the first line and back up the incline as the troll collapsed on top of the pile of bodies.
They were going to be overwhelmed.
In fact they were already overwhelmed.
He grimaced as he shifted up the slope – yet no matter how many steps back he took the wave of bodies and death before him didn’t seem to grow any further away. They’d barely reached the second line of cover when a third wave surged from the forest and rushed across the grass toward the killing pit. And every single witch and wizard in the influx began to blindly open fire on the incline. They aimed at anything and everything that moved – or didn’t move. They didn’t care. They had no target – they just released spell after spell, and it was as if the heavens had opened up and they were being bombed with attacks. A shot of green whizzed by his head, then his knee – Arthur dodged a third attack and rolled out of the way as another stream of hexes cut through the air.
He saw three students go down just a few feet behind him – then four more. His stomach twisted, it felt like his heart was being ripped out of his chest as one’s arm was blasted off while two more were struck in the chest by streaks of gold and they simply collapsed to the ground motionless. He saw Lavender grabbing the armless boy, hauling him from the ground and all but dragging him up the hill and sending him off with another student back up to the courtyard as Ron covered her back.
There were too many students still working their way up the hill and with the storm of curses and hexes pouring down on them he knew they would never make it. He felt like he was being torn apart from the inside out as he desperately tried to keep his head above water and not drown in the attacks.
He could hear Shacklebolt yelling something as they all tried not to get hit. One of the second-row cover blocks was struck and it exploded and caught fire. The few remaining stone statues rushed to form a tighter line at the edge of the trench to keep the enemy from crossing – but their numbers were just too small, and their attackers were too relentless. You Know Who’s people knew they had the advantage now and the skill level of the third wave was proof of that. These were no longer expendable people – these were incredibly dangerous and violent attackers who knew what they were doing. Even as Minerva raised her wand and unleashed an incredible display of magic on the Southern side from the second line – it just wasn’t enough.
“SHACKLEBOLT!” Arthur screamed, ducking another attack and rolling across the ground. His knees shook as he stood and the panic in his chest began to tighten. He tried not to look at the bodies that littered the ground. He tried not to wonder if the leg that he’d just accidentally stepped on belonged to a former student. He forced his eyes back to the bloodbath and found Shacklebolt right in the thick of it between the first and second line – taking on a werewolf and two small acromantula. Arthur’s jaw clenched tight as he sent the message through the tag and he screamed it out as loud as he could. “CALL THEM IN! CALL THEM IN NOW!!”
He could barely see the man nod as he finally managed to sever the head off the werewolf and he began to weave his way through the crowd as Arthur took out the spiders. He ducked behind a second-row block of cover before casting something into the air behind them that almost looked like a shield.
“I ALREADY DID!” Shacklebolt screamed, his voice barely audible. He quickly cast a second shield, again sending it out above the third row students before recasting his own shield and rushing back out around his cover to join the chaos once more. “THEY’RE ON THE WAY – LEFT FLANK!”
Arthur nodded in understanding, ducking behind his new block of cover once more to avoid the Avada that shot by his head before continuing with his defence. He heard another scream somewhere in the distance, yellow sparks shot up into the air along the path to the courtyard followed quickly by three more sets that spanned out across the ground behind him. Panic coursed through him as he looked around – desperately trying to see who had requested help as Fred and George sent out their Patronus’ and the magpies darted into the air. Arthur shot off his own – hoping to Merlin that it found where it needed to go because there was no way in hell he could see where the sparks had originated from.
Just as he managed to take out another two acromantula he was clipped on the shoulder so hard it knocked him to the ground. His teeth clenched as he hissed out in pain. It felt like the entire left side of his body had just been shattered even though he knew his shield was still active. He groaned as he forced himself to stand. He summoned another strength potion from his pack, not stopping to question if it was a good decision before he downed the entire thing and threw the empty vial away. He could feel every single muscle in his body tense as the potion coursed through him and his heart rate doubled. Whoever had brewed this had done a hell of a job – because it numbed the agonizing pain on the left side of his body and he couldn’t even feel it.
He saw flames igniting and snaking across the ground, drawing a line through the insanity and cutting across the crowd toward the final massive troll that was raging up the ground on his right. The flames wrapped around the creature’s legs, twisting up its body and encasing it in fire as its roars of pain and panic split the air. Arthur darted across the ground cutting down the acromantula that were rushing towards him before ducking behind the next piece of cover closer to Remus and the remaining professors. Six broken chunks of stone were suddenly lifted from the ground – the remains of the first-row cover – and they were immediately hurled across the trench into the oncoming flood. He had no idea who did it, but he could hear the thud of the stones as they rolled through the snatchers and crushed the ones not quick enough to get out of the way.
Three more attackers exploded, six were beheaded, a group was blasted backward by Fred and George as Minerva covered them and the limbs went flying. He lost count of the bodies. He lost count of how much blood. He lost count of everything as his entire existence seemed to shift into nothing more than instinctive and animalistic survival mode. He could hear Ron directing the injured back up to the castle behind him. He could hear Lavender screaming as an acromantula jumped on top of her, but Colin managed to cut it down. There was a loud bang to their left, a bright flash of light and suddenly the wave of oncoming attackers pouring out of the trench was being cut down the middle as Aberforth rushed into view and unleashed an attack that would have rivalled the one Minerva had used only moments ago.
Arthur didn’t have a clear view, but he could see a small stream of bodies pouring in from their left flank and driving back the attack. Some of the reinforcements seemed to be recently graduated students – he could just make out Angelina who rapidly made her way into the mix while hexing anything in sight. Lee, Katie – two other students that he did not recognize and a handful more of Ministry Employees as well as half a dozen other figures. But they darted into the battle so quickly he couldn’t make out who they were.
His arm buzzed – confirming that their reinforcements had arrived, and they’d joined at the greenhouses too. Bill notified them that Augusta Longbottom was there, and she’d already taken out the last troll and despite all odds, the greenhouse had managed to regain some ground.
But in terms of the Eastern front, he knew that even with the arrival of their back-up it wouldn’t be enough.
The surprise attack was just enough to cut a temporary hole in the attack that allowed him and the others a second to breathe, heal and down a bunch of potions while the injured third line students evacuated up the hill under Shacklebolt’s shield. Aberforth and his team took on the brunt of the attack, acting as a distraction and taking on the main fire so that the students could get away. But it wasn’t going to tip the scales in their favour, and it definitely wasn’t going to allow them to hold the second line forever – and he knew that Shacklebolt knew that a retreat to the third line was inevitable.
He watched as Aberforth obliterated a horde of acromantula coming from the Northern side and Remus poured a collection of potions down Madam Hooch’s throat so she could stand once more and help him cover the left. Arthur knew first-hand the woman’s body was likely still severely injured and she was running on potions – but at this moment it didn’t matter. She was standing and fighting and that was good enough. The both of them sent out a stream of attacks over the trench as the students from Ron and Lavender’s row followed suit. Then Aberforth directed his crew to begin their fall back to the second line – and for the briefest of moments, it actually looked like they might make it. It looked like they could manage this front and reform a line.
Then the ground rumbled – sharp rapid popping sounds broke out across the Eastern front, but he couldn’t see what it was as he felt the air grow frigidly cold.
The hairs on the back of his skull stood up with terror as the sky was dotted with nearly a hundred black cloaks, the ground shook beneath them as a massive collection of bombardas began to collide with the small shield that Shacklebolt had put up above the retreating students and the sky was lit up with magic once more. Evidently, their attackers had realized that their hexes and curses were no longer getting through and the third wave had coordinated and given up on sending anything other than explosions. He saw the small shield bend as a crater was blown into the ground on their left flank – narrowly missing Madam Hooch as she ducked and rolled away.
“GET BACK!” Shacklebolt’s voice bellowed out as he motioned with Aberforth for their backup to retreat up the hill to the second line. But they struggled to make any headway – Arthur could see them ducking and dodging and stumbling under the onslaught of explosions. “NASIR – WITH ME! ARTHUR, COVER US!!”
Arthur sent out a barrage of attacks as Nasir and Shacklebolt made their way down the hill to help the others pull back. The small shield above the students failed, a massive succession of cracks cut through the air as the third wave began to annihilate the Eastern front with nothing but bombardas. Explosions went off left, right and center. Arthur fought to dodge around them as dirt blasted up into the sky and then rained down on his head.
He saw Katie get hit as she dodged an acromantula only to get hit by one of the explosions – her body and limbs were lost to the blast as three others from the Ministry were taken out. More red sparks shot up behind them, followed by yellow as the temperature continued to drop and the dementors descended and sickness filled his soul.
He could see something rushing the grounds now, but he didn’t know what it was. It was cutting through the mix of third and second wave attackers, outrunning the werewolves and cutting up the front lawn with wicked speed. It didn’t look human – but it didn’t look like any creatures he knew of either. Arthur squinted, trying to see what it was through the chaos as he sent out another string of attacks to cover Lee Jordan as the boy rushed up the incline towards him. Nasir grabbed the boy by the scruff of the neck as he reached him, yanking him out of the way of an attack before all but throwing him ten feet up the incline towards Arthur’s cover before he continued to work his way down towards the small group in the center that was struggling to get away from the front line. Shacklebolt managed to haul two Ministry employees out, dragging the one that was injured up the ground as Arthur dodged another explosion and covered him.
But when his eyes shifted back to Nasir and the center once more – Arthur saw him stiffen. The man’s blood-covered body went rigid – his dagger still stuck in the temple of a snatcher as his eyes scanned over the grounds. Then, with one swift jerk, he dislodged his dagger, re-holstered it and downed an entire bottle of something before pulling out his wand once more and turning back to Shacklebolt.
“INFERI!” Nasir bellowed, ducking a blast of green before cutting his attacker in half. “SHACKLEBOLT! IT’S INFERI! YOU NEED TO RETREAT!!”
Arthur felt his blood run cold as the word echoed in his mind and terror filled his heart. That was what he’d seen rushing up the ground. That was what was outrunning the oncoming werewolves and cutting through the rear second and third wave attackers as the ones at the front began to confidently cross the trench and take the Eastern front in full.
They couldn’t stay here.
They were done.
He could see it on Shacklebolt’s face as the man nodded and called for a full retreat. There would be no third line fall back. There would be no more defensive line on this front – this was a full pull back and Nasir, Shacklebolt and Aberforth all plunged back into the chaos to help get the remaining few that were still stuck down by the front line out as Arthur sent out the signal and called to Ron to get the remaining third line students back to the courtyard.
And within seconds of announcing their retreat, Bill signalled that the greenhouses were done – they’d lost the small ground they’d gained, and they were issuing a full retreat as well. Arthur’s heart thudded painfully in his chest as he dodged another attack and desperately tried to cover his allies as they made their way up the incline. He didn’t know what had happened, if the Southern front had inferi too or what was going on but he knew that if Harry did not miraculously find what he needed in a matter of minutes there were all going to die.
They couldn’t hold against this.
Even with a full retreat, they could not withstand this attack.
There were just too many and he could feel his body aching with pain as he sent out another Patronus and started to inch his way up the incline to the third line. He glanced at the students behind him – they were darting up the hill now, some of them carrying or supporting the bodies of others while two Patronus’ circled above them. But Ron, Lavender, and Colin were going the wrong way. They were rushing down the hill with six other students ducking and dodging before firmly planting themselves in a line just below the third row of cover to create another layer of defence so those behind them could get away.
He opened his mouth to scream at them to go but the ground between them exploded and Arthur was blasted to the left. He collided with the ground, groaning in pain as he struggled to breathe. It hurt. Everything hurt. He pushed himself to his feet and nearly got beheaded as he stood. His vision blurred and twisted as his eyes glanced around him and all he could see was carnage.
The few remaining stone statues that were trying to brace against the wave that had officially crossed the trench were being ripped apart. Shacklebolt was covered head to toe in blood and dragging someone else out of the chaos and sending them up the incline. He saw Minerva get hit as Fred tried to fend off the attacker and George covered them. The dementors were picking off anyone they could get their hands on and even the massive goat Patronus that Aberforth had released to protect the two front lines wasn’t enough to drive them all away.
But his heart positively froze in his chest as Remus’ voice cut through the air and Arthur’s stomach dropped like a stone.
“DORA!”
The man’s scream echoed across the Eastern front louder than the explosions as he cut down the incline and weaved between the bodies. Arthur’s eyes jerked in time to see Tonks slicing open a werewolf and dodging a set of attacks just at the edge of the front line near the left. And his body instinctively reacted, rushing after Remus and trying to give the man cover.
The woman was moving and shifting like someone had loaded her with adrenaline. Her face was strained, her body was covered in blood and dirt as she and Angelina Johnson worked as a team in the middle of the chaos – leaving a pile of bodies in their wake. He could see the panic on Remus’ face as he tried to get to his wife. The man cut down six more men as Nasir reignited his fiendfyre and began to carefully carve a hole through the center of the wave so the others stuck in the middle could get out of the chaos as George hauled Minerva to her feet on the right.
It was as if everything was slowing down, and Arthur could see it all taking place across the entire Eastern front before it actually happened.
Tonks’ eyes had shot wide with panic, her arm flung out, grabbing Angelina and tugging her out of the way of an attack before she screamed for Remus to duck. Her wand raised just as the man obeyed her command, bending at the waist and narrowly dodging the werewolf that was lunging for his head. Tonks severed it clean in half – blood spilled like black water across Remus’ back as he fired off another round of spells to take out the influx of attackers to their left as Angelina tried to cover the right.
Remus was only a few feet away.
His eyes locked to his wife’s gaze and a small smile tugged at the corner of her lips.
It was as if – in that moment – the entire world could have seen the love that she had for that man. It was written all over her face. It shone from her eyes like a bright ray of hope – and it was the last thing that Remus saw before her eyes instantly hardened, her hand swished in a flurry and Remus was flung backward as she pushed Angelina underneath the barrage of attacks that came streaking in from their side.
It happened so slowly.
Yet Arthur knew it was less than a second.
Remus’ eyes grew wide and his mouth fell open as Tonks saved him and Angelina from the attack and was immediately struck with six different spells. Her eyes went blank – the dull ghostly emptiness like a white cloud across her usually bright and animated gaze. Her body convulsed. There was a sickening crack and then her chest split open – her ribs tearing through the fabric of her dirtied and bloodied robes before the blood rushed out and she dropped to the ground. He could hear Remus scream. It rang in his ears like agony. It sounded like the man was dying – like his soul was breaking and burning as he hauled himself back up from the ground and tried to push his way toward his wife’s body.
But she was lost in the madness – and the wave of death that washed over the hill was all Arthur could see.
Two more allies from the Ministry dropped like stones. Their bodies fell into the mud and massacre – disappearing from sight, no longer distinguishable to the eye amongst the other bodies that littered the ground. The final stone statue fell. Screams broke out into the air behind him. His head jerked to see Nasir hauling Shacklebolt up from the ground as one of their allies from the Ministry fended off a massive acromantula to their right. Then his gaze shifted again to see Colin collapse as blood spattered in the air – a younger looking girl crying out to him as he shoved her up the hill before his face hit the ground. Two more of the six students that had come down the incline got struck across the chest as a bombarda collided with the path beyond the third line of cover.
This is all wrong.
His heart was racing. Blood and dirt spattered across his face as the ground blew up six feet to his right.
All wrong.
More yellow sparks shot up into the air as Arthur beheaded two more people without even thinking.
Wrong.
He stumbled as the ground exploded six feet to his left. Everything was moving too fast. Too slow. His muscles were sluggish. His mind couldn’t keep track.
Wrong.
Arthur barely made it four more steps before he heard Lavender screaming ‘go’. His gaze shifted to see Ron rushing the final stretch between the third and second line of cover towards his brothers as Lavender lingered in the zone that was just out of reach of most of the attacks to cover him. And it was as if someone shoved a scorching hot iron down his throat.
“RON!” Arthur screamed, feeling his throat tear as he began to fight his way over to his children. How had he gotten so far away? When had he moved so far left? He could see that Fred, George and Minerva were pinned down as their attackers crossed the right side of the trench and cut up the incline. “RON NO – FALL BACK!! GET OUT!”
But the boy didn’t listen.
Maybe he couldn’t even hear him – Arthur would never know, but there was a hard glint of determination shining in his eyes as he began to sprint even faster.
He took out three snatchers as he ran, urgently making his way towards Fred, George and Minerva who were desperately trying to hold their spot behind a final block of cover from the second line. Arthur fought his way towards them, desperation nearly choking him as his heart thudded dangerously fast. He watched as Ron unleashed a flurry of hexes, taking out four snatchers and two acromantula before he reached them and motioned for George to take Minerva up the hill as he and Fred provided cover.
George’s face was gashed open.
His son struggled to his feet. His right leg was blatantly broken and wrapped in an extensive set of bandages, but the boy simply drank a vial of potion and then began to haul a battered and blood-covered Minerva up the incline. Clearly, all four of the kids had decided that keeping Minerva alive was more important than themselves – because regardless of how loud Arthur screamed, they all had continued with their rescue mission.
His limbs started to shake. He was nearly halfway toward them when they were assaulted once more. The two boys moved quickly, Fred and Ron ducking and dodging as they cast counter after counter and tried to inch their way up the incline behind George. Fred blasted away a small group of acromantula and Ron took out a snatcher trying to attack them as Arthur desperately cast anything and everything that he could to cover them as he ran. His feet pounded hard against the ground, his lungs felt like they were in his throat as he ducked and dodged and scrambled to get to them.
There was a flash and an explosion – and everything grew slower once more.
The block of cover that they’d been using exploded and then Fred got hit across the chest and he collapsed on the ground. George downed another two vials of potion, his body shuddered violently as a deep and agonizing groan cut from his lips. Even at this distance, Arthur could see sweat pouring from the boy’s body as he took off sprinting on his busted leg – running Minerva up the final stretch of incline and handing the woman off to Lavender like she was a relay baton before he turned around and headed straight back to his brothers. Ron dumped two vials down Fred’s throat, pulling him up from the ground and forcing him to move once more. A second spell hit them – then a third. Blood splattered across the ground as George closed the distance between them at an insane and dangerous pace.
But it wasn’t going to be enough.
Arthur’s stomach twisted in agony as it felt like someone drove a knife through his chest. He screamed for his children. He unleashed everything that he had at the oncoming attack as Lavender darted Minerva up the hill and George reached his brothers once more.
But it wasn’t enough.
And he could see it all unfolding like something from a nightmare before his eyes.
George dropped as he was clipped on the shoulder. His scream was like a dagger through Arthur’s soul but the boy somehow managed to haul himself from the ground and grab hold of Fred to help haul him up the hill. There was another explosion. A flash of colour. At the last second, Ron shoved Fred fully into George’s arms, pushing him out of the way of another attack while getting hit in the shoulder.
Ron slumped, the left half of his body seemed to curl inward as his face contorted in pain. He fell to his knees, his body shaking and twisting as if it were being slowly broken apart from the inside out. The last thing Arthur saw his youngest son do was cast his very first shield charm. The purple bolt shot from his wand, encasing his brothers just before Fred was hit again and Ron’s body dropped to the ground.
He could hear someone screaming.
He didn’t know if it was him.
Dust filled the air as the ground exploded and he was caught across the arm with a hex. It burned through his clothes; he could feel it eating into his skin but he didn’t stop running. He managed to dodge four more attacks before he was hit clean across the chest and he dropped to the ground with a thud. He tried to scream for his sons – but he couldn’t breathe. It was as if someone had punctured both of his lungs and squeezed the life from his body.
He couldn’t think.
His vision was spotting with black. Or was that something black hovering above him?
A massive explosion sounded to the North. The world spun around him as nausea swept through his body and everything went numb. He lost control of his neck as the acid continued to burrow through his skin. His head lolled to the side. Blood was pouring from his lips. He couldn’t move his legs. His vision blurred as a wall of black fire rose up from the ground just a few feet away.
Why is it so cold?
He heard a shaky rattled inhale above him. Then he couldn’t feel a thing.
It was empty – dark – void. And then – there was nothing.
This chapter is dedicated to the characters that I slashed in the previous three chapters. Though many of you may not believe me when I say it... it pained me to write it, and I am sorry. Many of them were my favourites and they will be greatly missed.
-x-x-
Warnings:
This chapter contains: blood, violence, descriptions of gruesome injuries and healing including but not limited to burns, loss of limbs, loss of skin, decapitations, explosions, war and other not so awesome things. If you are squeamish be wary
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Arthur
It was so empty.
Arthur
Like a whisper he felt it brush against his mind, and yet his mind wasn’t even truly there to hear it. He couldn’t think, he couldn’t speak – it was just nothingness in an endless void.
Arthur!
Something tugged. He didn’t know where but suddenly he felt his body coming back to him and there was a sharp electric jolt across his chest.
Arthur!!
Panic exploded in his mind. He couldn’t see. Something was stabbing him. It hurt. Something was grabbing him, but he couldn’t speak. It pulled on bits and pieces of him that he didn’t even know existed and yet his lungs still would not work. He couldn’t breathe, and his body was screaming as his cells ached for air.
“ARTHUR!!”
His eyes rolled open, a desperate gasping inhale filling his lungs as something thudded hard against his chest. His body instantly started to shake with pain. It felt as if someone had smashed him with a hammer and then crushed him once more just for good measure. His vision swam, coming in and out of focus as he coughed and wheezed. His gaze darted around wildly as his burning heart raced and he desperately tried to make sense of his surroundings.
A tall lean body was kneeling on the ground by his side. A strong hand was forcing his mouth open and pouring something into it. He choked as he swallowed – gagging violently at the awful taste of what he knew in the back of his mind was several different potions being administered all at once. He jerked as warmth spread through his veins, his vitals skyrocketing as his body was forced back to life with a painful flood of adrenaline.
He groaned out in pain. The cry split from his lips like a raging roar as he blinked and shook his head before looking around him once more while the world came rushing in.
Nasir was hovering over him, an empty vial momentarily in his hand before the man tossed it away and began tapping at his chest. He felt something shift. He heard something crack and he groaned in agony once more as his hand reflexively shot out. He grabbed the man hard, gripping his blunt arm like a vice as his ribs were forced back into place. Then Nasir shifted, his hand left his chest and there was a quick tug on his left arm. He could feel his sleeve being ripped away as the tall man began to pour something that hissed and sizzled across his flesh.
“W-What happened?” Arthur stuttered, sitting up from the hard ground and glancing down at his arm as he hissed out in pain. He felt his stomach curl with sickness as his eyes took in the burned, blackened and melted remains of his left forearm. He had no idea what had hit him but whatever it was, it had eaten into his arm like acid.
“We can’t hold,” Nasir said quickly, dumping another vial over his arm before muttering something inaudible and then pulling a string of cloth from his pocket. His gaze kept darting up to the right as tension seemed to strain across his shoulders. “We’re retreating in full.”
“I know,” Arthur grunted, his teeth clenching as all the muscles in his body spasmed in reaction to the potions taking effect. “I remember – but what happened?”
“He pulled a dementor off of you.”
Arthur’s head jerked to the left and his eyes landed on Lee Jordan. The boy’s face was twisted into a peculiar look – a strange mix of awe, dazed confusion and fear as he stood there holding his wand before him and Arthur realized that the boy was lighting the ground so Nasir could see what he was doing.
“What?” Arthur’s brow furrowed, his mind struggling to process the words as he tried to remember exactly what had happened before he went down. He remembered the order to retreat, he remembered everyone falling back but everything else was just a haze.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Lee said, his head shaking as if he was suffering from mild shock or disorientation. His wand hand was trembling and there was blood dripping from his shoulder onto the ground though it was unclear if it belonged to the boy or if it had simply splattered across his jacket. “He just – just grabbed it, and ripped it right off.”
“You what?” Arthur’s voice wavered in confusion as his eyes shifted back to Nasir in time to see the man finish wrapping his forearm with the tan cloth, sticking it in place and sealing it with some sort of paste from his pocket. But the tall man simply ignored his words, his eyes focused as they rapidly shifted between his arm and somewhere off in the distance.
“This will have to do, we need to leave – now,” Nasir said quickly, his voice sounding almost tight as he glanced toward Lee and nodded. “Mr. Jordan – up the hill.”
Lee nodded, extinguishing the light from his wand but still lingering near them as Nasir hauled Arthur from the ground in one swift pull. His head rushed and his vision blurred from the sudden movement. As he swayed on his feet his eyes took in the sight of a massive wall of burning black flames. It cut across the entire Eastern front and stretched down to the greenhouses – then Nasir turned him around and began shifting him across the broken ground.
“What did you do?” Arthur wheezed, his legs shaking beneath him as Nasir slung his arm over his shoulder and started to half carry him up the hill at a ridiculously rapid pace. “Did you cast that?”
“No,” Nasir said quickly as they shifted up the ruined incline, but he seemed distracted. His eyes were once again darting to the right as they moved. “That was Aberforth and Shacklebolt – but it won’t hold for long.”
Arthur’s bleary gaze traced along the broken and wretched landscape before them. The occasional spell from behind the wall of black flames continued to strike against the incline from the enemy forces trapped behind it. There wasn’t a single block of cover left intact. His feet stumbled and tripped over chunks of earth, rock, wood and limbs as they quickly made their way up the incline. He could hear voices screaming and calling out to his left and right as dark figures moved and ran up towards the courtyard carrying things that looked like people or bodies. If not for the faint glow of silver light that seemed to encompass the entire Eastern front, he wouldn’t have been able to see them moving in the darkness. His eyes darted up and widened in surprise as he saw a massive collection of Patronus circling in the sky – the two largest of the group, a goat and a lynx, were pacing in a wide circle.
His heart clenched painfully in his chest as something sharp dug into the back of his brain. He glanced to his right, eyeing the tall, silent man who was nearly carrying him – again. His expression looked tight, his eyes dark and glinting. His gaze continued to flick to the Northern front and his body seemed to be exceptionally stiff – stiffer than normal. It was as if the man was, for the very first time that Arthur had ever seen it, visibly stressed.
“You saved my life again,” Arthur said tightly, his throat clenching as he struggled to make his limbs keep up with the tall man. The pain at the base of his skull was growing worse and he grit his teeth as he tried to ignore it. Murky images from the battle were surfacing and he could feel his heart beating faster with each step.
“It was nothing,” Nasir’s deep voice replied automatically, his eyes still darting to and from the Eastern and Northern fronts as he began to move them even faster. Lee was panting, trying to keep up as others struggled up the incline before them.
“It’s not nothing,” Arthur practically grunted, ignoring the roll of sickness in his stomach as they reached the now obliterated third line of cover and he stepped on something soft and wet. He knew it was the remains of a dead body, he just hoped to Merlin that it wasn’t human. “Stop saying it like that.”
He groaned in pain once more as his heart gave a heavy thud and the broken memories in his head finally started to clear. Everything from the last few minutes was quickly rushing into focus and he could feel his body starting to shake as his eyes widened in realization.
“My boys,” Arthur’s voice came out in a rasp, his chest constricting in agony as his legs stuttered to a stop. His eyes flicked to Nasir in desperation before he tried to turn around and look at the wreckage behind them. “My boys – where are my boys?! Are they okay? Ron – Fred and George! Are they okay?”
“Shacklebolt has them,” Nasir said quickly, his grip on Arthur growing tighter as he forced the man to continue up the incline. “You have to get back to the courtyard – I don’t have much time.”
“But are they okay?” Arthur pressed, desperation filling his voice as his mind and body were flooded with panic. “Are they alive?”
“Fred and George are,” Nasir said quickly, his voice even tighter than before. “Ron didn’t make it.”
And with those four simple words, Arthur felt like his heart had been ripped from his chest as a strangled sob left his lungs. His vision blurred as Nasir continued to haul him up the grounds. He could hear water rushing in his mind. The sound grew louder and louder and louder in his head from the pain as his agony blocked out everything else until Nasir suddenly stopped dead and he heard Lee’s voice once more.
“What’s that noise?”
Arthur’s bleary eyes jerked to the right, his heartbroken mind barely managing to take in the sight of an extremely confused-looking Lee and an entirely still and immobile Nasir at his side. And then he realized that the rushing sound wasn’t in his head at all. It wasn’t his internal pain or his mind drowning with the memory of his son’s death. It was an audible noise across the Eastern front and he could see the other dark shadows still scattered across the incline coming to a stop as they looked around in confusion.
“What’s happening?” Arthur asked, his eyes creasing as he rapidly glanced around them. His eyes shifted back to Nasir as he felt the man’s grip on his side grow impossibly tight – so tight that it became excruciatingly painful. “Nasir your –“
But the words died on his lips as his eyes locked to Nasir’s face and he instantly knew that something was very very wrong. The man’s expression was like nothing Arthur had ever seen before. His gaze was so dark it was blacker than the night. His eyes were glinting – but there were visible creases at the corner. Something deep and impossible to name was radiating so strongly behind his usually cold and empty gaze that it struck Arthur dumbfounded and silent. Arthur’s eyes shifted to the North – looking to see what had captured Nasir’s attention so raptly and he felt his body grow still with terror as the rushing sound grew louder around them.
It wasn’t water.
The noise that was rumbling and churning and growing louder by the second was not water at all.
It was fire.
And it was shooting up into the air along the Northern front like a massive tidal wave.
Then suddenly, he was being jerked forward once more. Nasir’s bruising grip left his side, and he was being shoved up the hill at such an intense pace he couldn’t even process it. Lee was being dragged along behind them until they passed the third line of cover and Nasir stopped once more. He pushed Arthur into the boy’s arms, hauled out a collection of potions from his robes and dumped them into Arthur’s hands.
But Arthur wasn’t looking. His gaze was fixated on the North and the flames that seemed to be growing and morphing along the hillside as another devastating realization rang through his soul.
“Ginny,” he whispered as Nasir pulled out another vial and downed the contents himself.
Everyone on the hill had stopped now – their eyes locked to the massive blaze of bright red, orange, yellow and white. The smell of burning and roasted flesh filled the air, and the noise grew horrendously loud. The spells that were being lobbed over the line of black fire ceased and the noise from the North was the only thing that could be heard.
There was only one person in the world aside from the man by his side that could make a blaze that large and it was as if the entire school knew it. Not a single soul could look away from the outrageous display of power. Then the panic hit him, and Arthur’s gaze snapped back to Nasir once more.
“Ginny!” Arthur’s voice came out hoarse and loud as terror filled his heart. The sky was alight with fire, the glow of it reaching the Eastern front and making it look as if the night was burning. “Ginny is there! Ginny and Charlie and Hermione are there!”
“Mr. Jordan take him up the hill now!” Nasir ordered as he ripped the left sleeve of his robes up and rapidly sent out a collection of messages across the tags. But Arthur couldn’t even make himself read them. He could barely make himself hold the potion vials that were shaking in his hands. “Make sure that he drinks all of those – do you understand?”
Lee nodded, his eyes wide with horror as his gaze flicked between Nasir and the enormous blaze that was taking shape on the hill. Arthur’s stomach twisted with nausea, bile burning at the back of his throat as an ungodly roar split through the air and a flaming beast reared its head. He could feel the heat of it from here. It was wafting over the school and making the air thick with the smell of death as a giant raging Nundu began to ravage the lands and shake the very earth beneath his feet.
“LEE!” Nasir snapped, his voice so loud and his tone so deadly that the boy’s head jerked back to look up at him in fear. “Take Arthur to Shacklebolt, now. Tell him I’ll be back and make sure that all these people get off this incline. If anything happens to him, even one single scratch – I’m going to carve out your heart and keep it as compensation, understood?”
Lee nodded, his body trembling in fear at Nasir’s dangerous expression and then he moved. Grabbing Arthur tight and turning to start back up the hill once more. But Arthur’s panic spun out of control and he pulled back towards Nasir who was turning on his heel.
“Nasir – we have to do something!” the words came out broken as he juggled the vials into one arm so he could grab the tall man’s shoulder. His nails dug into the fabric of Nasir’s robes, his stomach twisting with nausea as the beast grew larger and roared out once more. “He’s attacking the bridge – You Know Who is attacking the bridge!! We have to go there!”
“No,” Nasir’s voice was dark and level as he tugged himself away from Arthur’s hold and turned back to look at him. “That’s not Tom.”
Arthur felt his stomach drop as the inferno grew bigger once more. The Nundu’s shoulders were rising into the air as blue flames poured from its mouth and set the forest on fire. But as his gaze shifted back to Nasir once more, he felt his rapid heart rate stutter in his chest. The man’s dark gaze was glinting, his eyes were creased, his jaw was tight – but underneath it all, Arthur saw worry.
“That’s Hermione,” Nasir said quietly, his voice almost strained. Before Arthur could say another word, the man tore away from them, taking off at an incredible sprint across the grounds toward the North.
Another massive roar split through the air and rattled the bones in his body. Arthur’s eyes glanced up to see the blaze nearly double in size as the beast raced towards the Hogsmeade hillside and obliterated the grounds. When he looked back to where Nasir had run, the man was nowhere in sight and Lee was dragging him up the hill and screaming at everyone to run.
-x-x-
Heat. Fire. Pain. Death.
It consumed her.
It was her entire existence as everything burned and everything melted away. She could feel it in her mind. She could feel it in her soul. She could feel it in her lungs as they blackened with ash and ceased to function while the air and life was crushed from her body. It was everything. It was the only thing. It was a part of her, burning and raging, splitting her open and flaying her alive as the rage continued to pour out and her soul was shattered beneath the endless ocean of agony that sat on her heart.
Chaos.
It was the only thing left.
Her vision blurred with racing colours – blue, red, orange, and white. She couldn’t tell up from down and time ceased to exist as the deafening screeching roar of her hell fire consumed her mind. And then, just as the very last puff of scorching hot air left her lungs and she felt her shield charm entirely fail – something cool and calm brushed against her mind. It was like water on a fire, like ice on burning desert sand. Something pushed lightly against her spine, she could feel it between her shoulder blades while something else pressed into her diaphragm momentarily. Then a hand was reaching into the blaze and grabbing at her own. She couldn’t feel it, but she knew it was there and then suddenly – everything stopped.
The fire went out.
The world stopped screaming.
She could feel her body shaking as a cool familiar breath ghosted by her ear. The low rumble that followed was like the first gasp of air after a lifetime of drowning and her body all but collapsed as she heard it.
“Hermione.”
Her legs crumpled as a strangled noise left her lungs.
“Breathe Hermione – you’re okay,” his voice was low and dark, but even in her delirious state she could hear his concern. “I’ve got you. It’s okay.”
She would have fallen to the ground completely and broken into pieces had he not grabbed her and held her up. Her vision swam, her eyes were rolling as her lungs refused to inhale the air that she so desperately needed.
“Breathe, Hermione!”
She felt a sharp tap on her back, magic flooded her lungs and the air rushed in as she cried out in pain. She coughed and gagged. She felt something wet dripping from her lips and she instinctively knew that it was blood as he shifted around her, standing before her while he continued to hold her up. Her head rolled to the side, her bleary eyes drifting across the scorched and burning land behind him. She felt her stomach roll, vomit filling her mouth and nose as the weight of her rune crushed her blackened soul and ramrodded into her chest like a freight train.
“Don’t look at it,” Nasir’s voice cut through her hazy mind as she violently wretched and threw up on the ground. She could see blood and tar spatter across the blackened earth by her feet as she choked, and her legs gave out completely.
His hand came to her face. Something tapped against her chest and her airways cleared as the sick was vanished from existence. Then her mouth was pulled open, and liquid was running down her throat. She gagged again but he covered her mouth – forcing her to swallow the disgusting mix of what she knew was copious amounts of blood replenisher and dittany. Agony burned through her lungs and throat once more. When it finally went down, he removed his hand and let her cough. Green smoke poured from her lips as she hissed out in pain. Her head rolled to the side again and she felt horror surge through her mind once more as her eyes roved over the unrecognizable landscape for the second time.
It was too heavy.
It was too much.
Her heart started to race; her mind started to spin. She couldn’t carry this. She couldn’t do this. She could feel the sick churning in her stomach as her body and mind cracked under the pressure and threatened to break entirely beneath the weight. She could almost hear her bones groaning – creaking as if she were an old house about to blow over in a windstorm.
“Don’t look at it,” Nasir repeated sternly. His hand grabbed her chin and he forced her eyes to look at him. His face swam into focus. He was staring at her intently, his gaze dark and laced with an inordinate amount of emotion as his eyes creased and his voice seemed to soften. “Don’t – not now. Look at me Hermione – just at me.”
Her eyes welled at his words before they creased in pain and tears began to pour down her face. It didn’t matter if he wouldn’t let her see it – she could feel it, she would always feel it. She knew what she’d done. And the guilt and the darkness were suffocating her. It was killing her from the inside out.
“I’m – ss-sorry,” the words came out broken and slurred, her vision swimming once more as she started to quake in his arms. Her head was shaking, and her heart was breaking as desperate ramble poured from her mouth. “I – had to – I had to – I’m sssorry – I couldn’t st-stop – I’m sorry – I had to – I didn’t want to – I –”
“I know,” Nasir cut her off, his low voice calm as he kept her face aimed at him. He dropped his hold on her chin to grab another vial from his pocket, holding her up with his blunt arm as he shifted. She saw him bite the stopper out then he brought the bottle of blood replenisher to her lips. He made her drink it too, but it only made the sickness in her stomach surge worse once the smell of burnt flesh registered in her newly healed nose. “It’s okay.”
Her vision started to blur as he shifted before her – his body now completely blocking out the wasted land that continued to sizzle and crack under the extreme lingering heat.
“We need to go.”
His voice was lower. She could still hear it but everything else was starting to fade. She felt his arms wrap around her and he lifted her from the ground, clutching her firmly to his chest as if she weighed nothing before tucking her head in by his neck so she couldn’t look at the aftermath of what she’d done from over his shoulder. She could tell that his robes were dirtied and covered in blood. He smelled like the night air – but it was smothered in sweat, fire, and death. She could feel him shifting quickly as he carried her with ease. She heard something else, something that faded in and out of focus as his voice rumbled in his chest against her cheek.
“Miss Weasley.”
Hermione’s eyes started to roll again, and her body started to shake once more. She could hear someone muttering almost nonsensically behind her, their voice was panicked and desperate as Nasir came to a stop.
“Miss Weasley,” he repeated, his tone becoming impatient.
“I – I didn’t – we – there were so many, and I can’t – it was inferi and Hermione she – and I don’t – I don’t know what else to do but she won’t stop bleeding!”
“Ginny!” Nasir’s voice was sharp, and Hermione felt him shift again. “Ginny, look at me – look at me –you’re going to be fine, but I need your help and I need you to focus.”
She felt him shift again as her vision started to spot with flecks of black. She heard a clink. Her body was growing cold, and the trembles were growing stronger as the sickness became more violent.
“Is she okay? She’s shaking – is she okay?!”
“Drink that – now,” Nasir ordered quickly as he shifted again. “Hermione is about to go into shock and Miss Bones is going to die if we do not move right now. We cannot stay here but I don’t have any more hands, so I need you to grab Miss Bones by the arm and then grab my ankle – do you understand?”
“Yes.”
The reply was much calmer. In the back of her mind, Hermione knew that the voice belonged to Ginny Weasley but everything was fading, and her brain seemed incapable of doing anything with that information.
“What’s the command to explode the bridge?”
“Uh – Totum – Totum Ignitionem Statuto.”
“Good, get ready,” he shifted once more, and Hermione’s eyes closed as her exhausted body began to fail. “Take a deep breath, Miss Weasley – this is going to be painful.”
There was another shift, she felt something warm grip her neck firmly. Her head felt as if it had been plunged underwater, everything was becoming dull and muffled. She wanted to sleep. Her chest was too heavy. Every bone like lead.
“Totum Ignitionem Statuto.”
The sound of an explosion split through the air. It was like a hammer through her skull, rattling down her spine and into her chest as the world around them began to distort and the air was squeezed from her lungs once more.
She could hear screaming. The pressure was crushing her. Her bones were breaking as her body was forced into a space that was much too small. And yet it was nothing compared to the pain that seemed to be radiating from the very core of her being – a dull heavy ache that was endless and eternal. As if she was being ripped apart from the inside out at a slow and agonizing pace. Not as sharp as the rune carving had been but somehow, in some way – it felt worse, and she knew she would never be free of it.
Then everything went dark and her mind slipped away as the cold disappeared.
It was warm.
It was peaceful.
For the first time in ages, she felt nothing at all, and her mind was entirely silent. If she could have let out a sigh of relief she would have. If this was death, she welcomed it with open arms for it was so much easier and far more comfortable than she could have ever imagined. She was okay with this. She would accept this. The small remaining awareness that she had for her body was numbing as the darkness grew deeper and her lungs stopped moving.
Then something ripped through her heart and her eyes shot wide. Stone and dim torchlight flooded her vision. Cold – wet – pain – life – it was all flooding back in as someone tapped her chest. Her crushed lungs inflated, and her ribs snapped back into place. She was grunting in pain again, but she could hear someone else screaming loudly as several of her broken bones knit back together.
A girl.
It was coming from the right, but Hermione had no idea who it was. She inhaled deeply – the smell of smoke, blood, dirt and sweat filling her lungs once more. She felt herself moving, lowering and her awakening mind rationalized that Nasir was setting her on the ground. Her head rolled back against the wall with a soft thud; she could tell that he was pulling things from his pockets but she could barely see it. Her brain couldn’t process it and her body grew cold once more as the weight of her rune tried to drag her head beneath the water. Then her body started to convulse.
“She’s shaking!” Ginny’s voice rang out and she heard someone moving by her side. “She’s shaking again, and Susan’s neck is bleeding once more!”
“N-Nasir,” Hermione choked out as her back began to arch and her body shuddered against the hard ground. Her eyes rolled as she attempted to force them open, tried to force them to focus so she could find him in the blur that whirled before her eyes. But everything was spotting with black.
“I’m right here.”
His voice sounded to her right and she felt something nudge almost reassuringly against her leg.
“It’s okay, I’ve got you.”
Her head lolled in his direction as she felt his warm hand open her mouth again and he poured something down her throat. It was more blood replenisher – a lot of it – and somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew that that was a bad thing. She had drunk enough to replace her blood three times over, which meant that the shakes and the cold were a result of blood loss. Which meant that she was, in fact, bleeding out – again.
“The potion pack on her thigh,” Nasir’s voice sounded in the darkness. “Take it and open it. Do exactly as I say.”
She felt something tug at her leg as her convulsions began to lessen and her vision swarm back into focus. Ginny was holding her potion pack and shifting to the girl on the floor to her right who was screaming and groaning out in pain.
“The bottle labelled cleanser – grab it. The dittany – pull that out too and grab the silver powder,” Nasir said quickly as he opened Hermione’s mouth and dumped another three potions down her throat. She didn’t even question it as she diligently swallowed and continued to try to process what was going on. “I’ve tethered her to the ground so she can’t move, but you’ll need to watch her heart rate on that diagnostic – the purple line on the big bubble, there. If that flashes let me know. Cleanse the re-opened neck wound first. Then use the silver powder followed by the dittany to close it.”
Warmth spread throughout Hermione’s body and the world grew sharper as the potions kicked in. Her head jerked to the side, rapidly scanning around and trying to figure out where the hell they were. There was a picture on the wall, tall oak doors to their left. Her mind quickly deduced that he had apparated them inside Hogwarts to a corridor near the Headmaster’s Office. Then her gaze rolled back to her side to look at the redhead who was huddled on the floor.
“Ginny,” Hermione said hoarsely, her head spinning with pain as she looked at the girl. Her uniform was ripped and torn. Her face was covered in blood. In the rapid insanity of the battle on the Northern front, she’d not been able to truly look at the girl. But now, Hermione could clearly see the cut that ran from Ginny’s right temple straight across her face to her left jawline. Relief and sorrow flooded her body like a wave as something horrible ached in her chest. “Y-You’re alive.”
The girl looked up and as their gazes locked Hermione saw that she was crying. Ginny’s head started to shake as she rapidly pulled vials from the potion pack, only pausing to smear the filthy charred sleeve of her sweater over her face to wipe away her tears. She didn’t flinch as the material dragged across the gash that had yet to be healed and instead, she just sniffed as more tears began to fall.
“Because of you,” Ginny’s voice broke as she grabbed the bottle of cleanser and ripped the stopper from the top. “Alive because of you.”
Hermione watched as the girl poured the potion over the re-opened wound on Susan’s neck. It must have split back open during the apparition and Ginny’s face grimaced in pain as Susan started to scream even louder. Their eyes broke apart, Ginny turning her full attention to Susan as Hermione felt a heavy weight landing in the pit of her stomach.
She’d thought that she’d killed her.
She’d thought for sure that Ginny had died in the blaze with the rest and yet somehow, she’d managed to keep the inferno away from the two girls. She knew she should feel relief. She knew that she should feel happy. And yet, she didn’t really feel anything at all. All she felt was a hollow empty numbness that grew deeper with each painful breath that she took.
It wasn’t right.
She didn’t feel right.
Her emotions were there under the surface, but they felt blunted and scattered and disjointed and lost. Her gaze shifted back to Nasir. She couldn’t watch Susan writhe and scream anymore as Ginny began to apply silver powder and dittany to the wound on her neck. She knew how that felt. She knew just how painful it was and knowing that Susan would be marked forever made her feel physically sick to her stomach even if the emotional reaction was stunted. If not for the strength potion the diagnostic showed coursing through Susan’s veins right now, she would have blacked out already. Instead, the girl was left mostly conscious and aware of the pain.
Hermione inhaled sharply, the rune on her chest getting heavier and heavier. With each pulse of her heart fear began to inch through her bones.
It was too heavy.
She couldn’t carry this.
She’d barely been managing as it was. After Gringotts, after finding out about Harry, after getting here and then feeling all the death and agony and pain through the tags – she couldn’t handle this too.
She wanted Harry.
She wanted to be with him.
She wanted him there with her so he could hold her and tell her everything was going to be okay. She wanted to talk to him, to hear his voice again. To see him. Touch him. Hold him. She wanted to know that he was okay because it was the only thing in the world that might make her feel better. But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. No matter how desperately she craved him she would not reopen their connection until she managed to get control of herself or he would surely panic and abandon his task to come find her. She needed to wait until some of this pain was gone because she couldn’t bear the thought of him feeling it through the bond.
It was the logical thing to do, but knowing it did nothing to calm her mind.
The muscles along her spine began to tense as she clenched her jaw tight. She desperately tried to ignore the hollow empty that was building in the center of her chest – but she couldn’t. She needed a distraction. She needed something, anything, to keep herself from losing her mind or reaching out to Harry. So, she watched Nasir. He seemed to be intently working on something near her side. Her eyes followed his movements, tracing down his arms as she looked to see what he was doing, and her gaze locked to his hand. He was holding something thin, wet and slippery in his grasp. She could see him turning it over as he muttered something quietly. It took her a long moment to realize that the slick red and black tissue he was holding was, in reality – her arm, and her body jerked as her eyes shot wide in realization.
“Oh god,” her stomach lurched, and she gagged, alarm rushing through her veins as her heart started to race. “Oh no. No, no, no, no, no –“
It looked like she’d been skinned alive.
Every bit of skin on her right arm from the tips of her fingers to up just past her elbow was gone. The tags and her clothes were completely burned away and nothing was left. She could see the muscles in her forearm moving as she tensed and flinched in panic. The limb was clearly still functional and working but it was so damaged it was beyond recognition. And when her gaze traced down to the odd flecks of white that showed through on several of her fingers, she felt her blood run cold as she realized that what she was seeing were the bones of her hand.
“No – oh god, no – Nasir – Nasir my arm!” Hermione’s voice cracked as the words came out, her head shaking in denial as her body scrambled in hysteria.
“Hermione.”
Her heart rate doubled. Her entire body began to vibrate. Blood was all but gushing out from the broken blood vessels and pooling into a puddle on the stone floor as she stared at the foreign-looking limb in shock.
“Hermione,” Nasir said sharply as he let go of her arm and his blood-covered fingers reached out to force her gaze back to his face once more. “Don’t look at it.”
“It’s my wand hand,” the broken words were but a whisper as she felt her eyes start to sting once more. Her heart was in her throat, what little remained of it was breaking. Her mind spun as a choked sob left her lips and she looked at him desperately. “My wand hand.”
“I know,” his voice was calm and soft. His dark gaze fixed to hers, unwavering and steady. His grip on her chin was firm and she could practically feel the warmth of his fingers burning against her now cold and sweat-covered skin. “But you need to slow your heart rate. You’re losing too much blood too quickly Hermione, and I’m going to run out of potions. I need you to be calm – can you do that?”
A shiver ran down her spine as she slowly exhaled and forced herself to nod. She understood. Logically she knew that what he was saying made sense and she would try. But whether or not she would be able to do it was a different story. Between Susan’s cries of pain, the blood pooling on the floor by her side, her desperate urge to reach out to Harry and the crushing pressure on her soul it was beyond what she could manage.
She felt like she could feel it.
She could almost hear it. In her mind – all the souls that she’d taken, screaming out in agony as the dark magic clung and curled around her body.
She would never be clean.
“I can fix this,” Nasir said steadily, his dark glinting eyes still locked to hers.
She knew that he knew she was done.
She’d officially surpassed her breaking point and madness was going to set in. She knew that he knew she was slipping. She was struggling to breathe and shaking in his grasp. She could tell by the way that he was looking at her – he was, genuinely, concerned. But not about her arm. And frankly, what remained of her logical brain couldn’t blame him, he should be concerned, because she knew that something inside of her had broken beyond repair.
“Do you trust me?” Nasir said softly, his voice a low rumble between them.
She nodded despite the churning nausea and tightness stretching through her chest.
“Yes,” she whispered hoarsely, nodding once more. “I trust you.”
It was the truth.
She’d told him this before. So even though it felt like everything inside of her was dying and she was being washed away down a river she forced herself to hold his gaze. She clung to it. Desperately. As if he were a life raft in the raging waters.
“Then breathe,” he said slowly, his voice even and calm despite the fact that her racing heart was pumping dangerous amounts of blood from her body. “I can fix this, your arm is going to be perfectly fine. Don’t look at it. Don’t think about it. Keep your eyes on me and slow your heart. Can you do that?”
He repeated his last question in a lower voice, and she felt her heart almost naturally slow in response to his words.
“Yes,” she breathed out. The word was a shaky whisper, but he nodded and let go of her chin before turning back to her arm once more.
She watched his gaze narrow in concentration as he went back to work and she forced herself to keep her gaze locked to his face. She found herself reciting bits of books to resist opening the bond with Harry as the seconds ticked by. She could feel herself starting to tremble harder and then, just like clockwork, Nasir summoned another bottle of blood replenisher and poured it into her mouth before returning to work on her arm.
“Her neck and shoulder wounds are healed!” Ginny called out as she shuffled around Susan, crawling across the floor to the girl’s leg. “It’s the same for the leg, right?”
“Yes, the same,” Nasir said quickly as he rapidly sliced away the rest of Hermione’s sleeve and the lingering bits of ruined jacket above her elbow. She could feel it tug away at the shoulder before he picked out the remaining bits of fabric from her muscles.
He worked in silence for several long moments until Ginny’s voice rang out once more.
“It’s not closing,” Ginny’s voice wavered as she spoke, and Hermione’s bleary eyes couldn’t resist glancing to look at her briefly before locking her gaze back to Nasir when the panic surged. “What do I do – it’s not closing?”
“How many times did you heal it?” Nasir asked, his eyes still focused on Hermione’s arm as he dumped an entire vial of cleanser across it. She heard it sizzling just below her field of vision, yet she felt absolutely nothing. She knew that the nerves on her forearm were entirely gone. They’d been burned away with her flesh and where the skin just above her elbow still remained the nerve endings had surely been seared shut.
“Twice here – three times at the bridge,” Ginny said hurriedly, grabbing another vial of blood replenisher and pouring it into Susan’s mouth. The girl’s heart rate was dangerously low, Hermione had seen it faltering on the diagnostic. Susan would go into shock soon if Ginny could not stop the bleeding. “I didn’t have silver powder there, but it still should have done something, right?!”
“If it’s not closed yet it’s not going to close,” Nasir said calmly as he reached into his robes and pulled out another vial. The liquid inside was dark purple and Hermione had never seen it before.
“What?!” Ginny’s voice grew tight with panic once more. “Then what do I do? If it’s not going to close, she’ll bleed out – what can I do?”
“You have to cut it off,” Nasir said as he rapidly uncorked the new bottle, setting it down on the ground next to a collection of other potions before he drew out his dagger. Hermione watched as he tugged up the sleeve on his blunt right arm and then slit the flesh along his forearm. Blood poured from the wound, but he paid it no mind as he quickly sanitized the weapon and tossed it to Ginny. “Cut another inch off – at least.”
“Cut a what,” Ginny’s hands trembled as she looked at the dagger she’d reflexively caught. Her gaze darted back to Nasir, but the man had already turned away and was now extracting blood from the cut on his arm. “Cut an inch off what?”
“Off her leg,” Nasir said firmly as he finally glanced toward the redhead. His eyes flicked over the diagnostic charm as the blood from his right forearm collected into the air and formed a small sphere. Hermione saw his jaw clench as his eyes scanned over Susan’s stats, then he healed the cut on his arm, and he looked back to Ginny once more. “Her body is rejecting the lycanthropy. You need to cut away the infected flesh or there will be no chance at healing it. Miss Weasley, I cannot do two things at once, I need you to help me. You cannot do what I’m about to do for Hermione, so you need to take care of Miss Bones – here.”
Nasir rapidly pulled another vial from his pocket and threw the yellow potion towards her.
“Drink that,” Nasir said as his eyes dropped back to Hermione’s arm once more and then scanned over the collection of vials that were carefully laid out across the ground. He grabbed the first one and bit out the cork before continuing his words at a rapid pace. “It’s a strength potion. Take it and you’ll be able to do it in one quick slice. The second you’ve completed the cut, place your wand hand over the wound and say sarciovolnus – do it now or she’s going to go into shock and you’re going to lose her. You cannot feed someone with that many injuries blood replenisher forever.”
Ginny’s eyes were shining with tears. Hermione glanced at the girl and caught her gaze. She was looking at her desperately – pleadingly. Almost as if she was hoping that Hermione would tell her this was some kind of sick joke. But it wasn’t, and Hermione could only swallow hard and nod her head.
“I – I can’t,” Ginny whispered, her hands trembling more violently as she looked back at Susan and her head started to shake.
“Now, Miss Weasley,” Nasir said, not bothering to look at the girl as he dumped the first potion over Hermione’s arm, and it began to hiss once more. “Or say goodbye, it’s your choice.”
“Susan,” Ginny’s voice wavered as she looked at the vial in her hands and then back to her girlfriend once more. “Susan, I’m sorry.”
“G-Gin – ny,” Susan grunted out, her voice unbearably rough as she tried to shift against her tethers. For a brief and horrible moment Hermione thought the redhead was going to let her die. That she was going to let Susan bleed out in place of cutting off the end of her leg. But as silent tears began to fall down Ginny’s bloodied and dirtied face once more, she pulled out the stopper from the vial and downed the entire contents in one gulp.
“I’m sorry,” Ginny repeated, her voice laced with pain as she picked up the dagger in both hands. Her arms trembled as she raised it into the air and positioned it above Susan’s already gored and stumped leg. The end of it was jagged. Torn flesh was hanging from the bone in uneven chunks where the wound had clearly tried and failed to heal several times. “I’m sorry – I’m so sorry – I’m sorry – Please forgive me –“
And with one quick swipe, Ginny brought the dagger down and cleaved another three inches from Susan’s left leg. The girl’s scream spilled out through the corridor as Nasir dumped two more vials over Hermione’s arm. Pain shot through her body as blood poured from Susan’s leg and the dagger clattered to the ground. Susan’s vitals were flaring, Hermione’s arm was ice cold and her teeth started to chatter as her body shook against the stone.
“Sarciovolnus,” Ginny all but screamed as she grabbed the end of Susan’s leg with her right hand while she fought the keep the remainder of the limb steady with her left. “Sarciovolnus – sarciovolnus – sarciovolnus – sarciovolnus!”
Hermione’s eyes shot wide in pain. Her gaze jerking back to Nasir as he turned her arm over, muttering something quietly before setting it back down and dumping the final purple potion over the now steaming flesh. She jerked, her entire frame twitching as it felt like a thousand needles were jammed into her arm. The cold grew insufferable – then she saw tissue begin to form along her slick red muscles. He turned the limb over once more, muttering again before tethering it to the ground to keep it from jerking as he rapidly dipped his index finger into his own sphere of blood then traced a symbol onto the first piece of newly formed skin. She couldn’t read what it was – her vision had started to blur as the freezing cold raced up her arm.
Susan was still crying.
Ginny’s voice rang out in sobs through the chaos as she cast the counterspell for the dagger over and over and over again.
Then before she could blink, Nasir had dropped his hold on her once more and had flicked his finger so that the sphere of his blood began to stretch out into a thin line. It twisted and twirled through the air, thinning further until it became a stream of tiny symbols. He conjured bandages on her arm but it wasn’t a normal ferula. The material was too thin and stark white. It crept up her arm from fingers to elbow – the blood following each wrap and sinking into the material as a continuous and endless stream until her entire arm was covered in the thin dexterous bandage and was littered with symbols. The second it wrapped over her elbow and the final drop of his blood sunk into the material the cold faded and her shivers stopped.
It felt warm.
Normal.
Physically, she could feel her arm once more and the bleeding had stopped. Yet before she could even question it or ask what he’d done he was pouring a final vial of blood replenisher down her throat and giving her a strength potion. Then two others she didn’t even have time to recognize before he finally pulled out a small crimson bottle and held it up to her lips.
“Only a sip,” he said quietly, his eyes watching as she nodded and then he carefully tipped the vial. She followed his instructions – her mind in no place to argue or do anything else as she swallowed a single gulp of the experimental potion. The second it went down her throat she grunted in pain as her body ignited with heat and her eyes shot wide with life.
“Fuuccckkk!” she groaned as every muscle within her tensed, contracted, then surged with renewed strength.
She sat bolt upright from the wall with a gasp. His hand grabbed her shoulder, steadying her as her body jerked and was jolted back to life. Her teeth clenched; her heart raced. Her mind cleared and she hissed out a painful exhale as Nasir glanced at Ginny. She could see him scanning over the girl’s progress and when he looked back to her she shook her head and gestured towards the redhead.
“I’m fine,” Hermione grunted, inhaling sharply as she tried to adjust to the adrenaline rushing through her body. “I’m fine, Nasir – help Ginny.”
His eyes shifted over her once more, glancing up at the diagnostic charm that she hadn’t even realized was hovering above her head before he let go of her shoulder and then shifted across the floor. Hermione grunted as she sat up fully, moving her legs for the first time in what felt like years and gritting her teeth as her heart began to flutter like a rabbit’s in her chest. It was nowhere near as bad as the gut punch that had been her first experience with this potion at Malfoy Manor – but it still hurt like a bitch. Either the batch was made differently or she truly had been on death’s doorstep and Narcissa had given her a massive dose.
Regardless, she was glad that it didn’t feel like her heart was going to explode in her chest.
She turned to look at Ginny once more. Tear tracks streaked through the blood and dirt on the girl’s face, and her hands were shaking violently but – to Hermione’s surprise – she was gripping an almost entirely healed blunt end of Susan’s left thigh. Nasir gently pried her shaking hand from Susan’s leg and replaced it with his own, finishing the healing as Ginny fell back on her heels panting hard.
“You did well,” Hermione heard Nasir say quietly as the final pieces of skin stitched their way closed across Susan’s thigh. He wasted no time in vanishing the blood from his hands and pulling more potions from the pack. Hermione watched as he gave Susan more blood replenisher, then made her drink a gulp of dittany and a large vial of calming draught before he quickly turned back to Ginny’s hunched form and began tending to her face. But the redhead hardly even seemed to notice that he was there. She was gripping Susan’s hand tightly and mumbling words in a hoarse whisper.
It sounded like she was asking for forgiveness, and Hermione’s heart lurched as she heard it.
It wasn’t right.
None of this was right.
She was supposed to have protected these girls and instead she’d failed. Now, they were broken pieces of their former selves. Susan was missing a leg. Her neck and shoulder were scarred, and she was infected with lycanthropy. Ginny’s face was permanently marred, and she would have to live with everything that had happened. Hermione could feel the sickness curling in her stomach once more as Nasir began to ply Ginny with a collection of different potions. The wound on her face had healed rather cleanly but it still sliced across her beautiful features in a discoloured and uneven line that would never go away.
And then there were all the others.
All the ones who hadn’t made it.
Hermione tasted bile at the back of her throat as her eyes fluttered shut and her body reflexively curled inwards. Flitwick, Luna, Dean, Charlie, Seamus – all of them, dead. Dead because of this war. Dead because of Voldemort. Dead because of a blood feud that had gone on far too long. Dead because of her – because they’d not moved fast enough to set the charges on the bridge and she’d not been strong enough to protect them.
Still.
After all this time. After all that training. She still hadn’t been able to do enough, she hadn’t been able to stop the carnage and they’d barely gotten out alive. And now, she was falling to pieces on the cold stone floor of Hogwarts as Nasir finished healing the two girls at her side that she’d very nearly killed only moments ago in a blazing fireball from hell.
She couldn’t breathe.
She couldn’t do this.
And yet the tiny logical voice inside her mind was screaming at her and telling her that she didn’t have a choice. She’d never had a choice. It didn’t matter how heavy this was, how unbearable it was or how badly it hurt. She had to do this because they all had to keep going or everyone here and anyone who tried to stand against that maniac would die before his feet and be trampled like dirt. She’d made herself a promise. She’d swore that she would never give up and she’d promised to see it through to the end regardless of the consequences.
This wasn’t about her.
This wasn’t about Harry.
Yes, she loved him more than anything and she would die to keep him safe, but this war was bigger than them. Hell, it wasn’t even about the people who were here tonight – it was about everyone else, all the people yet to be born who would come after them. It was their duty to ensure that the future was safeguarded. That the world would be made into a better place where people were judged based on their merits and not the status of their blood. If they lost tonight, they lost everything.
So she couldn’t stop.
But she couldn’t handle this either.
So, she did the only thing that she could do as she brought her knees up to her chest and slowly wrapped her left arm around them. She grabbed the pieces of the box that she’d shoved her emotions into earlier – the one that had exploded and been ripped to shreds when she’d unleashed her fiendfyre and let out her chaos. She collected up each broken piece and then started to tape the box back together in her mind.
It was a haphazardous mess. It barely resembled a box. But she rapidly and viciously stuffed everything inside of it anyway, blocking out the sickness and the weight that plagued her body the best that she could as she forced her mind to refocus. It didn’t matter that she could feel the box straining, or that she could practically see the contents leaking through the ripped holes and squeezing out near the tattered edges.
It was all she had.
It was all she could do.
So she would do it, and she wouldn’t stop doing it until she took her final dying breath and the life was ripped from her body. Until Harry got the Horcrux and they ended this fight once and for all. And if all that was left of her at the end of this night was a hollow empty shell that barely resembled a human being, then so be it. It was worth it, and it was a small price to pay for securing a better future for the whole of the wizarding world.
She forced herself to inhale, barely managing not to choke on the smell of death that lingered around them. She forced her eyes to open, staring at the stone wall across from her as she mentally taped the broken box shut. Then, she slowly forced her gaze to turn to the arm that was hanging motionless at her side and she lifted it from the ground.
She watched as the limb responded to her commands. It lifted from the ground with no issue, the movement steady and normal as if the limb hadn’t just been in the middle of a raging inferno. Her gaze traced over the bandages. They were so thin and tight it looked like she was wearing a snug white glove – save for the fact that you could see the wrap lines and the red symbols that littered the material and ran up the full length of the bandage. Some of them were runes, others she didn’t recognize and a few of them looked Celtic. They seemed to repeat in a pattern and all of them were bright red and made from Nasir’s blood. Yet the blood that had been pooled on the ground beside her hadn’t stained the material. Her arm was warm and dry, the bandage unmarked as if it had been charmed to prevent anything from soaking into or damaging the bindings.
She tentatively moved her fingers and watched as her hand flexed before her eyes and then formed a fist at her command. It worked. It moved. It flexed. She brought it closer and watched her fingers shift once more. Everything about it felt normal, but she suspected that when and if she was ever able to remove the bandages it probably wouldn’t look the same. Was this how he had healed himself after the werewolf den? Would her skin be that smooth pale almost silver colour once it was fully healed?
She glanced back to him, watching as he finished with Ginny and then shifted back to Susan.
“Miss Bones,” Nasir said calmly as he pulled the crimson vial of potion from his robes once more. “This is going to hurt, but it will get you moving. It won’t be easy, but it’s the only way – we need to get you to the kitchens.”
The girl nodded to him in understanding and Hermione saw Susan grip Ginny’s hand tighter at her side.
“The Eastern front,” Hermione said quietly, her own voice sounding foreign once more. It was low, disconnected – almost hollow, but she forced herself not to think about it as she watched Nasir bring the vial down to Susan’s lips. “You left the Eastern front to come to us. How was it holding up? Is everyone there okay? What happened?”
“No,” Nasir said as he poured the crimson liquid into Susan’s mouth and the girl groaned out in pain. Less than a second later she jerked and sat bolt upright from the ground gasping for air as Nasir braced her by the shoulder but turned to look toward Hermione. His dark gaze was controlled, but she could tell that he was studying her carefully. “We were retreating when I came to you. Aberforth and Shacklebolt bought us time to escape with a widespread Protego Diabolica but it will have run out by now.”
“And what about everyone there?” Hermione said quietly, as she fought against the nausea that was inching down her spine. Getting used to having all the signals in her head had been a challenge – but now that they were gone, she felt disconnected and lost. She wanted them back. She needed them back and she had to swallow to keep the bile from reaching her lips as she thought about the final vitals that she’d felt before the blaze. “Did any of them make it?”
Her voice wavered despite her best effort to keep it calm and Ginny’s gaze was now darting between the two of them.
“The losses were heavy,” Nasir said quietly after a tight moment of silence. He glanced to make sure that Susan was breathing okay before dispelling the girl’s diagnostic and shifting to Hermione’s side once more. She watched as he took her right hand, his fingers slowly moving over the bandaged appendage before he squeezed the tip of her index finger. “Can you feel that?”
“Yes,” Hermione nodded, her muscles tensing as she took a deep breath and prepared to ask the question that could break her once more. “What about Arthur… is Arthur okay?”
“My dad?” Ginny’s voice was strained and her face threatened to falter. She was still sitting next to Susan and gripping the girl’s hand tight but now Susan seemed to be looking around and trying to make sense of her surroundings and the state of her body. Ginny inhaled tightly, her shoulders visibly tensing. “Was my dad hurt? Is he okay?”
“Arthur is fine,” Nasir said evenly, moving his hand to squeeze each of Hermione’s fingers gently and watching for her nod to confirm that she could feel the contact. “I managed to grab him in time.”
An audible sigh of relief filled the air as Ginny’s dirtied hand knotted into her hair. Hermione could hear her murmuring ‘Thank Merlin’ as she leaned against Susan and fresh tears silently trickled down her face. Hermione closed her eyes, inhaling hard as her chest constricted. She couldn’t believe it. She wanted to believe it, but his words only made her anxiety and sickness grow. She glanced back to Nasir once more, checking to confirm that he wasn’t lying, and he wasn’t just saying it for their benefit – but his dark gaze held no hint of deceit as he nodded to her once more.
“He’s okay,” Nasir said quietly, and Hermione’s throat tightened as he gripped her hand reassuringly. “I promise.”
“Thank you,” Hermione whispered, struggling to swallow as she nodded to him in return. “What – what happened before you came?”
“We were overwhelmed,” Nasir said slowly, carefully bending her wrist and then poking up along her forearm and eyeing her for a reaction as he continued to speak. “Tom brought in everyone – his allies from France, Norway, Russia and Bulgaria along with a collection of creatures. We were never going to be able to hold the front, but we drew it out for as long as we could until it became clear that we were going to be wiped out entirely. Shacklebolt called in our back-up from the Ministry and ordered a full retreat but even then, we weren’t going to make it. Tom summoned inferi, they would have rushed the school and we wouldn’t have been able to hold against the attack so Shacklebolt and Aberforth set the Protego Diabolica along the entire Eastern front to buy us time.
“It resolved the inferi issue as well. That’s the one downside to animated corpses, they don’t think, and they only follow orders. They continued to charge right through the flames,” Nasir said as he finished inspecting her arm and then gently laid it across her knees. He glanced at her diagnostic, then his dark gaze met hers once more and she felt the hairs on the back of her skull prickle. He was still examining her. “Though it seems that Tom did not anticipate nor was he prepared for what happened on the Northern front. Shacklebolt notified me that the attackers on the East have retreated into the woods.”
“Retreated?” Ginny asked, her brow furrowing as she looked back to Nasir. Susan was leaning against her side now, her face still pale and her clothes tattered and covered in blood. “Why would they pull back?”
“Because in a matter of seconds Hermione removed his entire Northern fleet,” Nasir said calmly, his voice not wavering or holding any hint of judgement as his gaze shifted to Ginny. “He likely assumes that I did it and he will now need to rethink his plan.”
“What if he leaves,” Hermione whispered, her gaze darting to Nasir as her muscles started to tense with panic. “What if he panics and leaves? I didn’t think about that before I did it – I – I should have thought of that. What if he leaves and we lose our chance?”
“He won’t leave,” Nasir shook his head and met her gaze once more. “Not now. He’s in too deep and he is far too stubborn and overconfident in his own abilities to consider leaving – even after suffering that heavy loss. Tom is arrogant and he has to save face before his supporters. Everyone who follows him is here tonight and if he leaves now, they will think him weak. He may be powerful alone – but he still needs them, and he knows it. They are his network, his spies, his enforcers and his resources. Without them, he is nothing. Besides, such a blaze requires a tremendous amount of energy and so right now he likely thinks that I am exhausted and suffering – he will view it as an advantage. He will pull back, he will re-group, he will come up with a new plan now that the Northern front is unusable and then he will attack again. It’s only a question of how much time we have before it happens.
“But when it does,” Nasir said as he shifted, quickly collecting the potion bottles from the ground and stuffing them into his pocket. “We need to be ready because that will be the final battle.”
She swallowed hard at his words. She was exhausted and suffering – and she wasn’t sure how much more, if anything, she had left to give in a final fight. A deep and disturbing darkness was clinging to her body, choking her lungs and making it difficult to breathe. She had to force herself to exhale. She suspected that the final battle would likely be her last moments – or more accurately, she was beginning to accept it as fact. Nasir had managed to spare her from certain death on the hillside but he wouldn’t always be there to save her, and there was a good chance that he would die by the end of this night too.
“Hermione,” Nasir said, his gaze flicking back to her once more. “Do you still carry spare clothes in your purse?”
“Yes, some,” she said roughly, nodding as her hand instinctively shifted to her jacket pocket. She had nowhere near as much as she did before splitting her bag with Liza but she still had a few spare outfits tucked away.
“Good,” Nasir nodded, getting to his feet. “Give them something new to wear. I’ve let Shacklebolt and the others know we are safe, we need to get back to them so we can regroup but it is unwise to remain in clothes drenched with infected blood and soaked in dark magic when the night has only just started.”
Hermione nodded again, wordlessly summoning two sweaters and other clothes from her pocket as Nasir bent and lifted Susan from the ground. He moved her out of the pool of blood and onto a dry patch of stone floor across the hall to their left. Ginny followed, silently trying to vanish the blood and dirt from her hands before taking the clothes that Hermione handed her.
It hurt to stand.
Hermione’s jaw clenched tight as she hauled herself from the ground, a mess of blood dripping from her pants and running down her shirt as she stood. She didn’t complain when she felt Nasir grab her elbow to keep her steady as she wobbled on her feet and carefully made her way across the hall a few feet away from the other girls.
“You should change too,” Nasir said quietly, dropping his hold on her arm. “Dark magic is cumulative, so it will help. I’ll extend the masking charm for you.”
His last words were muttered too low for the others to hear and she felt her heart clench in her chest as she nodded and he shifted away. He stood before them motionless, checking the tag on his arm as he kept his back to them.
“Why is the Northern front unusable?” Susan’s voice rang out from behind her as Hermione carefully began to strip off the remains of her jacket under the privacy of Nasir’s masking charm. The girl sounded unreasonably calm given everything that had happened, and Hermione’s eyes narrowed at Nasir as she pulled off her blood-soaked shirt.
Just how much calming draught had he given the girl?
“I blew up the bridge before we left,” Nasir said evenly, his body still motionless as he continued to face away from them.
Hermione gave up on trying to take off her clothes and instead split the seams with magic and tore the tattered remains from her body. She could hear Ginny implementing a similar tactic behind her as she wiped the remaining blood from her skin and tried her best to vanish the dirt and grime. Yet no matter how many cleaning charms she cast, most of it remained – like it was baked onto her skin. Her stomach knotted as she summoned one of the last sweaters she had from her bag and then tugged it over her head.
“But even if I hadn’t,” Nasir said slowly, still unmoving before them. “No sane person would cross that land. Not for hours, possibly days. It is what the Ministry calls a ‘hot spot’.”
“A hot spot,” Ginny’s voice sounded as Hermione pulled out a new pair of pants and forced her weary legs into the holes. “Like a dark magic hot spot? One where it lingers and festers? I know our clothes were ruined but is that why we’re changing – because we’re contaminated?”
“Yes,” Nasir said calmly, his voice perfectly level. “I imagine your father has had lots of experience with them. He’s told you about them before, hasn’t he?”
“Yes,” Ginny’s voice was low as Hermione heard the girl tugging on an item of clothing. “Though he’s never had to change clothes after being to one.”
“That’s not surprising,” Nasir said quietly, his deep baritone like a vibration through the cold air in the hall. “It is doubtful that he has been to one that large or that potent in the past – ones of this magnitude and concentration are rarely seen.”
She heard Ginny still behind her as her own hands faltered on the button of her fresh jeans. She could feel her muscles starting to tremble as images from the Northern front seemed to slide into her mind. The smell. The weight. The heat. All of it unrecognizable and heavy with a thick layer of sinister and corrupt magic. The hill was a hot spot, yes – but what tainted it had come from her, and she had no idea what the long term effects of that truth would entail.
“Hermione.”
Her head jerked back up, her heart racing once more as her gaze locked to the back of Nasir’s head.
“I’m okay,” she whispered hoarsely, forcing herself to swallow and do up the button on her pants. His tone had been soft when he called her name and she instinctively knew it was only for her to hear. She straightened her clothes, thankful that she was no longer cold or drenched in blood as she tried not to think about the fact that she herself was a festering hot spot of vile dark magic. “I’m decent – but I want to re-tag myself quickly before we go.”
“I’ll do it,” Nasir said quietly, gesturing for her to come to him. She did, the muscles in her legs stiff with pain as she pulled out two spare tags from her sweater pocket, having moved her purse into it and abandoned her torn and bloodied jacket on the ground.
She pulled up her sleeve and held out her bandaged arm as she stepped before him, meeting his dark gaze once more and trying to ignore the way her stomach twisted at the blatant look of concern that seemed to be radiating from his gaze.
“Will it work through the bandages?”
“Yes,” he nodded, taking the two tags from her and adhering them to her upturned forearm. He hesitated a moment before activating them, eyeing her carefully as though he was debating something. “Are you sure you want the tags?”
“Yes,” Hermione nodded, swallowing back the bile that seemed to be permanently bubbling at the base of her throat. “I want the signals back. I need them, Nasir.”
He eyed her for another silent moment before his gaze finally dropped to her arm and she felt the two tags flick to life as they connected to her vitals – but they still weren’t synched to the others.
“Hermione,” Nasir said slowly, his low voice echoing between them as the space seemed to grow smaller.
“No,” she shook her head firmly, already knowing what he was going to say. Her jaw clenched tight once more as the box in her mind strained against everything that she had trapped inside it. “I’m fine – really, I’m fine. I want those signals – I need those signals, Nasir. If you don’t do it, I’ll just do it myself.”
“You’re anything but fine,” Nasir said quietly, the tone of his deep voice cutting into her poorly faked calm like a knife. She felt herself stiffen as his grip on her forearm tightened and he didn’t let go.
“I am,” her voice wavered and the words nearly broke as she spoke to them. She could feel her jaw start to tremble as she met his dark gaze once more.
It felt like he was staring into her soul, seeing everything that she didn’t want him to see. She tried to bury it down, to hide it and make it invisible, but it was impossible. Before she could even blink and without uttering a word she felt Nasir slip into her mind.
“Get out of my head,” Hermione whispered, her voice shaking as she felt the bile bubble more violently. It was the first time that he had ever entered her mind and while it didn’t hurt and he was being gentle she didn’t like it. She could feel him lightly shifting through her thoughts until he reached the poorly boxed-up emotions and trauma, and her body stiffened with fear.
“I need those signals,” she repeated, her hollow voice becoming desperate and strained. She felt like an addict begging for a fix as she stared at him and fought to remain calm. “Please Nasir – I need them.”
“What you need,” Nasir said slowly, his dark gaze unblinking as he slowly left her mind. “Is twenty-four hours of uninterrupted sleep – but I can’t give you that. We’re not done yet, the night has barely started and we still have things to do. But that box stands no chance of holding if you sync your tag. If I’d known there were inferi here I never would have let you go to the Northern front alone Hermione, that shouldn’t have happened.”
“This isn’t your fault,” Hermione said, her head shaking.
“Maybe not,” Nasir said quietly, his dark eyes glinting as he continued to hold her forearm. “But I should have gotten to you sooner. I can’t let you activate the sync in your current mental state. I know you think you can handle it Hermione, but it will break you.”
Her body stiffened at his words. Something cold and angry stirring in her stomach as her jaw clenched impossibly tight. It was just like the argument in the tent all over again except that this time she desperately refused to accept his words because without those signals it felt like she was drowning alone in an ocean. Those tags had become her land, she needed them.
“Then I’ll do it myself,” she whispered hoarsely, trying to yank her arm from his grasp only to fail as his grip tightened once more.
“No – you won’t,” he said darkly, his eyes narrowing at her as he took a small step forward. “Nor do you need to. I already synced everyone’s vitals to my tag. I can keep track of the Order for you, the only person you need to monitor is Harry.”
She glared at him. Her stunted emotions blurring and rolling as her jaw began to ache in pain from being clenched so hard.
“We’re ready,” Ginny’s voice called out, the girl moving a few steps closer to them, entirely unaware of their strained conversation.
“Good,” Nasir said more loudly, turning to nod back to Ginny over his shoulder with a blank and impassive look before he twisted back to Hermione once more and gave her a stern and heated stare. “This is not up for discussion. You activate that sync, and you put yourself and everyone here at risk. It’s not a debate. You either agree or I will remove those tags entirely. I only put them on to make communication between the group easier. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have them at all.”
She bristled at his words, her eyes narrowing as she tried to control her heart rate and bury the anxiety that was eating away at her mind. He met her angry stare without batting an eye, unphased by her indignation and apparently willing to hold his ground without budging while content to rip the tags back off her arm if she disagreed.
“Nasir,” Hermione whispered, her low voice flat and hollow once more as her legs began to tremble gently beneath her.
“Do you trust me?” he said darkly, his hard stare burning against her skin.
“What?” her brow furrowed as she looked at him, his question catching her off guard.
“Do you trust me?” he repeated slower, his eyes never leaving hers.
“Yes,” she said tightly, her unnaturally flat tone lacing with frustration as he continued to hold her newly healed arm like a vice. “I already told you that I did.”
“Then trust that I have your best interests in mind,” Nasir said, his low voice dark with what sounded like frustration. He let out one of his rare sighs, his eyes softening a fraction as he took another step forward, apparently unbothered that both Ginny and Susan were now watching their exchange. “I am trying to keep you alive and functional when the world around you is asking too much and you’re all too willing to take the damage and lay your life in the line of fire. If you trust me, then trust me. Don’t pretend to be fine when you know perfectly well that I know you’re not. I know what you’re capable of Hermione, and this has nothing to do with that. I’m not questioning your ability to push the limits or your capacity as a witch and a human being.”
He dropped his hold on her forearm, leaning down toward her until there were only inches between them and she could feel his cool breath across her skin.
“I promised you that I would help you,” Nasir said quietly, his voice nothing but a low whisper. “So let me help you, Hermione. You have done more than enough already. You do not need to take on additional weight when there is no need. Not when you’re barely holding it together and you still have the fight of your life ahead of you. I am asking you to trust me – please.”
She swallowed hard. She could see the strain around his eyes. His limited emotions were seeping out and she knew that he must be exhausted if he was letting them show freely while there were two other people in the hall. She hated what he was saying, but she found herself nodding as she stared up at the man she considered her mentor and felt some of the anger leave her body.
“Do you trust me?” Nasir repeated, his low voice reverberating between them.
“Yes,” she whispered, her voice faltering as her stiff shoulders began to sag. “I trust you.”
“Then do as I say,” Nasir said quietly, his eyes locked to hers as he spoke. “Leave the tags as they are. You don’t need them synced and I will watch the others for you.”
“Okay,” Hermione breathed, her flat voice sounding weak as Nasir finally straightened and the tension in the air between them seemed to lessen. Her eyes darted to the side, Susan was sitting on the floor leaning against the castle wall and Ginny was standing by her side. Both of them were staring at them intently, whether or not they had heard the exchange she wasn’t sure but they had certainly seen it.
“Is everything okay?” Ginny asked tentatively, her eyes flicking between Nasir and Hermione with concern and curiosity.
“Everything is fine,” Hermione said quietly, trying to force her lips into a smile. The muscles in her face twitched but her lips barely shifted as Nasir stepped back and turned to face the two girls. “Just sorting some stuff out.”
Ginny nodded slowly, her eyes cautiously flicking between the two of them once more before she swallowed, and seemed to hesitate.
“We were wondering,” Ginny said slowly, her eyes shifting back to Nasir. “About the others. Were we – are we – did no one else from the Northern front make it?”
Hermione’s pathetic excuse for a smile faltered as Nasir’s gaze shifted back to Ginny.
“I detected no other life on the Northern front when I arrived,” Nasir said slowly, his voice level as he held Ginny’s gaze. “I checked once the flames were extinguished as well but nothing showed. It’s possible someone may have jumped or been blasted into the gorge, but it is extremely unlikely that they would have survived the fall. I can ask Minerva to have one of the house elves check the bottom of the gorge but I would not recommend getting your hopes up that they will find anything.”
Hermione could see Ginny visibly swallow, her eyes pinching in pain as she nodded in understanding.
“I’m sorry.”
The words had come out toneless and flat before Hermione even realized that they’d left her lips. She watched as Ginny looked at her, her eyes creasing even tighter as if she was in pain.
“I’m sorry,” Hermione repeated again, her heart beating quicker as more words tumbled from her mouth. “I’m sorry about Charlie – we didn’t know about the inferi. If we had we never would have gone and if I had managed to –“
“Don’t,” Ginny cut Hermione off, shaking her head as her jaw clenched tight. Her eyes were glistening with unshed tears yet her gaze seemed to harden as she shook her head in rejection once more. “Don’t apologize, Hermione. Not to me. Not to anyone else. Not ever.”
They stared at each other in silence as discomfort shifted down Hermione’s spine. She could feel her emotions churning again and yet they still felt so wrong and blunted. Before she could come up with anything to say Susan’s rough voice rang out between them.
“Thank you,” Susan said quietly, her eyes flicking to Ginny for a moment before returning to Hermione and Nasir. “You both saved our lives. Without you, we wouldn’t be here.”
Hermione’s brow creased, her head shaking. “It really wasn’t –“
“It was,” Ginny interrupted her again, meeting her eyes with that still painful yet determined gaze. “You easily could have lost control and killed us, but you didn’t.”
Hermione stilled.
I did lose control.
The words echoed in her mind as she watched the two girls for a moment and then dropped her gaze to the floor. Not killing them with her fiendfyre had been luck and nothing else. Yet she knew that they would never accept that as an answer no matter what she said and she was left feeling awkward and sick while she wished that they would look anywhere else but at her.
“We need to get moving,” Nasir’s voice broke the silence as he pulled a spare fake wand from his pocket and shifted towards the two girls. “And you need to talk to Harry.”
He turned back to look at her, his dark gaze knowing as she glanced up at him.
“You’ve been putting it off,” Nasir said quietly as he wordlessly lengthened the fake wand to turn it into a crutch. “He has been concerned, Hermione. Open it back up before he gives himself an aneurysm. I wasn’t able to send him many messages while working on your arm so he’s a bit frustrated right now. Do it while I get Miss Bones set up.”
Hermione nodded, stepping away from the others and shifting closer to the wall. Nasir wasn’t wrong. She was both incredibly desperate to open the bond to talk to Harry, and to feel his vitals in her mind once more – but she was also absolutely terrified to do it. She knew that even though Nasir had healed her body physically he was (yet again), correct. She was not okay. Not even close. And Harry would know. The second she opened the bond to him and her vitals flowed through to his mind he would instantly know that she was struggling.
But they didn’t have any more time.
She could already feel her arm buzzing with requests for updates from Shacklebolt. They still had a Horcrux to find and they had no idea how long it would be until Voldemort attacked the school again. He’d only retreated because he had to but he couldn’t afford to linger and wait around or he would lose the confidence of his followers. Deplorable as they were the majority of them were still humans who valued their lives and they weren’t necessarily ready to die for his cause. They’d come because they were summoned and they trusted their Dark Lord to be stronger than their opponent and to crush the castle to the ground. They’d undoubtably seen the fire and they were likely now nervous and possibly even questioning their decision to be here.
They had to move now.
So she inhaled hard, leaned against the wall and sunk down on her heels as she slowly re-opened the bond within her mind. And the result was instantaneous. The second it was open she jerked in pain as she was ramrodded with Harry’s screaming voice.
‘HERMIONE WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN!?!?’
She grimaced in pain, clutching at her temples as Harry’s voice echoed in her head and a barrage of panicked emotions and questions flooded into her mind. It overwhelmed her senses and blocked out all the other noises in the hall.
‘Harry –’
‘WHAT HAPPENED?!’
‘Harry I –’
‘What the FUCK were you thinking?! Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been!? No one would tell me what the fuck was going on! I found the Grey Lady but the school grounds started exploding and then you closed the bond! What the hell were you thinking?! Nasir wouldn’t tell me what happened, he just kept saying that everything was ‘fine’ and he had it under control - except that it didn’t sound like things were fine at all. What did you do? I’m making my way through the southern corridors back to the Great Hall right now but where are you?! Shacklebolt mentioned there was a blaze on the Northern front but he hasn’t sent any other details, he isn’t answering my messages and I -’
“HARRY STOP!!” Hermione hissed out in pain, no longer able to keep her messages to him silent or constrained within her head as she continued to clutch her temples. “Harry please – I can’t, you have got to slow down and control your emotions – I can’t breathe.”
There was a pause on the other side of the bond as she felt Harry’s heart rate pulse in a panic for another three beats before it slowed, and everything pulled back from the connection. A part of her was honestly amazed that he was able to do it given that she’d shut him out of her mind for the last little while and he’d been running blind.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, inhaling hard as she closed her eyes and fought back the nausea once more. She sent the words to him as she spoke them aloud, still not able to pull it back in and only use her mind. “I’m sorry Harry.”
‘It’s okay – just – please tell me you’re okay?’
“I’m okay,” she exhaled again breathing in low deep breaths as she fought to make her muscles relax.
“Wait – can she talk to him?” she heard Ginny’s question to her left, but she ignored it and opened her eyes to stare at the opposite wall as she concentrated. She could hear Nasir speaking again but she tuned that out too as she focused on the bond and sent the next messages in silence.
‘I’m okay Harry – I promise.’
‘The blaze on the Northern front,’ Harry said slowly, his voice level as he hesitated. She felt his pulse flicker as if he was fighting to remain calm. ‘Was that you?’
‘Yes,’ she grimaced as she pushed the thought through to him, half expecting him to get frustrated with her or unload a second barrage of questions.
But he didn’t.
He was silent for a long moment and then his voice slid into her mind like a calm and cool whisper.
‘I’m so glad you’re okay.’
She felt her eyes sting as she swallowed, and she had to fight back the urge to cry as a wave of love washed through the bond. It was unconditional. It was deep. It was like a balm on her damaged and blackened soul that made the ache in her heart lessen. Her bandaged hand clapped over her mouth to stifle the small sob that broke from her lips as her eyes shut in pain.
‘Are you safe?’
‘Yes,’ Hermione exhaled hard, forcing herself to breathe as she tried to steady the overwhelming rush of blunted emotions racing through her heart. Everything was still so wrong, all of them were dulled and distant but her love for Harry seemed to radiate the strongest through the mess in her soul. ‘I’m safe. I’m with Nasir, Ginny and Susan right now. We’re near the Headmaster’s Office but we’re going to make our way back to the others at the Great Hall. Susan was injured and lost her leg so we need to get her to the kitchens.’
‘Okay,’ Harry said calmly, still keeping his fear and panic tightly controlled. ‘I’ll meet you there. What about the others from the bridge – did anyone else make it?’
‘No,’ she felt the wave of nausea surge through her body once more and she had to clamp her jaw shut beneath her hand to stop herself from puking as the memory of burning flesh flooded her nose once more. She clenched her eyes shut harder, trying to breathe as she pushed it all down.
Nasir had been right, there was no way she could have managed anything else in her head right now. As it was, she barely had control of the bond and her emotions and vitals were slipping through to Harry as a rampant and turbulent mess.
‘We were the only ones,’ she forced the words through the connection as she opened her eyes and stared blankly at the wall before her. ‘Nasir was barely able to get us out.’
Silence echoed through her mind for another tense second before Harry’s voice sounded once more, but this time it was low and quiet.
‘Hermione,’ Harry sounded unsure. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’
‘I’m sure,’ she nodded even though he couldn’t see it. Even though it was a lie and she knew Harry would be able to tell. He could read her like a book right now because her defences were down and the bond was wide open. But there was nothing she could do about it and truth be told she never wanted to close him out ever again. She couldn’t. She needed him. ‘I’m okay – my arm was burned but Nasir fixed it. It’s fully functional and I can’t feel any pain or anything so I’m good to use it and keep going.’
There was another stretch of silence before his soft voice echoed once more.
‘That’s not what I meant, Hermione,’ he said quietly and she felt the prickle of tears at the corner of her eyes. ‘Are you okay?’
“I’m fine,” Hermione murmured audibly as she let out a breath and forced her limbs to move.
She hauled herself up from the ground, biting back a groan at the stiffness in her muscles as her back straightened. She felt eyes on her, and she knew that Nasir and the girls were watching her but she refused to look at them. She couldn’t stomach the idea of seeing the concern in their gazes as Harry’s gentle voice echoed in her mind. It was bad enough that Nasir still had her tagged so he was getting a play-by-play of her emotional reconnection with Harry. He could see all her vitals – so he, like Harry, knew she was teetering on the edge of losing her mind. She swallowed again and cleared her throat.
‘I don’t have the luxury of not being fine, Harry,’ she said quietly, her voice tight as she sent the thought to him and fought to regain control of her mind. ‘We don’t have time for anything else. I’ll live – and I’ll heal. We can talk about this later. I promise, but Nasir said that the forces on the Eastern front have retreated so we need to regroup and find that diadem before Voldemort launches another attack. Did you manage to speak to the Grey Lady? Do you know where it is?’
She knew he was worried.
She could sense his concern and fear for her wellbeing behind his carefully concealed emotions. His calm was a front, and she knew that all Harry wanted to do at this moment was come to her, check her over himself and make sure that she was okay. If he could, he would remove her from the rest of this fight and refuse to let her participate any further. If he’d seen the blaze – if he knew just how bad it was, he would lose his mind right now and throw a fit.
But he didn’t.
And he didn’t ask, because he could tell just how close to the edge she truly was. He knew if he asked she would break and she might not be able to pull herself back together. She could feel him forcing down his endless questions and burying his worry as he collected himself. Then his calm and reassuring voice filled her mind once more.
‘It’s in the Room of Requirements.’
This chapter is dedicated to Greca.
Thank you for finding the time to pre-read and edit these chapters. I know that life can be crazy, so I hope that you know how much I appreciate your time, your effort and your help. You catch all those pesky little errors that I miss and you ask good questions that help me ensure the story makes sense and the characters are in character. Thank you.
You are appreciated <3
-x-x-
May 1, 1998
Hogwarts, 11:03 pm
Harry’s feet collided against the stone floors, yet not a sound echoed around him as he darted down one of the final corridors before the Great Hall under a heavy muffling charm. His heart was racing in his chest. His breath was coming in quick rapid gulps and his body was still aching since the destruction of the Horcrux at Shell Cottage. It hurt more than he wanted to admit, more than he could have anticipated and yet, he didn’t pay it any mind. His attention was fully concentrated on Hermione, and on the unsteady and turbulent signals that were flowing to him through the bond. And as each second passed his heart seemed to grow tighter and tighter with pain.
Just what the fuck had happened?
It was the question that had been haunting him since the very moment the bond went dark and she purposely shut him out. He wasn’t stupid – ever since they first created the bond, she’d been regulating what he could see just the same as he had been doing to her. Both of them had been catering the information passed between their minds to paint a specific picture and both of them had been very careful to keep their true emotions and stress levels under wraps.
But that… what she’d done? Completely closing it down and shutting him out? That was entirely new, and he had not been expecting it. Nor had he been expecting the hollow, empty and deep-seated fear that shot through his body as the connection went dark and he was left sitting alone in his own mind. He hadn’t realized how much he relied on having her there. He’d gotten used to the feel of her gentle heartbeat in his head and losing it was like being put in a dark room with no sound or hint of daylight.
Despite everything else that he had been through in his life – he had never felt more alone than in those minutes of silence.
It had taken every bit of his willpower not to turn around and go seek her out. The last message that he’d received from her had been the notification that the North had been breached. After that… nothing. If not for the fact that he trusted Nasir to keep her safe and that man had sent him several quick messages telling him that things were still okay and that he needed to stay on task, Harry wasn’t sure he could have continued. He knew that several of the Order members would find his trust in the mysterious man deeply concerning – but they didn’t understand. They didn’t know what was coming. They didn’t know that he had no choice and that he had to learn to be comfortable with Nasir taking care of Hermione… because he was the only one who could.
He let out another deep sigh. The explosions around the castle had echoed through the halls like artillery blasts and he’d only just located the ghost and had finally gotten her talking when Hermione went dark. Those messages from Nasir had been the only thing to keep him from bailing on the Grey Lady and going to find her – that and the fact that he knew Hermione would crucify him if he’d abandoned his task.
But even knowing that right now a piece of him was wondering if it had been the right choice. A part of him was seriously questioning his actions and he wasn’t convinced that leaving her alone had been the right thing to do.
He knew it was selfish.
He knew that she was strong and more than capable of taking care of herself. That wasn’t the problem. That was never the problem with Hermione. The problem was what she was willing to put herself through on behalf of everyone else. The issue was what she was willing to sacrifice and how much agony she was prepared to shoulder – that was the problem. Did he doubt that she could handle herself on the Northern front alone? No, not at all. He knew she was more than capable. Did he trust her to survive through whatever was happening and make it out alive? Yes, the truth was he did. But did he believe that she would come out undamaged, in one piece, and totally fine?
No.
He didn’t.
She would risk her life to try and save the others if something went wrong and he knew that she would, without questioning it even for a second, sacrifice every piece of herself for this war. And she would volunteer to do it too, that was the problem. She didn’t know when to stop and she didn’t care about what happened to herself so long as it meant that they succeeded. And that was what was killing him. That was what was breaking his heart and making him want to scream out in rage and agony as he raced down the hall and struggled to reconcile what they needed to do versus what he wanted to do.
He wanted to save her.
He wanted to protect her.
He wanted to stop her from giving everything that she had to this war because he still believed that she had a chance at surviving and making it out alive, and yet he knew that he couldn’t. He knew no one could stop her. He exhaled hard as he continued to race through the school. She had, once again, sacrificed another part of herself to this fight and come out tarnished and damaged. He could feel it, in the very core of his being through the bond. Hermione was not okay. Her heart was racing. Her body was clearly under the heavy influence of potions based on her vitals and those potions were barely keeping her functional as she made her way to the Great Hall with Nasir, Ginny and Susan. But worse than the physical state of her body was the state of her mind.
Hermione was a fucking mess.
Her mind was manic. He could feel it breaking and cracking and being constantly stitched back together like an old patchwork quilt. She was riddled with guilt, clouded in darkness and every raging emotion in her head was layered with pain and agony – but it was blunted in an incredibly concerning way. It was as if someone had gone into her head and smeared over her emotions with a thick tar that choked them, left them stifled and almost dormant. He’d never seen anything like it, and he knew in his soul that it was not a good thing. The ominous festering darkness that was clinging to her like poison reminded him far too much of the corruption that radiated from his own soul, but the difference was the amount.
Hermione was practically drowning in it.
He knew it, she knew it, and that meant that Nasir definitely knew it.
Given the state of her mind and the fact that the fire on the Northern front was hers, it wasn’t hard to figure out that she’d unleashed her fiendfyre. But how much had she let out? The short and clipped responses from Nasir hadn’t exactly been reassuring. If anything, they hinted that things were worse than either of them were letting on. Combine that with the fact that Voldemort had just blasted the school with an amplifying charm so loud it had shaken the very foundation to announce that they had two hours, and the fact that he could hear the low growl of thunder echoing through the walls of the castle – he knew that what had happened on the Northern front was a big deal. She’d superheated the air significantly enough to bring on a storm and she’d done enough damage to force Voldemort to retreat his forces and give them a small and unplanned reprieve.
He nearly groaned in frustration as he ran his hand through his hair and forced his legs to move quicker. He was desperate to find out exactly what had happened, but he knew he couldn’t ask. Not now – at least not directly. Asking Hermione might very well break what little control she had left over her unsteady state.
When she’d reopened the bond, he’d been livid and desperate. His emotions had gotten the better of him and he’d unleashed everything into her mind uncontrolled and unfiltered without realizing the condition she was in. He cringed at the memory of her desperate plea for him to control himself because she couldn’t handle the overload he’d bombarded her with. It made him sick to his stomach. He knew that he’d hurt her through the bond even if she would never tell him so. He should have known better. He hadn’t been thinking, but that was no excuse. He needed to do better for her sake. Especially given what was about to come…
He swallowed hard as he turned the next corner and his legs began to move more quickly still. He needed to see her. He needed to hold her. He needed to tell her that he was sorry for overwhelming her through the bond and that he loved her no matter what. He could see glimpses of the terror lingering in her heart. He knew that she was worried she’d become irreparably damaged and broken by what she’d done – but he didn’t care.
He loved her.
Always.
As he rounded the next corner the sound of pain rang through the halls and assaulted his senses. He could smell the death before he saw it and when it came into view he wasn’t sure what was worse: the sight of endless injured students crowding the space just outside of the Great Hall, the hobbling bodies inching their way into the massive room while leaning on the shoulders of others – or the blood, missing limbs, screams of agony and bodies laying out across the floor within the large room as a battered-looking Madam Pomfrey rushed around trying to care for the injured as countless other figures raced about attempting to help her.
The entire thing was chaos and he felt his stomach knotting with sickness and torment as his eyes took in the crisis zone that was once the Great Hall. It used to be happy. It used to be filled with students eating and talking and laughing. It was a place for warm meals and celebration and now it looked like a hospital tent from the first world war and it was coated in layers of blood and grime. The charmed ceiling was dark and violent. Flickers of lightning flashed across it as the clouds grew dense and dangerous to match the storm brewing outside.
And he’d missed all of it.
He’d let his friends, his peers and his professors fight this battle on his behalf while he raced around the school trying to find the Grey Lady.
He swallowed hard, tasting bile at the back of his throat as he looked at the repercussions of what he had asked of them. What he had told them they needed to do in order to win this fight. He’d known this was coming, he knew that the losses and the damage tonight would be immeasurable but seeing it was something else entirely.
He carefully pushed past the straggling students that were headed for the giant oak doors and made his way into the Great Hall. He ignored the way that they looked at him, he could feel dozens of eyes on his body as several students stopped to openly stare while others across the large hallway and inside the Great Hall pointed and whispered to the people next to them. But he ignored that too, his heart clenching with pain as he took it all in and fought to remain calm and composed. His eyes swept over the room looking for Hermione and Nasir.
‘I’m here, but I don’t see you,’ he whispered the words to her quietly as he continued to force himself to contain his emotions and search the crowd.
He felt like he was boiling on the inside, but he couldn’t let it flare out to her again. He wouldn’t let it flare out to her again or she’d know just how devastated and utterly agonized he was over what had happened. And what he knew he still needed to do before the night ended…
‘We’re on the way,’ her response came instantly, and he felt her heart flutter once rapidly in his mind before she quickly clamped down on it and forced her pulse to slow. ‘Sorry – we’re moving a little slow, but we will be there soon, Harry.’
‘I’ll wait for you here,’ he said quickly, his eyes shifting across the Great Hall once more as he tried to put names to bodies and get a feel for just how bad the situation truly was. He mentally checked the time, they had just under two hours until Voldemort attacked again – supposedly. Though he wasn’t going to put much weight on the demon’s words.
He shifted into the chaos, moving over to the right side of the room as he looked around and carefully stepped over the bodies that lay on the floor. Some of them were dead. Others were severely injured and maimed. He lost count of how many were missing limbs versus how many were cut, cursed, or covered in blood and instead he started to count based solely on whether or not the person was alive. He cast diagnostic charms as he moved to help Madam Pomfrey identify those most in need and he’d nearly made it to the wall when he heard his name.
“Harry!”
His head darted to the left and he barely caught a glimpse of red before Arthur Weasley grabbed him and tugged him to his chest. Harry felt his body tense instinctively, but he pushed the reaction down as he gripped the man tightly in return and relief flooded through him like a wave. If anything had happened to Arthur, he wasn’t sure what he would do – and he knew it would kill what was left of Hermione. He needed this man. They both needed this man and Hermione would need him even more if the plan that he had established with Nasir went to shit.
“Thank Merlin you’re okay Harry,” Arthur whispered, his voice hoarse and his body shaking as he held Harry tight and then stepped back, still gripping his shoulders, to look at him. His eyes were bloodshot, he’d clearly been crying, and his face was covered in dirt and blood like all the rest of the people here. “Did you find what we need? Did you get it?”
“Not yet,” Harry said quickly, reaching up to grab the man’s arms in return and squeezing them tight. He’d heard the desperation in Arthur’s voice, and he could tell that the man was struggling to remain in control of his emotions. He was also very clearly injured. His face was covered in small cuts, there was dried blood in his thinning hair. The left sleeve of his robes was cut back past the elbow and his left forearm was bandaged in tan cloth while he stood favouring his right leg. “But I know where it is and I’m going to go get it. Hermione is on her way with the others so we can regroup and once she gets here, we’ll go find it – this will be over soon I promise, but are you okay, Arthur?”
“Yes,” Arthur nodded, his eyes welling with tears as he swallowed hard and then shook his head. “We lost so many Harry – Ron – he didn’t make it and Charlie – they said Charlie was lost at the bridge. I knew we would be outnumbered but I–“
The man struggled to finish his sentence and instead just shook his head once more as his eyes creased in pain.
“I’m sorry,” Harry heard the words leaving his lips before he even registered that he was saying them.
He could feel something cold and empty twisting in his gut as he looked at Arthur’s devastated expression. His relationship with Ron might have fallen apart and been permanently damaged but Ron was still Arthur’s son, and in the end, the boy had stepped up when it truly mattered. He’d been there for them after the werewolf den infiltration and he’d helped them prepare and reach this point. He’d grown, matured, and contributed to the Order in several surprising ways over the last two weeks.
“I’m sorry Arthur,” Harry’s brow creased in pain as the apology continued to pour out as his heart ached in his chest. “I didn’t think it would take that long to find what we needed. I should have been out there with you. I should have–“
“No,” Arthur cut him off, squeezing his shoulders tight before he let go and he shook his head once more. “You’re doing what you need to do Harry and we are simply playing our part. This was never going to be easy, but it was always going to happen – remember that. I know that Dumbledore placed a lot of pressure on you these last two years, and he’s made you believe that this war rests on your shoulders but it’s not true, Harry. This is everyone’s fight; it always has been.”
Harry swallowed hard, his throat tightening as he heard someone groan out in agony on their left. He could see Mrs. Weasley rushing around in the background with potion vials while Madam Pomfrey moved on to treat another injured student. Everything about this was wrong, but as much as he hated it and as much as he hated himself for what had happened, logically, he knew Arthur wasn’t wrong. This war had been coming for decades and it was always going to end in carnage – he just wished he could have done more to lessen the blow.
“Dad?”
Harry jerked, his head twisting toward the hoarse and broken sound. It was barely audible over the noise within the Great Hall, but Arthur heard it and he stiffened at the word. His entire body went rigid before his brow furrowed in confusion and his head turned to the right with Harry’s to see Percy Weasley standing just ten feet away holding up an injured Penelope Clearwater.
Except the man standing there didn’t look anything like Percy Weasley at all. He was tall, thin and lanky like he always had been – just like his father. But he was covered in dirt – so much so that his hair was barely red. His eyes were bloodshot, dried blood was splattered across the front of his once pristine blue robes and it trickled down his chin from where his lip was split. He looked like he’d walked out of the center of an explosion and as the thought crossed Harry’s mind he realized that Percy very well might have.
“Percy,” Arthur’s voice faltered as he spoke and suddenly the tall young man’s face crumpled, and tears began to pour from his eyes as he staggered on his feet before his father.
“Dad I’m sorry,” Percy practically sobbed as he stepped forward, struggling to hold up Penelope as he tried to close the distance toward Arthur. “I’m sorry – I’m so sorry – you were right and I – I didn’t – dad I didn’t –“
His voice cut off as Arthur rapidly closed the distance between them and pulled his son into a tight hug. Harry watched as a small smile formed across Penelope’s face when she too was pulled into the mix and Mrs. Weasley’s voice rang out as the woman ran across the room towards them. It was the most heart-wrenching reunion Harry had ever seen, and he felt his stomach knot as Arthur and Mrs. Weasley welcomed their son back into their arms without judgement. It hurt to watch and yet he couldn’t look away. This was what they were fighting for after all – and yet it ached so horribly in his chest he thought he might be physically sick. So he turned away, pulling out potion vials from his leg pouch and moving to the nearest injured student that was laying on the ground near the wall.
He forced himself to swallow the bile that seemed to be inching up his throat as he fought to keep his emotions in check and away from the bond. He healed the girl’s broken arm, checked her vitals then gave her a small sip of strength potion before shifting along the floor to the next injured body. He sent a quick message to Shacklebolt asking where the man was and got an immediate reply that he was on his way to the Great Hall – he’d been out in the courtyard with Aberforth and a few others assessing the school boundaries but he was headed inside now with Minerva and Bill because they both needed medical attention. He managed to heal two more students and cast a diagnostic spell on a third when he heard Shacklebolt’s familiar voice calling his name from across the hall.
“Harry!”
He looked up at the sound, taking in the sight of a blood-covered and exhausted-looking Shacklebolt shifting through the crowd. The man darted into the Great Hall, limping slightly as he carefully weaved his way through the bodies while Bill and McGonagall followed along behind him. Harry grimaced at the sight. McGonagall was covered in blood, dirt and grime. She was limping badly and leaning against Bill as the man all but carried her across the stone floor toward him. Bill’s face was covered in blood, dirt smeared across it in streaks and his face was twisted in pain. Harry could see a large patch of blood staining his left side under his open jacket as he moved and as Shacklebolt grew closer, Harry realized that the tall man was missing two fingers from his left hand and one from his right.
“Shacklebolt,” Harry said, nodding to the man as he grew closer before quickly giving the student that he was helping a dose of blood replenisher. He recognized the boy as a fifth year Ravenclaw, but he didn’t know his name. He double checked the diagnostic once more before dispelling it and giving the boy a nod. “You’re fine, take these vials and go give them to Madam Pomfrey – help her with whatever she needs.”
The boy nodded, accepting the collection of vials that Harry handed him though his face remained pale and his eyes glassy with unshed tears. The boy might be fine physically, but Harry knew he was anything but okay.
“Did you find what we need?” Shacklebolt asked as he closed the last few steps between them and patted the boy that Harry had just released on the shoulder reassuringly as he walked past them and headed toward Madam Pomfrey.
“Yes,” Harry nodded firmly, standing once more and quickly pulling a vial of cleanser from his pocket as Bill approached with McGonagall. “I know where it is. Hermione and I are going to go get it – she’s on her way now. Here, Bill – let me look at that.”
“It’s really not as bad as it looks,” Bill grimaced as he let go of McGonagall and the woman leaned against the wall with a grunt of pain. She seemed out of breath, the stress lines by her eyes were even deeper and yet her expression was entirely focused as she looked around the room. “It just ripped open again right when we reached the doors of the Great Hall. I’m not as good with healing spells as you and Fleur – apparently, my patch job was pretty shit.”
Harry nodded at his words, stepping forward as Bill removed his jacket and grimaced in pain.
“Is there any movement on the Western or Southern fronts?” Harry asked, his gaze flicking to Shacklebolt who was now moving to tend to Professor McGonagall’s leg. He quickly cleaned the wound along Bill’s side and pulled a bottle of dittany from his pocket. He could tell just by looking at the injury that there was something wrong with it and one quick look at Bill’s eyes told him that the wizard knew perfectly well the re-opening of the wound had nothing to do with his ‘shit’ healing capabilities. Dittany should have closed it, and if it didn’t work it meant that there was something else wrong.
“No, nothing that we can see,” Shacklebolt said as he quickly glanced around the Great Hall. His eyes darted over everything in sight and Harry could practically see the man calculating as he did so. He was tallying their resources, taking stock of what they had left and how bad the injuries were as he pulled a vial of blood replenisher from his pack and then handed it to McGonagall.
“You should get Nasir to look at this when he gets here,” Harry muttered quietly as he quickly resealed Bill’s wound. He gave the man a knowing look before he repocketed the empty vials and Bill lowered his shirt back into place. “It’s not going to stay closed for very long, Bill.”
“I know,” Bill said quietly, giving Harry a pained smile as he picked up his jacket once more and started to tug it back on. “Don’t worry I will.”
Harry nodded at the man, only just stepping back as he felt the bodies around him still. Shacklebolt was staring at the entrance to the Great Hall and McGonagall’s eyes had gone wide. The dull murmur that had filled the hall seemed to quiet as every uninjured eye shifted to take in the sight of the four figures that had just shifted into the doorway. Harry felt his chest constrict as he turned to look, then his heart thudded painfully, and he felt his stomach drop.
Hermione was standing before the open door, her gaze shifting around the room as she looked for him. Only Madam Pomfrey and a select few others didn’t seem to notice their entrance as they continued to move about helping those who were injured. But everyone else, including Harry, felt speechless at the sight.
Her hair was caked in blood, ash and dirt. It looked as if someone had dumped a vat of it over her body and then baked it into her skin. It smeared across her face like war paint and coated her boots so thickly it had actually dried in layers and was starting to chip by the toes. Her eyes were dark and empty, the black rings beneath her gaze making her look nearly skeletal and gaunt as she stood wearing a worn, far too large and ill-fitting charcoal sweater. He recognized it as his own – she’d clearly changed her clothes because they’d been ruined and drenched in blood and death. Yet the new outfit did little to mask the scent of burnt flesh that seemed to cling to her body and make those nearest to the door step back in fear.
It was clear to anyone who looked at her that she was covered head to toe in the filth of war regardless of her clean new clothes. Everything about her screamed death and the detached and void stare that shifted across the room only made it worse. Her right arm was wrapped in thin tight bandages, they disappeared under the sleeve of her sweater and were littered with tiny red symbols. Harry didn’t need to guess who’s handiwork that was because the man was standing right there by her side – tall, dark, deadly. In that moment it was honestly debatable which one looked more threatening, and their appearance was only made even more foreboding by the two girls who were standing on Hermione’s right.
Ginny was nearly unrecognizable.
A massive scar cut across her beautiful features from temple to jawline. It rivalled the one that Bill sported and it was accented by smears of dirt and blood. She looked exhausted, worn – there was a hard glint in her eyes, but they were red-rimmed and swollen as if she’d been crying just a short while ago. She was wearing an old pair of whitewash jeans and a black sweater that hung loosely from her tiny frame. She’d clearly changed too, and he recognized the clothes as Hermione’s.
His eyes shifted to the strawberry blonde that she was supporting – she was missing her left leg just above the knee. The girl’s dark pants had been rolled and charmed to stay in place just below the cut and Harry instantly recognized her as Susan Bones. Yet just like Ginny, the girl looked nothing like her former self. Ash covered her hair; blood stained her face and neck. The skin peeking out from the neck of her sweater was twisted, scarred and mangled like the wounds that Hermione had gotten in the alley so long ago.
The four of them looked as if they’d been to hell and back. Like they’d been right in the middle of the blaze on the Northern front and Harry didn’t doubt that was exactly the case. Yet seeing it made his stomach churn and his blood boil because he knew at that moment just how bad, just how large, and just how terrifyingly powerful the blaze must have been for them to come out looking like that.
Hermione’s eyes finally reached him, and he saw her swallow in discomfort as her gaze locked to his. Then without pausing to think, without stopping to breathe, Harry stepped away from the others and cut across the room. The students parted before him like the ocean, and he didn’t stop until he reached her and suddenly his face was buried in her dirty, blood-covered hair and she was clinging to him as he held her.
“I love you,” he whispered, holding her closer, gripping her tighter and knowing that it would never be enough.
He could feel her shaking in his arms. He could smell the death and feel the dark magic that was clinging to her body and suffocating her soul. He’d been around Nasir long enough to sense it and she was layered in it thick as mud. But he didn’t care. It didn’t matter. He loved her more than anything and she would always be his. Even if there was only the smallest shred of her left, he would love her unconditionally until the very end.
“I love you so much,” he breathed in her ear as he felt her fingers knotting into the back of his jacket. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there. I’m so sorry, Hermione. I’m so sorry.”
-x-x-
May 1, 1998
Hogwarts, 10:49 pm
“So... how did you meet him?”
Hermione’s eyes shifted toward the somewhat hesitant voice on her left. The group had remained quiet as they steadily made their way through the school towards the Great Hall. She’d not uttered a word since they set off to join up with the others, but it seemed that Ginny had grown uncomfortable with the silence.
Though then again, Hermione thought as her eyes glanced over to the redhead who didn’t appear in the least bit nervous. Perhaps she had grown comfortable with the silence and simply wanted to talk.
She could see Ginny glancing at the man before them curiously as they walked. Her eyes were tracing over Nasir’s tall form as he led the way several feet in front of them. She seemed to be thinking something and when her gaze shifted back to Hermione, she raised a brow in question.
“He works with Shacklebolt,” Hermione answered quietly, her eyes flicking to look at the man ahead of them before glancing back at the two girls at her side once more.
Susan was managing fairly well given that she only had one leg. Ginny’s arm was wrapped securely around the girl’s waist to provide support and with it, and the long wooden crutch that she had tucked under her left shoulder, she was moving at an impressive and solid pace. It had taken her a few steps to get the hang of it, but now it seemed almost second nature.
“I know,” Ginny nodded, her voice sincere as she spoke and a loud clap of thunder echoed outside the school. Susan’s curious gaze shifted to look at Hermione as well – she too had been eyeing the Nasir curiously for the last little while. “But how did you get involved with him? He doesn’t strike me as the social type so I’m guessing that you didn’t just start up a conversation with him during one of the Order meetings.”
Hermione felt her lip twitch ever so slightly at Ginny’s words. Not only because she was right, but because of how normal the girl was making the conversation sound. As if Hermione wasn’t covered in dried blood. As if she hadn’t just set the entire Northern hillside on fire and killed an uncountable number of people. As if they were back in school simply talking about class, their upcoming weekend plans or quidditch with the boys. It was as if Ginny genuinely wanted to know – but not because it was gossip, or because she was nosey, or because she was suspicious of the man and Hermione’s involvement with him. Not for any of the reasons that most people would want to ask and not for any self-gain.
And that meant more to Hermione than she would ever be able to explain.
Ginny was so much like her father – so open and accepting, so curious but unjudging and so unwilling to give up on anyone around her. She fought with a fiery determination and never accepted no as an answer. She’d managed to stay alive at the bridge. Then she’d fought to save Susan’s life and since the very moment that Hermione had run into the girl tonight, she had been seemingly determined to treat both her and Harry with the same kindness and friendship as before regardless of how much they’d changed. And maybe that was why Hermione felt her mouth moving to respond before she even realized that she was speaking.
“He healed me after Harry and I ran into some trouble,” Hermione said quietly, her eyes shifting away from the two girls as she spoke.
Her voice remained low and detached – as if what had happened a month ago was no big deal and she hadn’t very nearly been left armless and forever crippled by violent tremors. She nearly snorted at the realization, it was insane to think that she had only known this man for a month and yet he was such a permanent fixture in her life. He had impacted her in so many ways and she’d come to rely on him more than most people knew – though she supposed spending hundreds of hours with someone in such short a time and such dire conditions would do that. She swallowed and shook her head; she could feel both Ginny and Susan watching her as they took the next right and continued their way down the large hall.
“He saved my life that night,” Hermione nearly whispered, her eyes locking to the tall man’s back. “And then he saved it again several more times after that. I’d asked him to train us after I met him, and he agreed. We’ve been working closely with him since then.”
She could see Ginny nodding from the corner of her vision, and she chanced a glance at the girls to see that both of them were now intently staring at Nasir’s back.
“He’s a bit intense, isn’t he?” Ginny murmured, dropping her voice so that they would not be overheard. It wouldn’t work, Hermione knew that – Nasir could be another twenty feet in front of them and still hear their conversation perfectly clear, but she wasn’t worried, she doubted he was interested in the conversation.
“A bit,” Hermione agreed, her eyes shifting back to Nasir once more as she wondered what he must look like to fresh eyes. When she’d met him, she’d already been damaged and desperate – she’d not been in any place or mindset to judge the only man who could help her. But to some of these students, he must be rather intimidating.
“And he just... worked at the Ministry?” Ginny questioned, her eyes shifting back to Hermione. “What – just another employee working in the stacks? Or was he an Auror too?”
“No,” Hermione said quietly, not fully sure why she was continuing to answer her redheaded friend. “He wasn’t an Auror… he was an Unspeakable.”
Silence surrounded them once more as the girls processed her response. It was not a secret that Nasir was an Unspeakable – but bringing up that department of the Ministry usually had this result.
“Did he teach you that?” Susan's quiet voice broke the silence and Hermione could feel the girl’s gaze digging into her temple. “On the hill, the fiendfyre – did he show you how to do that?”
Hermione felt her spine stiffen at the mention of the blaze and she instinctively clenched her jaw shut tight as she swallowed hard but nodded in confirmation. She inhaled sharply and forced her body to exhale. She couldn’t let what had happened on the Northern front have such a hold on her body or she would never make it through this night with her mind intact. She had to detach and move on – push through this one step at a time. So she forced herself to answer.
“Yes,” Hermione breathed as she set her jaw tight and clamped down harder on the boxed up trauma in her mind. “He taught me.”
Silence rang out once more and Hermione could feel her muscles starting to tense with discomfort as she fought against the urge to look at the two girls by her side. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what was going through their heads or what they must think of her after what they had seen her do. And she didn’t even want to consider what they must think about Nasir – knowing what he’d taught her, knowing what he was capable of, and knowing that he could apparate within the Hogwarts grounds, which thankfully, neither of them had asked any questions about.
This was why the next words that Ginny spoke caught her entirely off guard and she very nearly tripped over her own two feet as her brain processed the words.
“I like him,” Ginny said firmly, her head nodding as if to emphasize the statement as Susan's head tilted in agreement. Hermione blinked as she stared at the girls, her brow furrowing in disbelief as Ginny’s gaze only seemed to become more and more resolute.
“I do too,” Susan confirmed quietly, her eyes shifting to Hermione as a small if not slightly nervous smile crossed her lips. “I'm glad he’s on our side.”
“So am I,” Hermione whispered, and she could have sworn that she saw the tall man before them slow mid-step at her words as they rounded the next corner. “So am I.”
They moved through the next hall in silence. The steady click of Susan’s crutch almost soothing as the thunder outside grew louder. Perhaps it was the clean dry clothes. Or maybe it was the company or the fact that she was once again by Nasir’s side and on her way to see Harry – but Hermione felt her heart calm as they reached the small narrow staircase that led away from the Headmaster’s tower and they began their descent to the main castle.
They’d made it a quarter of the way down the flight of stairs when a massive clap of thunder shook the school and an eerie noise shot through the air. Susan stumbled as the castle rocked. She would have fallen down the stone steps if Ginny hadn’t grabbed her and Hermione hadn’t helped to brace the two girls up. Nasir halted mid-step, rapidly turning around and darting back up towards them as a voice cut through the air and filled Hermione’s soul with terror.
‘YOU HAVE TWO HOURS TO COLLECT YOUR DEAD AND RETRIEVE YOUR WOUNDED’
It was the same voice that she had heard on the beach at Shell Cottage. The same voice that filled her heart with dread and her mind with fear. It grated on her nerves, cut through her mind and scratched at her sanity. It was deadly, vile, repulsive and filled with so much hate she could practically taste it in her mouth as her hands instinctively shot up to cover her ears.
‘AT WHICH TIME, IF YOU DO NOT SURRENDER AND VOW TO SERVE – I WILL KILL EVERY LAST MAN, WOMAN, AND CHILD WITHIN THIS SCHOOL AND BURN IT TO THE GROUND TO ERADICATE THE HERESY THAT PLAGUES OUR WORLD.’
‘YOU HAVE UNTIL 1 AM ’
Hermione’s legs shook beneath her as she gasped for air. Her pulse was racing once more and she could feel Ginny and Susan shaking next to her as Nasir stood before them staring out the window on their left.
“What was that?” Ginny asked, her voice hoarse and shaking as she gripped Susan tight. “Was that him?”
“Yes,” Nasir confirmed, his eyes shifting away from the window as he reached out to grab Hermione’s shoulder gently. “That was an incredibly powerful sonorous. Hermione, are you alright?”
Hermione nodded, swallowing hard as she closed her eyes tight and fought back against the sickness curling in her stomach. So much for feeling a tiny bit better, she thought bitterly. She had only just managed to lower her pulse and start to get control of her body and now she felt like she was on the verge of spiralling again.
“I’m okay,” she breathed, pressing her fingers to her temples and letting out a low shaky breath as she forced her eyes to open once more. “I’m okay.”
“Alright,” Nasir nodded, squeezing her shoulder once before his gaze shifted to the other girls and he glanced over their paled faces. She could see the concern behind his eyes again, the strain that was tugging at the edges of his false calm. Nasir was stressed and as he slowly let go of her shoulder and gestured for them to continue, she saw his jaw clench tight. “Let’s keep going. We need to move quickly.”
They all nodded in agreement, but Hermione could feel the apprehension in the air as they began to make their way back down the staircase. Ginny looked disturbed; Susan looked physically ill. Both of them seemed to be clenching their jaws hard and she could see them trembling as they pushed themselves forward once more. They travelled the rest of the way in complete silence, no one speaking a word or making a noise aside from Hermione noting that Harry had reached the Great Hall. Susan’s crutch clicked against the stone and they navigated two more staircases before the sound of pain began to fill the air and Hermione’s nose filled with the scent of blood and potions.
There were kids in the hall. Bodies wrapped in bandages and covered in blood and dirt. They were moving around, laying on the ground, and helping each other out – but all those standing before the Great Hall parted as Nasir led the way inside the large doors.
She could feel countless eyes on her as she shifted to stand next to the tall man, taking her usual spot on his right-hand side as Ginny and Susan came to stand next to her. Every muscle in her body tensed under the scrutiny of a hundred stares. She could feel the tremor of exhaustion in her legs as her eyes scanned over the crowd within the Great Hall searching for Harry. She recognized nearly every face that she saw, most of them students, kids her own age or only a year or two younger and they were nearly all battered and broken. There didn’t seem to be a single person in the school that wasn’t coated in their own blood or the blood of another.
But she didn’t let herself think about it. She forced her eyes to keep moving as she searched out her target. Just as the discomfort from being gaped at started to shift down her spine and reach the very tips of her toes her eyes shifted over Arthur, Percy, Mrs. Weasley and then finally – Harry, and she felt her heart still in her chest and she swallowed hard. Before she could even open her mouth, form a single thought or even take a step towards him he was rushing across the room and suddenly she was buried in his arms.
He gripped her tight; pulled her closer. She could feel his warm breath in her hair and on her neck as his love flowed through the bond stronger than ever. She gripped him tight, her fingers knotting into the back of his dark leather jacket as she fought not to collapse in his hold. She could hear him muttering into her hair, his words making her eyes sting with tears as he openly held her with no regard for anyone else in the room.
“Harry,” his name came out breathless and whispered from her lips as her heart ached in her chest. Every other emotion since the fire had felt stunted and hollow and yet somehow now in his hold the pain was lessened, the empty wasn’t so big and the weight on her chest and radiating from her rune wasn’t so brutally agonizing. She could actually feel something other than anguish, and it was her deep and unconditional love for this man. “Harry, I’m sorry.”
He kissed her hair, her temple – uncaring that she was covered in filth. Then he pulled back from her hold to kiss her directly before grabbing her and pulling her to his chest once more. If anyone in the room had been unsure of their relationship or had been wondering what they might have meant to each other the question was answered there in that moment as Harry held her like she was the only person in the world. He stepped back again when the sound of Shacklebolt’s voice filled the air and Hermione swallowed hard as she looked up at him and his hand came to cup the side of her face gently.
“You’re okay?” Harry asked quietly, his eyes locked to her face as Nasir’s voice echoed beside them. His thumb brushed over her cheekbone as she nodded and forced herself not to break.
“I’m okay,” Hermione whispered, nodding once more as she continued to grip the side of his jacket tight. She cleared her throat and did her best to blank her expression and void it of the chaotic mess that was churning inside her. “I can do this.”
“Okay,” Harry murmured, his green eyes shifting over her face. He didn’t show a hint of emotion outwardly but she knew that he was looking at her with sorrow. “We’re almost done, I promise.”
He kissed her again, his hand trailing down her side to grab her hand before he turned to look at Nasir. She gripped his hand tight as Harry stepped forward and firmly grasped the man’s arm, muttering a low thank you as the tall man nodded in return. Then Harry shifted to her right to look at Ginny and Susan. The two girls had been watching them. Susan’s hand was pressed over her lips and her eyes were creased in pain. Ginny’s were watering with tears. She looked so happy and yet so agonizingly sad as she bit her bottom lip tight and then smiled broadly at the pair of them.
The whole thing felt surreal. Ginny stifled a sob, and Hermione allowed the girls to pull her into a strange group hug with Harry as their emotions began to pour out – but the whole of it was overwhelming.
She had to remind herself to breathe as one of them gripped her shoulder and then Arthur’s voice cut through the room. He was at them in a flash, his eyes red-rimmed and filled with tears as he grabbed Ginny tight and pulled her to his chest. Before Hermione could blink, she was wrapped up into the chaotic bundle with Susan as more red hair crowded around them. It was beautiful and tortuously painful. It was everything that they were fighting for and everything that the Weasleys deserved and yet her mind couldn’t seem to process the words that were being spoken around her as her panic began to flare. A piece of her wanted to be a part of this grand reunion and yet the majority of her felt dreadfully disconnected and out of place.
It was too much.
She couldn’t handle the closeness. Her heart couldn’t manage the emotions or the heat of all the bodies that were now crowded around them like sardines. She could hear Mrs. Weasley speaking to Ginny – it sounded tense and awkward. Thunder rumbled above and around them as Professor McGonagall spoke to their right. She could hear Shacklebolt talking to her left. Bill was asking a question that she knew was important and Arthur was responding to it but panic was starting to spread through her body like a wave. Her grip on Harry had been lost when she was pulled into Arthur’s hug. She tried to box it all up, to remind herself that she was safe but her heart started to race, her chest started to tighten, her lungs wouldn’t work – then a hand gripped her shoulder tight and she was jerked back from the small crowd as Harry’s voice echoed in her mind.
‘We’ve got you,’ he whispered calmly and suddenly he was at her side once more.
She glanced up to see Nasir standing just behind her, his hand still gripping her shoulder tight as Harry wrapped his arm around her waist and stepped even closer.
“I’m sorry,” Hermione whispered, feeling pathetic as she exhaled hard. She needed to do better. She needed to regain her focus. She saw Harry shoot Nasir a concerned and uneasy glance before he looked down at her once more. “I – I didn’t catch what they said.”
“It’s okay,” Harry said softly, giving her side a reassuring squeeze before he turned to look back at the others once more. “Shacklebolt and Bill were just giving us an update before we go – Shacklebolt?”
“Yes, I want to make sure that we’re all aligned before we split up once more,” Shacklebolt confirmed, nodding as his eyes quickly flicked over Hermione’s battered form. She could see worry behind his eyes, but his gaze didn’t linger and he didn’t ask any question as he turned back to Harry once more. “Voldemort’s forces retreated into the forest after the fire on the Northern front. I have Aberforth out in the main courtyard right now with Fleur and a few others keeping watch while Thomas is scouting for survivors in the wreckage but so far there’s no sign of movement.”
“There was no sign of movement on the South either,” Bill added, his hand gripping his left side tight. Hermione could see what looked to be fresh blood soaking the material of his shirt, but the man seemed to be ignoring it. “Augusta is down there now with Professor Sprout – they’re using one of the DA coins to keep us updated but they’ve not heard a sound since they pulled back into the forest.”
“We all heard his message,” Shacklebolt said slowly as he ran his injured hand over his face and let out a low sigh. The man looked dead on his feet. Deep stress lines lingered by the corner of his creased eyes and there was a gash across his temple that had yet to be healed. “I doubt he ordered the retreat – his men probably panicked and fell back themselves but regardless, it doesn’t mean that we get a break. He’ll be spending this time rethinking his plan and we need to do the same. His men can’t fight forever and they’ve suffered casualties and injuries just the same as us so he’s stuck between a rock and a hard place right now and he’s forced to give us time whether he wants to or not.
“What Minerva and I were just discussing is that it’s still too risky to bring the students outside of the wards to try and evacuate them,” Shacklebolt continued. “We have no line of sight inside the forest and it’s too dangerous to get any closer. We have no idea how far his forces have pulled back – they may be lingering just inside the woods while they tend to their wounded and wait for new commands.”
“If I had to wager a guess,” Arthur said slowly, his brow furrowing as he met Shacklebolt’s gaze. “That would be it. They won’t retreat in full. You Know Who would never allow it and he is too clever to let up or give us an out. They know that we took heavy losses and they know that our defences are spent.”
“I agree,” Shacklebolt nodded, grimacing as he shook his head. “Aberforth and I believe that he has ordered the rest of his resources to thin out and flank the school entirely. The house elves have started to help with the evacuation but it’s intermittent at best and not all of them seem to agree with the directions that Minerva gave. When Padma brought the last group down to the kitchens, she confirmed that Mipsy evacuated a few of the more heavily wounded to the farmhouse but otherwise we’re not having much luck. We still have the portkeys, but they will only work if we can get outside of the wards.
“Right now, our plan is to heal anyone who can still fight and continue to move those too injured to help down to the kitchens. But we also need to start resetting defences around the school closer to the castle,” Shacklebolt dropped his voice lower and took a step forward. His body along with Bill’s blocked out most of the curious gazes from the students behind them and Hermione felt a silencing charm surround the small group as the man turned to look directly at the pair of them once more. “What I need to know from you, Harry – is if this plan is going to work, and how much time you think you and Hermione are going to need.”
The concern in the man’s eyes was blatant and Hermione could see the tension in his shoulders as his head shifted and his gaze flicked to the massive group of injured students and remaining Order members at their side.
Hermione followed his gaze, her eyes drifting over the room once more and taking it all in with clarity. When she had first walked into the large room she had been looking for Harry. She had been hyper-focused and tunnel-visioned. She’d seen the mess that was the Great Hall, but she had not truly looked at it. Now, as her eyes danced over the endless sea of bodies, she felt her muscles tense and her stomach churn with sickness.
Fred was sitting along the far wall with George and tending to Lavender’s injured arm. They’d not come over to join the group, but they were watching the discussion with curious and exhausted eyes. George’s leg was heavily bandaged, and Fred’s face had been poorly healed back together and blood covered the three of them like paint. Further down to the left she could just make out Padma tending to Neville’s shoulder. The girl’s lip was trembling as she worked, her eyes were red and glassy, and her hands shook as she cut away Neville’s shirt to reveal a massive amount of clotted blood over deeply cut letters. Hermione’s heart stuttered in her chest as Padma poured cleanser over the wound, washing away the blood and dirt to reveal the text that marked Neville’s body.
BLOOD TRAITOR
It was carved into his flesh so deep she could see some of his muscles. The blood that oozed from it was thick and dark as if it was infected and festering. Countless others around them were missing limbs, were covered in gashes, bandages or were outright unconscious. And as her eyes shifted back to Shacklebolt’s tall form she knew what the man was going to say before he even opened his mouth to speak.
“We can’t hold out much longer,” Shacklebolt said quietly, his voice so low it was nearly a whisper. She saw Arthur’s face tighten from the corner of her eye – Ginny and Susan were standing close to the man’s side. Penelope and Percy separated the girls from Mrs. Weasley, almost like a buffer. The woman clutched Percy tight but continued to flick her gaze between the girls and Shacklebolt as he spoke. “I’m going to do everything that I can to help patch these kids up and I’m going to do what I can to try and give them some hope but Harry –“
Shacklebolt’s jaw clenched tight and his eyes radiated with pain as the ceiling flickered with lightning and thunder rang through the air.
“Most of them are going to die here tonight if we don’t find a way to get them out and end this quickly,” Shacklebolt confessed as he swallowed hard. “If there is a second attack like the first, we will not be able to hold out for nearly as long. At best we can cause a diversion on the Eastern front in an attempt to sneak the students out on the Southern side. They will need to make a run for it with one of the portkeys but the reality is their chances are slim and they’re going to get picked off. We’ve lost too many already and no one else is coming to help us. We’re on our own.
“Look, I’m with you until the end Harry,” Shacklebolt assured them as he took another small step forward. “I’m here no matter what and I trust the two of you. I know you’re still working the plan that Dumbledore set out and Nasir has assured me this is the only way – but I need you to tell me what your plan is. After you and Hermione get what we need, what’s next? I need to know so we can prepare because we have less than two hours to figure this out otherwise the school will be nothing but a graveyard.”
“I know,” Harry said quietly, his voice tense as his steady gaze moved over the small group. “We only need another twenty minutes – thirty tops. It won’t take us long to find it. After that, we will have the advantage, and we’ll lure Voldemort onto the grounds. We need to make him think that we are hiding inside and entirely unprepared for the second attack because we need him to engage in battle directly instead of hiding behind his forces.”
“But how are we going to lure him out?” Bill asked, his eyes creased in pain as he continued to hold his side tight. “He still has hundreds of men and creatures out there. There’s nothing stopping him from just unleashing a second wave against the castle and standing back to watch like before.”
“I’ll draw him out,” Nasir stated quietly, his deep voice drawing the attention of everyone’s eyes. “Once he sets foot on the castle grounds Harry, Hermione and I will attack him, and it would be best if you and the others did not engage him. Instead, we are going to need you and everyone else here to keep the others off our backs. Tom will not fight fair, the second he engages in battle it will put everyone here in danger and he will use everything that he has. We won’t stand a chance at taking him out if we are being attacked by what remains of his troops while we fight him.”
“Then for now our group will stick to the plan that we have,” Shacklebolt nodded, his face looking grim. “Heal who we can, prepare to evac the others, and set up defences. I’ll see what we can do to try and push the house elves. Otherwise, we try to create a pinch point or some way to divert his supporters from you three once he gets on to school grounds. I’ll let everyone know that they are not to engage in your fight and that we are to insert ourselves to push back against his troops and create space to prevent them from sidelining you.”
“We still have just over an hour and a half,” McGonagall said quietly, her gaze shifting across the group. “I can try to repair some of the stone statues and charm more armour – there are still a few sets throughout the castle. We can send those students who are fit to walk to go collect them. We may not have any more fireworks, but we can certainly add more blockades across the lawn and perhaps Fred and George can help us find a way to make the existing trench more useful. Those two know more hexes and charms than anyone else alive. Perhaps we could set the trench on fire or laden it with something to make it impassible?”
“That just might work,” Bill nodded, turning to look at his old Professor. “I can talk to Aberforth as well – he might be able to help them.”
“That’s all well and good,” Mrs. Weasley cautioned, her voice sounding exhausted and strained. “But maybe that’s exactly what You Know Who is expecting us to do? Who’s to say that we won’t be attacked the second that we step out onto the grounds?”
“Tom has been quiet for nearly half an hour now,” Nasir said calmly, his gaze shifting to the redheaded woman. “If he was going to blitz attack us again, he would have done it by now. He’s strategizing and reorganizing his forces. That said, you’re not entirely wrong. Make sure that anyone out on the grounds is properly muffled, fully disillusioned and entirely hidden at all times. I would not put it past his troops to decide independently or otherwise to take out easy targets that wander across their sights. They’re going to be watching us, so whatever we do we need to do it discreetly. If you expect Tom or his followers to honour a ceasefire in full then you will be the first ones to fall as part of his second attack.”
“Agreed,” Shacklebolt nodded firmly. “I’ll make sure that anyone out there is covered.”
“How do we even know that he’s still here?” Mrs. Weasley pressed as she took a small step forward. “Maybe he’s retreated? And if he hasn’t, wouldn’t securing the castle and barring the doors be the smarter choice?”
“It would certainly put fewer people at risk of immediate danger,” Shacklebolt agreed, his eyes looking strained as he turned to glance at the woman. “But honestly, Molly – I’m not sure that it will make much of a difference. You saw what happened to the shield. If Voldemort wants to get in, he’ll get in. We’re better off splitting what remains of our people across the East and South and barring those too injured to fight inside the castle while the rest of us remain on the grounds and prepare to hold off the next attack to give Nasir, Harry and Hermione a chance. As for whether or not he’s still here…”
Shacklebolt paused, his face shifting into a grimace as he let out a deep sigh.
“There are three dark marks in the sky surrounding the castle,” Shacklebolt revealed, his eyes heavy with concern. “One to the North, one to the East and one to the South. He has made it abundantly clear that he is still here, we are stuck within his hold and we are entirely at his mercy.”
Mrs. Weasley’s face paled and Hermione saw the woman visibly swallow. She could see the others in the small group shifting uncomfortably as Shacklebolt glanced around and met each person’s gaze, looking for any other questions.
“Do you need anything else?” Arthur finally asked, his eyes shifting to lock on Hermione and Harry. “Anything in order to do what you need to do.”
“No,” Harry confirmed, shaking his head as he gripped Hermione tighter. “You’ve all done more than enough already.”
“Alright,” Shacklebolt concluded, nodding his head as the silencing charm around them fell away. “Then let’s get to this. Hermione, Harry – go get what we need and come back to the main courtyard once you have it. Bill – you head back to the South to help Augusta, see what we can do to funnel an attack. Arthur – you’re with me, we’ll head back out onto the Eastern front with Percy to get started on those defences. Miss Clearwater – you can come as well. Minerva – get Miss Patil and have her help you collect a group of students who are still mobile but too injured to fight to help you gather up whatever else can be charmed within the castle. I don’t care what it is – if you can charm it and use it, rip it down from the castle walls and drag it out into the courtyard. Tell the students to get creative. Once that’s done you can try to repair the stone statue remains by the trenches. Molly – take Miss Bones down to the kitchens and then help Poppy with whatever she needs here in the Great Hall.”
“What about me?” Ginny asked, her question making Mrs. Weasley’s face fall in despair as Arthur’s eyes pinched in visible pain.
“Can you still fight?” Shacklebolt questioned, his eyes shifting to the small girl who was still standing by her father’s side.
“Yes,” Ginny said firmly, her jaw clenching tight. “I can fight.”
“Then I want you and Miss Brown to work with Mr. Longbottom. Get anyone who is still willing to fight assembled in the main courtyard,” Shacklebolt said quietly and Hermione could see Mrs. Weasley’s lip twitch with dissatisfaction. “We’ll split them up once we have a headcount. Tell Fred and George they are to meet me out on the hillside – as Minerva suggested we’re going to need their expertise.”
“We've lost two sons already,” Mrs. Weasley whispered, her voice hollow and lacking the usual fight that it had when she was about to start an argument. “You want us to lose our daughter too?”
It was as if she said it instinctively because protecting her children was as reflexive as breathing – yet one look at the woman’s eyes told Hermione that even she knew her words were a lost cause. She didn’t accept Shacklebolt’s orders. She never would. And the anger and heartbreak on her face was evident. But this war had finally beaten reality into her brain and she seemed to know that attempting to send Ginny to the kitchens with Susan would only result in an explosive outburst that she had no chance of winning.
“You know it’s not like that Molly,” Shacklebolt said tightly, his brow creasing as he looked at the woman and then glanced at Arthur as if to confirm his stance on the issue. But Arthur didn’t refute it. The muscles in his jaw twitched but Arthur forced himself to nod.
“George can’t even walk,” Mrs. Weasley whispered, her grip on Percy growing tighter as her voice became hoarse. “And Neville Longbottom’s shoulder has not stopped bleeding since he came back to this hall – but you want to send them back out?”
“I don’t have many other options,” Shacklebolt said gently. “If they are willing to go back out – then I’m going to allow it.”
“Some of these people can still be made battle-ready,” Nasir interjected, his low baritone once again drawing the eyes of everyone in their small group. His dark gaze was scanning across the Great Hall and she could see him rapidly assessing the injured. “Not all of them, but a good number of them. Including Mr. Longbottom and your son. Shacklebolt is correct, we cannot send everyone who can’t walk or hold a wand to the kitchens. We should only be sending those that are incapable of fighting or outright refuse – but I could up the number of those fit for battle.”
“Then you should stay and help them,” Hermione said, turning to look up at Nasir and nodding her head as if to reinforce the words. She had no idea if the man had been planning to come with them to get the Horcrux or what he was going to be doing since Shacklebolt had not given him any orders but this seemed like the best fit and Shacklebolt was nodding in agreement. “Heal as many as you can, help them get started on the defences. Harry and I will be fine, it won’t take us long.”
Nasir’s eyes shifted down to meet her gaze and he stared at her for a moment before glancing over to Harry.
“You know exactly what you need?” Nasir asked, his tone level as he met Harry’s gaze intently.
“Yes,” Harry nodded. He kept his expression carefully controlled despite the curious glances of the others.
“Exactly where it is?”
“Yes.”
“You're sure?”
“I'm sure,” Harry confirmed. They stared at each other in silence for a moment and Hermione couldn’t help but feel like something unspoken shifted between them. “Stay here and help them, Nasir. We’ll be fine.”
“Alright,” Nasir nodded, turning back to Shacklebolt and following Harry’s direction without question for the second time that night. “I’ll need an extra set of hands or this is going to take too long.”
“I’ll do it,” Ginny volunteered, stepping forward from her dad. “I can help him.”
She turned to look at Shacklebolt and the tall man arched his brow in question as he glanced to Nasir for confirmation.
“Miss Weasley has already proven herself useful,” Nasir answered, nodding once in acceptance as Mrs. Weasley’s face paled further. “She’ll be fine.”
“Alright – that’s settled,” Shacklebolt said firmly, stepping back from the group. “Miss Brown and Mr. Longbottom can round up anyone ready to fight and send them outside. After that, they can come back in and help you heal anyone else who can be made fit for battle while Poppy and Molly take care of those who are too injured and will need to be evacuated. Everyone get started – I’ll announce it to the Hall. Bill – make sure you see Nasir before you head outside.”
At the dismissal, people started to shift. Everyone made to follow their orders and get started but as Susan’s voice rang out several of them stilled.
“Excuse me, sir!” Susan called, gripping her crutch tight and hobbling her way over while avoiding Mrs. Weasley’s approaching form. The older woman was clearly planning to take the girl down to the kitchens, but Susan was not having it. “Nasir – sir – I have a question.”
Arthur visibly stiffened as Ginny moved after her girlfriend and Bill, who was still holding his side tight, shuffled over toward them.
“Could you make me battle-ready?” Susan asked, coming to a stop just before Nasir and ignoring the stunned noise that came from Mrs. Weasley behind her as Shacklebolt began to address the Great Hall. She looked up at Nasir directly, her gaze determined and unblinking as she stared into his dark eyes and set her shoulders back. “Can you do something to make me more mobile – more useful? I want to help.”
Nasir stared at her for a moment, his eyes scanning over her small frame assessingly before he finally nodded.
“Yes,” Nasir said slowly, and Hermione heard a ragged wheeze leaving Mrs. Weasley’s lungs. “It will not be comfortable, so I will need to numb what remains of your left leg – but that will put you at risk of causing permanent nerve damage since you won’t be able to tell if you are agitating the injury. But yes, Miss Bones, I can make you more functional if that is what you desire.”
“I do,” Susan said firmly, her eyes hardening as she tried to stand up straighter. “Do it – do whatever it is that you need to do so that I can actually help.”
“Susan,” Mrs. Weasley breathed as Arthur grabbed her arm and Bill looked between the two women with concern. “You lost your leg – there is nothing wrong with helping in the kitchens. You could do irreversible damage if you let him carry out some kind of makeshift experimental fix.”
“I appreciate your concern, Mrs. Weasley,” Susan said calmly, her voice almost cold as she turned to look at the woman. “But I’m of age, and the reality is I’m probably going to die tonight. I’m injured. I can barely get around and we can’t leave – the odds of me or anyone else getting out of here alive are slim. I’d rather die helping. I’d rather do something than just sit around in the kitchens waiting for an evacuation that may or may not happen. I may not be able to outright fight in the next attack – but if I’m able to walk and move around independently I could help lay defences or help him and Ginny heal those who actually can fight when the time comes.”
Mrs. Weasley’s face dropped, and her eyes creased with agony as Arthur pulled her away from the girls and steered her toward Madam Pomfrey. She didn’t fight him. It was the first time that Hermione had ever seen the woman look defeated and it made her heart clench painfully within her chest.
“Please be careful, Ginny,” Arthur said as he moved back towards his daughter and pulled her into one final hug before turning to Susan to do the same. “Susan – you too. Stay near the castle if you can – with Nasir, help him set the defences once you’re done healing the other students. If you’re sent to help on the grounds do not remove your disillusionments, stick together and come find me or Bill.”
“We will, dad,” Ginny nodded, swallowing hard as Arthur stepped away and turned to head back outside. He paused as he passed Bill, gripping his son’s shoulder tight before glancing back at the group one last time. Hermione met his gaze, and she felt her heart clench tight as he looked at her with deep agonizing sorrow before he nodded and then turned to leave.
“I’ll work on your leg after I fix Bill’s side – go get Mr. Longbottom and bring him over here,” Nasir said to the girls before gesturing at Bill for him to move closer. He turned back to Hermione and Harry as the two girls stepped away and she felt a small silencing charm encase their bodies. “Once you have it come right back here. Do not destroy it, we need him to continue to believe that we are still looking for it or he might not attack.”
“I know,” Harry murmured, nodding in agreement.
“We still need to figure out what to do about Nagini as well,” Hermione whispered, pulling her wand from her holster and gripping it tightly in her hand as she tried to mentally prepare herself for what came next. “He’ll keep her close – it’s possible he won’t even bring her into battle.”
“Possible,” Nasir confirmed, pulling a few vials from his pocket and removing the silencing charm as Bill reached them. “We’ll figure that out when the time comes. For now, go get what we need. Be quick and keep me updated.”
They nodded in agreement, then turned away from the man and headed back out through the large oak door at a quick and steady pace. Hermione didn’t even realize that she had taken Harry’s hand or that she was gripping it tight until the noise of the Great Hall had faded away and they were darting along a corridor in complete silence. She could feel Harry’s heart beating steady and strong in her mind as her own raced erratically in her chest.
There were a million things that she wanted to say to him. A million words that she needed him to hear. She wanted this nightmare to be over. She wanted more time. She wanted to pull him into a corner, climb into his arms, hold onto him tight and never let go. And yet she couldn’t seem to open her mouth. She couldn’t seem to figure out what to say as bile burned at the back of her throat again and her exhausted legs shook beneath her battered body.
Where did she even start?
What could she say to this man who already knew exactly how she felt because he could see her mind and feel her emotions through the bond that connected their very souls?
He already knew that she was broken. He already knew she’d pushed the limits of her capabilities on the Northern front and left herself in tatters. He already knew that she loved him more than life itself. So as they rounded the next corner and continued their way to the North, she settled on gripping his hand even tighter and letting her love for him slide through the open bond.
-x-x-
They made it to the Room of Requirements just after 11:40 pm. It hadn’t taken them long to navigate the school hallways and neither one of them had spoken along the way. Though Hermione had very nearly broken his hand from holding it so tight. He almost smiled at the thought as they stopped before the familiar wall and Harry squeezed her hand tight. What he wouldn’t give to have more time with her – or to carry the burden of her rune and the darkness that was clinging to her body. She seemed calmer now, her heart rate more steady and the chaotic spinning of her mind more controlled.
But he knew that the calm was coming at a great cost, and she was literally fighting with her own body to remain in control and combat the dark emptiness in her soul as the door to the Room of Requirements appeared next to the tapestry of the dancing trolls. They waited in silence until it had finished forming and then Hermione finally let go of his hand and they moved their way inside.
“Do you have any idea where it is?” Hermione asked, her voice still low and void of her usual inflection as her eyes shifted over the piles of random items scattered through the room of hidden things.
“No, I don’t,” Harry said quietly, his eyes shifting over the nearest pile before he raised his fake wand. “Accio Horcrux – accio Diadem.”
They both stood there for a moment waiting, but nothing happened, and the room remained silent.
“Well, it was worth a shot,” Hermione sighed, turning to give him a small half-smile. “Though I doubt any sort of locating magic will work in this room. Did you see what it looked like back on the beach?”
“Not clearly,” Harry shook his head as he followed along beside her and his eyes continued to search the piles. “But the Grey Lady described it to me. She said that it’s silver with a blue oval sapphire. And there is text inscribed across the front that reads, ‘Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure’.”
“Alright,” Hermione nodded, arching a brow at him in question. “Do we split up? We can cover more ground that way.”
“I think we might have to,” Harry admitted, grimacing at the thought. He didn’t want to leave her side now that they were finally reunited but they needed to move quickly so they could get back to help the others. He looked at her weary frame, the way that her shoulders seemed to sag under an invisible weight and her eyes held an empty hollow gleam that had never been there before. It made his heart ache. “We split up – but we shield and keep the bond open at all times. Keep talking and let me know where you are.”
“Alright,” Hermione agreed, quickly setting her shield and waiting for the purple to encase her body as Harry did the same. “I’ll take the left alleyways; you take the right. If you find it, send up red sparks so I can locate you but don’t forget to mark the path you took so we don’t accidentally double back or miss anything.”
“Alright,” Harry nodded, hesitating as he stood before her.
“I’ll be okay Harry,” she said quietly, stepping toward him and gripping his upper arm tight. “I promise – we won’t be far apart.”
“I know,” Harry whispered, leaning down to kiss her gently before stepping back. “Let’s get this over with – the faster we find it the quicker we can get back to the others.”
They both shifted to their respective sides and Harry dropped his wand to his side to mark his path as his eyes poured over the endless items crammed into the room.
‘Anything yet?’ Harry asked, stepping around a muggle bicycle and glancing into a small cupboard.
‘Not yet,’ Hermione replied. ‘Though there are an awful lot of old brooms on this side – and I’m pretty sure that there might be Red Caps living in the pile nearest the wall. Makes me wonder what might have happened in this room.’
‘Don’t they only live in places where blood was shed?’ Harry’s brow furrowed as he moved around the next pile and stopped to search the impressive collection of stuff. He could see six desks, four chairs, two muggle soccer balls, endless stacks of books, an old bedframe, Fanged Frisbees and what looked to be a moth-eaten hammock – but no diadem.
‘Exactly,’ Hermione confirmed. ‘I wonder if that’s our doing from the DA days or if people used to use this room for training or as a battleground. It also raises questions about the room itself – is it the same room changing to meet the user’s needs? If so, does that mean that what happens in one room might affect another? Or are they physically different rooms and blood was spilled in the room of hidden things specifically?’
‘I never thought of that,’ Harry murmured through the bond, enjoying the odd calm that had settled between them as they searched. It felt like the old days – back in the tent in the middle of winter when they would just talk and toss around ideas. Except for the crushing time pressure and impending battle. ‘This room would be ideal for legitimate duels, not the room of hidden things but the Room of Requirement in general. It would have provided everything that they needed and it could have expanded to hold any number of people.’
‘You’re imagining an underground Hogwarts fight club, aren’t you?’
‘I am now,’ Harry grinned, pushing deeper into the room.
They continued searching for another five minutes. Both of them mentally relaying what they saw to the other as they quickly and methodically searched through the room. It wasn’t until he turned down a new alleyway and passed a familiar looking stuffed troll that he realized he knew exactly where he was. His feet slowed and his body tensed as he approached the familiar looking cabinet where he had hidden Snape’s copy of Advanced Potion-Making in his sixth year. He moved towards it, an odd feeling pulling at the back of his mind as he opened the door and saw the old cage with the five-legged skeleton.
What was it that was bothering him? Why did he feel like there was something he should know but was just out of his reach?
His brow furrowed in confusion as he reached out to push the cage aside and he picked up the old dust-covered text. It felt so familiar in his hands – he’d spend hours and hours pouring over this text and it seemed strange now to think that he’d ever considered getting rid of it in such a massive room filled with so much junk. It would be impossible to find it in here… and wouldn’t he have wanted to locate it again? Even with what had happened, hadn’t he wanted to ensure that he could find the book again?
He could feel something uneasy sliding down his spine, and for a moment – he almost thought he heard a familiar hissing whisper.
He stared at the cover, turning the old book over in his hands as the odd familiar feeling continued to niggle at the back of his mind but the whisper remained just out of reach. He brushed the dust from the cover, opening the book to stare at the familiar black spiky scrawl that was responsible for not only his improved potion-making skills but also his now dangerous offensive attacks – and then it hit him.
“The tiara!”
He slammed the book shut, tucking it under his arm as he rapidly turned down the cross path and raced toward the hideous warlock bust.
“Fuck I’m so stupid!” Harry groaned, rushing toward the bust and tugging the tarnished tiara from the dusty orange wig as the whispers grew louder in his mind. It had been there this whole time. He’d known where it was for over a year! He’d touched it, held it, moved it to mark the place of this book. Without hesitating, he thrust his hand into the air and sent up a string of red sparks.
‘Hermione, I found it!’ he told her quickly, sending up yet another round of sparks as he made his way back up the long alleyway and toward the center of the large cathedral-like room. ‘I’ve known where it was this whole fucking time! I saw it here a year ago when I went to hide that book.’
‘Did you get it?!’ Hermione asked and he could feel her heart starting to race. ‘Do you have it?!’
‘I have it!’ Harry told her, his legs moving into a run as he ignored the murmur that poured from the diadem in his hands. ‘I’m headed back to the center!’
‘I’m on my way!’
He rushed down the narrow path, jumping over a small stack of books and a stuffed animal before skidding out into the main row. He sent up more sparks as he began moving back to the entrance only to nearly collide with Hermione as she came jetting out of the next row.
“You got it,” Hermione breathed, panting hard as she stared at the tarnished diadem he was clutching in his hands. “You’re sure it’s the right one?”
“Positive,” Harry said, turning the diadem over to show her the words that were etched across the front. “Besides, I can hear it.”
“Good,” Hermione nodded, pulling up her right sleeve and placing her fingers against the white tag on her arm. “I’ll let Nasir know – oh, you grabbed the book too?”
“Yeah,” Harry nodded, reaching forward to the pocket of her sweater and tucking both the book and the diadem inside. He tried to ignore the lurch in his stomach as he saw that the bandages on her right arm extended well past the wrist. They covered her whole forearm and disappeared under the sweater that was bunched around her elbow. “I figured I might as well – it could come in handy.”
“Good call,” Hermione agreed, sending a quick string of messages through the tag and causing Harry’s arm to buzz. “Alright, let’s go – we need to get back.”
“You’re not going anywhere.”
Harry stiffened at the deep but familiar voice, his gaze shifting toward the sound and taking in the sight of four bodies standing on the center path a dozen feet away. He felt Hermione move at his side, her left hand dropping away from her right forearm as she turned to look at the uniformed party. He hadn’t heard them coming – but then again, he’d not been anticipating running into any obstacles inside the school. It was his own fault. He should have known better. They’d made their way here under muffling charms, they’d been careful as they moved, but he’d not bothered to cast a detection spell once they entered this room. Like Hermione had suggested, he’d assumed it would be useless given that the room was intended to hide the things inside it.
But that didn’t matter now.
Regardless of whatever he and Hermione should have done their situation was what it was. They were standing in the middle of the room facing four familiar, and particularly tense-looking faces.
“Hello, Crabbe,” Harry said quietly, eyeing the tall thick boy who was currently pointing his wand at them. “It’s been a long time.”
“Shut up Potter,” Crabbe spat, his grip tightening on his wand. He looked largely the same as he had in sixth year, but there was an undeniable darkness behind his eyes now. “You’re coming with us.”
“Am I?” Harry asked, his voice still low and calm as his eyes shifted over the rest of them.
Goyle was standing to Crabbe’s left, his wand also extended, and his face was scrunched in anger. Pansy Parkinson was next to him, her wand twitching nervously in her hand as her eyes flicked between her group and Harry – and she looked absolutely terrible. Her once hard pug-ish face was now gaunt and her normally perfect hair looked dull and limp. Yet somehow, worse off than her, was the blonde-haired boy standing to Crabbe’s right.
He was nearly unrecognizable.
If not for the iconic platinum blonde hair and the pale porcelain skin it would have been easy to mistake Malfoy for just another Slytherin student. His school uniform looked loose, his tie was uneven, and his clothes were rumpled. It was a far cry from his typical pristine look. The boy had lost an incredible amount of weight and his now way too thin face made his sharp features even more prominent. The dark rings under his eyes told of sleepless nights and the faint, nearly imperceptible tremor that seemed to be radiating through his body suggested that the boy had been on the receiving end of one too many cruciatus curses.
He was trying to hide it. Harry could see the tightly clenched jaw and the way that he was fighting against his own body as he struggled to hold his wand steady before him. Most wouldn’t notice it. In fact, Harry doubted that many had, but he had seen enough of Hermione’s experience post-Malfoy Manor to recognize the signs and pick up on the dull vibration, and he didn’t doubt that she saw it too.
“Are you sure about that?” Harry asked, arching a brow as he took a small step forward. Pansy flinched at the movement, unconsciously inching backwards as Malfoy’s body tensed. Out of the four, those two seemed the most disturbed by his and Hermione’s appearance. “Because I don’t think I want to.”
“Shut the fuck up, Potter!” It was Goyle who yelled this time, and he took a step forward as he shifted his wand to aim at Hermione directly. “Drop your wand, Mudblood.”
Harry’s back stiffened, but Hermione didn’t move. She stared at the boy silently for a long second before her hollow voice filled the room.
“No,” she said flatly, taking a step forward to stand next to Harry. Her eyes didn’t leave the group before them, but her head tilted in Harry’s direction as she intentionally spoke her next words to him out loud so the others could hear. “We don’t have time for this Harry – I already told the others that we’re on our way back. I vote that we just take them out, but it’s your choice.”
“I said drop your fucking wand!” Goyle yelled again, his face growing red with rage.
“And I said no,” Hermione said darkly, her eyes snapping to him much like a hunter locking onto its prey. Harry could feel her pulse quicken, but he knew it wasn’t out of fear. She was agitated – annoyed that these idiots were wasting their time and she was about two seconds away from just taking them all out. “Now drop your wand, Goyle – or I’ll tear you into pieces so small you’ll fit inside a matchbox.”
‘What’s your decision, Harry?’ Hermione’s voice rang inside his head as her hand tightened on her wand at her side.
But before Harry could respond Crabbe began to shift. His feet moved across the floor, his body twisting into a horrible example of the familiar stance that Harry had seen Hermione and Nasir take countless times during training. The boy’s mouth fell open, and Harry’s eyes hardened as the words came spilled from Crabbe’s mouth like an angry snarl.
“Dæmonia Cor–“
But he never finished his words.
A sickening rip split through the air as Crabbe’s body was simultaneously torn in two and blasted backward by the combined attack that he and Hermione unleashed. Pansy screamed, blood flew through the air and splattered across the ground as the two halves of his body collided into an old desk with a sickening crunch. He tried not to think about how easy it had been, or how little he felt as he stared at Crabbe’s dead body.
A part of him wondered if it was just battle reflexes – Crabbe had been about to unleash fiendfyre inside the school. But another part of him wondered if maybe they had fallen too far and become too indifferent to death. After all, fiendfyre aside, they had just taken another life without so much as a second thought. The question tugged in the pit of his stomach, but he forced himself to ignore it as his eyes shifted back to the three remaining Slytherins.
“That’s a very dangerous spell,” Hermione whispered, her low voice deadly as her eyes shifted over Pansy, Goyle and Malfoy. “And it’s not to be used indoors.”
“Drop your wands,” Harry ordered, his voice coming out in a dark deep baritone. “We won’t ask again.”
Pansy shuddered at his voice, her wand wavering before her as her hand started to tremble. He could see the fear on her face as she struggled to decide what to do. Goyle seemed to still be processing what had just happened, his mouth hung open as he looked between them and Crabbe’s body in disbelief. Malfoy, on the other hand, seemed to still as he looked at Harry and his pale grey eyes were swimming with rapid thought. Harry held the boy’s gaze, watching as his eyes creased, his jaw clenched and then – to Harry’s utter disbelief, he lowered his wand.
“What the hell are you doing?” Goyle snarled, turning to look at Malfoy but keeping his wand carefully trained on Hermione.
“He’s using his brain,” Hermione said flatly, her eyes locking to Goyle’s large form. “I suggest that you do the same, you have three seconds.”
“You bitch!!” Goyle yelled, his angry expression twisting into one of rage as he turned to look at Hermione. “I’ll fucking kill you for what you did to him!”
“Three.”
Goyle’s eyes narrowed, and he opened his mouth.
“Two.”
“Ava–“
Goyle dropped to the ground with a thud, his words dying on his lips like a whisper as his wand clattered to the ground. Harry turned to look at Pansy as the girl’s legs started to tremble.
“Last chance,” Harry said quietly. “It’s your choice – we can’t waste any more time here.”
“Pansy, drop your wand,” Malfoy said quietly, his voice far hoarser than Harry remembered it being.
“What?” Pansy hissed, her voice wavering as her bloodshot eyes flashed to Malfoy’s tall frame. “What are you doing, Draco? When he gets here how are you going to explain this?!”
“When who gets here?” Harry asked, his eyes instantly narrowing at the blonde as he stepped forward and wordlessly disarmed Pansy. He snatched her wand out of the air as he approached Malfoy and Pansy stumbled backward. He was done playing games, if Malfoy was up to something it put the entire school at risk and they didn’t have time to mess around. “Malfoy, what are you doing here?”
“Did you find a way to let people into the school again?” Hermione asked, her voice dangerously low as she stepped forward.
Harry saw Malfoy’s jaw clench tight as he swallowed but then shook his head ever so slightly.
“No,” the blonde whispered hoarsely, his wand arm starting to tremble more violently at his side. “I came here to hide.”
“What?!” Pansy exclaimed, her eyes growing wide with shocked disbelief as her voice became hysterical. “You said we had a job! You said that we were going to meet Yaxley here!!”
“Well, I lied,” Malfoy said tightly, his gaze shifting to look at Pansy who was now visibly trembling from head to toe as she shook her head in denial. “He’s not coming here.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Pansy whispered, her hands threading into her hair as she dropped to the ground in a crouch.
“I’m going to ask you this one time Malfoy and I suggest that you answer me quickly, for your sake,” Harry said as he closed the last few steps toward the blonde. “Why the fuck are you here tonight?”
“Several of the professors came around to lock us in our dormitory,” Malfoy answered, his body tensing and his eyes narrowing apprehensively as Harry stood less than three feet before him.
“We know,” Hermione retorted, her eyes narrowing at the blonde. “I suggested that.”
“Well I didn’t want to get locked in,” Malfoy said, his eyes darting to Hermione as the muscles in his jaw flexed. “I couldn’t get locked in – I have orders to follow. But these three followed me out when I left and then Crabbe suggested that we start aiding the attack from the inside. So I lied – I told him I had orders to meet Yaxley here before midnight and that I needed their help.”
“And they just believed you?” Harry scoffed doubtfully, his eyes narrowing even further.
“I can be convincing when I need to be,” Malfoy glared at him, though it just made him look even more exhausted
“Like how you lied at the Manor?” Hermione questioned, her brow arching as she fixed him with a dark and piercing stare.
“I didn’t know it was you,” Malfoy retorted, his jaw clenching tight.
“Bullshit,” Hermione said quietly, taking another step closer so she was nearly in his face. “Harry might not have been recognizable that night, but you knew exactly who I was. Even your mother knew who I was – so why didn’t you say something? You could have turned us in right then and there.”
Malfoy stared at her for a long quiet moment, his eyes flicking between her and Harry as Pansy seemed to be struggling to breathe as she remained crouched in a ball on the ground.
“Because my mother didn’t turn you in,” he whispered, the tremor in his arm becoming so violent he had to physically grab it with his left hand to quell the shakes.
“And whose orders are you following tonight,” Harry murmured, his eyes tracing over Malfoy’s shaking form. “Voldemort’s?”
Malfoy flinched.
“Your father’s?”
His face twisted into a grimace as his gaze shifted back to Harry.
“Bellatrix’s?”
His eyes went dark, and his jaw clenched tight.
“My mother’s,” Malfoy said tightly as he glared at Harry with an undeniable fury. But for the first time ever – it didn’t seem like Malfoy’s rage was directed at him.
Harry’s eyes skimmed over the boy’s frame once more. Taking in the way his body seemed to be sagging to the right and a thin scar was peeking out of the collar of his shirt. His hands were covered in tiny scars and he was gripping a light coloured wand that appeared awkward in his hold. He looked like he was struggling, but it wasn’t just physically – it was so much more than that. His mind raced through everything rapidly, and he could feel Hermione doing the same as her dark gaze traced over Malfoy’s face, her eyes narrowed in assessment and her jaw clenching tight.
There were too many questions.
Too many unknowns.
They knew that Narcissa Malfoy had, in many ways, spared them that night at the Manor. She’d known damn well who they were, but she’d never revealed them to Bellatrix. She’d kept Hermione alive, and Dean and Luna had insisted that if not for that woman they would have died at the Manor long before being rescued. Then there was Hermione’s wand and the fact that she had handed it off to Snape who had handed it off to Nasir. He didn’t know the details around how that sequence had occurred, but he knew that regardless of his feelings towards Malfoy there were way too many data points for this all to be a coincidence. Especially since Malfoy had yet to attack them, attempt to leave or throw a single insult or derogatory comment in their direction.
And it seemed that Hermione had come to the same conclusion because she took another step forward and although Malfoy stiffened, he didn’t move away.
“How did you let the Death Eaters in last year?” Hermione asked, her voice low and calm as she stared up at Malfoy’s pinched expression. He remained silent for a short moment, his grip tightening on his shaking arm as he seemed to debate something before he spoke.
“Through a vanishing cabinet,” he whispered.
“Where?” Hermione pressed.
“Here,” Malfoy answered more quickly, his eyes flicking over to Harry as he spoke. “In the room of hidden things.”
“Does it still work?” Harry asked, watching as Malfoy nervously licked his lips.
“Yes,” Malfoy nodded. “Sort of – it’s complicated.”
“Make it uncomplicated,” Hermione said darkly, her eyes narrowing at him once more. “Can you get it to work?”
“Yes,” Malfoy confirmed, a nervous waver in his voice. “I can get it to work.”
“Where does it go?” Harry asked, already knowing where Hermione was going with her line of questioning. He didn’t like it, but it was too valuable not to follow-up.
“To a warehouse,” Malfoy said slowly, his brow creasing in question.
“Who has access to it?” Hermione demanded, her words coming quicker as Pansy’s head flicked between the three of them and she watched the rapid-fire conversation with wide baffled eyes.
“Just my mother and I,” Malfoy said quickly, looking between the pair of them in confusion. “Why?”
“No one else can access it?” Harry pressed, his heart starting to beat more quickly in his chest.
“No,” Malfoy said, his voice lacing with a hint of irritation – as if he was insulted that his integrity was being questioned. And then the words began to pour quickly from his mouth. “My mother purchased the sister cabinet from Borgin and Burkes before the school year started. The cabinet here was damaged again after the invasion last spring, I managed to fix it in September, but she told me not to tell anyone. It’s how I’ve kept in touch with her this year – it’s how we communicate. We send notes through it and other small items. I’ve only used it a few times myself, but it does work – it’s just finicky. Sometimes the doors get stuck so it’s risky to use it if there isn’t someone waiting on the other side – but why do you care about a stupid cabinet?”
“Because we’re going to use it to evacuate the school,” Hermione said bluntly, her gaze shifting to look at Harry. “I’ll let Shacklebolt know – we can start sending up the students from the kitchens.”
“Tell him to send someone from the Order to oversee it,” Harry nodded in agreement. “We need to confirm that there’s no danger before sending any of the injured through and I don’t want to leave it to just the students. Malfoy – where is the warehouse?”
“It’s in Dorset,” Malfoy said quickly, his head shaking at the pair of them. “But you can’t use it – no one can get in or out.”
“No one but you or your mother,” Hermione concluded, already pulling up her sleeve and tapping her fingers against the white tag. “Which is exactly why you are going to go there with them and help get them out of the warehouse.”
“I can’t,” Malfoy said tightly, his jaw clenching as he looked at them almost desperately. His arm started to shake more violently, and he clutched it tight to his side as his eyes strained in pain. “It requires apparition.”
“You can apparate,” Harry said flatly, looking down at his arm to read the incoming message from Shacklebolt. “I’ve seen you do it before, Malfoy. Okay Shacklebolt’s on board – he’s sending Thomas and Padma, and Mrs. Weasley is preparing the first group of students for once they’re sure it’s secure.”
“I had my wand before,” Malfoy sneered, though it seemed half-hearted and strained. “For them to get out of the warehouse I would have to apparate them outside – but I haven’t been able to do that for weeks because I don’t have my wand.”
“You can’t do it with your current one?” Hermione asked, arching her brow at him as his lips tightened into a thin line.
“No,” Malfoy said through clenched teeth. “This one was temporary, and it is barely functional.”
She turned to look at Harry and he tipped his head in confirmation.
“Alright,” Hermione nodded, stuffing her hand into her pocket. Malfoy flinched at the sudden movement, but his eyes widened in surprise as she pulled out his wand and held it up. “Then we will give you back your wand. But first –“
Harry took Malfoy’s wand as she handed it to him and watched as she summoned a white tag from her pocket and grabbed Malfoy’s spasming arm. He jerked as she touched him, his face contorting into a look of surprised horror as she quickly sliced the fabric of his white dress shirt and shoved it up his arm.
“W-what are you doing?” Malfoy stammered, his voice coming out panicked as his eyes darted to Harry. But Harry simply arched a brow at him, daring him to try and pull away as Hermione continued with her task.
“I’m tagging you,” Hermione said as she rapidly affixed the white strip of paper to his arm. “This will allow you to communicate with me – touch it and think of the words that you want to send. It will transfer through and show up on the tag that I’m going to add to my arm.”
It took only a second for her to adhere the white strip of paper to his pale forearm but when she was done – she didn’t let go. Instead, her grip only tightened, and she jerked the blonde forward and fixed him with a deadly stare.
“It also contains a trace – it tells me your exact location at all times along with your vitals and a whole bunch of other neat tidbits of information,” Hermione said darkly. “It cannot be removed – not unless you want to cut off your wand arm which I seriously doubt. But just in case I’m wrong – I’m going to add a second one to your neck.”
Malfoy froze under her gaze, his whole body going still except for the tremble of the arm that Hermione continued to hold. He watched her with a curious and fearful expression. Like he wanted to pull away but was terrified to do so.
“You will do exactly what I, Harry or Thomas tell you to do,” Hermione whispered, her voice growing low as she stared at him hard. “There isn’t a limit on this trace, Malfoy. So there isn’t anywhere on this Earth that you can go where I won’t be able to find you. If you hurt them. If you abandon them. If you lie to me or do anything other than what you’re told to do or you try to run – I will hunt you down, and I will teach you the meaning of pain as I slowly tear your body to shreds. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Malfoy whispered; his voice so hoarse it was barely audible. “I understand.”
“Good.” Hermione dropped her hold on his arm and summoned out another tag. He didn’t move as she reached up and pressed the thin strip of paper to his neck, right on top of his carotid artery. “Then let’s go.”
“Draco,” Pansy’s soft murmur pulled Harry’s gaze to the side. She was standing again, but she looked unsteady and even worse than before. “What are you doing?”
But Malfoy ignored her words as Hermione stepped back and Harry handed him his wand.
“Thomas won’t hesitate to kill you if you try to screw us over,” Harry said quietly as the blonde dropped his spare wand to the floor with a clatter and reached out to take his old one.
Harry held onto the wand as Malfoy gripped it. He could feel the tremors from the blonde’s arm vibrating through the wand into his own hand as he met the boy’s pale grey eyes with a serious and level stare.
He didn’t like this.
In fact, the idea of it made his skin crawl and he knew that Hermione hated it even more. But the truth was they didn’t have a lot of options and Malfoy was the only one who knew how to operate the vanishing cabinet. Even if he was lying about where the sister cabinet was located – they had to at least check it out. They couldn’t afford not to, it could mean the difference between life and death for hundreds of students.
“But that’s assuming that he gets to you first,” Harry said quietly, his tone so low it nearly vibrated. “In which case – you should consider yourself lucky, because he will grant you a quicker death than we would. Don’t make me regret this, Malfoy.”
The blonde stared at him for a long moment, something unreadable shifting behind his eyes as he swallowed hard.
“I won’t,” Malfoy said hoarsely, taking his wand as Harry finally let go.
“He’ll kill you,” Pansy whispered, her voice cracking as tears started to pour from the corner of her eyes. She looked like she was falling apart, Harry could see her cracking at the seams as she stared at Malfoy in misery. “He’ll kill you – he’ll know.”
“He’s going to kill everyone,” Hermione said flatly, finally turning to face the girl directly. “Or are you still under some false notion that he actually gives a shit about you or anyone else who follows him? He uses you all like disposable pawns – surely you know that by now. You’re nothing to him. You think Voldemort will spare you? After he finds out that you’ve been hiding in the Room of Requirements all this time when you could have been aiding him from the inside?”
Hermione snorted, the sound harshly cutting from her lips as her gaze darkened at the shaky Slytherin girl.
“You’ll probably suffer a worse death than me, Pansy,” Hermione mused, shifting her eyes over to Harry as she arched a brow.
“You can either help or spend the rest of the night unconscious,” Harry offered, turning to look at the girl and fixing her with a questioning stare. “What’ll be?”
“I can’t,” Pansy whispered, her head shaking as more tears started to fall. “I can’t.”
“Pansy,” Malfoy said hoarsely, stress lines creasing around his eyes. He took a small step towards the girl, but she thrust out her hand and stumbled backward at his approach. Her whole body was shaking now and Harry could see sweat beading across her forehead as she fell into her fear completely.
“I can’t Draco,” she whispered, her voice breaking as she continued to step back. “I can’t – he’ll kill me. He’ll kill my family. I can’t.”
“Do it,” Hermione sighed, reaching into her pocket to pull out another white tag. “We’ve spent too much time here already.”
Harry nodded as Hermione pushed up her right sleeve once more, fastened the third tag to her forearm and then charmed it red before syncing it directly to Malfoy’s tag. She had, smartly so, created a separate channel so he wouldn’t be able to see the other group messages. Harry let out a sigh and then knocked Pansy unconscious. She fell to the ground with a soft thud and Malfoy stared at her stiff form with a grimace as Harry tethered her in place.
“Alright let’s go,” Harry said quickly, gesturing for Malfoy to move before them.
The blonde turned and walked without question; his eyes downcast and locked to the floor as the three of them quickly made their way toward the exit and out into the hall. They made it down two flights of stairs before it happened, and Harry stuttered to a stop, gripping the wall tight as his chest constricted in pain.
‘Shit,’ he grimaced mentally clenching his teeth in pain as he felt the darkened connection in his mind opening for the third time that night.
‘Harry?’ Hermione’s concerned voice echoed in his head as he stared at the floor and fought to breathe. ‘Harry, what’s wrong? What happened?’
He could feel Malfoy watching him, his pale grey gaze curious and unsure.
“Get back to the Great Hall,” Hermione said quickly, as she shifted to stand before him to block Malfoy’s view of his hunched form.
His vision was starting to blur. The images and sounds around him were contorting and mixing with the flood that was rushing into his brain.
“Thomas and Padma are already on their way – you might meet them in the halls,” Hermione’s voice sounded distorted, and Harry jerked as a massive clap of thunder echoed in his mind. “Go – now.”
Harry inhaled sharply as the sound of retreating footsteps filled his ears and suddenly his brain was filled with a swarm of images from Voldemort’s mind. But it was nothing like the times in the past. Nothing like what had happened when he’d been searching for the Grey Lady or when they’d destroyed the Horcrux on the beach at Shell Cottage.
These flowed with a sense of triumph, joy and discovery. There wasn’t an ounce of pain and not a hint of anger. It was as if Voldemort had had a revelation and the result was a massive amount of putrid joy seeping from his mind without him even knowing it. Harry could practically taste the demon’s excitement as he collapsed to the ground, his eyes pinching shut as clips of cold, dark memories from the night floated into his mind.
He gripped his temples tight, squeezing his eyes shut harder as he focused on the memories and words that floated through his mind. He needed to see it. He had to focus. It could save their lives; it could be critical information like how he’d seen Voldemort directing his troops through the forbidden forest earlier that evening.
Images of the Northern front flashed through his mind. He saw the hill. He saw the blaze. He felt rage, anger and… fear as the smell of death filled his nose. Then the orders came. Men were moving, dispersing into the unburned section of trees and fanning out across the grounds. Shacklebolt had been right – they were lurking in the woods and planning to pick off stragglers. He heard Voldemort’s voice telling them to heal and prepare. He saw Narcissa disapparating. Then his red gaze turned to Snape and Harry gasped as his eyes shot wide.
“What time is it?!” Harry asked, standing up from the ground so quickly he very nearly smashed his head into Hermione’s chin.
“Just a few minutes shy of midnight,” Hermione said quickly, her worried gaze flicking over his face. “Why? Harry, what happened? What did you see?”
“Shacklebolt was right,” Harry panted, grabbing Hermione’s hand and tugging her down the hall toward the staircase. “They did surround the school. He ordered them to do so and they’re preparing to mount an attack concentrated on the Southern front – Narcissa was tasked with coordinating it. But Hermione – he’s figured something out!”
“What?” she asked quickly, gripping his hand tight in return.
“I don’t know,” Harry shook his head as they rounded the next corner and began racing down the stairs at a rapid pace. “I couldn’t tell – but he is ecstatic about it. He seems to think that it’s going to win him this war. He was practically salivating with joy, Hermione – whatever it is, it’s related to the Elder wand and he’s prepared to come into battle now.”
“Well, that’s partially good right?” Hermione questioned, breathing hard as they darted down the next flight of stairs. “We needed him to engage.”
“True but based on how excited he was about it I’m thinking it doesn’t bode well for us,” Harry grimaced, jumping down the final two steps and whipping around the corner. “But more importantly – I saw Snape and I have an idea.”
“You saw Snape?” Hermione asked, her head twisting to look at him as she raced down the second last flight of stairs by his side. “What was he doing? What’s your plan?”
“I saw Voldemort giving out directions to his forces,” Harry said quickly, his mind racing as he explained. “So I can tell Shacklebolt where they’re moving. Like I said, Narcissa was sent to the South, Yaxley was sent to the East but more importantly – he tasked Snape with the North.”
“But the North is unusable.”
“It is for nearly everyone,” Harry agreed. “But not for Snape. Voldemort directed him to apparate forces directly onto the Northern grounds in batches.”
“Fuck,” Hermione breathed as they raced down the final set of stairs.
“That’s what I thought,” Harry admitted, careening to a stop and ripping up the sleeve on his arm. She felt her tag buzz rapidly as he sent a bunch of information to Shacklebolt but held her gaze intently. “Until I realized that this works in our favour. Not only because we know we’ll get hit from the North again and we can have Shacklebolt send over some resources to prepare, but because Voldemort told him to run the operation from the Shrieking Shack. Hermione – he’s treating his top Death Eaters like muggle military generals. They’re not engaging in the battle – they’re directing it from afar and conducting it like an orchestra. He only intends to have them enter battle when he comes after Nasir once he’s done whatever this thing is that he’s convinced will win him this war.”
“And you want to go to him,” Hermione whispered, her eyes widening with understanding. “You want to go to the Shrieking Shack.”
“Yes,” Harry nodded, glancing at the tag on his arm to see that Shacklebolt had acknowledged his information and was already sending out orders to adjust their defensive strategy to focus on the South. Without stopping to think Harry shifted his fingers to the green tag on his arm and began sending out a stream of messages to Nasir as he spoke. “Snape still controls the wards, Hermione – but neither he nor Voldemort know that the vanishing cabinet is functional. If they did, they would have used it already. We can spin this in our favour. We have a second chance to take Snape out without anyone interfering. We can regain control of the wards and buy ourselves more time. We can close them and then maximize the evacuation process through the vanishing cabinet and get as many students out as possible. Then, we open the wards, and we lure him in.”
“You want to lock Voldemort inside the school grounds so he can’t leave,” Hermione concluded, her eyes tracing over his face and seemingly reading his thoughts. He could feel her mind spinning through the bond and the experience of it was almost dizzying. The sheer volume of information and thoughts that she could process even while injured and barely keeping herself together was astounding.
“Yes,” Harry nodded in confirmation. “It will prevent him from fleeing if anything goes wrong during the fight. It will keep the battle contained and give the us a better shot at taking him down. What do you think?”
She let out a deep sigh, her bandaged hand running over her blood-caked hair as her brow creased in thought.
“What if he notices that Snape is gone? And when we close the wards to buy ourselves more time to evacuate before he unleashes his second attack – you don’t think that will be a problem?” Hermione asked. “You don’t think that he’ll know what we did or that he’ll just leave?”
“No,” Harry shook his head, swallowing hard. “Not if we don’t leave a trace and make it look as if Snape has fled. There’s always been suspicion around his loyalty, Hermione and after what happened on the Northern front it’s not unrealistic to think that some of his followers might have bailed. Reality is – some probably have bailed.
“Besides, he is… so sure of himself right now it’s sickening,” Harry grimaced. “So long as he thinks Nasir is inside the school and that we don’t have the Horcrux he will wait it out. If he has to – he’ll starve us out. He doesn’t know about the vanishing cabinet – he doesn’t think that we have a way off the grounds and the Death Eaters have been raiding the school’s supplies for months and stripping its resources bare. There isn’t enough food here to feed all the students or heal the injured – and I’ll bet he had Snape limit the house elves too and that’s why they’re so hesitant to leave the grounds and follow McGonagall’s instructions. Voldemort knows that Hogwarts can’t last, all he has to do is wait.”
Hermione nodded as he spoke, her eyes deep in thought as she twisted her hand into the bottom hem of her sweater.
“I think,” Hermione said slowly, her eyes narrowing as she finished the words. “That it’s worth a shot. If we can take Snape alive and imperius him as per our original plan – that would be the best. But if not, we kill him – because we can’t risk having him commanding forces on the Northern front or apparating people inside the school grounds. It’s too dangerous. But we only have an hour left, Harry – we’ll need to be fast. We have to get back to Nasir in the main courtyard before Voldemort attacks in case this plan doesn’t work.”
“I know,” Harry said, reaching into his potion pack and pulling out a small vial of strength potion. “So we run.”
His arm buzzed and he glanced down to see Nasir’s text scrolling across the tag.
“What does Nasir think?” Hermione asked, pulling her own small vial from her leg pouch and uncorking it in preparation.
“He agrees,” Harry said slowly, his eyes skimming over the man’s response. “But we are not to engage in battle on the Northern front if we see any people along our way. We can’t risk Voldemort finding out that we know his plan before he attacks, or he might change it. We’re to sneak by anything on the Northern front. That – and he says that Shacklebolt says that if we cannot take Snape out silently without drawing attention, we are to disengage and return to help with the evacuation and defences as per the original plan.”
“That makes sense,” Hermione muttered, her gaze dropping to look at her bandaged hand. “The last thing we need is another giant explosion. Are they okay without us there though?”
“Yes,” Harry nodded, tapping his arm once more. “Nasir says that he has it under control.”
“Alright,” Hermione breathed as she set her shoulders back.
His arm buzzed again, and Harry felt his lips twitch.
“And he’s given us a curfew,” Harry said, pulling the stopper out of his vial and downing half the contents. He watched as Hermione carefully drank a third of the vial she was holding and then recorked the bottle. “We need to be back before 12:45 am, regardless of how this goes, and we’re to call him immediately if something happens.”
“Then let’s get going,” Hermione said, quickly recasting her shield and setting her jaw tight. “It’ll take us at least ten minutes to get there and that’s assuming we don’t run into anyone.”
They took off at an incredible sprint. Hermione’s pulse raced in his mind as they both cast a new round of silencing spells and carefully disillusioned their bodies. He felt her tether connect to his sternum as they burst through the Northern courtyard doors and ran out into the night. His heart hammered in his chest, his legs burned as he sprinted, and just as they reached the edge of the Northern courtyard the sky opened up and it began to pour heavy rain.
Thunder growled through the air as lightning crackled across the sky and lit up the Dark Mark that loomed over the smouldering hillside. The flashes cast shadows across the grass as his clothes instantly began to soak through. He cast detection spells every ten yards – his eyes rapidly scanning across the landscape as he looked for any signs of the men that Snape had supposedly apparated across to the Northern front – but he didn’t see a soul.
There wasn’t even a hint of life on his radar.
It made his stomach twist uncomfortably. The results of his scans were so quiet – it was too quiet. He had no idea where Snape would have brought them. He supposed that they could be way down by the bridge or perhaps somewhere in the trees out of range. But that seemed unlikely. If Snape was going to apparate them in, why wouldn’t he bring them closer? Or better yet, apparate them directly into the school? He’d already warned Shacklebolt that may be the case and so everyone within the Great Hall and working along the grounds were now operating under the assumptions that the school itself was no longer safe.
But still… he had expected to see something as they dashed across the Northern lawn.
They darted off the path and out onto the grass, his boots sinking into the mud as another massive clap of thunder split the air. He could already see the Whomping Willow, it was swaying in the wind and looking innocent as ever as they made their rapid approach. He cast another set of detection spells, and grimaced at the flatlined results as Hermione sent out a silent immobulus and they both slid to the ground by the base of the tree. He felt his hands starting to shake with nervous trepidation as he waited for Hermione to crawl into the tight hole first before following along behind her.
What if Snape wasn’t even there?
What if he was still out on the Eastern front healing the other troops?
His jaw clenched tight as his hands scraped across the muddied tunnel floor until it grew large enough to stand and they took off at a sprint. If Snape wasn’t there, they couldn’t afford to wait forever. They would need to leave eventually, and if this resulted in them coming back empty handed then the defences on the other side of the school would pay the price for their gamble.
He felt Hermione’s nervous pulse thudding as the tunnel dipped down and they scrambled across the stretch that dipped under the gorge. This was the second instance in less than 24 hours that he was running and crawling through a dark dirty tunnel deep underground and he could feel his knees, back and legs screaming out in protest.
‘After this – no more tunnels’ Hermione whispered to him through the bond, clearly having the same thoughts that he did on the matter.
‘Definitely,’ Harry agreed, picking up the pace when he felt her tether tug gently across his chest. ‘No more tunnels – I promise.’
They raced for another few minutes until the sound of rain began to echo around them, and Hermione slowed her pace and dimmed the light from her wand. They were almost there. He could feel his heart racing in his chest as he held his breath tight and they closed the remaining distance. They moved another ten feet in rapid silence, nearly reaching the end of the tunnel only to falter mid-step as the unmistakable sound of Snape’s voice rang out. Harry stilled. His heart was beating in his chest so quickly he thought it might give out. He inched forward, closing the distance between him and Hermione only to freeze instantly and grab the back of her sweater tight as the dim light from her wand went out.
Cold fear slid down his spine.
He could feel Hermione shaking under his grip.
He could feel her heart beating three times too fast in his head as they both remained unmoving and silent in the darkness.
Because as the rain poured down and an unbearable crack of thunder rocked through the earth, the reply to Snape’s question echoed down the tunnel... and it was Voldemort who had answered.
This chapter is dedicated to Severus Snape.
Not many people like you, but I think that’s fair. You weren’t a kind man and you represent a lot of uncomfortable and terrible things to a lot of people. You were a bully and a bastard – but I personally have always found you one of the most interesting characters because you are imperfect. You’re the embodiment of grey, that bad people can do good things, that great people are not necessarily good and that life and humans are complicated. I believe that your character deserved a better arch – more time, more explanation, more content, and more than one chapter at the end of a seven book saga because you could have been so much more.
So here’s to attempting to make that happen.
-x-x-
Despite this not being a Hermione/Harry POV chapter, I recommend that you read it. With all characters now operating on the same timeline, each and every chapter will contain plot critical information regardless of POV.
*SPECIFICALLY – this Snape POV chapter is key to the main plot and includes scenes that will not be covered by future Hermione/Harry chapters*
Warnings:
This chapter contains: death, blood, descriptions of gruesome injuries and events including but not limited to: fiendfyre, explosions, torture, decapitations and dismemberment, inferi hordes, and depressing and borderline suicidal thoughts as well as other not so awesome things.
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May 1, 1998
Hogsmeade Hillside, 9:34 pm
Snape’s legs buckled beneath him as his feet touched the ground and the black wisps that had encased his body disappeared. He had never liked flying, not like this at least. Give him a broom, a thestral, a potion – hell, give him a fucking Hippogriff and he would fly that thing for hours with no complaints whatsoever. But the ‘gift’ that the Dark Lord had given to him? He hated it. Not only was it excruciating to use, but it also made him sick to his stomach with nausea. He had not been planning to use it tonight. In fact, he had not been planning to use it again – ever.
But everything had gone to shit and he was forced to truly and literally fly by the seat of his pants.
He collapsed to his knees, wheezing and gasping for air as his gut lurched and he emptied the contents of his stomach onto the ground. Problem was, there was nothing in his stomach and there hadn’t been for hours, possibly even for days. So, he dry-heaved in the dark on the long damp grass for a full two minutes until he finally managed to force his body to stop. Wiping the bile away from his lips, he vanished the remains from his mouth as he struggled to his feet.
His legs shook beneath him, and his hand trembled as he reached into his pocket to pull out a small vial of yellow potion. It would be dangerous to drink it given how much he had had the night before, but he didn’t have a choice. As it was, taking the time to vomit at the edge of the Forbidden Forest was dangerous. He had intentionally landed a decent way away from the gathering point but there was no guarantee that he was alone. Swallowing half the bottle Snape wordlessly cast several quick detection spells and let out a silent breath of relief when they came back negative. Then, he allowed himself to close his eyes tight as he fought to regulate his breathing.
This was not how he thought his night would go.
He could still hear the racket from the hallway in his head. He could still smell the blood and the death from the night before and he could still taste the bile in his mouth even though he had cast several spells to remove it.
When Nasir told him that they were planning to invade Gringotts on the 1st of May, the mysterious man had not given him any details. This, although understandable, was also incredibly frustrating, and as a result, Snape had incorrectly assumed that it would happen in the early morning – and if not in the morning, that it would be in the afternoon. He had definitely not considered that the Gringotts operation would take place at night.
Thus, he had spent the entire fucking day sitting on the edge of his metaphorical seat waiting for it to happen as he tried to prepare for the fallout and stuffed his pockets with anything and everything that he might need. He had banked on it happening before the detention with Weasley and her idiot friends. So when 8:00 pm rolled around and he still hadn’t heard anything about a break-in at Gringotts, he had been forced to adjust his already dicey plan and come up with some kind of bullshit detention.
Snape let out a low sigh and clenched his jaw as the burning sensation in his arm continued to radiate through his body.
The purple potions that he had placed on their desks were harmless, at least in the way that he had intended to use them. Worst case, they might have gotten a headache for the next twenty-four hours but there were no lingering long-term physical side effects and he figured that was better than truly being tortured. The potion was one of the more questionable brews that were still occasionally used by some hospitals to subdue patients. It was a highly regulated and controlled substance, and it was illegal to use it outside of specific medical situations.
It was essentially the wizarding equivalent to flunitrazepam and its history was just as dark and disgusting as that of ruffies. Snape hated the potion more than anyone knew and any time he was tasked to brew it for the Dark Lord another piece of his soul died and shrivelled with self-disgust. He’d still had some in his potion stores leftover from the last time that the Dark Lord had requested it and he had found it while searching through his stock in panic at 8:35 pm. He hadn’t had time to come up with anything else so he grabbed the purple potion, diluted it to 50%, snagged a small bottle of veritaserum and collected four quills from his drawer before apparating down to the old defence classroom.
To say that he had been stressed and unprepared for the detention would have been an understatement – but he had pushed on anyway with the intention of making it work because he hadn’t had any other choice. The potion would have made them compliant, subdued, relaxed and entirely weak to his suggestion. Which made it a hell of a lot easier to modify someone’s memories. After making them write cruel and sadistic lines with red ink for a few hours he would alter their memories one at a time and convince them that the detention had been served under extreme pain and duress. It was really no different than what he had done to Miss Pelton the week previous except that in this case he had been interrupted.
He cringed at the memory, forcing himself to open his bloodshot eyes once more as he compelled his shaking legs to move. He could still feel the excruciating pain of the Dark Lord’s call and every so often sharp aftershocks rocked down his spine.
The Dark Lord’s power was greater than most people realized. There was a reason why he had gotten this far, why he had gathered so many followers, why Snape feared him above all others and why even Dumbledore and Nasir knew better than to take him lightly. He was a psychopathic narcissist and a threat to the entirety of wizarding society. If Potter and the Order failed tonight the world as they knew it would vanish and the damage would be irreparable.
Those who didn’t have it could never understand but the Dark Lord’s hold through the Dark Mark was fierce. It was unlike any other bond or connection that Snape had ever come into contact with and still to this day, after having the mark for over twenty years, he didn’t fully understand how it worked.
He had experienced pain through it before.
He knew that the Dark Lord could use it to contact them and this wasn’t the first time that he had heard the Dark Lord’s voice in his mind through the connection. He had experienced the Dark Lord’s rage many times over the years, both in-person and from afar. He knew what it felt like to be summoned while the Dark Lord was livid. He had also witnessed the demon inflict cruel torture and do things that would utterly break and destroy some people if they were forced to witness it.
As a result, he had never thought of the Dark Lord as controlled. If asked to describe the man, Snape would never use the words sane, composed, disciplined or restrained. Those words didn’t belong in the same universe as the Dark Lord. He would call that thing a monster – a true abomination of death and life and chaos uncontrolled that had walked out of someone’s nightmare.
And yet today, to his horror... he realized that he was entirely wrong.
In the past, the Dark Lord had been restrained.
And that realization had terrified him to the very depths of his broken soul. He thought he had known the limits of the demon’s darkness. He thought he had known the extent of the Dark Lord’s cruelty – of his anger, his rage and his ability to inflict pain. But he was wrong. So fucking wrong – and cold sweat continued to pour from his skin as he forced his lungs to breathe.
Two steps further and the strength potion finally took effect.
The tremble in his legs lessened and the ache in his muscles dulled. What had happened in that classroom as he was about to start his fake detention torture session was unlike anything that he had ever experienced. The pain of the Dark Lord’s call had torn through every cell in his body and nearly ripped him to shreds. The only thing that he could compare it to was the rune carving, and honestly, if not for having experienced that in the past he wasn’t sure that he would have been able to handle the burn that encased his body without passing out as the Dark Mark ignited and electrified his nerves. The Dark Lord’s voice had screamed into his skull and ripped through his mind so violently that it had actually changed the pressure in the room and it had nearly burst his eardrums. He could still feel them throbbing and the effects of the call had been so strong that even Weasley and the others had felt it.
He brought a shaking hand to his ear, vanishing the blood that had trickled down his neck as he bit back a groan of pain. Then, he took a deep breath and relinquished his control of the Hogwarts wards. He nearly sighed in relief as the weight was lifted from his shoulders, but it was quickly pushed aside by the sickening feeling of dread that lingered in his chest.
This was not how he had wanted to leave the school, but then again, it seemed like any control he had over the war, himself or his role within it was lost ages ago.
Four nights previous, the day immediately following their conversation at Spinner’s End Snape had gone to Malfoy Manor intending to obliviate Narcissa. It hadn’t been a question of want. It was an issue of necessity, and he knew that he needed to do it or he would forever risk jeopardizing his mission. And yet when he arrived, despite her being there and despite him having every opportunity to obliviate her mind – he didn’t.
He couldn’t.
So, he had gone back again the next night, pretending to drop off more potions and intending to correct his mistake a second time. He needed to undo his moment of weakness and he needed to do what he should have done in the first place. Yet once again… he couldn’t.
Instead, he found himself staring down at her in silence, his wand clenched tightly in his hand as she looked up at him defiantly. Even now, days later, in his broken and battered state, he could still see the scene perfectly in his head. He could still feel the way that the cold night air had tugged at his robes as she stood before him, beneath a tall tree in the darkness and encased in a silencing spell. Unmoving. Unyielding. Entirely unconcerned for her own safety as she arched a perfect brow at him and outright challenged him to do it. He could still hear her words in his head. They were like a whisper that tormented his mind, and he could still see the look on her face as her features had suddenly and almost sadly crumpled while she took a slow step forward.
‘If it’s what you need to do then do it, Severus,’ she had whispered as she looked up at him. He had nearly jolted as her hand touched his chest. She was standing too close again. Way too close. Why did she keep doing that and why did she always touch him now? His mind was sent spiralling with a million questions as her eyes traced over his face with a look he could not comprehend. ‘Do it now, or don’t do it at all. I won’t stop you, but you need to decide right now because you can’t keep coming back here like this. You’re putting yourself at risk. I promised you that I would help you, not make things worse. So, decide Severus – right now.’
He had stood there staring into her blue eyes willing himself to raise his wand. His body and mind both screamed at him in anguish as he tried to force himself to do what needed to be done. She was right. He couldn’t keep doing this and he knew it. He knew it two nights ago when he came back to his office and had a heart attack. He had to either fix this or let it go but there was no in-between. Yet no matter how loud the logical and paranoid part of his brain screamed, he couldn’t do it. Something deep within his bones stopped him, and it was so ingrained into his broken soul that he couldn’t fight it.
So he left.
He didn’t go after Draco either. He didn’t contact Narcissa again and he didn’t return to the Manor. He refused to allow himself to think about it and instead he fought to turn that part of his brain off because there was nothing that he could do. He had tried and failed three times to close the loose end and each time he was met with a resistance so fundamental and so instinctual that he knew it was a lost cause. He managed to stay away from her and the Manor until he was summoned there last night and tasked with interrogating several Ministry employees that Yaxley suspected were aiding the Order.
It had been a terrible night. One that he wished he could wipe from his mind and one that would eat into his soul like acid and mark it forever.
By the end of it, he had been covered in blood, sweat and other fluids that he didn’t even want to talk about. He had, very carefully – and also very stupidly – risked exposing his loyalties once more by removing some of the memories from two of the victims’ heads before the Dark Lord returned to the Manor because as luck would have it, or not have it in this case, two of the four prisoners truly were assisting Shacklebolt by spying on the Death Eaters from within the Ministry. The woman, named Martha, had clearly had her memories altered before; but the other, a man named Hector – was new to the task and had apparently been caught just before his scheduled mind wipe.
How the Death Eaters had caught the two of them Snape would never know for certain. Yaxley had played it off as some great triumph and a victory of their hard work and sleuthing but based on the fact that the other two prisoners were just regular people who had no idea why they were there Snape was fairly certain that Yaxley’s men had just gotten lucky.
He had done what he could to lessen the blow and protect Order. Especially Arthur and his sons – particularly Charlie, who as it turned out, was back in wizarding Britain and had met with Hector in the middle of a forest to pick up a folder of information. But there was only so much he could do. Between the torture, the presence of everyone else in that room and the arrival of the Dark Lord who immediately dove into the prisoners’ minds – Snape had been unable to finish his work and he had been unable to remove the undeniable link between Shacklebolt and Nasir.
Most wouldn’t have caught it.
Most wouldn’t have even known to look for it.
But that tiny black bat that hung in the corner of Shacklebolt’s office while he met with Hector and gave him instructions was unmistakable to those that knew – and the Dark Lord knew. He knew… and he exploded.
Up until last night, the demon had truly believed that the Revenant was working alone or with a new faction. He had refused to even consider the idea that Nasir might be working with the Order or aiding them in any way, but that bubble popped the instant that he raged through Hector’s mind.
He tortured the man for the next three hours looking for more information, squeezing Hector’s mind like a lemon until his heart finally gave out. Then, the Dark Lord restarted the organ and began the process over. Each time it got worse, and each time the Dark Lord grew more angry. He was unable to find any clarifying information within Martha and Hector, and their minds were so broken Snape’s tinkering had gone unnoticed. By the end of it, all the Dark Lord knew for sure was that Nasir was either working with or spying on Shacklebolt and all Snape knew was that he would never be able to unsee the mangled mess that was Hector’s body.
That night had lasted an eternity and Snape was certain that he had aged another decade by the time it was over. He’d had to take potions just to get through it. He’d had to use his occlumency and completely disassociate his mind just to be able to stay in that room. The Dark Lord had ordered Yaxley to spend the next three days collecting up anyone associated with the group that they had just tortured and to shadow Shacklebolt like a hidebehind. Snape was tasked to assist and he knew that if they did not come back with some kind of information in the next 48 hours it would be him and Yaxley in the chairs next.
When he finally returned to Hogwarts this morning, he felt like his body was breaking and his mind was shattered. He would never get the screams out of his head and even though he had done everything that he could to lessen the pain and try to quicken their deaths it would never be enough. It was four more souls that would rest on his conscience. Four more souls that he was responsible for and would take to his grave even if he hadn’t been the one inflicting the torture.
Exhaustion hit him like a train as his feet touched the floor of his office and his legs nearly gave out under the weight of his runes. It had taken everything that he had not to drop to the ground in agony. He knew that breakfast was over, and he was planning to go to his room and throw up several times but before he could even take a second step Phineas started screaming at him that there was a fight outside the Great Hall. Unable to do much else, because he could barely stand on his own two feet, Snape had downed yet another shot of strength potion and apparated right into the thick of the fight. He hadn’t even taken the time to change his robes, to wipe the blood from his hands or the stench of burnt flesh from his body. He hadn’t even bothered to hide the effects of the potion or his disgust and rage as he saw Miss Maisey Williams laying on the floor in the center of the chaos. In the end, despite his best efforts, the young girl had died.
And it had been entirely his fault.
He didn’t get there soon enough.
He didn’t protect her.
It was his duty as the fucking Headmaster of the school to protect his students and even though he had known that this day was coming it had hit him harder than he could have ever anticipated. He’d never been sicker in his life, and it had taken him nearly twenty minutes to stop hyperventilating when he finally got back to his office. She was the first child to ever die while directly under his watch and he would never forgive himself for it. She had been a good student. She’d had so much potential. But worse than that… he knew that she wouldn’t be the last.
His stomach lurched again and he paused mid-step along the edge of the Forbidden Forest as he clenched his jaw and fought to steady his stomach.
The burn in his arm was getting worse. He knew that he should just apparate to the top of the hill and get this over with, but he couldn’t seem to make himself do it. In the last six days, it felt like the world had shifted under his feet. In the last four days, he had completely lost the ability to think critically and remove his personal bias so he could do what was necessary. In the last two days, reality seemed to be slipping through his fingers, his mind was cracking under the pressure, and he was entirely slipping.
For fuck’s sake – a few minutes ago he had nearly attacked his students in order to get them to leave the school.
In hindsight, it hadn’t been the smartest move but at the time he hadn’t felt like he had a lot of other options. He was weak and vulnerable, visibly so. He knew that Weasley and that idiot Longbottom had tried to attack him in the past so he wasn’t about to give them a free shot. Not when the school was about to be invaded and not when he still had a role to play. Besides, they wouldn’t have been able to open the classroom door to leave because he had locked and warded it to keep people out while he faked their torture. So, at the time, exploding it open and pretending to attack them had seemed like a pretty good way to get them moving. He had been hoping that it would spark some kind of student-led evacuation.
It had been stupid.
He could rationally see that now. But while his vision had been compromised, his hearing was all but gone, and his bones and muscles were threatening to break under the Dark Lord’s call, it had been his instinctive reaction – and shit had hit the fan. He let out a tight laugh, but the sound was hollow, dead and cold.
His life as a spy had left him as an empty shell and even though he knew what he was fighting for and he planned to push himself tonight until his last dying breath, he still felt broken, destitute and alone. He wasn’t part of the Order. He wasn't part of the light. No matter what he did tonight – he had already failed. And that truth made his heart ache because it felt like all of this may have been for nothing. He was walking a very thin line between helping and hurting the cause that he had sworn to serve.
He swallowed hard, burying the useless thoughts deep and smothering them into silence. They wouldn’t help him now, and the reality was, his feelings didn’t matter. They didn’t change a fucking thing. He had a job to do, and he would continue to do it. He wouldn’t stop now, and he wouldn’t complain. This agony was his life, it was his burden to bear, and he would carry it until the very end.
He just wished that he could have somehow been better prepared. He wished that he knew this was coming.
Two days ago, incredibly late on Wednesday night, Nasir had stopped by unannounced and found Snape awake and brewing another set of strength potions. During his unexpected visit, the tall man had warned Snape that the war may spill over to the school, but like always, Nasir had been intentionally vague. He had refused to say why and refused to say when.
Snape wasn’t stupid. He figured that it had something to do with the Horcruxes or perhaps some kind of extraction plan that Shacklebolt had been working on to get the students out, but Nasir seemed unsure about exactly what might happen. So, Snape had logged the information away as yet another future problem while he ignored the tightening pain in his chest. Nothing about that part of their interaction had surprised him and nothing about it had been unusual. What had been unusual were the words that Nasir spoke just before he left through the open tower window.
He told Snape not to worry. He told him that this would all be over soon and that his goal was still in reach. Then he said something that made Snape question everything that he thought he knew about the Revenant, about Potter and about Dumbledore because none of it seemed to align with the information in his head.
He said that Potter already knew… and that the boy had accepted it. That Snape did not need to carry the burden of that message any longer and that it would be taken care of at the right time before the final Horcruxes were destroyed. Nasir stepped out the window before Snape could even open his mouth to ask a question and he was left standing there in the dull light of his cauldron flame wondering what the hell had just happened.
Yet even with that new information, Snape had not been expecting things to unfold like this.
Just like with the coup, which he had known McGonagall was planning, he hadn’t known when she was going to try and do it. He hadn’t expected Potter and Granger to show up here, tonight, after successfully robbing the most secure wizarding bank in the world with Nasir by their side like a personal fucking bodyguard. When Nasir had said that things might reach the school he didn’t realize that the Revenant was planning on bringing along his two new side-kicks. Though their appearance did answer the question of why the fight might reach the school. Shacklebolt would never have allowed Potter to come for an extraction mission, it was too dangerous, so if the boy was here it meant that there was a Horcrux within the castle and they were going to find it.
Yet regardless of understanding that fact he hadn’t been prepared to meet them in the flesh in the middle of an exploded hallway. And he certainly hadn’t been prepared to see what they looked like.
He knew that they had changed since Malfoy Manor. Based on Phineas’ updates and the very limited details that Nasir had revealed to him over the last little while he knew that they were different people. Logically, he understood that they were trained, dangerous to the average witch or wizard and that they were as ready as anyone could be for war.
He understood those facts.
Yet, somehow, seeing them just moments ago had been like a physical blow to the chest of epic proportions because the truth was – he didn’t recognize them. He had no idea what Nasir had done to them over the last month during their ‘training sessions’, but they were nothing like the Potter and Granger that he knew and nothing like the injured and blood-covered individuals that he had seen at Malfoy Manor one month ago. Seeing them tonight was like seeing a boggart for the first time and it had completely shattered his understanding of who they were.
Death clung to their bodies. Potter looked shaggy, deadly and dark. He resembled a bizarre and disturbing combination of Sirius Black and Alastor Moody more than he looked like his own father and mother. If not for those haunting green eyes and the fact that Nasir was standing there behind him, Snape wasn’t sure that he would have recognized the tall and dangerous-looking man as the annoying Potter brat.
And then there was Granger – who was nothing like Granger at all.
He didn’t even possess the words to describe her appearance and he knew that the state of the both of them had shaken McGonagall to her core. He couldn’t even imagine what must have been going through the old witch’s mind as they broke out into a fight and the two of them began duelling with skills that were decades beyond their years. It had surprised even him, and truth be told – he wasn’t sure that he would have gotten out of that mess alive if they had truly wanted to hurt him. He wasn’t naive enough to think he had won that fight – far from it – as much as it pained him to admit it they had let him go. Twice Granger had the opportunity to kill him and instead she chose to throw stunners – not to mention the bullshit that Potter had pulled with tethers and trying to lock his legs. They hadn’t even thrown a single deadly spell.
Then there was Nasir.
If that man had wanted him dead, he could have done it. Instead, he hadn’t thrown a single lethal spell and at one point – Snape’s eyes had met Nasir’s gaze in the chaos the tall dark man had given him a nearly imperceptible nod before discretely blocking one of McGonagall’s attacks. After stumbling backward to avoid Granger’s approach, Snape used the same spell that he’d used that morning to flee the castle.
He let out another deep sigh and forced himself to keep walking up the hill as he wondered if things could have gone differently.
If McGonagall hadn’t attacked him, would he have left? Maybe he shouldn’t have raised his wand at her after chasing Weasley and the others out into the hall? At the time he hadn’t been sure what to do, but maybe that had been a mistake? Maybe he should have stayed? Maybe he should have surrendered? He had always known that this would all come together as one giant cluster fuck and yet when it finally happened it had been worse than he had anticipated and the mess of it was threatening the break the tiny threads of sanity that he had left.
Any hope he’d had to walk away from this war unscathed had died ages ago but now, in the last twenty minutes, he had lost all hope of ending this fight with minimal student casualties. This had turned into a full-fledged war on a scale that even he had not been anticipating and true to his worst fears – the final battle was sitting at Hogwarts’ doorstep.
No one was ready for this. Not even the Dark Lord and Merlin only knew what the professors were doing right now or if the Order would be coming to join the fight. Then there were the students, and thinking about how terrified they must be just made him sicker. The Dark Lord had just summoned every single man, woman and creature that supported him to these grounds and he was about to unleash a wave of terror that would rip through this school like a hurricane. He wouldn’t stop, and he wouldn’t leave – not until he was holding Nasir’s heart in his hand while he crushed Potter’s skull beneath his feet.
Snape groaned as the burning sensation in his arm intensified. He knew that he couldn’t delay much longer, and he knew that he would need to apparate directly to the meeting point in Hogsmeade. And knowing that made his stomach roll dangerously for the fourth time. He wasn’t sure if he could help from this side of the impending fight. Soon enough the Dark Lord would direct him to do something to harm the school and if he didn’t comply, he would die on the spot.
He had no interest in trying to save his own skin tonight, but he also knew that having an ally behind enemy lines was potentially invaluable to Nasir, Potter, Granger, and anyone else who came here to help them tonight. So, at least for now, he did still serve a purpose and there was value to him fighting to stay alive for as long as he could. As such, every move he made after this point needed to be carefully calculated. Dying simply for the sake of defying the Dark Lord was a waste of his life, and while he knew in his bones that his death would happen tonight, he would stay alive for as long as he could. He would sabotage the Dark Lord’s forces and do everything and anything possible to hinder their attack and help defend the school even if it meant making cold and calculated decisions.
There were still things he could do to help.
As it was, he had already managed to reinstate McGonagall's Deputy Headmistress status. It was a risk; it was part of the reason why he was struggling to walk up the hill and delaying his return to the Dark Lord. Adjusting the wards in his mind and transferring the permissions was a pain in the ass, but he grit his teeth and forced himself to finish the process regardless. If the Dark Lord noticed, which Snape suspected that he wouldn’t – he could always lie and pass it off. The castle was old, the magic ran deep, it was convoluted and complicated, laced with backup protocols for safety and automatic permission transfers in case of an emergency. Even though he knew that the castle knew that he had not abandoned it – that’s how it would appear to everyone else. Including the Dark Lord if he bothered to take notice.
From here on out, he would wait and watch for moments of weakness. Then he would strike. Silent. Deadly. Unnoticed for as long as possible and if he could – he would try to give Nasir or McGonagall warnings.
He didn’t know how this was going to go down.
Even he didn’t know what the Dark Lord had up his sleeve, but he knew in his heart that this was it.
This was their moment.
There would be no second chance.
He gripped his left forearm in pain as he paused his walk up the hill in the dark for the final time. He could feel the familiar night air pulling at his robes. He could hear the noise of the forest at his side and the sound of the tall dark grass as it swayed in the light breeze. He stood there for a moment, an unspeakable agony aching deep within his chest as he turned to look back over his shoulder at the castle behind him. At the place that had been his home, his nightmare, his hell, his prison, his safety – and the only place in the world where he had ever truly felt comfortable in the whole of his 38 years of life.
Then, he exhaled, the low breath burning through his lungs as he pulled a crimson vial from his pocket and then added what he suspected was the final nail in his coffin as he took a drink and nearly screamed out in pain. His blood surged. His eyes widened. His mind felt like it was racing a thousand miles a second as every muscle in his body contracted and he clenched his hands so tightly the vial shattered in his hold. But he barely noticed. He couldn’t even feel the pain as the glass shards sunk into his skin.
His heart began to grind viciously in his chest as the latest batch of experimental potion #47 took hold and forced his body to perform at above human standards.
“This is it,” he whispered hoarsely, forcing himself to turn away from the school as something deep and agonizing shifted through his chest. He vanished the blood and glass from his hand as he closed his eyes and prepared to apparate. “This is your last ride – and this is the last stop.”
-x-x–
Snape watched through the darkness as the golden shield that had been the only thing protecting the school from an outright attack glowed red hot and then cracked into pieces. The sound of shattering glass echoed through the night air, he could smell the burning, he could feel the ground trembling beneath his feet as the school’s only defence failed and broke apart. His chest started to constrict. Bile was burning at the back of his throat. The Dark Lord, who stood only a few feet before him, had just unleashed one of the greatest displays of brute force power that he had ever seen and there was nothing he could have done to prevent this. Nothing he could have done to stop it.
He barely even noticed the slight stagger that the Dark Lord took as he cut off the spell or the flash of frustration and disgust that showed across his skeletal face.
All he could think about was the school and everyone inside of it as he stood there next to a collection of top-ranking Death Eaters and watched the horror unfold. No one was moving. All of them were speechless. A moment of tight silence hung in the air and then as if a switch had been flipped, he felt the ground shake once more and the massacre began the second the Dark Lord lowered his wand. Spells lit up the eastern sky. He could hear the explosions rocking through the air worse than the barrage of artillery attacks that the Dark Lord’s forces had used against the shield for the last several minutes.
Everything about this strike, about the attack and all the events leading up to it, had been intentional. That became excruciatingly apparent from the second that Snape landed before the Dark Lord’s feet at the top of Hogsmeade hillside. The Dark Lord could have ordered him to open the wards immediately, but he didn’t. The Dark Lord could have used this spell to punch through the shield right away, but he hadn’t.
Because he didn’t want to.
This monster was toying with them, tormenting them just to prove that he could. He had them trapped in that school with no resources and absolutely no way out and he fucking knew it. To him, this was a simple game of cat and mouse and it was only a matter of time. It didn’t matter that the Order had shown up and they were attempting to defend the school. The only question was how long would they try to fight it? How many people, how many students – how many lives was the Order willing to spare before they finally gave in and admitted defeat?
This was a battle of numbers, and those defending Hogwarts had already lost. They had lost the second that the Dark Lord summoned his forces here and sent them into the woods to surround the school. They just didn’t know it yet.
The Dark Lord wasn’t just here to kill. He was here to utterly destroy them in every single meaning of that word. He wasn’t going to rush because in his mind he had already won. He wasn’t going to delay because he had better things to do with his time. He would end this systematically, brutally, and at exactly the pace that he felt was necessary. He had finished taunting them, so now he would attack them and soon he would annihilate them so thoroughly that there was nothing left.
Because as far as the Dark Lord was concerned... they were all expendable.
“SSsseverus,” Voldemort’s cold hiss sent a shudder down his spine and Snape had to fight to maintain his control of the wards as he turned to face the Dark Lord.
When the Dark Lord had directed him to open the wards moments ago, Snape had complied because he knew that if he didn’t the demon would simply imperio him, do it anyway, and then kill him on the spot. That said, he refused to comply entirely. He refused to give the Dark Lord genuine control of the school or the wards and thus, he had done the next best thing – he had opened the wards, but he had only opened them partially.
He left massive sections closed including most of the northern front, the entire western side, half of the southern front and the majority of the east. He made the holes big enough that they would hopefully go unnoticed by the Dark Lord’s forces but small enough that they would act as a funnel – particularly for the massive swarms of acromantula and other nasty creatures that could easily overwhelm the grounds if they were to enter across the entirety of the eastern front.
It wasn’t much, he knew that – by opening the wards at all he had just sentenced countless people inside the school to death, but the alternative had seemed worse. He just hoped that the Order knew what the fuck they were doing and that Nasir, Potter and Granger managed to find the Horcrux as quickly as possible so they could draw the fight away from the school.
“Yes, my Lord,” Snape forced the words out between clenched teeth as his spine curled into a low bow.
“Now,” Voldemort hissed, and he didn’t need to clarify what he meant because Snape already knew.
He barely managed to hide the tremble that slid down his spine as he swallowed the sick that had gagged into his mouth. He nodded, straightening to his full height and letting out a quiet breath. His lungs burned as he exhaled and he turned around to face the countless men and women who lined the hill behind him and the other Death Eaters. Then, as the weight of his rune became unbearable, he raised his wand into the air and cast a single wordless spell. Red sparks shot into the dark and streaked across the sky above the hillside, and before he could even lower his wand, the first two units of snatchers and keepers moved. They rushed past him and the Dark Lord and raced down the hillside toward the bridge like a wave.
Not even a moment later the Dark Lord shifted and Snape’s brow creased in confusion. He watched as the tall skeletal figure took three steps forward then knelt to the ground. Cold fear began to creep down his spine as he watched the demon stick his entire hand into the dirt and utter words that made his skin crawl.
Merlin, please not that.
The Dark Lord raised his wand, a horrible sickly sound escaping from the ground as Snape’s blood ran cold and he fought against the urge to shake in terror.
Please don’t let that be what I think it is.
The ground began to vibrate.
No – it’s not possible.
He saw a hand claw its way out of the soil and into the air.
Fucking hell – no, no, no, no, no, no!
The Death Eater at his side audibly inhaled as hundreds of partially decomposed hands shot out of the ground and into the night. Snape barely managed not to gag as the smell of rotting flesh filled the air. The Dark Lord stood once more and with him, hundreds upon hundreds of inferi crawled from the ground and staggered to their feet.
Some of them were missing limbs. Some of them had no clothes. Nearly all of them were half rotten and he knew in his gut that they were likely all muggles that the Dark Lord had either killed or dug up himself. From the corner of his vision, he saw Dolohov and Smith back away in fear as Snape watched transfixed and horrified as the inferi began to move. Two people to his right flinched, someone behind him gagged and one person to his left covered their mouth and nose with their hand.
When the bloody fuck did the Dark Lord do this?
How long have they been here?
Anger and sorrow burned in Snape’s throat as he ripped his eyes away from the massive collection of rotting flesh that lined the hillside. He stared at the tall and deadly figure that stood before him only two feet away, towering like the devil himself before his army of undead. With a flick of his long white finger – they ran. The inferi took off so fast it should be impossible and within seconds they had caught up and surpassed the snatchers that Snape had sent down the hill less than a minute ago.
He was going to be sick.
He was going to be fucking sick and everyone in that school was about to be ripped to shreds. He hadn’t known about the inferi. He hadn’t known that this was coming. If he had – he probably would have done something different because this changed everything. He wouldn’t be able to keep them out with the wards because they didn’t register as live human tissue.
Devastation filled his heart as he saw the undead horde rush down the northern front from the corner of his eye. How long had the Dark Lord been planning this attack? He could feel his already broken soul fracturing further under the weight of his runes as the final tiny threads of hope he had left that Hogwarts would somehow make it through the night were instantly washed away. It took everything that he had to remain on his feet and not vomit on the ground as the Dark Lord turned around to face them.
Snape stared up at his former master, at the vile and despicable creature that stood before him as something deep and cold and angry rocked through his broken soul. How had he ever – EVER – followed this monster? How had he ever believed a single word that came from this abomination's mouth?
The man’s red eyes glowed in the darkness. His skin was so pale it was nearly translucent and it reflected the light of the battle to the east. There was a distinctly disturbing and satisfied look to his eyes – as if this moment had been something that he had dreamed of for a lifetime. Snape didn’t move as the Dark Lord walked past him to go stand with Nagini who had been lingering behind the Death Eaters to the left. He didn’t breathe as the smell of death and blood and rot filled his nose and sunk into his skin like poison. He didn’t flinch as explosion after explosion filled the night air and colours electrified the sky. Instead, his nails sunk deep into the palms of his hands as his mind desperately raced and he tried to figure out what the hell he should do.
If anyone was down there trying to hold the bridge to secure the northern front they didn’t stand a chance.
Fuck, he hoped that they weren’t that stupid. He hoped that someone in the Order knew something about war tactics and that if they had directed forces to the north they were waiting on the castle side so they could use the bridge like a funnel. It was the only way that they might stand a chance especially since Fenrir and his pack had been sent down to the bridge along the western edge of the hillside several minutes ago disguised under a masking charm that the Dark Lord himself had cast.
Please let there be no one there.
He felt a right molar crack as his jaw clenched impossibly tight. He could feel the panic rising in his chest as he watched the acromantula and additional snatcher forces burst from the eastern treeline.
Please let there be no one there.
He inhaled sharply as his eyes caught sight of the tiniest flicker of movement at the base of the bridge and then his heart plummeted into his stomach as colour erupted through the air.
No.
His legs started to shake.
It was like watching fireworks except that the beauty of the colours was lost because he knew that each burst of light was someone dying or being cursed and critically injured. Explosions rocked through the air on all three fronts and he fought to keep the wards tight as more forces tried to squeeze through. He could feel acromantulas prodding at the boundaries along the east and a troll attacking the ones along the south, he opened a pocket for incoming Order forces when they had collided against the wards but all he could look at was the shit show going on before him. The inferi were getting closer. More and more acromantulas were pouring from the trees and yet the battle continued to rage on and grow more violent as it spread further and further from the bottom of the bridge.
They were all going to die.
Not just those idiots at the bottom of the bridge – the entire school, they were all going to fucking die.
A massive explosion erupted at the base of the bridge and the flashes of colour dulled to one small pocketed area along the edge of the gorge. Panic was surging through his chest so hard he was struggling to breathe. Even with the potion forcing his body to function he was struggling not to fall apart.
He had to do something. He had to try to do something or what the fuck had all of this been for? Twenty years of effort washed down the drain in less than an hour. All of it. Every second of his time, every second of time spent by the Order, every moment of agony, every life that he had taken, every mind that he had tortured and interrogated, every plan and every sleepless night all gone – over – wasted.
His spine stiffened as he reached for his wand.
He didn’t have a plan.
He didn’t know what he was going to do but he knew that he couldn’t continue to do nothing while he waited for an opening to present itself. His fingers curled around the cool wood as acid burned at the back of his throat and he took a deep breath. But before he could even move to raise his wand he saw a small flicker of light ignite near the base of the bridge. It was hardly visible through the dark. It was weak and it wavered like a candle about to blow out. But he stilled. Waiting. Watching. His heart in his throat as he mentally crossed every single finger and toe that he had as his body tensed.
Please, Merlin, let that be what I think it is.
The seconds that dragged by seemed to extend forever as he held his breath and then, just when he thought he might lose his fucking mind – the fire exploded into a massive blaze and relief flooded his chest.
Thank fuck.
He felt the men and women by his sides flinch as the flames spread like wildfire, curling across the grounds and stretching towards the forest and the hillside. He heard the screams over the explosions from the east, the sound ringing in his ears as Nasir’s fiendfyre doubled in size and began consuming snatchers and keepers and acromantulas at an alarming rate. Not a single soul on the hillside moved as the Dark Lord suddenly cut through the crowd to retake his place at the front on the peak of the hill. The thundering sound of rushing water filled his mind and before it even happened he knew what was coming. Red, white and yellow soared up into the sky, igniting the heavens as the hellfire spread and grew hotter and hotter.
The ground shook beneath his feet. The smell of burnt flesh filled his nose. The Dark Lord stood rigid and immobile like a statue on the edge of insanity as a massive tail thrashed through the air and ignited the forest. A low growl rocked the earth and Snape’s mouth parted in awe as a massive Nundu took shape. He had never seen anything like it. He had never been so close to something this terrifyingly glorious in his entire life and its ungodly roar hit him like a physical blow as the heat became unbearable.
It destroyed everything.
It killed everything.
He watched mesmerized and horrified as the beast grew larger and larger until it stood taller than the castle. He could see it approaching them as it melted the ground and vanished every single last inferi from existence and yet despite the closing distance he couldn’t move. He stood there with the rest of them, feet glued to the ground as the hellfire monster of death began to charge up the hill toward them. The bright blazing colours consumed his mind, he couldn’t look away, he almost didn’t want it to stop and then –
The fire vanished.
The unbearable racket faded and was instantly replaced with the deep sizzle of heat as smoke filled the air and he was left staring at a blackened stretch of ruin. No one moved. No one breathed. Snape could hardly process what had happened as his heart continued to race dangerously fast in his chest. The explosions along the eastern and southern fronts had died off. The air felt quiet and tight with tension as a low growl of thunder rumbled in the distance.
A moment later, the northern bridge ignited in a blaze of glory. Fireworks shot up into the air, the ground trembled as the thick supports cracked, and the ancient structure crumbled under the blast as fire ignited along the edge of the gorge. He didn’t know what to think as he watched it break and tumble into the gorge. He had no idea how long they stood there, or how long the Dark Lord remained unmoving and rigid staring at the decimated hillside in silence.
Bellatrix was the first to break the quiet, stepping away from the row of Death Eaters as she took a step toward the Dark Lord.
“My Lord?” Her voice was quiet. The nervous shake was unmistakable as she raised a trembling hand as if to reach for her master – but she instantly froze the second that he shifted and raised his hand into the air.
“Tell them to pull back,” the low hiss was barely a whisper and Snape saw Bellatrix’s face falter as she stared at the Dark Lord in confusion.
“My Lord?” she repeated, but this time as she took a small step forward he turned around and grabbed her by the shoulder so hard Snape could literally see his pale white fingers digging through her robes.
“Tell them – to pull back,” Voldemort repeated as a deranged look crossed his face and then his expression became eerily calm.
The witch barely managed to contain a whimper as his thumb punctured her shoulder and sunk into her skin. Snape could see blood dripping from the wound as the witch’s single eye creased in pain but still, the Dark Lord did not let go as he turned to look at the collection of Death Eaters that lined the top of the hill. Something horrible and dark was shifting behind his glowing red eyes and it made Snape’s already tight body clench with fear. This calm cool exterior that the Dark Lord was maintaining was nothing but a thin plastic shell.
He was on the verge of losing it.
Maybe he already had lost it?
Snape could see a tiny twitch by his left eye as his thumb sank deeper into Bellatrix’s shoulder. The Dark Lord had always been a grenade ready to blow and Nasir had just pulled the pin – but the Dark Lord was too smart to release the lever in front of all of these people. Too clever to lose control no matter how livid he was in this moment. It was clear to Snape that the Dark Lord had not been expecting a counterattack. He had summoned everyone that he had here, and he had quickly given well thought out orders and directions that suggested that he had long ago created an attack plan for the school.
The buried inferi were confirmation of that.
But the Dark Lord had not believed that Nasir would waste his magic to defend it. Whatever that demon believed was going on, even with knowing that Nasir was tied to Shacklebolt, he still seemed to believe that the Revenant was largely working alone. He had gone into this fight arrogant – with good reason – and under the assumption that even if Nasir was working with the Shacklebolt that it was for his own gain. That Nasir would not truly aid the Order and that when push came to shove the Revenant would allow the school to burn because as far as the Dark Lord was concerned, Nasir only had one goal.
The destruction of his Horcruxes to overthrow and obtain his power.
How long the demon had known that his Horcruxes were being systematically exterminated Snape wasn’t sure, but there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that the demon knew it now. It was why they were all here. It was why he could see a slight vibration of barely suppressed rage encasing his skeletal body. It was why Snape knew that this was the end and that the Dark Lord would not leave until Nasir and anyone else who stood in his path was dead.
But a counterattack of that magnitude had completely caught the Dark Lord off guard and now he needed to save face and recalculate as quickly as possible before he lost the confidence of his forces.
“It would seem,” Voldemort said slowly, biding his time as his red eyes shifted over the group of unmoving Death Eaters. “That my old friend Nasir has finally decided to show his face after decades of hiding. For those of you that don’t know of him – he is a coward and a thief, and the bastard child of a pureblood whore.”
He paused, his red eyes shifting back over the group as the first streak of lightning flashed across the sky.
“He is a traitor with no place in this world or the next, and he is a threat to wizarding society and the values that you fight to uphold,” Voldemort’s voice dropped low and Snape felt a shudder run down his spine as the air seemed to tighten around them. “He is here with Harry Potter and the rest of the pathetic remains of the Order, and he will be exterminated here tonight along with any other man, woman or child who stands in our way. What you just witnessed was the extent of his power, which he has foolishly exhausted in an attempt to scare you off because he knows that tonight is his last and he knows that this fight is already lost.”
Snape nearly blanched at the Dark Lord’s words. He had to fight to keep his face straight at the unbelievable and incredibly inaccurate statement that the demon had just made to his followers. He couldn’t comment on Nasir’s lineage – but anyone who knew anything about the Revenant knew that the man was in the same fucking league as the Dark Lord himself. That outrageous display of magic was not the extent of Nasir’s power, he had not ‘exhausted’ anything and he didn’t do it for show either. Nasir was an incredibly cold and calculating man. If he had decided to unleash his fiendfyre for everyone here to see it was done intentionally, it had been done with control and it had been done for a reason. And it meant that something was wrong.
Nasir was biding time.
Snape knew this, and he suspected that the Dark Lord did too. Either Potter couldn’t find the Horcrux or they had it but couldn’t destroy it. That, or something else had happened – but either way, it meant that the situation wasn’t looking good for the Order or the students that remained trapped in the school. The fact that Nasir had actively chosen to cut off the fire and leave the northern front as a sizzling melted mess without actually engaging the Dark Lord himself meant that the night was far from over.
It hadn’t been a threat or a show of power to scare people away, it had been done because it was necessary. End of story. But most of his followers didn’t know that. The majority of them had never even heard of Nasir and they had no idea who the man was.
Aside from himself, Narcissa, Bellatrix and possibly Yaxley, Snape wasn’t sure if anyone here knew the story about the Revenants so he wasn’t surprised to see some of the Death Eaters by his side nod at the Dark Lord’s words as a spark of wary confidence returned to their eyes. The Dark Lord could make nearly any desperate or destitute person believe anything because he never showed his weaknesses and he controlled the information that they had.
“We will not be deterred by the Order’s pathetic and ill-contrived plot to chase us away with a dramatic and desperate display of fragile power,” Voldemort said almost violently as he raised his wand into the sky.
Without uttering a word, he cast the morsmordre and it shot up into the sky and expanded into a massive skull. Snape saw two others form behind the Dark Lord, one to the east and one to the south as his followers heeded his call for unity and strength. Snape could see several people around him nodding in agreement and he had to fight the urge to shake his head in disbelief. These idiots would die for him without ever realizing that they were nothing but a tool of war.
The Dark Lord lowered his wand, his eyes all but burning as he turned to look at the matching skulls that filled the night air. They took up nearly the entire sky, illuminated by the increasing flashes of lightning as thunder rolled across the grounds. He turned back to face his followers, stepping closer as he gripped Bellatrix even tighter.
“Tonight we will show the Order the strength of our cause,” Voldemort hissed, his voice growing louder as he stood to his full height. “We will show them just how weak Nasir is – how their faith in Potter has been misplaced. Tonight, we will take back the power that you so rightly deserve and begin this world anew without the continued muggle dangers that threaten our very existence!!”
Snape forced himself to nod with the rest as several others audibly cheered.
“Bella,” Voldemort began, his voice becoming a sickening croon as he turned to look down at the woman that he was still impaling with his thumb. “You will go to the eastern and southern fronts. You will tell Narcissa and Yaxley to pull everyone back to the second and third gathering points and you will tell them to create a perimeter around the entire school. They are to eliminate anything and anyone that sets foot on the grounds during our temporary ceasefire. We’re done playing games with them. Nasir wants to play now – and I’d hate to disappoint him.”
“Yes, my Lord,” Bellatrix groaned as the Dark Lord finally dropped his hold on her shoulder. She bowed low, her eyes shining with deranged excitement as she quickly apparated away.
“Nott,” Voldemort’s gaze burned as his head snapped toward the tall man on Snape’s right. “Take Crabbe, Goyle, MacNair, Travers and fifty of the snatchers from the remaining unit to the southern front. Prepare to mount a concentrated attack near the greenhouses – it is their weakest point. Narcissa will lead it from the third gathering point on my signal. None of you will engage directly until I give the word.”
“Yes, my Lord,” Nott nodded and began to move, shuffling through the group of Death Eaters to gather fifty of the men and women who lingered behind the core group.
“Malfoy,” Voldemort’s eyes turned to the pale blonde who looked like he might collapse at any moment.
“Yes, my Lord,” Lucius said tightly, his face paling further as he took a meager step forward.
“Take Rockwood and go search the eastern front. Grab those that are salvageable and leave the rest,” Voldemort’s eyes narrowed at the man in disgust as Lucius turned away. “When you’re done, go join Narcissa. Surely, you can manage that?”
Lucius froze, a shudder running through his body as he forced himself to nod. “Of course, my Lord.”
“Mulciber,” Voldemort’s eyes shifted back to the remaining Death Eaters and he seemed to rapidly assess who was left. “Take Scott, Avery, Helen, Smith, and twenty-five of the remaining unit to the eastern front. Assist Yaxley with maintaining the perimeter and prepare for the final wave.”
“Of course my Lord,” Mulciber answered and the other Death Eaters echoed the same response as they turned and began to gather their resources from the thinning remains of the final unit of snatchers.
“SSsseverus,” Voldemort finally said, his low hiss grated on Snape’s nerves as he stepped closer and Snape fought to remain still.
“Yes, my Lord,” he said instinctively, bowing his head before he met the man’s red eyes and steeled himself for what might come next.
“I have a special task for you,” Voldemort all but whispered and Snape stiffened. “Given your unique abilities on these grounds – you are to take Dolohov, Selwyn and the last of the snatchers across the gorge to the northern front.”
“My Lord?” Snape answered, his brow arching in question as the uncrossable Hogsmeade hillside continued to sizzle with extreme heat behind the Dark Lord’s tall form.
“Apparate them,” Voldemort hissed and Snape felt his heart sink. “Secure their position within the northern courtyard and make sure that they have access to the school. When you are done – go to the Shrieking Shack. You will command the attack from there out of the line of fire. You will ensure that the wards remain open, that the school remains accessible and you will not engage in the battle with the others until I give the signal and I enter the school to seek out Nasir.”
“Yes, my Lord,” Snape bowed, his hand tightening on his wand as the Dark Lord continued to stare at him.
There was something more unnerving about his gaze than usual. Something dark and thoughtful and filled with curiosity. He could feel the urge to squirm swelling under his skin as the Dark Lord slowly cocked his head to the side but didn’t move away.
“My Lord?” Snape hesitated, wondering if there was something else going on that he was supposed to be aware of. He instinctively closed his mind, ensuring that his regular occlumency was extra secure in case the Dark Lord was planning to prod.
“There is something that has been bothering me, Severus,” Voldemort said quietly, his voice so low that the others would not hear as he took a step closer. The expression on his face was like nothing that Snape had ever seen and it made his bones cold as the pungent smell of death and rot that clung to the Dark Lord’s body filled his nose. “Something that I must resolve before I make my move – wait for my signal.”
“Yes, my Lord,” Snape whispered hoarsely, not sure what to think as the Dark Lord’s eyes slowly narrowed and then he stepped away. In three quick strides, the Dark Lord shifted to Nagini’s side and they disappeared with a loud crack.
He let out an inaudible sigh, his mind racing as he turned to look at those who remained on the hill. He obviously could not lead an attack on the northern front and there was no way in hell he was going to apparate two extremely dangerous Death Eaters and twenty-five capable snatchers onto school grounds. If they got inside the castle, Hogwarts was fucked. He fought the urge to frown as his potion-fueled body began to ache and scream with pain. His time was running out, soon the potion would wear off and the hardened muscles in his heart would seize so he needed to make his move.
This was his opening.
He had to come up with something and he needed to figure it out quickly because he couldn’t delay. He forced his legs to move as his mind continued to race, taking a step toward Dolohov while his face remained carefully indifferent.
“I’ll take you in batches,” Snape said calmly, knowing that whatever he was going to do would only work if he could better his odds by reducing the likelihood of being outnumbered in an attack. A year ago, he might have been able to hold his own against this full crew, but that day had long since passed and his body was barely hanging on as it was.
“Batches?” Dolohov scoffed, clearly feeling emboldened now that the Dark Lord was no longer present. Just a few minutes ago Snape had seen the man flinch as the fiendfyre grew closer yet now he was acting like he hadn’t nearly pissed his pants in terror. “Have you lost your edge, Severus? As one of the Dark Lord’s top-ranking followers, I would have thought that you would be better than that.”
Snape stilled, his pulse spiking at the taunt.
He knew that he should ignore it. He knew that it didn’t matter, and that Dolohov was a fucking idiot. He had always hated that man – but something about the smug look on the man’s face was like a knife through his heart.
He had just watched his school get bombarded while he fought to keep it from being overrun by creatures. He’d spent twenty years of his life in agony fighting this war on both sides as his body disintegrated and this asshole had the audacity to call him weak?
That cold feeling that had rocked through his soul as he watched the Dark Lord animate the inferi and send them down the hill radiated in his chest once more as he stared at Dolohov. He heard Selwyn chuckle as a waft of heat from the charred and blackened remains of the hillside shifted across his skin.
Fuck this.
Enough was enough.
He knew exactly what he was going to do and if he died doing it, then so be it. It was worth it – this was exactly the opening that he had been painstakingly waiting for. He was not going to waste this opportunity and he would not spare a single fucking soul. As far as he was concerned, everyone on this side of the fight could burn in the fiery depths of hell. Snape kept his face impassive as he stepped towards the shorter man and dropped his voice to a low whisper so only he and Selwyn would hear.
“You want me to apparate twenty-seven people at once, just to prove that I can?” Snape said coldly, his brow arching as he let his disgust echo through his low voice. Dolohov stiffened at the tone, and his eyes narrowed as Snape took another step forward and straightened to his full height. “That – Dolohov – is exactly why I am leading the northern front and why you are simply here as another bag of meat to be tossed into the grinder. Risking the security of the wards and our access to the school, for what? A pissing match with a grown man who never amounted to anything more than a third-tier lackey who nearly pissed himself at the first sign of fire?”
Snape shook his head, a small smirk tugging at his lips.
“I think not, Dolohov,” he whispered darkly as a look of rage crossed the shorter man’s face. “Let the adults do their jobs and wait until you’re called upon.”
Selwyn grabbed Dolohov’s arm as he made to step forward but Snape ignored it, not sparing the idiot a second glance as he turned away and stalked toward the remaining twenty-five snatchers.
“Split into groups of five – now,” Snape said coldly, his voice loud enough to carry across the entire group. The low growl of thunder was getting closer and dull flashes of lightning began to streak through the air more frequently. “I’ll apparate you to the northern courtyard. Once there, I’ll position you out of sight along the edge of the castle. There are two doors that we will be using for entry – fifteen of you will use the main door while the remaining ten will use the emergency exit that leads into the dungeons. All of you will cast a silencing spell before we leave and none of you will make a sound after this point – do you understand? Good, do it now.”
Snape paused, watching as the people before him nervously shifted into groups and pulled out their wands. He waited as they cast their spells, his hand clutching his own wand so tightly he could no longer feel his fingers as his heart started to race in anticipation of what he was about to do.
“You,” Snape called, nodding toward the nearest group. The man at the front flinched in response but he didn’t say a word. “You’re first – you and your group will be entering using the main door. Grab onto the person next to you, keep your wands out and your eyes fixed on the castle when we land.”
He barely gave them a minute to comply before he stalked over to the front man and roughly grabbed hold of the back of his neck.
“Hold your breath,” Snape said coldly as his grip tightened and the man’s eyes went wide with fear. “This might hurt.”
A loud crack split through the air and they vanished from sight. Snape purposely stretched the apparition as long as he could – he made it jerky, uneven and as horrible as humanly possible before he finally allowed the ground to come rushing up beneath their feet. He could hear his heart thudding in his ears as he let go of the man he was holding and allowed the group to drop the remaining fifteen feet through the air. They collided with the ground, disoriented and nauseous. Three of them fell over, the rest staggered on their feet and one began to vomit as she collapsed to her knees. He landed hard just two feet behind them, his knees threatening to buckle from the impact as he raised his wand.
They hadn’t stood a chance.
They hadn’t seen it coming.
Five silent sectumsempras later and their bodies dropped to the ground as cuts of fresh meat. He stood there for a moment, panting as his heart beat so dangerously fast in his chest he was certain it would explode. He could literally feel the muscles around it growing harder and tighter with each painful thud. This stunt had just cost him minutes off his life but as he looked down at the dismembered bodies and the pool of blood that scattered the ground by his feet – he almost smiled.
“It’s worth it,” he breathed, closing his eyes and letting out a sigh.
He would do it again and again a hundred times over if he could, but his heart would give out well before that and he doubted that the crimson potion would be able to stop it. As it was, he was running on borrowed time. Frankly, he was amazed that he had made it this far at all. Standing at the top of the hill next to the Dark Lord watching the school burn as he fought to maintain control over the wards had been hard enough. And when the inferi had crawled out of the ground, the panic that surged through his body had nearly killed him right then and there.
Forcing his eyes open and ignoring the growing shake in his legs Snape turned away from the bodies and walked out of the trees so he could see the northern courtyard. He stood there in the dark, listening to the approaching thunder as he counted to thirty then turned on his heel and apparated back to the Hogsmeade hillside.
Four more times he made the trip and each time he was certain it would be his last. Each time he picked a different spot in the trees that lined the northern grounds by the castle and each time he dropped his victims to the ground from fifteen to twenty feet up in the air before landing behind them and ending their lives. Each time, he felt his heart growing simultaneously heavier and lighter as the bodies dropped to the ground in pieces, blood splattered across the ground and he fought the urge to smile and vomit.
Maybe he wasn’t so different from the Dark Lord after all? Maybe, in the end, despite working for the Order – he had become the very thing that he had wanted to defeat? A heartless shell of a human being who could take lives in an instant without an ounce of regret.
Phineas was wrong.
He was a monster… and he was the worst kind. The kind that hid behind a mask of necessity and inevitability. The kind that claimed to fight for the light while using the darkest of measures and the cruellest of methods. In the end, regardless of whatever he managed to accomplish here tonight, his soul would forever be tainted beyond repair– and he would have fundamentally failed as a human being.
He saved Dolohov and Selwyn for last, taking extra care to make sure that their apparition was the most unbearable one yet. He could practically feel his bones breaking as he drew it out and his lungs screamed for air until finally – when he couldn’t take it any longer, he dropped them to the ground from thirty feet in the air and then landed behind them with a heavy thud.
Dolohov knew it was coming.
Snape could tell from the way that the man tried to grab for his wand. He very nearly got it too as he spun around erratically, stumbling on his feet as he tried to defend himself while struggling to get his balance. In the end, he wasn’t fast enough, and Snape split him open waist to sternum before cutting off his head. The sound of his organs spilling out across the dark grass was like music to his ears that made him want to wretch. Selwyn didn’t figure it out and he didn’t even manage to stagger to his feet before Snape severed his spine and then cut off his head for good measure. He watched as it fell to the ground, panting hard and clutching at his chest as he struggled to breathe.
He was too old for this.
Too broken for this.
He groaned out in agony as he took a step away from their bodies and pocketed his wand. He was struggling to maintain control of the wards, he could feel it slipping through his fingers as his vision blurred and he swayed on his feet. He didn’t know what came next, but he knew if he stopped moving he would probably collapse and die, so he forced his legs to carry him away from the bloody mess and deeper into the trees. It would be too risky to apparate to the south or east to try and sabotage the attacks there. He wasn’t in any state to outright battle and going into the school after the way that he had left it seemed like a bad idea.
McGonagall would have the armour kill him on sight – and that was assuming that Flitwick or one of the other professors didn't get to him first. He doubted that they would give him the chance to speak before they attacked, not even if he went in there with his hands up carrying a white flag. Not that he could blame them… but that was beside the point.
He needed to set up some kind of communication before he went back to the school and tried to help directly – and the only person who would trust his word right now was Nasir. Clutching the robes at his chest and ignoring the pain in his legs he took a few more steps as his mind continued to race. He needed to find a way to message Nasir so he could tell the Order that the next attack would be concentrated to the south and that the perimeter of the school was surrounded. He had just started to come up with a few possible ways of accomplishing the task when suddenly, his arm began to burn.
“Fuck,” Snape groaned as he released his robes to grip his left forearm. The Dark Lord was summoning him to the Shrieking Shack and from the increasing severity of the burn, it must be important.
He grit his teeth in pain, a part of him longing to ignore the call and simply trod up to the castle to help the Order fight. But that was a pipe dream and the logical, cold and calculating part of his brain that had allowed him to be a spy for the last two decades knew that ignoring the Dark Lord’s call would only make things worse. He had to go. He couldn't afford the Dark Lord finding out what he had just done and besides – going there might give him another opening. Maybe he would be tasked with something else he could sabotage, or maybe he could draw out the conversation to try and buy the school more time.
Hell, maybe he could attack the Dark Lord himself.
He nearly laughed at that thought and let out a low sigh as a massive crack of thunder rocked through the air. He could feel the rain coming. The wind was picking up and it was tugging across his robes as he neared the edge of the trees by the gorge and looked out at the scorched earth through the darkness. The Dark Mark in the sky above the hill twisted in the air like it was alive and he felt his stomach knot. He didn’t even recognize the grounds. All that remained of the bridge was two shattered wooden posts that stuck out from the edge of the gorge on the castle side and the rest was completely obliterated.
He stared at it for a long moment, a sense of awe and fearful admiration shifting through his chest. The magnitude of that display had been astonishing. This land would forever be tainted. People would not be able to cross it for days and the contamination was so thick he could practically feel it from here. The Order had no idea how lucky they were that Nasir was on their side because any witch or wizard capable of such devastation was not only lethal, they were cut-throat, detached, and so deeply tainted their hearts were close to stone.
Snape tore his eyes away from the destruction to look up at the sky as another massive crack of thunder rumbled through the ground. The hiss of the lingering heat grew louder and steam instantly filled the air as the sky opened up and rain began to pour. Without wasting another second, Snape turned on his heel and apparated to the shrieking shack.
-x-x-
“SSsseverus,” Voldemort hissed slowly as Snape entered the shrieking shack and cast a wordless drying spell to remove the water from his robes and hair. He kept his face impassive despite the fact that he was surprised to find the Dark Lord already here. His eyes skimmed over the two blue flames that lit the disgusting room and he tried not to cringe at the way his name sounded.
“My Lord,” Snape bowed deeply, his stomach churning nervously as he took in the dark and glinting look that radiated from the demon’s eyes. He fought back the urge to scrunch his nose as he glanced down to see Nagini slither over her master’s feet and curl around his legs. He had no idea where the Dark Lord had gotten that snake or why it was so loyal, but the way that he treated it had always made him uncomfortable.
“Did you secure the northern front?” Voldemort asked, a strange and slightly disturbing smile cutting across his lips as his eyes raked down Snape’s thin frame.
“Yes, my Lord,” Snape nodded, unable to stop his body from shuddering as the Dark Lord’s gaze pierced through his soul and continued to linger on his body. He felt the hairs at the base of his skull prickle as he swallowed and fought to remain calm.
Something was wrong.
The Dark Lord was way too calm – but it looked forced and barely controlled. He could see a crazed sort of excitement lingering beneath the surface as his red eyes glinted in the low blue light.
“Fifteen men are being led by Dolohov through the main northern entrance while Selwyn takes the remaining ten through the dungeon,” Snape lied, discomfort shifting down his spine as the Dark Lord continued to watch him with that peculiar expression.
Had the Dark Lord figured out what he had done? Did he know that the wards were still partially shut and that his northern forces were dead and littered throughout the woods? He swallowed hard – he didn’t know, but he forced himself to stay steady on his feet as he held the Dark Lord’s gaze.
“They are disillusioned just inside the doors and are waiting for my signal,” Snape continued. “Which, I shall give at your command, my Lord.”
“Excellent,” Voldemort murmured, his sharp pointed teeth showing as a second smile formed across his lips. “Narcissa has the southern troops ready and Yaxley is nearly prepared on the east.”
“That’s good news, my Lord,” Snape said quietly, as he fought to keep his hands still at his sides. “Soon this night will be over, and you will have your victory.”
“I suppose I shall,” Voldemort said slowly, and then he shifted, taking a deliberate step forward as Nagini moved by his feet. “Tell me, Severus – what is it that you’re hoping to gain tonight?”
“My Lord?” Snape asked, genuine confusion showing on his face as he watched the man take another step closer. The familiar rank smell of his inhumanly tall body began to inch up his nose and he had to fight not to cringe. “My goal has only ever been to aid you in succeeding my Lord, to serve you – nothing else.”
“And you have always served me well,” Voldemort said quietly, as he stopped no less than a foot away and looked down at Snape with a curious expression. “Loyally, and without faltering – not even once. Tell me, Severus – how do you think things have gone so far tonight?”
“They’ve gone well overall, my Lord,” Snape said carefully, struggling to structure his words because he couldn’t quite process the look on the Dark Lord’s face. “The school will not hold out for much longer, we will overpower them with this next attack.”
“Indeed, we will,” Voldemort agreed, as he slowly took out his wand. Snape stiffened as the tall man raised it, but he didn’t dare move from his spot. “And yet despite this fact – I have a problem, Severus.”
“My Lord?” Snape said, his hand starting to tremble at his side as his mind raced to figure out what the hell was going on.
“This wand, Severus,” Voldemort whispered as he leaned in much too close. “It doesn’t work for me.”
“My Lord?” Snape said blankly, his brow creasing in confusion.
He knew that the Dark Lord was fixated on his wand – it had started after the incident with Potter, and it had grown into somewhat of an obsession. It was why Mr. Ollivander had been captured in 1996 and why he had been kept as a prisoner in Malfoy Manor. The Dark Lord had tortured him, interrogated him, ordered Ollivander to make new wands while he bombarded the old rattled man with endless questions on wand lore and legends. And the entire time the Dark Lord had grown more and more frustrated.
He had gone through more than a dozen different wands in the last year alone and he had even at one point, taken Lucius Malfoy’s wand and used it for several weeks. Then, about two months ago, he stopped. It was after he had come to search the Hogwarts grounds and left holding Dumbledore’s old wand. At the time, Snape had not thought much of it aside from it being another obvious and disgusting instance of trophy collection. It wasn’t the first time that the Dark Lord had returned to an enemy’s grave, and it wasn’t the first time that he had taken a token to commemorate his victory.
With everything else that was going on around him, Snape had barely thought about it and since the Dark Lord was notorious for compartmentalizing information within his ranks, Snape had never gotten any details on what had happened with his wand obsession. It wasn’t the first time that Snape had been left in the dark, he had often been left flying half-blind in his battle to spy and assist the Order – but now he was starting to wonder if he was missing something.
That maybe, he had missed a detail that he should have noticed much earlier.
“I don’t understand,” Snape said slowly, uttering what was probably the most honest response he had ever given to the Dark Lord. “You have performed extraordinary magic tonight, my Lord.”
“No,” Voldemort said, a strange and almost pitiful look crossing his flat deranged features as his eyes gleamed deep red. “I am extraordinary. I have performed my usual magic tonight Severus, but this wand – this wand has resisted me. I feel very little difference between it and the others that I have used this past year. Do you know why, Severus?”
“No, my Lord,” Snape whispered, answering honestly for a second time.
He fought against the urge to recoil as the Dark Lord raised the familiar wand before his face and stepped so uncomfortably close Snape couldn’t suppress his shudder. He could see the Dark Lord’s slitted pupils; they were dilated in excitement, he was eyeing Snape as if he were food and it made his stomach twist into a tight knot.
“This wand,” Voldemort murmured softly, pausing deliberately as he let his gaze trail slowly over Snape’s face. “Is the Elder wand, Severus.”
Snape stiffened, his mind blanking as he stared up at the creature before him and struggled to process his words.
“But you didn’t know that, did you?” Voldemort whispered, licking his lips as he inched even closer. Snape could hear Nagini shifting along the old floorboards as his heart began to race. “You didn’t know that Albus had it all this time, because he didn’t trust you, did he? So he never told you.”
Snape didn’t answer, he remained frozen with fear, his neck craned painfully as he looked up into the crimson eyes of death above him.
“That is how I know that you were always mine. That you were only loyal to me – because he would have warned you otherwise, wouldn’t he?” Voldemort said, the words a taunting croon as the gleam in his eyes grew. “You know the legend of the deathstick, don’t you Severus?”
“Yes,” Snape whispered hoarsely, unable to look away or escape the dread that was squeezing his chest like a vice as the Dark Lord lowered his wand.
“Then you already know why you’re here,” Voldemort whispered, and Snape felt his body go rigid as a wordless spell wrapped around his frame and held him in place.
The Dark Lord raised his hand and Snape shuddered beneath the spell as his frigid white fingers grazed the side of his face. The contact burned against his skin, freezing his insides as bile formed at the back of his throat.
“Such a shame,” Voldemort murmured, then another disturbing smile cut across his lips as he finally took a step back. “You were always my favourite, always so helpful – but everyone has a role to play, and this has always been yours, Severus. I must master the Elder wand before I go to battle to remove Nasir and Potter from this earth.”
He paused, his eyes trailing over Snape’s immobile frame once more before he let out a sigh, flicked his thin skeletal finger and Nagini began to uncoil at his feet.
“You did well,” Voldemort said, his eyes all but shining with maniacal desire as he smiled at Snape in the most sickening way. “Be proud of how you have served, Severus; and know that you will be missed – but I don’t regret it.”
A violent hiss left the demon’s mouth and before Snape could even process what had happened, agony split through his chest as a blur of scales flashed past his vision. The spell holding him immobile fell away and a scream of agony left his lungs as pain tore through his body. He could feel Nagini’s fangs sinking into his flesh, puncturing his lung, and crushing his bones as her poison burned like ice through his veins. He collapsed back against the wall of the filthy shack with a heavy thump, unable to breathe as a massive crack split through the air and the Dark Lord vanished from sight with Nagini at his side and the blue flames disappeared.
The Elder wand, his mind whispered as he slumped to the ground and stared at the empty space before him. He has the fucking Elder wand.
Pain and cold began to encase his body as his vision started to dither. His head tilted down, a sickening gurgle leaving his lips as his eyes took in the massive amount of crimson that covered his chest. He could feel it dripping from his neck, pouring from the holes in his lungs and soaking through his clothes. It was pooling on the floor. Surrounding him like a blood-red halo as the last of his potion wore off and his heart began to slow.
Nagini’s venom spreads quickly.
It was why the snake was so fucking dangerous.
Even if he had the antivenom on him it wouldn’t have made a difference because he didn’t have near enough blood replenisher or dittany to repair the damage to his body or stop the bleed. Besides – all of that was a moot point because the venom was already starting to shut down his nervous system and he could hardly move. He would never have the dexterity to uncork a vial let alone heal the tear in his neck.
No, he thought as a second painful gurgle left his lips. Now you die.
Slowly.
Painfully.
Finally… just like you always knew you would and as the failure you have always been no less. In a decrepit shack – in the place that you nearly died two and a half decades ago, he winced as he coughed blood from his lips. How fucking sardonic is that?
His body was growing colder, and he could feel his pulse weakening with each passing second. His vision speckled with black. There was no use fighting it, he gurgled again and prepared to close his eyes to wait it out when a noise to his left caught his attention.
The fuck?
His head rolled to the side and his eyes widened in disbelief as four blue flames sparked into the air and Potter and Granger appeared out of nowhere. They rushed across the room, both of them moving so quickly he could barely track it. Granger was saying something, but he couldn’t hear it over the ringing in his ears and even if he could have heard it, he wasn’t paying attention to it. His gaze was fixated on Potter. On stupid fucking Potter and his stupid fucking face.
His heart thudded painfully in his chest as his eyes creased in pain.
Why the fuck was this asshole here in his last moments? Why did this have to be the last thing that he saw? Could he have nothing? Not even a tiny shred of peace in his last moments?
A part of him wanted to scream, but another part of him couldn’t look away from those green eyes and suddenly – it hit him. He could still do his job. He could still tell Potter what the Dark Lord was planning and he could still help the Order. He felt a surge of strength flood through his body as the venom began to freeze colder than ice.
Fuck that demon. And fuck him for saying that he was his favourite – that he had been loyal.
With his last dying breath, he would tell Potter everything. The wand. The attack. The Death Eaters and their positions. The truth about the Horcruxes and Nasir. Everything. He would reveal it all.
He clenched his teeth against the pain as he rapidly began to gather his memories. It was hard. Possibly the hardest thing that he had ever done in his life. All of them were blurring together, he couldn’t separate them into clean pieces, so he just grabbed them all and began to force them from his body as he felt Granger’s hand press against his neck.
“P – P– ott – er,” the word stuttered out like a deranged hiss, but it seemed to be effective because Potter met his gaze once more.
“Don’t talk,” Granger’s voice echoed by his head. It sounded odd, but he ignored it as he attempted to reach for the shaggy-looking man who was kneeling by his side.
“T– Ta-ke T-hem,” Snape rasped, more blood pouring from his neck as the memories took form and leaked from the corner of his eye. To his relief, Potter seemed to understand and he rapidly summoned a vial and brought it to Snape’s face to collect the memories.
“Harry it won’t work like that,” Granger answered, even though Potter had not said a word. He felt like time was slowing down. Logically he knew that everything around him was happening much more quickly than he saw it but to him, it was like an eternity between words as his heart continued to slow. “It will just pour out his throat – I’ll have to inject it. Hold this.”
They shifted above him, Potter holding the vial to his eye with one hand while taking over the task of closing his neck wound with his other hand as Granger began rummaging through her pocket. More black speckled his vision, the cold that encased his body was making it hard to focus. He forced the rest of the memories out as he stared at the familiar green eyes that had haunted his dreams for years. They blinked and turned away and an odd panic surged through his pain-addled mind.
“Look – a-at – me,” he whispered, the ragged words were barely audible but Potter met his gaze once more and Snape felt his heart clench.
How many times had he wished to see these eyes again so he could beg for forgiveness? So he could take it all back. So he could tell her that he knew it was his fault. That he had been wrong. That he had been a boy – a stupid fucking idiotic boy who hadn’t meant what he’d said. Who hadn’t understood the gravity of what he was getting involved in. Who had reacted out of rage and anger and jealousy.
He could have been so much more.
He could have done something with his life. He could have been someone worthy of a place in this world and instead, he had made mistake after mistake and entirely squandered his life away. He had made terrible choices. He’d been tempted by power and poisoned by his own rage. He knew where he went wrong, and this was all his fault.
He struggled to breathe as he stared at Potter and then it dawned on him that there wasn’t an ounce of hatred in the boy’s eyes – and that didn’t make any sense. He had been terrible to Potter, and he had made that boy’s youth miserable. Seeing him had been like seeing all his life’s greatest mistakes compiled together into the body of his childhood bully and he had been unable to deal with it. It wasn’t an excuse – he knew he’d been wrong, but it was the truth. Just looking at Potter was torment. Just being near him was like having his life’s greatest failures paraded before his eyes free for all to see. And he had not handled it well. He’d taken it out on the boy like the bitter bastard that he was, and he’d become the bully who had tormented him as a child.
So why was Potter looking at him like that? Why did he seem so concerned?
Maybe this wasn’t real.
Maybe he’d already died.
“You have your mother’s eyes.”
Snape felt the words slip from his lips, but he was unsure if they were real. The ice of the venom was getting colder, and his vision was starting to wane.
Death was coming.
He could feel it.
He would welcome it.
His eyes began to droop and then suddenly Granger’s voice cut through the air like a blow to the head.
“Got it! No, we can’t wait – give him one now or he’ll bleed out!”
Strong hands grabbed his face and he choked as something familiar poured into his mouth. He winced in pain, his eyes growing wide as someone forcibly inflated his punctured lung and oxygen surged through his body once more. He felt the fabric of his robes being ripped and cut away. Cold air swept across his abdomen and his eyes rolled to the left in time to see Granger place a warm hand on his pale white torso. Her fingers trailed across his skin, her eyes were narrowed with focus as she rapidly looked for something then promptly jammed a large syringe into his stomach and depressed the plunger.
He didn’t feel the puncture.
But he felt the effects of what she had injected him with instantaneously and he immediately knew what it was. Burning heat surged through his body and his heart skyrocketed as he groaned out in agony. He convulsed against the ground. Her hand moved, pressing into his chest and pinning him to the floor with more strength than what should have been possible before he felt three tethers tie him to the ground.
“No, we don’t have enough time,” Granger said as she shifted on the ground, wiping the blood from her hands and pulling out a wad of fabric from her pocket. “It could be important, Harry – it could make or break this.”
She pressed the fabric against Snape’s neck, ignoring his groan of pain as she looked at Potter and shook her head. They stared at each other for a moment, endless thoughts racing behind their eyes before Granger grit her teeth and Potter finally nodded.
“Fine,” Potter said, quickly capping the vial of memories and stuffing it into his pocket. “But you still need to be back on time.”
“I will,” Granger nodded, keeping her hand firmly pressed against his neck. “It takes around twenty minutes for the antivenom to decompose the poison. Until then the venom will just keep tearing the wound open so I can’t seal it yet – it would just be a waste of potions. I’ll have to wait it out and time the blood replenishers until it’s done, but it will only take me a few minutes to stabilize him after that. I’ve got this, Harry – go. I’ll be back on time, I promise.”
“You better,” Potter said quietly, as he quickly stood to his feet and glanced down at his arm. He touched it twice, his brow furrowing for a moment before he nodded. “Nasir’s on standby. Keep him alive.”
“I will,” she nodded, and Potter turned on his heel, sprinting across the dirty floor to the left until he disappeared from sight. Before Snape could form a coherent thought Granger turned her eyes to the space above his head and her brow creased. “Shit, you need another one already.”
Keeping the pressure on his neck Granger summoned a vial from her pocket and then bit out the stopper. She wrenched open his mouth with one hand and poured the contents down his throat. He gagged and sputtered, but he could feel the second blood replenisher taking effect as the black that had dotted his vision began to lessen and his heart continued to race. She summoned a new piece of cloth from her pocket, quickly swapping it with the blood-soaked one against his neck and throwing the ruined bundle to the side.
“I’m sorry about the syringe,” Granger said quietly as her eyes flicked back up the space above his head and she began to summon a collection of bottles from her pocket at an astounding rate. “But it was the only effective way to administer the antivenom given the hole in your neck.”
Despite the pain of the venom and the burning heat of the cure, Snape's mind began to clear as the fresh blood surged through his body and sweat formed across his skin. He blinked, a small groan leaving his lips as his heart started to constrict with pain. Granger’s eyes narrowed, her gaze shifting to the space above his head, and she frowned. With the swipe of her hand three very familiar looking diagnostic bubbles drifted down before him and he saw the flashing light to signify his heart failure.
“It seems that the venom isn’t our only issue, is it?” Granger said quietly, her eyes finally meeting his bleary gaze. “How much of that stuff have you had, Professor?”
Snape stiffened, his eyes narrowing at her as the hardened muscles around his heart began to scream with pain from the rapid pace that the antivenom required. How much did she know? What the hell had Nasir told her? The man had clearly taught her how to use the diagnostic charm but based on the confidence in which she moved and the speed at which she did it – she knew what she was doing, and this was clearly not the first time that she had treated an extensive injury.
It dawned on him as she quickly swapped the fabric against his neck once more and prepared to administer another blood replenisher that she was saving his life.
Granger – the annoying know-it-all whom he had tormented for years was trying to save his life. He stared at her, unable to process the realization as his brain finally looked at the stranger who was kneeling above him. This wasn’t Granger. This wasn’t even the same Granger that he had met in the hallway earlier tonight – she had changed yet again during the time in between and it made something in his heart ache with pain.
There was blood caked in her hair.
There was a dark emptiness in her eyes.
What the fuck had happened in the last hour to turn her into this?
His eyes creased in pain as she poured two more bottles of blood replenisher down his throat and then cast a set of muscle easing charms on his heart in an attempt to stop them from seizing.
Why is she doing this?
His lung started to deflate again, and Granger fought to keep her hold on his neck as she began the process of reinflating it once more.
Why is she bothering?
Her hands were shaking, and it was at that point that he noticed her right hand was covered in thin bandages with tiny red symbols. Sweat was gathering across her brow, it was creasing in frustration as his body continued to fail in more ways than she was able to manage. His vision started to blur, and his heart stuttered in his chest. His eyes flicked closed only to shoot wide open as a painful jolt shot through his chest. He groaned out in pain, more sweat pouring down his face as he realized that she had just restarted his heart.
Three more bottles of blood replenisher.
Two sweaters and an old t-shirt.
One more shock to the heart as the organ tried to give out and time crept by at an agonizingly slow pace.
His eyes dropped to the ground, scanning the small collection of potions that remained and he already knew that there wouldn't be enough. That was the downside about the antivenom… you had to wait until it had finished breaking down the venom within the body’s tissue before you healed the wounds. But during that time, the patient’s body spiked a fever, their heart raced 200 beats per minute and the blood was pumped and flushed from the individual multiple times. There was a reason why Arthur had been confined to St. Mungo's when he was treated and why the man had been constantly fed these potions.
This was never going to work.
She had to know that.
Her eyes glanced back to the diagnostic, and he saw her jaw clench.
Good, Snape thought as her eyes rapidly searched over the diagnostic once more. She knows.
She would give up now.
She would let him die in peace.
He waited, watching for her to drop the fabric pressed against his neck and admit defeat – but she didn’t.
“You’re bleeding out too fast, Professor,” Granger said quickly, summoning a new bottle from her pocket and biting out the cork. “I don’t have enough blood replenisher, so we need to slow the bleed.”
Without hesitating, she pulled the fabric away from his neck and dumped a vial of dittany over the wound. He could feel the skin and muscles stitching back together as a horrible sound tore from his lips. What was she doing? What the fucking hell was she doing?! He clenched his jaw in agony as his body convulsed against the tethers. Was she seriously going to waste dittany on a wound that wouldn’t heal?
“S-Stop,” Snape hissed, his voice coming out torn and jagged as his bleary eyes shifted up to meet her surprisingly calm gaze.
“Don’t talk – you’ll open the wound,” Granger replied, her low tone somewhat detached and void of the emotion that he was used to hearing in her voice.
Within another minute the wound on his neck reopened and she summoned yet another article of clothing to staunch the bleeding. His eyes began to burn, but this time – it didn’t have anything to do with the venom or the injuries to his body and it hit him in the chest like a physical blow.
He didn’t understand.
Why was she doing this?
His brain simply could not process what was happening.
She was kneeling in his blood. It had soaked through her pants. It covered her hands and body and yet she continued to pour bottle after bottle of blood replenisher down his throat and summon item after item of clothing from her pocket without slowing down. Without stopping. A wave of emotion burned through his heart like agony, and he felt his damaged soul breaking in his chest.
He couldn’t let her do this.
He wasn’t worth the effort.
“Le -t m - die,” he whispered hoarsely as she summoned another bottle from her pocket.
“No,” she said firmly, glancing down at him before she bit out the cork and dumped another batch of dittany over his neck and shoulder. Green smoke filled the air once more and Snape convulsed in pain as tears he could not control leaked from the corner of his eyes.
“W -hy,” he ground out, his right hand shifting through the pool of blood that surrounded them as he tried to use his arm. He wanted to stop her. He wanted to push her away but all he could manage was sliding the limb back and forth through the thick red liquid as he grimaced in pain.
“Because I haven’t heard from Harry yet and we may still need you,” Granger answered quickly. Her eyes traced over his diagnostics, and she cast another muscle easing charm over his heart before she summoned another article of clothing and pressed it against his neck. “Stop moving – you’ll make it worse. Besides – I have questions for you that I want answered. I know that you gave my wand to Nasir to have him return it to me. I know what happened with Susan – and I know that you didn’t even try to attack us in that hallway.”
His eyes burned as she met his gaze and this time, he could see something behind the cold exterior. She summoned the last bottle of blood replenisher from the ground and poured it down his throat despite his protests before she closed the wound on his neck one last time. She made to summon another article of clothing from her pocket, but nothing came out and she froze for a fraction of a second before her hand flew to her arm and she rapidly tapped it three times. Then she split the right sleeve off her sweater and pressed it to his neck.
No.
Snape tasted bile at the back of his throat as the extent of the injury to her arm came into view. The thin white bandages that covered her hand didn’t stop at the wrist – they wound all the fucking way up her arm past the elbow. His eyes creased as her gaze shifted back to the diagnostic and he knew that she was counting the minutes. There wouldn’t be enough. It wouldn’t last. She had already used her last bottle of blood replenisher and his racing heart was about to drain his body once more. Her eyes narrowed as she clenched her jaw, then something flashed behind her eyes, and she stuck the sleeve of her sweater to his neck with a tether and dropped her hold.
Before he even realized what she was doing – she had already cut away her left sleeve, stuck it to his neck and drawn out a silver dagger. His eyes widened in shock as she cut a thin line into her arm just below the jagged red text that littered her skin. But he didn’t get a chance to read it, he didn’t even get a chance to protest it as Granger quickly healed the wound into a clean silver line and then cast the blood compatibility test.
“No,” he rasped, struggling against the tethers that pinned him to the ground as the yellow flame ignited in the air before them.
Granger watched it warily, her eyes rapidly shifting between the test and the diagnostic as the venom in his body grew closer and closer to zero. The test flickered three times and Snape felt his heart plummet into his stomach as it burst bright green on the fourth and final flick.
No.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no!
“S-St -op,” Snape whispered, the word burning from his throat like a sickening wheeze as Granger reached into her pocket once more and pulled out a long tube sealed in a plastic bag.
He couldn’t do this.
He couldn’t let her.
Didn’t she know that he was supposed to die?
He didn’t want it.
His eyes grew glassy as they spotted with black. He had already bled through all her clothes and the sleeves of her sweater. He had already used up all her potions, he had already taken her time and energy and now she was hooking herself up to give him her blood. A strangled noise left his throat as his eyes traced over her battered form and he tried to think as his mind started to falter.
What had happened to her?
She was thinner, but her arms were unmistakably toned with muscles. Tiny silver scars dotted across her skin and as her arm shifted the red letters came back into view, and he felt his heart stutter in his chest.
MUDBLOOD.
It was carved into her skin. Deep – as if she were a fucking jack-o-lantern.
Jagged. Red. Angry. It spanned from wrist to elbow. It was violent. It was permanent. And he knew exactly which sadistic bitch had done it to her. But as he stared at it, his heart began to sink.
How was it any different than what he had done?
A nauseous wave of guilt surged through his chest as his heart began to falter. He might not have ever physically hurt her – but he may as well have. All he had ever done was make her life miserable. She had been the best in her class. She had been the most promising student that Hogwarts had seen in decades and how had he rewarded her? By tormenting her, belittling her and picking apart every little thing that she did.
And for what reason?
To maintain his act as a Death Eater? He nearly scoffed at the poorly contrived excuse that he had at one point allowed himself to use. It was a lie, and he knew it. So was it to get back at Potter? Maybe, he was a degenerate asshole and he had wanted Potter and those around him to be as unhappy as possible. Especially since she too was just another reminder of all his failures. Or had he simply used her as a stress release because he was so fucking angry all the time over what his life had become and disgusted by his own incredible failures that he took it out on her, her peers and everyone else around him?
That one hit hard… because that was the truth.
His vision blurred further, and he closed his eyes as they burned with tears of shame.
She deserved better than this. They all deserved better than this. She shouldn’t even be here. She should have left with Potter – she should have left him to fucking die like he was supposed to. He could feel his mind starting to slip as his heart began to slow. He could taste blood at the back of his mouth as his punctured lung failed once more and his chest started to collapse.
“Ple -ase s-stop,” Snape gurgled the words as he gagged on the blood that was collecting in his throat. “D -on’t d-deserv – t-to li-ve.”
“I doubt that Professor – but we can figure that out later. In the meantime, you need to stop talking.”
Her voice came from somewhere above him and he felt his lung reinflate as something warm tingled in his arm. His eyes fluttered open, but he couldn’t see her clearly anymore as the muscles around his heart began to seize.
This was never going to work, and the truth was – he wasn’t sure that he wanted it to.
He wanted to die.
This had always been his plan; he didn’t know anything else and she should have left him long ago.
His bleary gaze shifted over her fuzzy features, but she wasn’t looking at him and when he felt the air leaving his weakened lungs once more his chin dropped against his chest.
Merlin, I have done so much wrong.
His left hand twitched in the pool of blood by his side, and he forced it to move – sliding it through the cold thick slick until the back of his fingers brushed against her knee and he felt her gaze lock to his face. It took everything that he had to raise his head to meet her gaze. His neck screamed in pain. His eyes stung with tears. His vision faded in and out and spotted with black until he forced himself to blink and her brown eyes briefly came into focus.
“I’m sorry,” Snape whispered, the words barely audible as his single functioning lung refused to inhale. “F-For everything.”
It would mean nothing to her – but he meant it.
He felt it stronger than any feeling he had felt before in his life.
It echoed through the broken remains of his blackened and destitute soul like an agonizing vibration. He would never be able to make things right. He would never be able to undo the horrible things that he had done in his life, and he would never be able to save his own soul. He knew that.
He wasn’t trying to.
He deserved this. It was inescapable. He’d been a liar, a bastard and a bitter and miserable man for nearly the entirety of his life, and no matter how hard she tried, he had always been destined to die in this war and he fully accepted that. But in his last moments, as his final seconds ticked by, he could leave this earth knowing that he had been honest – that he had voiced the words that were being screamed from the very bottom of his shattered heart.
His vision flickered once more, and her warm brown eyes became unfocused as black shadows crept in. His heart stuttered in his chest and the painful feeling in his limbs disappeared as it was replaced with the gentle flutter of warmth.
The cold was gone.
He could feel the muscles through his body growing limp as his mind began to drift.
So this is death, Snape thought as his vision flickered out, silence filled his ears and his heart stopped beating. Finally…
This chapter is dedicated to Pepper_Imps.
Thank you for joining our little online community – it has honestly been a joy to get to know you. You are such a wonderful person, and your kindness knows no bounds. Thank you for being so supportive and so helpful to everyone in AFON. I’m really lucky to have gotten the chance to meet you <3
Know that you are loved and appreciated.
-x-x-
Warnings:
This chapter contains: blood, violence, descriptions of gruesome injuries, depressing and borderline suicidal thoughts, mentions of past abuse (child), emotional anguish and trauma, as well as other not so awesome things.
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Delicate.
Vulnerable.
Heartbroken.
Remorseful.
None of those were words that Hermione would have previously associated with the tall, dangerous, cold, callous, and calculating man who was her potions professor for five years. Never in her life would she have believed that the man was anything other than an asshole. An empty, bitter, and resentful being with a twisted moral compass who had no issues tormenting those weaker than him. Who took joy in harassing students, making her life miserable and agonizing those around her.
Professor Snape was a dick.
It was an unquestionable and undeniable fact that was known not only throughout the school but throughout the wizarding world of Britain. He was not a nice man. He was not a role model or a hero. He was and would forever be a bully, a bastard and a bitter man.
And yet, when his blood-soaked hand had gently brushed her knee, and his final words were an apology that left his lips like a broken whisper of agonized pain – she felt her body grow still, and her heart stutter in her chest as his eyes drifted closed.
She didn’t know him.
And looking at him now as he lay slumped against the dirty wall of the Shrieking Shack in a pool of his own blood, she was certain that she had never known the man.
No one had.
And they had been wrong.
Everything that they thought they knew about him was true, in a sense, and this moment did not change the past – but Snape was also so much more than what he had outwardly shown to the world. She had watched decades of pain pour from his eyes as he looked up at her in misery. He was everything that she thought he was – but he was also lonely, scared, dangerously skinny, and layered with years’ worth of damage caused by potion abuse and poor diet.
She could see it on the diagnostic charm that hovered above his motionless body, and she knew that this man had been barely holding it together for months. Possibly years. He was tainted with dark magic; she could feel it wafting off of him in waves. His soul was damaged like hers; and as her gaze slowly trailed down his blood-covered neck, past the final remains of her shirt that she had tugged off and used to stop the bleeding, down to the pale white skin of his exposed chest – they locked to the blood-red and dark black symbols that marred his skin, and she knew, his soul was not only damaged… it was broken.
Literally.
She didn’t know how. She didn’t know why. She didn’t know if he had consented to it when it had happened – but she knew who had done it, and she felt her throat tighten in pain. She could have counted all his ribs without a spell. She could see every muscle across his abdomen because there wasn’t an ounce of fat on his body. She could see his faint heartbeat throbbing beneath his skin, and – across his chest and arms – she could see an endless collection of scars.
They covered his chest. They marked his neck. They ran down his arms. It seemed like everywhere that she had cut away fabric from his body they appeared like white, silver and red reminders of a past that he had tried to hide beneath thick black billowing robes.
Some looked self-inflicted.
Which made her stomach turn and her jaw clench even harder. She wasn’t sure what to make of that – she couldn’t picture this man, who had been the embodiment of fear and terror in her childhood, being in so much pain and anguish that he would cut deep gouges into his own skin along his forearm. Yet there they were, in long thin lines that had faded over time.
One scar looked like it came from muggle surgery – he’d had his appendix removed. Several others looked like battle scars or perhaps the remnants of torture. Others, which she found far more disturbing than anything else she had seen on him, she knew were from abuse. She may have never experienced it herself as a child, her parents had never physically laid a hand on her, but she wasn’t stupid. Over the course of her life, she had read and researched nearly everything – and there had been a girl at her secondary school who had those same scars.
Cigarette burns.
Someone had used him as an ashtray. Someone had broken his bones repeatedly, to the point that a few of them were permanently damaged, and two of his ribs were crooked and bent the wrong way. This man’s body was littered with evidence of extensive abuse and a history of violence, and she doubted that anyone had ever cared. And while it didn’t change what he had done or justify who he had become – it did fill in a lot of gaps and answered a lot of questions that she didn’t even realize she had.
He had tormented them verbally and harassed them endlessly, but he had never laid a hand on them or physically hurt them – and looking at him now – she wondered if this was why. She wondered who had done it. Was it his parents? Both of them – or just one? What had his childhood been like, and why on earth hadn’t someone done something when he showed up at Hogwarts and completed his initial medical exam? Or had he skipped the exam because he didn’t want people to know? He certainly wasn't the first child to suffer abuse, and learning to hide it was often one of the first things that kids did.
She felt her rune grow heavier as more and more questions circled her mind, and she longed to reach out for Harry – but the bond was closed, and he could not hear her calls. He had kept it open and maintained a constant stream of communication with her up until he entered the pensieve within the Headmaster’s office. She didn’t know if he had shut the bond intentionally or if it simply occurred on its own because he was inside the pensieve within someone else's memories and the combined magic somehow blocked the bond. Either way, his vitals and the reassuring sound of his voice in her mind were gone.
And she hated it.
This was what she had done to him when she had cast her fiendfyre and shut him out. Being on the receiving end of it now, she understood why he had nearly exploded at her when she first opened the bond. It was agony. Sitting in the quiet, waiting for the connection to open. Not knowing if he was okay or what the fuck was going on – and without the other vital signals in her mind, she felt entirely alone. Only the dull and erratic thrum of Malfoy’s heartbeat filled her mind, and it did absolutely nothing to calm her nerves.
At the sound of the main door banging open, Hermione quickly staggered to her feet, swaying as the blood rushed from her head and the tube connected to her arm that was still feeding Snape life pulled against her skin. Her wand instinctively came up as she narrowed her gaze, a spell on the tip of her tongue as she stepped in front of the thin and battered man on the ground.
“Hermione.”
“Oh, thank god,” she murmured, dropping her wand to her side as a deep exhale left her lungs. She felt her legs shake weakly as the tall figure that had burst into the disgusting shack quickly closed the distance between them.
“Are you okay?” Nasir’s deep baritone resonated through the air, his eyes flooding with concern as his gaze shifted over her blood-covered body.
“Yes,” Hermione said weakly, reaching for the plastic tube still connected to her arm.
She had just been about to take it out before he came bursting into the small ramshackle house. She barely managed to pull the needle from her vein and meet his gaze again before a diagnostic spell appeared above her shoulder, and his hands were on her arms. His dark gaze was glinting, clinical, and yet not entirely detached as it scanned over her small frame looking for injury.
“It’s not my blood,” Hermione reassured him, not at all caring that she was standing before him in only her bra after using the final remains of her shirt to buy a few crucial extra seconds and prevent the unconscious man behind her from bleeding out. She knew Nasir better than that – he didn’t even seem to register her appearance as he quickly pulled out a blood replenisher and handed it to her. “I ran out of potions.”
She took the vial from him, downing the entire thing and shuddering at the heat that flooded her body as the potion rushed through her veins. She could feel it instantly taking effect, replicating her blood as the dizziness that had slowly been encasing her body faded away, and she stood much more soundly on her feet. She didn’t question it as the blood that covered her torso and arms began to vanish and Nasir checked to make sure that she was indeed uninjured.
“That was risky,” Nasir said darkly, his eyes flicking to the needle. He gently took her shaking left arm, and she saw his eyes crease in concentration as he examined it.
“I know,” Hermione agreed, nodding as she let him continue his inspection. She tossed the now empty blood replenisher vial into the pile with the others that littered the floor.
“I should have come sooner,” Nasir said, dropping his hold on her left arm to then reach for her right. He squeezed each bandaged finger briefly, looking for her confirmation that she could still feel it before moving on to look at the rest of the arm. It was still stark white and perfectly clean and dry – unlike her left arm, that was wet and stained with Snape’s blood. He prodded her wrist twice, checking the movement of the joint before his gaze shifted back up to her diagnostic. “I was finishing with the defences to the south, but I should have come sooner.”
“No.” Hermione shook her head, shifting her arm within Nasir’s grasp so she could grip his forearm as she met his gaze seriously.
Blunted as her emotions were right now, she did not want him to blame himself for this. This had been her decision – she was the one who had told him that she had it under control because she didn’t want to take him away from his task.
Keeping Snape alive was important, but he ranked lower than preparing the school and getting the defences set up. Nasir had messaged her and offered to come sooner, but she knew that he had apparated Harry to the Headmaster’s office to save him time – and thus, the tall man had already lost several minutes from helping the school prepare. She hadn’t wanted to waste any more of it because the school needed him, and she knew that she had the situation under control. She had called him the second that she started giving Snape blood, and she had been extremely careful about how much she gave him – watching her own levels to ensure that they didn’t dip too low.
“I told you not to come. I told you I had this, and I did.” Hermione squeezed the man’s forearm reassuringly. “I read your research notes, remember? There are potential benefits to giving him some of my blood ahead of just dumping more replenisher down his throat. Especially given the pre-existing state of his body. I called you exactly when I needed you, and you came. I’m okay, Nasir – I promise.”
He stared at her, his dark eyes flicking over her frame one last time before he finally nodded and cancelled the diagnostic charm. His eyes then shifted to look over the diagnostic charm that hovered above Snape. It was blinking with several warnings, none of which she could do anything about at this moment.
“He still may not recover from this, Hermione,” Nasir said as his eyes dropped down to the motionless man, scanning across his body with the same clinical and assessing gaze he had viewed her with. He stiffened almost imperceptibly when his eyes shifted over the exposed symbol on Snape’s chest – the one that matched his own – and if she hadn’t been holding his forearm at that moment, she wouldn’t have felt it.
“I know.” Hermione nodded, letting go of his arm to move back toward Snape. She bent down with a small groan and carefully removed the needle from Snape’s arm. “And if he does, honestly, I’m not sure that he’ll be happy about it. He asked me to stop. He wanted to die, Nasir – and it was as if his body was intentionally giving up while I tried to heal him. I had to nearly beat it into submission just to keep his lung inflated and his heart beating.”
She quickly gathered the blood-filled tube, pausing to turn and look up at Nasir.
“You did it – didn’t you?” Hermione asked.
The words came out quiet, and even through the thick layer of fog that seemed to blunt her emotions, she felt her heart throb painfully as she looked up at her mentor. Maybe it was the exhaustion, or maybe it was the physical pain that ached through her body, but she felt like she could feel more emotion now than she could immediately after the fire. She watched his blank expression, and she knew that it was forced. She had known him long enough to be familiar with his indifference. She knew his eyes, and right now – he was trying to appear indifferent, but she could tell that he wasn’t truly.
There were deep-seated emotions flickering behind his eyes, and he was trying to hide them. Had he not been so tired, so worn, and so beaten like the rest of them – and had she not been so familiar with him – he might have been successful. But she could see it. And she knew that this man was attached to Snape in more ways than one, whether he wanted to say it or not.
“These symbols,” Hermione said, watching as his dark gaze glinted in the low flicker of blue light. “You carved these runes.”
“We can talk about it later,” Nasir said it evenly, but the tone was unmistakably finite, and she knew that the conversation was over. He tore his eyes away from Snape to meet her gaze. “We need to go – we’re running out of time.”
“I know,” Hermione said, standing and tossing the used tube to the side, onto the pile of blood-soaked shirts and clothes that sat in the corner.
There was so much blood in this tiny room she could smell it, and she knew that it would permanently stain the floor of the shack. She watched as Nasir rapidly vanished the red from his hands and then summoned a white dress shirt from his pocket. Then she followed him away from the deep pool of blood over to a dry patch of floor. She vanished the remaining bits of blood from her body the best that she could – but there was no spell in the world that would fix her pants. They were drenched in it, hanging low on her hips, heavy with the weight of the thick red liquid.
They would need to be burned, as would the rest of the articles in this shack, but that would come later.
Assuming that they lived past the next hour.
She let out a quiet exhale as she tested the bond with Harry once more, and it continued to remain firmly closed in her mind. She tried to ignore the discomfort that twisted in her gut from the silence and reminded herself that Harry was safe inside the school, and she would hear from him as soon once he had returned from the pensieve. She took the shirt that Nasir held out to her without question. He must have, correctly so, assumed that she had nothing left to wear in her purse. She thanked him as she quickly pulled it on, and he averted his gaze to check the next stream of incoming messages.
The fabric was exceptionally soft and not at all what she had been expecting. It was light – and yet there was an underlying weight and warmth to it that left her feeling secure and safe. It was clear that he charmed his clothes, extensively, because she could feel the magic laced within the fabric of the garment as it touched her skin. She tried to do up the buttons, but her hands were still shaking from blood loss and fatigue, and she struggled to jam the white discs into their tiny holes. She could feel the frustration and agitation building in her chest under the heavy weight of her rune, and she groaned out in annoyance when the shirt refused to respond to the charm that she silently cast to do up the buttons.
Evidently, Nasir’s clothes did not listen to strangers. At her annoyed noise his gaze shifted away from his forearm back to her, and his deep voice filled the air.
“Here.” He gestured for her to step closer to him, and she didn’t hesitate. There was no time, and she easily admitted defeat. In the battle of buttons – the buttons won, and she dropped her hands to her side as she shifted before him and he reached his single hand out toward the stubborn shirt. “The multiple charms on the fabric make them finicky, and they tend not to respond to magic.”
She stood there in silence for a second, watching as he carefully and meticulously did up the first two buttons on his shirt.
“We can’t leave him here, Nasir,” Hermione said as he quickly did up the third one. She felt like he was buttoning her into a tent. The fabric dwarfed her small frame, hanging loose around her body, nearly reaching her knees, and it made her realize just how much smaller she was compared to him. “Harry told me to keep him alive – we might still need him. What if someone comes in here?”
“I can’t apparate him, Hermione,” Nasir said as he did up the sixth button, his motions growing quicker and quicker along with his words. “It would undoubtedly kill him, and he is barely hanging on as it is. If we move him, we need to do it manually but we don’t have the time to do that, and there is nowhere safe to bring him. We need to get back to the castle.”
“We do,” Hermione agreed, nodding and watching his fingers shift to the eighth button. “But there has to be something that we can do. Is there anyone from the castle that we can spare to put on guard duty? Have them come down here to keep watch? McGonagall would be ideal because she knows him, but we’ll need her when the attack starts, and she will be busy controlling the wards – but could she send a house elf?”
Nasir stilled, his hand lingering on the final button below her collar as his dark gaze flicked up to meet hers, and she could practically see his mind racing.
“The house elves still aren’t listening to her fully – but the Malfoy boy summoned some of his to help with the evacuation,” Nasir said as his gaze flicked over to the diagnostic that hovered above Snape then he did up the last button and straightened before her. “You tagged him, right? Ask him to send one here to watch over Severus – it’s the best we can spare without sacrificing the school’s defences. We can tag him as well, and I will monitor his vitals.”
“Wait,” Hermione faltered, her head shaking as she looked up at him. She had just been reaching to remove her wand holster and dagger, but his words still her movements. “Malfoy summoned his house elves to help – Draco Malfoy?”
“People don’t always become their parents, Hermione,” Nasir said, his deep voice quiet as he quickly pulled out a pair of dark slacks from his pocket. “Though Mr. Malfoy came exceptionally close to following his father. But yes, he summoned them. Thomas notified Shacklebolt about it, and they’ve been working to apparate the students out while they continue leading groups through the vanishing cabinet.”
“Why would he do it?” Hermione asked, disbelief lacing her voice as she set the two holsters and her wand on the dusty broken table by her side. She could feel Malfoy’s vitals in her mind as she unlaced her boots and kicked them off. They were uneven and stressed – but they had been that way since the moment that she tagged him.
“Getting the students out was taking too long,” Nasir answered simply, his gaze dropping back to his tags as she reached for the button of her ruined pants and began to take them off.
“Isn’t that a risk?” Hermione asked. She gave up trying to shove the wet, sticky fabric down her legs and instead just split the seams and tore them away. She tossed the disgusting jeans to the side onto the pile of other clothes before she vanished the blood from her legs and cast a few quick cleaning charms.
“Potentially,” Nasir agreed, quickly handing her the new pants as he turned to examine the diagnostic above Snape and she rapidly pulled the clean pants on. They too, were heavily laced with magic, and she could feel the temperature of her body regulating as she tugged the soft fabric up her legs. “But Mr. Malfoy has insisted that his mother is not working with Tom, and he only summoned the house elves that serve Narcissa Black.”
Hermione paused, Nasir’s pants halfway up her thighs as her brain raced. She looked up to the tall man once more. He was reading a string of incoming messages on his arm.
“But Malfoy isn’t a Black,” Hermione said, resuming her motions and tugging the pants the rest of the way up her legs before doing up the zipper. She forced her shaking hands to do up the button at the top – it was easier because it wasn’t so small – but the pants were way too big on her. If she let go, they would surely fall down, and the fabric of the long legs was all but pooling around her sock feet. “Malfoy is a Malfoy – that’s how the pureblood lines work.”
She may not have been born into the magical word, and she certainly wasn’t a pureblood – but Hermione understood how bloodlines worked.
She had refused to be uninformed while at school, and she hadn’t wanted to give anyone any excuse to make fun of her or give her a hard time more than they already did. It was why she had known what the slur mudblood meant in second year when Harry did not. She had found it while researching the magical world and looking up pureblood traditions in the library – because she never wanted to be caught off guard or made to look like an idiot. Combine that with all the research that she did on house elves in fourth year, and Hermione was nearly an expert.
She knew damn well that house elves served family names, and when a household had enough of them, some elves would only serve particular people within that family. When purebloods married, the elves from each home would come together, but they still only ever truly served the family member from their family name – unless they were inherited via death like Kreacher was to Harry.
So in the case of Narcissa Malfoy, until the day that she died, her house elves served her and her alone. Draco Malfoy and his father would only ever have partial control over them – which would typically be more than enough for most purebloods because most purebloods viewed house elves as useless trash, and they didn’t fully understand just how much the creatures were capable of. Hardly any pureblood families let the creatures leave their property, and they never used them for apparition, so they wouldn’t know that they weren’t capable of commanding it.
“Malfoy would never be able to summon them here. That’s beyond the bounds of his control unless–” Hermione froze, her eyes narrowing in thought as she looked up at Nasir and her mouth fell open in disbelief once more.
It was like someone had just hit her over the head and all the little puzzle pieces that she had been collecting throughout the war fell into place. It had happened with Snape. It had happened with the man before her. And now, it was happening again with Narcissa Malfoy.
“Unless she allowed it,” Hermione finished quietly, not moving as Nasir reached for her and began adjusting the clothes to fit her better now that she was fully dressed. She could feel his magic through the fabric as it shrunk and tapered, forming around her like a cocoon. He adjusted the sleeves so they stopped just below her wrists. He adjusted the neckline so the top button sat just above her topmost scar. The pants became shorter, the legs skinnier – she dropped her hands to her side again as she stared up at him in confusion. “Did you know?”
“No,” Nasir answered, reaching up to adjust the collar of her shirt. His movements were still quick – neither one of them had slowed down since the moment that he had shown up, and in some ways, even though her feet were planted to the ground, she felt like she was running a marathon.
He folded the stiff collar down, smoothed it into place, then added a sticking charm. But his hand lingered on her shoulder. His dark gaze met her eyes, and she felt his thumb graze against the skin on her neck. The touch was subtle, soft, and completely out of character. Nasir never touched her unnecessarily. He rarely touched her at all, except to heal her or train her, and this was not that. Yet the brush had been so light that if not for the odd sensation that fluttered across her skin and shot down her spine as it happened – she doubted that she would have felt it.
Her brow creased as the warm and unfamiliar heat settled into her skin then vanished. But before she could even open her mouth to say anything, Nasir gripped her shoulder tight in a reassuring gesture, then his deep baritone filled the dim room once more.
“And that is the truth, Hermione,” Nasir said as he dropped his hold on her and took a step back. “I did not know about Narcissa, but it is my understanding that Thomas and Shacklebolt had other reasons to believe Mr. Malfoy’s claim aside from his word, though they have since added their own monitoring charms to the boy. Regardless, Narcissa Malfoy has given Draco full control of her house elves – they are here, and they are evacuating students at an impressive rate.”
A strange noise left her lips, and her chest constricted in pain. She found it hard to believe. Her gut instinct was to reject the words like she was sure everyone else at the school had done the second that Malfoy offered to summon house elves to help with the evacuation. She didn’t want to believe it was possible. She didn’t want to appreciate him or his family – or to imagine that they could be anything other than the vile, pompous assholes with ass-backward views that she knew them as.
She imagined that how she felt right now was very much how Harry had felt when she suggested that Snape might still be helping them. His relationship with the potions professor was worse than her own; it always had been. And this, accepting Nasir’s words regarding the Malfoys – it was fucking hard. With the weight on her chest, the damage to her body, and the dead emptiness that she felt in her soul, she was struggling to process this information worse than anything else that had happened since finding out Harry was a Horcrux.
And yet…
She could not deny it either.
There were too many pieces that she could see fitting together. The way Luna and Dean had insisted that the woman kept them alive during their imprisonment. The way the woman had given Hermione the crimson liquid to keep her heart beating when she nearly died – and how she had called Hermione by name, quietly, but didn’t give her up during the interrogation.
Narcissa had been the one to plead with Bellatrix to summon Snape to confirm their identities. Narcissa had been the one to prevent her sister from summoning Voldemort in the first place when they arrived. Narcissa had been the one to tell Harry not to waste his energy in the dungeon because it was warded against magic. Narcissa had been the one to silence Ron when he screamed for her as Bellatrix touched her. Narcissa had been the one to say that they were to be kept undamaged. Narcissa had been the one to try and curb Bellatrix’s lust for blood, and in the end – as they made their escape – the woman had stood there, stock-still, wand at her side as blood and organs poured over her perfect boots.
She had watched them leave.
She had done nothing to stop it.
And – Narcissa had been the one to collect her wand.
Hermione could taste bile at the back of her throat again as everything churned like an unstable mess in her heart. She hated it. She hated this. And she knew that she would never know for certain if the woman had done those things because she was truly against Voldemort or if she had simply done them to save her own skin because at some point, she realized that she was on a sinking ship and she wanted a way out. Either way, whatever the reason, her involvement – much like Snape’s – was impossible to ignore. And impossible to deny.
“Fine,” Hermione said darkly, knowing that much like everything else that had happened tonight, they didn’t have any other choice. Forcing herself to swallow the uneasy feeling in her body as she tugged the right sleeve up her arm and brought her trembling left fingers to the red tag.
Hr–Malfoy, I need a house elf.
She felt the blonde’s heart rate increase in her mind as Nasir summoned her purse from the floor and gathered her dagger and wand from the dusty table.
M–Where?
The reply had come in less than three seconds, and Nasir was already shoving more potion bottles into her purse from his pockets while carefully levitating Snape from the ground.
Hr–The Shrieking Shack
She paused for a fraction of a second, then added.
Hr–Send additional potions as well
Hr–And fabric, any kind is fine
Hr–The elf will be here all night
Hr–So make sure it’s someone you can spare
There was a brief pause, and her heart beat twice in her chest as Nasir moved Snape’s motionless body across the room into the small bedroom on the right.
M–Anything else?
She pondered it quickly then responded as Nasir lowered Snape onto the old moth-eaten mattress.
Hr–No
M–Okay
There was another pause. Malfoy’s heart raced erratically like it had been all night, and then her arm buzzed once more.
M–I’m sending Daisy
M–She will follow your orders
Hermione let out a tight sigh as she closed her eyes, the urge to vomit rolling through her stomach as she forced herself to send the next message.
Hr–Thank you
She didn’t want to do it. In fact, she would have rather cut her left arm off than ever thank Draco Malfoy for anything. But she needed her arm for battle, and the truth was – underneath the cold hollow in her chest that left her feeling void and disconnected, she knew that thanking the blonde was important. It was the same as with Ron – why telling him that what he had done for Ava and Liza to make them feel included was invaluable.
She hated Draco Malfoy.
Probably more than anyone else, but if he was willing to help them, she would take it. And if she didn’t show any sort of appreciation or tell him when he had done a good job or done something right – he would have zero incentive to want to do it again. Yes, Malfoy was afraid of her. She knew that. She had seen it in his eyes when she had tagged him in the Room of Requirements and threatened to tear his body to shreds if he betrayed them.
And that threat was still very real.
But fear only got one so far. Fear didn’t gain one true loyalty, and it did not incite change or inspire growth. It was why Voldemort’s followers were unreliable, why he needed so many of them, and why they had started to flee the school the second the battle shifted favour. He did not have many true loyal followers. He had an army of terrified foot soldiers who would abandon him at the first sign of failure. She refused to be anything like that abomination, so regardless of how dull her emotions were and how dead her heart felt – she would be better than that.
Otherwise, what was the point?
She felt Malfoy’s vitals flicker in her head the second the message went through. It was as if his heart had literally stuttered in his chest while reading her words, and she could feel his stress and anxiety spiking worse than it had all night. There was a beat of silence, then to her disbelief, her arm buzzed once more.
M–You’re welcome
She glanced at it only for a second as the sickness in her gut twisted once more. Then she shoved it aside and buried it down as she tugged the sleeve back over her bandaged arm.
“He is as stable as possible,” Nasir said as she moved through the main room and into the small bedroom by his side. She summoned her dragon hide boots and quickly put them on, lacing them up tight as Nasir cast several balls of light into the air and glanced at his arm again. “What did he say?”
“He’s sending Daisy,” Hermione replied, adding several sticking charms to the laces before she tugged her new pants back into place. “I asked him to send some potions as well.”
“Good.” Nasir nodded, handing her back her dagger. She took it and re-fastened it to her leg before taking her wand holster from him and doing the same. “The final defences are set – Shacklebolt is gathering the rest of those willing to fight in the main courtyard and dividing them into squads. I told him we are on our way – once we get there, we will re-group and finalize our strategy. We’ll have about fifteen to twenty minutes before our time is up. Any word from Harry?”
“Not yet,” Hermione shook her head, but she wasn’t able to say anything else because a loud crack split the air, and they both turned to see a tiny house elf appear in the center of the main room.
She was smaller than any others that Hermione had seen. Her eyes were exceptionally large, but her ears were slightly less floppy, and she was carrying a large bag. She looked young, and she instantly flinched at the sight of all the blood that doused the floor. Her eyes grew wide with concern, then her gaze shifted over to Hermione and Nasir – and she bowed.
“Master says that I am to assist the Miss,” the small elf said, her voice shaking with nerves as she slowly straightened once more. She was shifting around on her feet like she was trying not to stand in any filth – which was impossible given the state of the shack. “Daisy will be doing as the Miss says. And I has the potions and the fabric that Master said Miss has requested.”
The small elf moved toward them, holding out the bag as she glanced nervously between them.
“Thank you, Daisy,” Hermione said as Nasir shifted forward to take the bag from the creature. “You see that man on the bed there.”
Hermione turned and pointed to Snape who was lying unconscious as the three diagnostic bubbles circled above him and flashed with multiple bright colours.
“Yes, Miss.” The elf nodded. “Daisy knows Headmaster Snape – he would come by to visit sometimes. He knows the Master and is a friend.”
“Well, he’s very injured,” Hermione said quietly, attempting to make her voice sound less cold as she squatted down, so she was nearer to eye level with the elf. “Too injured for us to move him. So I need you to watch him and keep him safe – and you are not to tell anyone who he is, where he is, or what you are doing here. Not even your Master. If anyone comes in here besides me, Harry Potter, Nasir, Professor McGonagall or Mr. Shacklebolt from the school – protect him and get him out – do you understand?”
“Yes, Miss.” Daisy nodded.
“Good.” Hermione nodded. “If any of his wounds open up – use the fabric that you brought to help stop the bleeding and use the potions that you brought to heal him. We’ll only take a few for ourselves. Do everything that you can to keep him alive, understand? And do not leave his side. He is important to this fight, and we need him.”
“Yes, Miss.” Daisy nodded again, her bright blue eyes locking to Snape’s motionless form. “He is important to the Master too. Daisy will keep him safe.”
The small elf shifted across the rest of the room, making her way over to the bed and stopping right next to it to eye the diagnostic charm. Hermione didn’t know if Daisy could read it, but she straightened from the ground just the same and stepped toward Nasir again.
“Here.” He handed her her restocked purse, and she quickly stuffed it into her pants pocket, carefully tethering it and sticking it into place. “You have six bottles of blood replenisher now, three vials of dittany, four strength potions and one vial of the experimental potion. Don’t take it unless you absolutely have to, Hermione. You’re already pushing the limits.”
“I won’t,” Hermione agreed, holstering her wand on her calf. “Did you take some for yourself?”
“I restocked back at the school,” Nasir confirmed, setting the bag down on the bed for Daisy to use if needed. “Give me your arm.”
He reached for her right forearm, and she gave it to him freely, watching as he pushed the white sleeve up out of the way and then tapped the white tag that acted as their private channel.
“I grabbed one of the spare tags from your purse and tagged Severus,” Nasir said evenly, his dark gaze focused on her tag as he concentrated on synching them. “I’ve fed his vitals through to mine. I’ll keep an eye on him.”
“Thank you,” Hermione said, feeling her stomach knot under the heaviness in her chest as she took her arm back and shoved the sleeve back down. Nasir went back to fiddling with his own tags – probably synching up the last of the vitals as she let out a quiet breath.
It went without saying why he did it, and she knew there was no point in arguing or asking him to feed the signals through to her tag because she already knew that he would refuse. And he would be right to do so. Adding Malfoy’s vitals to her mind was only just manageable, and she did not need the distraction of Snape’s weak heartbeat in her head.
‘Hermione? ’
“Harry?!” she said in surprise, her eyes growing wide as her heart pulsed. “Did you make it? Did you get to the pensieve? Did you watch them?”
She purposely spoke her questions out loud so she wouldn’t need to explain it to Nasir, and she instantly began assessing Harry’s vitals through the bond.
‘I did,’ Harry’s voice sounded hoarse in her mind, and the tension within his vitals was barely contained. She had expected him to be affected by whatever he might have seen, but she had not expected to feel a barely concealed rage that was burning through his mind like wildfire. It was livid – beyond any reasonable level of anger.
“Harry?” Hermione said tentatively, her own pulse picking up as her hands curled nervously into the fabric of her pants. “What was it – what did you see? What did he give you?”
‘Everything.’
The word came with a wave of emotion. She felt Harry’s burning rage flare one final time before the bond clenched tight, and he seemed to seal it all away so she was left only with the flutter of his heart in her mind.
“What do you mean by everything?” she whispered, feeling Nasir’s gaze on her temple as she spoke.
‘I’ll explain when I see you,’ Harry’s reply came back slowly, almost as if he was hesitating. ‘I’m on my way back to the front courtyard now – I’ll meet you there, okay?’
“Okay,” Hermione whispered, swallowing hard as she struggled to inhale.
She didn’t like this.
Just like how she hadn’t liked so many other things that he had done this evening and within the last forty-eight hours, she was once again left with a heavy and nervous feeling in her chest. The weight of her rune compounded. She could feel the dull tremor in her left arm getting worse as the hollow empty in her mind grew colder as she thought about everything that he had done.
How he had denied knowing he was a Horcrux. The way that he had been looking at her the past few days and the way that he had looked at her last night before she passed out from dreamless sleeping draught. How he had separated himself from her since arriving. The way that he had looked at Nasir as if unspoken words were passing between them. And the way that he had spoken to her as they navigated the chaos at the school.
Yet there was still nothing that she could directly call him out on. Everything he did was reasonable and calm – almost to the point of it being excessive. And it grated on her nerves and left her riddled with anxiety because her gut kept telling her that something wasn’t right – even though everyone around, namely Nasir and Harry, kept reassuring her that things were fine.
“Are you ready?”
Her eyes jerked away from the wall that she was staring at blankly, and she met the dark gaze of the man before her. His hand was outstretched between them. He was looking at her intensely like he often did, his eyes dark and glinting – and yet – her brow creased, and she felt her heart stutter.
What was that behind his gaze?
Was it concern?
Was it worry?
No – she had seen him worried before. She saw that emotion when he tended to her injuries after the fiendfyre, and his concern in that moment had been blatant. This was something else, and she couldn’t place it. It almost looked apprehensive, regretful, as if he was dreading what was coming next, but it disappeared nearly as quickly as it had flickered by and his gaze its usual controlled and indifferent state.
“Yes,” Hermione said slowly, her rough voice catching in her throat as she forced her fingers to uncurl from the fabric of her pants.
She straightened her spine and held his gaze. She didn’t know what was going on. Maybe Nasir truly was dreading what was to come because, as he had said, this would be their final battle. And maybe, it was somehow going to be even harder and more impossible than she already thought it would be.
But he had told her to trust him, and she did. So even though her stomach was twisting, even though her soul felt darker than ever, and even though the hairs on the back of her skull prickled in warning, she took his outstretched hand and followed him as he made for the main room to leave the Shrieking Shack.
She caught a glimpse of herself in a dirty, partially broken mirror that sat atop a crooked dresser in the small dim bedroom. The crack in the glass had cut down the center of her reflected face – making it look as if she were split in two. She had to stop herself from freezing mid-step as she took in the sight of her reflection.
She looked battered.
Worn. Violent. Hollow. Dangerous.
Nothing at all like her former self, and nothing like the person that she had seen in the mirror when she prepared for the Gringotts mission while tightly braiding her hair and securing it with charms. That same braid was still in place, but now it was covered in blood, dirt, and grime, and endless tendrils had pulled loose to hang around her face. In her borrowed clothes, she looked even more foreign. They fit her well considering that only moments ago, they had been four times her size and she was all but swimming in them.
Yet none of those things were what had nearly caused her to freeze mid-step.
It was the empty and haunted gaze that had stared back at her – the darkness that seemed to radiate from the very depths of her damaged soul. And – it was the mark that she could just barely see on her neck.
Ægishjálmr.
It was a deep crimson red and partially hidden beneath the grime that covered her skin.
But she saw it.
It extended from just below her jawline to her shoulder, disappearing under the collar and covering nearly the entire right side of her neck. She instantly knew what it was because it was located exactly where Nasir had stuck his tag and exactly where his thumb had brushed her skin a moment ago.
And the only word that filled her mind was why.
She felt her fingers reflexively slide between his long slender ones as they moved across the creaky wooden floor, and the realization hit her hard.
Her throat started to burn. Her heart faltered in her chest, and as she turned her head to look up at the tall mysterious man by her side, she held his hand tighter.
His eyes were dark, focused and glinting. After seeing the symbols on Snape’s chest – she understood now why he looked both familiar and yet entirely unique. Why his mannerisms felt so recognizable and yet were entirely his own. Why he had come back different, but the same. Still Nasir, yet something else, for he was an amalgamation of many parts, with very little of himself left.
She still knew nothing about him. She still had no idea where he had come from, what he had done or who he was. She didn’t even know his last name – or if he even had one. She didn’t know why he had agreed to help her, or what he would ask for when this was all over – if anything at all – or why he had picked her.
But she knew now what he had done when he stuck that thin piece of paper to her neck. What he had done when the burn washed over her body like a wave as she stood in the hallway of the school, and what he had done just moments ago when his thumb grazed her neck and the bizarre sensation sunk into her skin.
He hadn’t just tagged her.
He wasn’t just tracking her location.
He wasn’t just monitoring her vitals.
He had encased her body with blood magic – old magic – using a Viking symbol that wasn’t even part of traditional wizarding runes anymore. Ægishjálmr was rarely seen, and it had not been in practice for hundreds of years because no one knew how to use it anymore. But its meaning was well known:
The Helm of Awe – used to strike fear into the hearts of your enemies and provide protection in battle – and Nasir had just activated it.
The cold rain and wind ripped at her clothes as she stepped over the threshold of the Shrieking Shack into the darkness, yet she remained dry and warm by his side. The clothes she was wearing perfectly regulated her temperature, and she instantly understood why the man only ever wore his thin black outer robes. He didn’t need anything else.
They stopped five feet out the door, and his dark gaze finally shifted down to meet hers. She knew that he could see the endless streams of questions in her eyes as she stared up at him through the rain – completely lost for words – and yet he said nothing. And his gaze remained completely void of any flickering emotions.
Why?
Her eyes burned.
Why would he do this for me?
She swallowed, unable to look away from him or say a single word.
How had he done it?
Where on earth did he learn it?
And most importantly – what could she possibly give him in return for such a benevolent and uncharacteristically caring action?
It wasn’t something that you just did or gave out freely. The protection was permanent, and it had undoubtedly required a sacrifice on his part because that was how these things worked.
But still, he didn’t say a word. He didn’t even blink.
Instead, she felt his fingers shift against her skin as he gripped her hand tightly in return. Perfectly matching the pressure that she was maintaining on his hand as he took a step closer. Then, she felt a sharp tug behind her navel, and the violent and awful pull of his inner Hogwarts apparition took hold. The world began to spin, her stomach twisted with nausea, the air was crushed from her lungs, and they disappeared with an unbearable crack.
-x-x-
“YOU SENT POTTER AND GRANGER TO DESTROY HORCRUXES ON THEIR OWN?! – ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE!” Snape launched himself at Dumbledore’s portrait the second he appeared in the office and slammed his hands against the walls on either side of the frame.
The memories were whipping by, playing faster than real-time as if he were watching a film on fast forward.
“Do you even care what those things might do to them? Do you know the lingering effects of being exposed to them? What they’re capable of! One almost drowned Granger in a pond tonight!”
Everything shifted, and he was standing in a kitchen.
“Tobias, please stop! Stop! Stop it! He’s just a boy! Please, I–” the woman’s voice cut off, her head snapping to the side with a loud crack as a tall man with black hair struck her across the face.
The memory cut out just as the woman hit the ground. It was clear that Snape hadn’t intended to give it because it quickly morphed into something else.
Chatter filled the air, it was the hallways of Hogwarts, but Snape was walking down them as a student, a redhead close by his side. They were talking quietly, minding their own business, on their way to class or the library until something hit the back of Snape’s head, and he collapsed to the ground.
“JAMES!” The redhead’s furious voice cut through the air with venom as she rounded to face the four boys behind her who were laughing hysterically. “Stop being such a jerk!”
Everything shifted again. He was in a forest. One that looked familiar and made his skin crawl.
“Severus.”
The deep baritone was familiar, and he watched Nasir appear – yet the man looked empty, and so different from how Harry viewed him now.
“It’s been a long time – I admit that I never anticipated you calling me, especially now.”
“It has come to my attention that you are meeting with the Order tomorrow night,” Snape said. “To assess some injuries. I have some potions that will assist with that. And I need to request a favour.”
“A favour? What sort of favour could you possibly need me for – are you not well established within the Dark Lord’s ranks? Surely he would be able to grant you what you need.”
“I need you to heal the girl,” Snape said. “I will give you the potions required to do it, and I need you to return her wand.”
“Why?”
“They deserve a chance to have a life outside of war. They are – fascinating – despite the fact that I cannot stand either one of them, and it pains me to admit it – they do show potential. Given the chance – they could become something more. Possibly something great. The Dark Lord is an abomination who will do nothing but destroy the wizarding world and the knowledge within it, and while you may not care about such things – I do. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life Nasir; I don’t want to make another one. I would like to see the Dark Lord fail before I inevitably die at the end of this war – and in order to do that, I need Granger functional and healed so she can help Potter.”
Nasir’s eyes remained cold and blank. Detached as if he were nothing but a hollow shell.
“Why should I? I have no stake in this blood feud – I told Albus that long ago, surely he told you I have no interest in his schemes or the battles of men.”
“Because I think you will find them interesting. I think you will find that they are worth saving. They’ve been through more than most have in a lifetime – they’re not who they used to be – or who you would expect them to be. If you do this for me, Nasir, I will give you whatever you want – please.”
It was not a word that Harry had ever thought he would hear his potions professor speak, and he felt his stomach twist as the memory unfolded.
“What do you want in return?”
Snape handed Nasir several familiar bottles.
“I haven’t decided yet…
The world was ripped from beneath his feet, and suddenly he was in the cold watching as Snape muttered to himself about Hermione’s alarms. The man was both annoyed and begrudgingly impressed. Harry watched him set the Sword of Gryffindor in the pond, then cast his Patronus before the world shifted again.
“And your soul.”
He felt the devastation of those words in his heart like a physical blow as Snape froze within his memory.
“My soul,” the words came out as a raspy whisper.
“Yes,” Nasir’s eyes glinted as he looked at him. “Just part of it – I am not so detached that I would request the entire thing and leave you with nothing. You will live…
“SEVERUS!” Dumbledore bellowed. “You are absolutely NOT giving part of your soul to that man!”
“Why the FUCK would that matter to you!” Snape exploded at the wizard, his face contorting in anger. “I’M ALREADY DEAD! My life will end with this war just as you’ve designed it! Don’t fucking pretend like you give a shit now, Albus…
They were in a set of rooms that Harry had never seen before, and Nasir’s exposed chest was covered in black and red – three fresh runes carved into his skin.
“I thought that was supposed to be excruciating,” Snape said hoarsely, watching Nasir’s emotionless reaction.
“It is,” Nasir said darkly. “If you have a soul…
Harry shuddered at the sight. He had nearly forgotten just how eerie the tall man could be.
“You understand that I do have a job, don’t you?” Snape said tightly. “That I am a Headmaster, a Death Eater, a Spy and a fucking babysitter for Potter and Granger. I am summoned every other day by the Dark Lord, and I am at constant risk of being attacked in this fucking castle while trying to prevent two insane sadists from killing half of the school’s population. I’m perfectly willing to give you a piece of my soul – I told you that I would give you whatever you wanted, and I will follow through on our deal. I will happily die for this war but not until I’ve played my part. Surely you can give me some indication as to when you plan to rip a piece of my being from my body!”
The room grew dark, and Harry watched Snape stare at his reflection in the mirror. His black eyes were locked to the two black runes on his chest and the blood-red border before things shifted again and suddenly, Susan was clutching Snape’s robes. Her eye twitched, then her body exploded in rage, and she punched him so hard in the nose Harry staggered on his feet.
“YOU FUCKING MONSTER!”
Her words struck harder than her hits, and Snape did nothing but stand there as she beat the ever-loving shit out of him. Harry could hear the crack of the man’s bones as she landed a blow against his ribs.
“Susan – calm down.”
He was back in the office, watching Ginny stare up at the man in sadness.
“Don’t you care?”
“No – because I’ll be dead.”
Warm voices filled his mind. Snape was a child again, he was sitting around a table, and the room looked happy and bright. The redhead was by his side, passing him a bowl of mashed potatoes while a woman across the table eyed the bruise on Snape’s arm with concern.
“Lily, don’t do it! Mummy told you not to!”
Harry watched as a younger version of the redheaded girl from the memories before turned to look at the other young girl and giggled. It was his mother and his aunt Petunia. And Lily had been playing outside. He watched as a young Snape appeared and told Lily that she was a witch. He watched them talk and become friends and then the memories cut off and shifted again.
Snape was older now, a teenager, and he was arguing with Lily over James Potter. She told him he was ungrateful after James had saved his life in the Shrieking Shack and accused him of using dark magic. The memory shifted again – Snape called Lily a mudblood, then Harry watched fragmented memories slide by as the man desperately tried to apologize, and Lily vehemently rejected all his excuses.
Everything twisted, and the smell of blood and burnt flesh filled the air.
“I – I’m not – going to tell you – anything,” Peter panted out.
Harry recognized the man from the apothecary they had robbed, but only just. His screams echoed through memory, grating on Harry’s nerves as the tortuous scene rapidly played out and Peter was skinned alive. Snape had held Narcissa’s hand, but Harry could practically feel the confusion surrounding the gesture as the man fled the Manor and desperately tried to get back in time, only to freeze mid-step and clutch at his chest.
“Oh fuck no –” the man’s eyes grew wide with realization as he ran for the gates. “No – no, no, no – NO ARGGGH FUCK!!”
His screams broke through the air and ran down Harry’s spine so violently he thought he might be sick. Then the memories warped again, and Snape was collapsed against his desk struggling to breathe as Nasir calmly stepped towards him.
“I know – I’m having a – heart attack.”
“Eventually, these spells won’t cut it anymore. That organ is going to give out.”
“I know…
Harry watched in silence as Nasir rapped him on the back and regulated his heart.
“I’ve spoken to them about their products. Though they never mentioned that they had a perpetual firework. You must be special… Here I was thinking that my difficulty in dealing with your emotions was simply due to being out of practice – but it would seem that you struggle with them too. What has you all worked up this evening, Severus.”
The memory shifted as if on cue, and Harry was standing in a house he barely recognized from an earlier memory as Narcissa Malfoy all but screamed at the tall man and her eyes burned with fury.
“We are purebloods – we are Blacks – my family lineage dates back to the 13th century, and Blacks do not serve anyone! I serve my family and my family alone, and I am tired of watching my life get ripped apart and dragged through the mud over a war that I’ve never cared about! This is not the life that I wanted! We used to have pride, and we used to be strong, and this is not a life I will allow my son to take part in any longer! We – are – done.”
Harry felt his shoulders drop, a raging mix of emotions churning in his stomach as he watched the exchange continue, and Snape tried and failed to deter the woman.
“You’ve done enough on your own. This isn’t your decision – you can’t control every single piece of this war like I know you’re trying to. So don’t bother trying to convince me otherwise. I’ve spent the last year living with the Dark Lord, Severus. I know exactly what will happen to me if this goes wrong.”
Narcissa was standing close now. Too close. Harry could feel Snape’s discomfort and unease through the memory. He could feel the panic, and it sank heavy in his heart as he realized that this man was terrified of closeness, and he instinctively rejected it.
“Should a similar situation ever arise and I find myself in the same position – do I take the same action? Do I help them?”
Snape nodded, then Harry was back in the Headmaster’s office as Nasir’s familiar voice filled the air.
“He’s right – you are thinner…
An exceptionally unimpressed expression crossed Snape’s face.
“You’re alive.”
“For the most part, I could say the same about you.”
“And I would give the same response.”
Their conversation was tight and strained, yet beneath that, there was a bizarre and agreeable sort of understanding. And Harry could tell just by looking at Nasir that he was entirely comfortable with the tall potions professor and unbothered by the man’s inability to manage his anger. It was almost as if he might actually enjoy the man’s company.
“Aside from the fact that I don’t have a fucking clue where you're staying – no – I didn’t tell him that we've been 'in touch' Nasir. I've already made it abundantly clear what side of this war I'm on. I would have thought that you’d have believed me after I gave you a piece of my fucking soul. Which by the way,” Snape’s voice became laced with sarcasm. “How is it? Is it comfortable? Do you find that it’s suiting you well?”
“I find that the sardonic, angry amusement gets tiresome at times,” Nasir said flatly. “And your difficult emotions are tedious – it was just a question, Severus. You don’t need to get defensive…
“So not much time,” Nasir nodded as his eyes glinted calculatingly.
“No. Not much at all before this turns into a full-scale war. Our days of shadow work, sabotage and guerrilla tactics are numbered.”
“The Order won’t be ready…
“The Dark Lord thinks you blew up his werewolf operation.”
“I did blow up his werewolf operation…
The dry humor stunned Snape and Harry could see the man’s agitation growing.
“You knew it would lead him right to the Order, and you planned to blow it up yourself from the start so it would put the attention on you. You bloody knew this from the start…
Harry watched Snape lean forward in his chair before his face filled with disbelief.
“You did that for Granger and Potter. You seriously expect me to believe that? What are they giving you out of this? Did you barter for part or their souls too – or better yet – once the Dark Lord falls, then what? Do you plan to take his place?”
Harry stilled, his body growing tense as he watched the dark expression that shifted across his mentor’s face.
“Do not – ever compare me to that man. What I do and why I do it is none of your business – I don’t expect you to believe anything, nor do I need to justify my actions to you. Are we clear?”
“Crystal…
Yet the anger and darkness was pushed aside, and Nasir moved on as if the conversation had never happened.
“How stocked are your potion reserves?”
“They’re stocked. Why?”
“Make more…
“What are you going to do? Dope everyone in the Order to give them an edge? You’re serious – you’d dose the Order with experimental potions that have known negative side effects to win this war?”
“Yes. Without hesitation.”
The world warped once more, another fragmented memory coming into view as Snape collapsed to his knees on a muddy hilltop. He looked terrible, younger – but older than his school time memories.
“Don’t kill me!”
His voice was raw and panicked, nothing at all like the familiar baritone that Harry had come to know – but what startled him was the cold reply.
“That was not my intention.”
Dumbledore had appeared, and he looked at Snape with disgust, contempt dripping from his voice as Snape begged the man to save his mother’s life. The sound of a dying animal filled the air as Harry stumbled back into the Headmaster’s office and Snape’s slumped form clenched in pain.
“I thought – you were going – to keep her – safe.”
But Dumbledore showed him no pity, telling him that Harry had survived and that he had Lily’s eyes – describing them in detail until the man snapped.
“DON’T!”
“Is this remorse Severus?”
“I wish – I wish I were dead.”
Harry watched as the devastated man swore to protect him and made Dumbledore promise never to tell a soul. Then the world shifted again as thunder rumbled in the distance, electricity crackled through the sky, and Snape dropped batch after batch of Death Eaters to the ground as he continued to hold the wards mostly closed.
He slaughtered them. Tore them into pieces so violently that Harry clutched at his chest in pain. Then the man wandered to the edge of the gorge and stared at the sizzling hillside – and Harry could feel his emotions in that moment. They washed over him in waves and threatened to drown him in agony and regret until he was standing before a low fire and Nasir was speaking once more.
“Harry already knows Severus – and he has accepted it. I’ve already discussed it with him, and he is aware that it must occur before the final Horcrux is destroyed. You carry enough burdens as it is; you do not need to carry this one.”
There was something sad in Nasir’s voice – something calm and unsettling that hinted of so much more.
“I will carry it for you.”
Dumbledore’s voice rattled in his mind again, and he watched as Snape berated the old man for putting on Voldemort’s ring. He tried to heal it. He brewed countless potions and read dozens of books. He watched as Dumbledore told his ex-professor that he must be the one to kill him – never once mentioning why, never once mentioning the Elder wand, and instead telling Snape that it was to protect Draco’s soul and secure his own position within the ranks.
“You want me to tell him he must die.”
They were still in the Headmaster’s office – but this time, Snape was speaking to Dumbledore’s portrait.
“I thought – all this time that we were protecting him for her. For Lily.”
“We have protected him because it has been essential to teach him, to raise him, to let him try his strength,” Dumbledore had shut his eyes tight as he spoke, and he wore a very pained expression. “Meanwhile, the connection between them grows ever stronger, a parasitic growth: sometimes I have thought he suspects it himself. If I know him, he will have arranged matters so that when he does set out to meet his death he is prepared. You’ll recall before I died, I told you that I would have one final favour to ask after my passing, when the time was right – this was it, Severus. You must tell the boy that he must die.”
“You’re unbelievable,” Snape breathed. “You’ve kept him alive so that he could die at the right moment – you’ve raised him like a pig for slaughter.”
“It is what is necessary. Don’t act shocked Severus, how many people have you watched die or killed yourself over the years?”
“Recently? Only the ones required per your plan.”
Harry’s muscles tensed as he felt the venom in Snape’s voice.
“I knew you were using me. I knew it from the moment I declared my loyalty to you and began this double life, but I did it anyway. I knew you used people, like tools until they’re no longer useful, and then you throw them away – but I never expected you’d stoop so low as to use a child. Growing him into exactly what you needed, patiently waiting until it was time to send him off to the butchers!”
“Don’t tell me you’ve come to care for the boy Severus?” Dumbledore looked rather surprised and a bit hopeful. “After all these years of tormenting him so.”
“Care for him?” Snape spat. His hand trembled as he raised his wand. “Expecto Patronum!”
A silver doe burst forward from his wand and pranced around the room as Harry felt his knees grow weak – and bile burned at the back of his throat.
“After all this time?” Dumbledore’s voice was soft, but Snape’s eyes hardened.
“Always.”
Agony filled his heart.
The memories became a swirling mess.
Pain was radiating through his body, stabbing into him like a thousand knives as his soul was split in two and yanked from his chest. Poison rushed through his veins like ice. His heart was seizing as the smell of burnt flesh filled his nose, fire burned into his skin and his ribs broke over and over again as a woman screamed.
Harry staggered back from the pensieve, his body convulsing as his stomach lurched and he collapsed to the ground. Vomit poured from his mouth, splattering across the stone floor as he gagged again and again and struggled to breathe.
He didn’t know what to think.
He didn’t know what to do.
His heart was breaking in his chest as everything that he thought he knew fell apart at the seams. How the fuck was he supposed to process this. His eyes shot wide as he gasped for air, clutching at his chest and staggering to his feet. Everything in his body hurt. It had hurt already after Nasir destroyed the Horcrux on the beach, but now he felt like he was being ripped to pieces as his heart raced with adrenaline, and his emotions sat raw, mangled and utterly destroyed in his chest.
So many memories – so many details – so many things that he didn’t know what to do with. Where the fuck did he go from here?
“Harry?”
He stiffened.
Something cold sliding down his spine at the sound of the familiar and inquisitive voice behind him. He hadn’t looked around the office when Nasir apparated him directly into the center of it – he had simply dashed toward the pensieve in the corner of the room before Nasir disappeared with a loud crack. Now, as Dumbledore's voice echoed in his ear, he felt a deep-seated rage ignite in his chest as he whipped around to face the one man who might have been able to do something about this war decades ago.
“You,” Harry breathed, wiping the bile from his lips across the back of his sleeve as he stared at Dumbledore’s piercing blue eyes. He didn’t even know where to begin, he didn’t even know if he ever wanted to speak to this man again – but looking at the old man’s soft expression, it was clear that the wizard still somehow thought that this was all under control. That he could help Harry – and that realization made Harry’s heart shatter with pain. “What have you done?”
“Harry,” Dumbledore said cautiously, his bright blue eyes filling with concern as they took in the anger that was rolling off Harry in waves. He seemed to be thinking – calculating – as if he was trying to sort out what was going through Harry’s mind to determine what he was angry at so he could figure out where to start. “There are things that you don’t fully understand.”
“Things that I don’t fully understand?” Harry repeated, his tone dropping low as he stepped toward the portrait. “Like what, for example? That you allowed that asshole to spend twenty years of his life working as your spy, but you didn’t even have the decency to tell him that you set him up to die with the Elder wand? Or that you fucking had the Elder wand all this time? That you let me fumble around like an idiot for the last year looking for Horcruxes? That you kept Hermione in the dark, even though you knew that she would be the only person to stick by me through all of this – and then you gave us absolutely nothing to work with?! Nothing to start with?!”
He could feel his hands starting to shake as his voice began to rise.
“Or is it that you lead a group of people who trusted you to know what you were doing and trusted you to keep them safe down a path that was never going to work?! That you fucked everything up so badly that Snape – fucking Snape of all people – realized we were doomed, and he went and sold his soul to barter for our survival?! Because even he realized that without Hermione, I would never have made it this far and we would have died if her injuries were not properly healed – but you tried to stop him?!” Harry inhaled sharply as his face contorted. “What the FUCK were you thinking?! Why didn’t you bring Nasir in earlier? Why didn’t you try to find more help?! Why didn’t you reach out to your allies – or have Shacklebolt recruit more people?! How could you possibly have thought that the Order would be enough?!”
“Harry,” Dumbledore’s tone had entirely shifted, and his bright blue eyes were now dark with fury. “I don’t know what Severus showed you, but there is a reason why I said no and why I told him to leave that man out of this. You saw what he did to Severus – you know what he is capable of.”
“Yes – I did!” Harry yelled, stepping closer to the frame. “He was capable of helping us and giving us an actual chance at winning this war!”
“You don’t know what he is!” Dumbledore snapped, practically yelling as his eyes flashed with anger. “You have no idea what he has done! The bloodshed he caused! The lives he has taken and the mess that he made! You don’t know what he is capable of! You have no idea what he will do when this is all over or what he might take! He could be worse than Tom!”
“Oh, I know exactly what he is,” Harry whispered, his voice oozing out like poison as his eyes locked to the dead Headmaster’s. “He’s my mentor.”
Harry took a step forward, all the air seeming to rush out of the room as the storm outside grew louder, and the air grew cold.
“He’s my friend, my ally, and my fucking soul-guide,” Harry said darkly, stopping just a foot away from the portrait as Dumbledore stiffened in his frame. “But more than that, he is the only man alive capable of helping to take out Voldemort. He is the only man aside from yourself or Snape that would have been capable of training me and teaching me what I needed to know, and he is the only fucking man on this planet who will be able to stop Hermione when she tries to kill herself in my place! He is the ONLY person who might be able to talk some sense into her when I go to die, and he is the only person who will be able to stop her from exploding and demolishing this entire school in a blaze of rage!”
Phineas had gone perfectly still in his frame and Dumbledore’s eyes had grown wide.
“You have no idea what she is capable of,” Harry whispered. “Not a fucking clue – but Nasir does, and even Snape did, which was why he knew that we needed guidance. That blaze to the north that I know you would have seen through that window.”
Harry turned and pointed before his eyes latched back to Dumbledores in rage.
“That was Hermione – and that’s what happened when our friends died, and Voldemort unleashed inferi to attack the school,” he paused, watching Dumbledore’s tight expression as his head shook in disbelief. “But you didn’t even know that they were here. He buried them around the grounds because apparently that’s what he does to protect his Horcruxes, and he has been planning an attack on this school for decades!
“Yet you stand here, refusing to acknowledge that what Snape did saved our lives and that Nasir saved our lives – all because he is the embodiment of the ONE thing you cannot stand! FREE FUCKING WILL!” Harry nearly bellowed as his stomach twisted with nausea, and he fought the urge to vomit. “You can’t tolerate anything or anyone you can’t control! You’re so blinded by your own narcissistic god complex that you never even stopped to consider what would happen if something in your plan went wrong – and even now, after you’re dead – you still refuse to admit you were wrong!”
“There was nothing wrong with the plan,” Dumbledore said darkly, his eyes growing tight as he stood straighter in his frame and glared down at Harry over the top of his spectacles. “If everyone had just done what they were supposed to do then–”
“Then WHAT?!” Harry snarled, his barely controlled rage snapping like a twig in the storm. His fist hit the wall next to Dumbledore’s portrait as lightning lit up the room, and he felt the bones in his hand shatter as Dumbledore stumbled backward from the blow. He didn’t even remember moving. He couldn’t rationalize why he’d done it, but he knew that he had completely lost control as everything that had been building over the entirety of his life burst out in an explosion of agony and pain. “IT ALL WOULD HAVE BEEN FINE?! EVERYTHING WOULD HAVE WORKED OUT?!”
He was losing his mind.
He could feel his sanity slipping through his fingers as all the memories rolled through his head.
A cruel and disturbing laugh cut from Harry’s lips as he dropped his arm back to his side and shook his head. How had he ever trusted this man? How had he ever thought that things would be okay? How had he even made it this far?
Sheer fucking luck for the most part – because it was clear that this man had never given the war with Voldemort the serious attention that it deserved.
“Was there ever going to be a point where you realized that Voldemort doesn’t follow the same rules as you?” Harry asked, staring at the old man in agony. “That he wasn’t playing your game – that he was going around collecting bodies and burying them in the ground near the school so that he’d have them for later ‘just in case’? Did you seriously think that we could win this war without losses – or that Hermione and I stood a fucking chance on our own without help?! A year ago, I would have been stupid enough to believe it. I had actually thought that I was the ‘chosen one’ like you told me and that somehow, that translated into me just magically being able to kill him and end this on my own!
“BUT I CAN’T!” Harry snarled, his fist striking the wall once more and cracking the stone beneath it. Pain shot up his arm, down his spine and through his whole body as his already broken fingers crunched beneath the blow. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Sir – I’m sorry that your plan failed! Who knows?! Maybe I was the problem, and maybe I couldn’t be what you needed me to be. But this war is so much bigger than just me and the idea that one person – a boy – with no training and no fucking idea what I was doing could defeat Voldemort and save the wizarding world on my own is the most asinine thing I have ever heard in my fucking life!”
“Harry,” Dumbledore cut in, his voice tight as his gaze hardened. “We had a plan. You’re letting your anger over what needs to happen get the better of you and–”
“Don’t,” Harry cut him off, his voice so low it trembled.
He could feel his throat tightening as his body started to shake. All the years’ worth of rage burning in his body choked at the base of his throat. It wanted to pour out. It wanted to keep screaming until his throat was raw with blood, and then he wanted to burn this fucking office to the ground.
But he couldn’t.
He wouldn’t.
Not after what Dumbledore was about to say.
“Do not finish that sentence,” Harry said darkly, his voice wavering as he forced his body back under control and took a deep breath. “And don’t for a single second mistake my anger right now as anger over the fact that I have to go die.”
His hand dropped from the wall again, the pain in his hand nothing but a dull throb in the back of his mind as his eyes filled with pain.
“I have been ready to die since I was eleven years old,” Harry whispered, his voice growing colder than ice. It hurt, and he could feel what little remained of his heart breaking in his chest as he stared at the old man in agony. “Or have you forgotten the last six years of your life?”
He could feel his eyes starting to burn.
“I was willing to die when I went after the stone,” Harry said darkly. “I knew that I would die when I went into that chamber. I thought I would die when I chased after Ron as he was dragged beneath that willow. I was sure that I would die when I landed in that graveyard. I was about to die when I went to the Department of Mysteries, and I was ready to die – for you – when we went to that grotto.”
Silence rang out in the tight air around them as the rain pounded against the window.
“I have no issues with dying tonight,” Harry whispered, his burning gaze making the dead Headmaster take an unconscious step back in his frame. “What I have issues with – what I’m angry at – is you.”
Lightning flashed once more, and the desk rattled as a massive clap of thunder split through the air.
“You had seven years,” Harry whispered hoarsely as his stomach turned and bile burned at the back of his throat. “Seven years. You could have told me. You could have trained me. We could have prepared. We could have researched – we could have developed a plan that actually worked by getting the help of those around us and telling them what was going on.
“Or was it in your plan to have Hermione nearly ripped to shreds?” Harry asked weakly. “For Sirius to die? For Arthur to get bitten? Did you plan for all those muggles to die while Voldemort grew his army and turned them into werewolves? Did you know? Or did you just not care? Was it not worth the effort to save them? Or were you just not paying attention? Did the concept of Tom branching out and using the most despicable methods of warfare and the most heinous forms of dark magic to gain an advantage just not cross your mind?”
He swallowed hard, forcing himself to breathe as the rain continued to grow worse and the anger in his chest reduced to a low simmer. He still wanted to scream at the man – but he knew that if he did it would be a wasted effort and energy. This man didn’t deserve it. And somehow, he knew that screaming in rage would only leave Dumbledore feeling like his actions had been justified, because then, he could still view Harry as an uncontrollable and short-tempered boy who couldn’t be trusted.
He had already lost too much control. He had already expended too much energy. He refused to give Dumbledore anything else, and he refused to let that man believe, even for one single second, that his actions had been justified. Especially since he knew that this conversation was a waste because Dumbledore’s portrait would always hold the same thoughts and opinions as the man himself when he had died. So, he took another breath, using the occlumency and meditation that they had been practicing for months to school his face into a cold and impassive stare, and then he forced his voice to calm further.
“You could have told me that I was a Horcrux,” Harry whispered, and even though the words came out calm, the hurt was unmistakable. “You could have told me last year. I would have accepted it. I had already suspected it, and I have been planning to die for the last few weeks now. You know that I’m ready – I have always been ready. You’ve seen me throw myself into the line of fire time and time again over the years without hesitation, so you look me in the eyes right now – and tell me I’m lying.”
He stared at Dumbledore’s portrait, waiting for him to refute his words, but the man remained still and unmoving as his jaw clenched.
“Don’t you dare try to turn this around and make it about me so you can hide from your own mistakes,” Harry said quietly. “This isn’t the first time that you fucked up – is it Dumbledore? And don’t even think about spewing that bullshit about our mind connection – or trying to use that as a reason for why you couldn’t tell me. You could have trained me in occlumency yourself. You could have found me another teacher. You knew perfectly well that Snape and I would never be able to work together, and you knew I was lying when I said that the lessons were going fine. You set us both up to fail, whether it was intentional or not the results were the same. You could have included Hermione in our meetings – you knew she was the only one who was going to stick with me and that’s why you gave Ron that device. And if you still refused to tell me anything – you could have told her, instead of leaving us that stupid book and a bunch of convoluted riddles. You could have just told her what you knew and taught her occlumency.”
His lungs were starting to burn, and his heart was lodged in his throat.
“You could have told me.”
He felt like he was swallowing broken glass.
“You could have said something – anything.”
He forced himself to take another breath as he held the old man’s gaze and let him see all the pain that he had caused.
“Seven years. And you placed the fate of the wizarding world on my back – on a prophecy – on a man who was broken and bitter and bound to your service – on a tiny group of people with no real experience in war – on your own convoluted idea of how this would go down even though you had done no recon work whatsoever – all while you told the Order nothing,” Harry whispered. “All while you exploited them, used them, took from them – and gave them nothing tangible to work with.”
He took a slow step towards the portrait.
“Tell me that you knew it would get this bad,” Harry whispered.
He waited, but Dumbledore just stared, his mouth pressed into a tight line.
“Tell me that you had a backup plan to address an attack of this scale,” Harry whispered once more, his spine starting to stiffen as Dumbledore remained unmoving and silent.
“Tell me,” Harry said, his voice growing dark as he locked away more of his emotions and his gaze grew cold. “That you knew this was coming.”
Dumbledore shifted, his eyes creasing as his head twisted with one solitary shake.
“I didn’t know,” his voice was tight, and Harry could see the strain across his painted features as the lightning flashed and lit up the room once more. “I underestimated how far Tom would go, Harry.”
“But yet you were willing to risk the lives of all these people anyway,” Harry replied, refusing to blink or look away.
“Harry,” Dumbledore said stiffly, the muscle in his jaw flexing as he clenched it. “It’s not that clean and simple.”
“Of course it isn’t,” Harry breathed. “Life is fucking complicated – but you didn’t adjust the plan when the conditions changed. And you didn’t make any alterations even after Snape told you time and time again that the plan wasn’t working.”
The old man stiffened, a crease forming along his brow.
“That’s right,” Harry whispered as he took a step back from the frame. He summoned the memories from the pensieve and returned them to the vial he tugged from his pocket. “He gave me way more than just the memory of your request to inform me that I needed to die. He gave me everything, and I am going to make sure that Shacklebolt knows exactly what he did and exactly what you didn’t.”
“Harry,” Dumbledore said tightly, concern washing through his eyes as he shifted closer in his frame. “I was trying to protect you. There were a lot of moving pieces, and there are still things that you don’t understand.”
“I doubt that,” Harry said bluntly, his tone entirely indifferent as he repocketed the vial. He glanced back at the dead Headmaster once more, locking down the final threads of his emotions as a vicious clap of thunder split through the air. “But should Hermione have any additional questions once I’m dead and this is over – she can just ask him directly.”
“Ask who?” Dumbledore said sharply, his brow furrowing in confusion.
“Snape,” Harry said calmly. “She is currently fighting to save his life.”
He heard Phineas let out a breath as the man grabbed the edge of the portrait in visible relief – but Dumbledore’s eyes only seemed to grow dark.
“Severus knew what he signed up for, Harry. He knew the risks of this plan, he knew what was involved, and he knew that he was going to die,” Dumbledore said firmly. “That man made his choices long ago. These were the consequences of his actions – not mine – and this was always how it was going to end.”
“Well then, it’s a good thing we’re not following your plan anymore,” Harry said evenly, not a trace of emotion in his voice. “It’s no longer up to you, and if he lives through this – that choice will be his.”
Harry turned on his heel toward the door, his internal alarm had gone off, and he was officially out of time. He had already wasted too much of it screaming at Dumbledore when he should have returned to help prepare the school for battle. He grimaced at the thought, guilt instantly flooding his body as he thought about the fact that he had left Hermione in the dark for so long. He knew how it felt to be shut out – and he knew that right now, she was probably struggling.
He quickly moved across the floor but froze three steps from the door to turn around and look back at the Headmaster that had remained silent throughout the entire exchange and was currently gripping the side of his frame for support.
“Headmaster Black,” Harry said quietly, watching as the man jolted upright, and his teary gaze latched to Harry’s. He was clutching his chest tight as if he were in pain. “I’d like to thank you for your help. We wouldn’t have made it this far without you. Your assistance was invaluable, and I am deeply grateful for everything that you’ve done.”
Phineas stiffened, his mouth falling open for a moment as he struggled to find his words.
“It was my pleasure, Mr. Potter,” Phineas whispered; a rush of emotions fluttered behind his gaze as his eyes traced over Harry’s frame. He hesitated a second, then inhaled deeply and straightened his frame. “Assuming that this does not all end in bloodshed, if you would be so kind as to let Hermione know that she always has a friend in her bag – I would greatly appreciate it, Harry.”
“Of course,” Harry nodded, watching as the painted man bowed in return.
Then he turned on his heel, closing the distance toward the door in three quick strides. He heard Dumbledore call out to him – but he didn’t turn around. He didn’t even acknowledge it or listen to the words.
Instead, he took off at a sprint, racing down the stairs that automatically opened to him as he rapidly healed the bones in his hand. He didn’t bother making sure that they were perfect – it wouldn’t matter soon enough and he didn’t have much time. He had to move fast. But he would not open the bond until he was in complete control of his emotions. He skidded around the next corner, gripping the stone before he hurled himself down the next hall toward the narrow staircase and past a pool of blood and clothes.
He could feel his legs aching in pain – but it didn’t matter, because he didn’t matter. His role in this equation was over.
All that mattered was Hermione.
All that mattered was tonight.
All that mattered was making sure that he bought this school as much time as possible with his death so that they could prepare for battle and get the students out – then, Nasir and Hermione would take Voldemort down. That was the plan. And it had been the plan all along. Whether or not he would join them for the final fight, he had no idea, but it was the only way they had any chance.
He knew in his heart that they could do it.
That she could do it.
She was strong enough – or she would be after the soul fragment in his body was destroyed. So long as Nasir could hold her back when he left, everything would fall into place, and this would all be over. The fiendfyre on the hillside had been a setback because now she was injured, and her body was strained. But he trusted Nasir – he had to. And he knew that the man would do what needed to be done.
Because this was their plan. A collective plan – a plan that considered every single person within the Order and incorporated their ideas.
Not just his.
Harry raced down another two hallways before he finally skidded to a stop, and he forced his heart to slow. Yanking up the sleeve of his jacket, he reached for the skin tone tag that blended in with his arm.
H–I’m out, how is she?
N–Anxious
N–But alright
H–And Snape?
N–Stable for now
H–We’re almost out of time
H–Are you ready?
N–Are you?
H–Yes
H–I’m ready
Letting out a deep breath and struggling to bury the last of his rage, Harry closed his eyes and opened the bond.
‘Hermione?’
‘Harry?!’
He was hit by an instant wave of relief and love – it crashed over his body like a wave, easing his broken heart and mending his shattered soul. He leaned into it like it was a physical breath of fresh air, knowing that no matter what happened from this moment forward – he loved her.
He would always love her.
And she loved him.
She had given him more in the last year than he deserved. She had been there with him through everything, and he would never be able to tell her in words just how much she meant to him. She was his everything. She was his air. His life. His reason for both living and dying and while it killed him that he would never get the chance to grow old with her and be by her side – he knew that she would be safe.
She would live.
-x-x–
They landed in a hallway just a few corridors from the main courtyard, away from where any people would be. She knew that Nasir had done it intentionally to avoid questions, and she wondered just what the hell people thought he was doing when he wandered off and disappeared, then returned only moments later with no explanation whatsoever. Or maybe, they didn’t notice at all – Nasir was exceptionally good at slipping away even within crowds. But the thoughts were quickly pushed from her mind as the first painful inhale filled her lungs, and she groaned out and nearly doubled over.
Apparating inside Hogwarts hurt like a bitch.
He braced her to keep her from falling, and she gripped his hand tightly as she struggled to breathe. Blinking her eyes to clear the tears of pain that had gathered, she saw a diagnostic vanish from sight before his deep voice filled the air.
“We only have about fifteen minutes before our time is up – and that’s assuming that Tom gives us the full two hours,” he glanced down at her, his gaze still giving nothing away. “Ready?”
“No,” Hermione groaned, forcing down the lingering pain of the apparition and straightening her stiff spine as she let go of his hand. Yet that truth didn’t matter, and regardless of whether or not she was ready, she forced her legs to move as she swallowed down her sea of questions. She didn’t have time to ask him why he had done it – or how. All she could do now was focus on this moment and hope to hell that they all survived so she could question the bejesus out of him after the battle. He had said that they would ‘talk later’, and she fully intended to hold him to that. “Let’s go.”
She started down the hall, easily moving into a run as her heart started to race.
‘Harry? Are you almost here?’
‘Almost!’ Harry’s voice slid into her mind, gentle and warm. ‘Be there in three!’
They rounded two corners and the doors to the courtyard came into view. Shacklebolt was standing between them, the rain splashing in through the open oak doors as the tall man rapidly talked with Arthur. Hermione could just make out a few groups of students lingering in the dark courtyard beyond from the dull glow of several blue flames – a taller figure, who she assumed must be McGonagall, was pointing and directing groups in different directions. Two squads were sent back inside, and they glanced over to her and Nasir nervously.
“Arthur,” Hermione panted as they slowed to a jog.
“Hermione!” Arthur’s gaze jerked up, and a warm sad smile crossed his face. “Thank Merlin, you made it – where’s Harry?”
“He’s on his way,” Hermione said, pushing some of the loose curls back from her face as she stopped just a few feet away and Arthur’s eyes creased in confusion at her new outfit.
“Did you finish the southern front?” Nasir asked, his deep baritone directed at Shacklebolt who’s gaze briefly, yet non-judgingly, flicked over her clothes. If he had any opinions on her constant change in appearance throughout the night, he didn’t voice it. However, his gaze did linger momentarily on her neck.
“Yes,” Shacklebolt nodded, his focus switching back to Nasir. “Augusta is down there with several troops disillusioned right now. We had some trouble trying to clear the grounds as you expected, so McGonagall was able to convince a few house elves to try and help collect the remaining wounded while Thomas focused on the evac. I think it kept a few people from getting picked off.”
“How is the evacuation going?” Hermione asked quickly, noticing the way that Arthur now stood stock-still with his eyes fixed to the visible symbol on her neck. She did her best to ignore it and kept her eyes on Shacklebolt as Arthur’s gaze slowly drifted to Nasir with an unreadable expression.
“Surprisingly well,” Shacklebolt said with a sigh, stress lines creasing around his eyes as he ran a hand over his face. “Nearly all the injured are out, and they have started on the third years.”
“They evacuated everyone in first and second year?” Hermione asked, her brows rising in disbelief.
“Yes,” Shacklebolt nodded, his eyes warming. “And Ava and Liza have taken charge of healing the injured we send out, they’re working under Ollivander’s guidance, so Poppy can stay here to help with future wounds. There are a limited few who were too critical to move, but Poppy had the elves levitate them down to the basement in the Hospital Wing where it’s safer.”
“So, what’s the plan then?”
Hermione’s head jerked to the right so quickly she nearly stumbled as Harry’s voice echoed down the hall.
“Harry,” she breathed, instantly moving across the ground towards him and grabbing him tightly. He held her to his chest, his hands knotting into the fabric of her shirt as his voice echoed by her ear.
“I’m okay,” he said, clutching her tight before pulling back and meeting her gaze. “I’ll tell you everything when this is over – but we won’t have time now, it's a bit complicated and long winded.”
She nodded even though she didn’t want to and clutched him tight as they moved back to the group to stand by Nasir’s side.
“The plan is the same as before,” Shacklebolt said, reaching out to clasp Harry on the shoulder. He gave him a strange albeit warm look, and Hermione felt her skin prickle with nerves. “We’ve rigged the trench along the east. Fred and George are down there now with a crew, disillusioned and waiting. They haven’t seen any movement along the edge of the forest yet, but we still have a few minutes. Augusta is leading the south, McGonagall managed to repair some of the stone statues, and there are countless other bits of Hogwarts down there now, charmed and waiting to attack the second we give the command.”
“Good,” Nasir nodded. “Tell everyone to hold until I give the order – we need Tom to engage before we attack, or he might flee. I’ll draw him in. We’ll do what we can to keep the fight contained to the center of the eastern front, but I expect it will reach the main courtyard. Once he realizes what’s going on he will pull in all his forces, and we will be hit hard on the east and south.”
“We’ll cover you,” Shacklebolt said firmly, his serious gaze meeting Nasir’s. “Do what you need to do – and we’ll keep everyone else off your flank.”
“Thank you,” Nasir said, then his dark gaze shifted to Harry. “We should go get ready.”
“Alright,” Harry nodded, and even though his face was void of any emotion and his pulse remained steady, Hermione felt her stomach turn. She knew it was just nerves – that she was terrified of what was about to come. But she still didn’t like it.
She gripped Harry’s hand tighter as they shifted, the three of them making their way out into the rain ahead of Shacklebolt and Arthur. Her legs ached with pain as they descended the steps and countless eyes seemed to watch them move. She felt the hairs at the base of her skull bristle with fear as she tried to stuff down the anxiety that was threatening to break her false calm. The box in her mind was struggling to stay closed, and as she looked out across the endless dark landscape before her, she felt the doubt and worry curl in the pit of her stomach.
Voldemort was coming.
They had already been through hell; her body was already falling apart, and yet as the clock grew closer and closer to the deadline, she felt like they had only just begun. She staggered when Harry suddenly stopped, and she turned to look up at him in question only for her heart to seize in her chest.
Dull blue light flickered across his face, and he was looking at her in that way.
That way that made her stomach knot and her toes curl with want. That way that reached into her very being and touched her soul. That way that made her feel, even though her emotions were buried under the rubble of her broken heart and humanity.
“Harry?” Hermione said softly, the words coming out like an unsure question.
“I love you.”
He said it so firmly.
So resolute and finite.
Like it was the only truth in the world, and she couldn’t help the small smile that tugged at her lips as she looked up at the one man that she knew she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. The man she knew she would do anything for – that she would follow to the ends of the earth and back while holding his hand.
His arm circled her body.
His fingers knotted into the still dry fabric of her white dress shirt, encasing her completely as he tugged her to his chest and pulled her into a deep and heated kiss. It was so unlike him to do this in the open and so unlike her to respond when she knew that people could see them. But all those thoughts fell away as her heart raced, her blood boiled, and all the feelings that she thought she would never feel properly again surged to the surface.
She loved him.
More than anything – and she kissed him back with a burning passion that ached through her soul.
She wanted him.
Forever.
Always.
Her hands knotted into his jacket as she opened her lips and his tongue entered her mouth. It would never be enough. And she would never forget this moment. If she died here tonight, this would be what lingered in her mind as she took her last gulp of air. Harry. Her Harry – kissing her deeply in the rain. Holding her close against his body as he opened the bond, and his love flooded her mind.
But that wasn’t the only thing that was flooding in, and she grimaced in pain as a slew of images and broken memories began to seep through. Suddenly, he was pushing her away – his hands had gripped her so tightly she could feel it bruise, and now she was looking up at him in confusion as an agonized expression crossed his face.
“I love you, Hermione,” his voice nearly broke as more memories were pushed through the bond. “I’m sorry.”
“Harry wha–” she struggled to get the words out as her mind was bombarded.
“Now, Nasir – take care of her.”
She felt seven tethers latch to her body as a heavy sticking charm was placed on her feet. Her lips were cold without Harry’s kiss, and his hands dropped their hold on her body completely as he stepped away and his face split in pain.
“Harry no–”
It was all she could manage before it felt like her head exploded. He was overwhelming the bond. Intentionally shoving endless streams of information through to physically cripple her body as she groaned out in pain. She could see Snape’s memories. They were flashing behind her eyes at an alarming rate as the rain soaked through her hair, the thunder rumbled the earth, and Harry grew farther and farther away.
“Double the evacuation efforts, now! Get a group assembled and send them to the northwest corner with a port key – they can take the boats out into the lake beyond the wards!”
“Pull everyone back from the eastern front – move them to the south! Get everyone out of this courtyard!”
The deep baritone behind her was calling out new orders, but she could barely even hear them through all the chaos in her mind.
“Ha – ry.”
She stuttered on her words. Trying to temporarily close the bond to stop the flow, but he just shoved more across as he began to walk away.
no.
Her pulse doubled, and she felt a sharp shooting pain jolting down her arm.
No.
More memories flooded into her head – voices and sounds that she didn’t want to hear.
No!
Harry was getting further and further away. Pain split through her skull. The memories hit her like a physical blow, and she dropped to her knees.
A scream tore from her lips.
Her entire body jerked as she forced the flow of the bond to stop, and the world before her came swimming back into the focus.
“HARRY!!!!”
The shriek was like death as she lunged up from the ground, hand outstretched as she tried to reach him. But he didn’t stop, and she felt the tethered points of her body tug hard as she tried to run after him.
“HARRY, NO! HARRY, COME BACK!!!”
She could taste blood and bile in her mouth as the words screamed out and tore her throat. She lunged forward again as she felt her heart break into pieces. Harry paused a hundred feet away, his hair soaked in the rain as he looked over his shoulder, and she saw the agony in his eyes – then he took off at a run toward the Forbidden Forest.
“HARRY!!!!”
She surged up from the ground, every muscle in her body tearing as she strained against the tethers that held her back and voices broke out around her. She felt her magic ripple over her skin. It burned through the air with a crackle of energy as her sternum broke. She heard the ground crack, three tethers broke loose, and she staggered forward another two steps.
“HARRY – COME BACK!!” Her voice broke. “HARRY!! TAKE ME WITH YOU!!!”
Her femur snapped as she forced her body to move beyond the length of her chains, and the more physical pain that flooded her body the more her blunted emotions surged. She could feel them – and they were killing her.
Then two strong arms wrapped around her body.
“Hermione.”
Her name was nothing but a dull whisper in the chaos of her mind, and she clawed against it. Kicking and screaming as blood poured from her lips.
“HARRRY!!!”
She was jerked backward hard as someone tugged her across the slick stone toward the school. She kicked again, more voices ringing in her ears as she punched and pulled and fought to get free.
“Hermione, stop!”
The cold breath that ghosted by her ear was familiar, and nausea erupted in her gut.
“LET ME GO!”
More tethers latched to her body, and she felt a tendon snap as she lunged forward once more.
“LET ME GO!!!”
Her breath came in gasps as the box in her mind shattered. A scream tore from her lips once more as agony coursed through her veins. She took four more steps.
“HERMIONE, STOP!”
She groaned out in pain as she collided with the ground and her emotions roared once more. Rain was pouring in her eyes and flooding her nose. Nasir was holding her down and she struggled in his grasp. Each inhale grew more rapid, and suddenly she couldn’t remember how to breathe.
“Hermione, breathe.”
She couldn’t.
She tried.
The air wouldn’t come.
“Breathe, Hermione!”
A sharp pain shot through her chest as something hard hit her back. Magic flooded her lungs, and the cold wet air flew in like razors. She coughed and gagged, struggling to get her bearings under the tight grip that was still latched around her body as everything started to shake.
“You – lied – to me.”
Tears flooded her eyes as the voices around them blurred with the cracks of thunder and the sound of rain.
How could he do this?
How could he do this to her after everything?
“Y-You lied,” she gasped, still trying to struggle in his hold. “You knew – you promised – you knew.”
But her limbs wouldn’t fight anymore. She could feel the muscles in her body seizing as a warm hand touched her neck, and something else took hold. Then her motions slowed completely.
“Hermione, look at me.”
The deep baritone sounded beside her, but it just made the pain hurt more. It meant nothing to her – nothing at all as she drowned under the weight of the anguish that seemed to be leaking from her broken soul.
You lied to me.
The strong arms around her shifted. She could feel her body being pulled up from the ground, but her eyes were unfocused, and she turned her gaze away to stare at the wet stone to her right.
“Hermione, look at me.”
You lied to me.
Her chest constricted tighter, and she heard herself choke. Her rune was smothering her. It was going to drown her. It was too heavy, too hot, too dark – she couldn’t bear it. And she didn’t even care anymore because this man had taken away her ability to move.
He had taken away her ability to reach Harry.
“Hermione, please–”
But the traitorous voice was fading out of focus, and all she could hear was the rain as it collided against the stone, and her body grew completely limp.
“HERMIONE, LOOK AT ME!”
She flinched at the harsh and commanding tone as his warm hand grabbed her chin and forced her head to turn. He was sitting behind her, his arms still wrapped around her body in addition to the tethers that gripped her bones. She was nothing but a broken, crumpled mess between his legs, leaning against his chest as he forced her chin up so she would meet his gaze. She could see blood running down his temple. His nose was clearly broken, and a deep gouge split across his eyebrow. The logical part of her brain knew that he was probably covered in cuts and deep bruises, and yet she felt absolutely nothing about that fact as she looked up at him.
“I need you to listen to me,” Nasir said, his voice hard as he continued to grip her jaw tight and keep her bloodshot eyes fixed to his face.
“Fuck you,” the words came out hoarse and bitter, she saw his eyes pinch at them, but he didn’t let go.
“I didn’t lie, Hermione,” he said firmly. She jerked at his words and tried to pull away, but still, he didn’t let her. “I have never lied to you. Never. Look at me – I need you to look at me and listen – please.”
She froze at the almost desperate tone of his last word, and tears immediately flooded her eyes as her heart seemed to break all over again.
“You were supposed to keep him alive,” she whispered as her body began to shake. “You promised me. You knew, and you didn’t tell me.”
“Hermione, I can explain–”
“Please just let me go,” she whispered, hot tears streaming down her face as she looked up at him and tried to reach Harry through the bond. But he wasn’t answering, and she could feel herself falling apart at the seams without him there. No matter how hard she called, he kept it closed except for his heartbeat, which was thudding in her mind like a soft and steady drum. “P-Please – I – I c-can’t do this anymore. Not without him. P-Please – let me go.”
“I can’t let you go, Hermione,” Nasir said, his voice quieter as his death grip on her body lessened a fraction. “I did keep my promise, and I did everything that I could to help him.”
Her head started to shake as the rejection flooded through her brain.
She didn’t want to listen to him.
This wasn’t real.
This couldn’t be real.
She wouldn’t accept it.
No matter what he said.
“It was his choice to make, Hermione – not yours,” Nasir said firmly, and the seriousness of his deep baritone made her freeze once more. The inconsolable part of her shattered heart wanted to roll from his grasp and drown herself in the puddle of muddy water by their side – yet she couldn’t. She didn’t know if it was him commanding her to listen through the tag on her neck, or if some tiny shred of her broken mind was still functioning rationally – but either way, she could not look away from the dark vortex of his gaze. “Just as you decided to risk your life accepting a rune, Harry has decided to accept his death. There was nothing that you could have done for him. If I had told you in advance, you never would have let him go, and you would have taken away his ability to choose. We didn’t have the luxury of time to deal with your objections, Hermione. This happened faster than we thought it would, and you never would have agreed to this – we both know that.”
Her eyes creased in pain as her chest tightened. He wasn’t wrong. Even in her fractured state, she knew he wasn’t wrong, and she couldn’t even argue. She never would have let Harry leave. She never would have agreed to whatever this ridiculous plan was because it risked Harry’s life – and if she had known in advance, she most certainly would have tried to prevent it from taking place.
She had already done just that – even without knowing his plan, she had taken steps to try and stop him from sacrificing himself.
“I asked you to trust me today,” Nasir said quietly, and he seemed to know that she was listening to him now, forced or not. His hand shifted on her face so he was no longer gripping her chin roughly but was instead bracing the side of it against his open palm, and she remained still under his gaze as her throat started to burn. “I asked you to trust Harry. I need you to do that. You gave me your word, Hermione. I need you to focus now, and I need you to listen to what I’m saying.”
“But I can’t do this,” she whispered, her eyes pinching closed as the tightness across her chest grew.
A numbness had started to encase her body, blocking out the agonizing pain of her broken bones and torn muscles as the heavy weight on her chest continued to grow. She knew that she had given him her word, but that was before. Before all this death, before her soul was ripped to pieces and marred with dark magic – before Harry had left her.
And she couldn’t carry it anymore.
“It’s too heavy,” she faltered, her voice breaking as she pinched her eyes shut even tighter. “I c-can’t.”
“Hermione, look at me.”
It was gentle, soft, and pleading – and when her eyes opened to meet his gaze once more, she could hardly even believe that this man had spoken them.
“Yes, you can.” His deep baritone ached through her chest, and a sputtered sob left her lungs. “You can, and you will.”
She shook her head in rejection again, fresh tears flooding her eyes.
She could hear the muffled sound of voices as they continued to shout and call out orders behind him. In the back of her mind she knew that people could see this, but she couldn’t bring herself to care when the weight in her heart was clawing into the depths of her soul and sinking it deeper into darkness.
“I can’t, Nasir,” she whispered.
“You have to,” Nasir said firmly, and she flinched at the harsh tone. She felt him still, then his eyes creased and his voice softened. “They need you, Hermione. Everyone here needs you. Harry is counting on you to finish this war, and it isn’t over yet. I made you a promise, and I’m keeping it. I will do everything that I can to bring him back, but I need you to trust me, and I need you to help me.”
His hand shifted again, and she felt his thumb graze across her cheek to brush away the mud that was covering her skin. Two tethers fell away; then, she felt the bond in her mind crack open by a sliver.
“I can’t do this alone,” Nasir said quietly, and fresh tears welled in her eyes as Harry sent a wave of love through the bond. “And neither can Harry. You’re not done yet, Hermione – not even close. This is not your last day. You have to pull yourself together, or all of this was for nothing, and all of these people here are going to die.”
Harry pushed another wave of emotion through the bond and her fingers curled into Nasir’s skin.
“I know it’s not fair. I know that the world has already asked too much of you. I know that you’re tired, I know you’re done, and I know that I’m asking you for the impossible right now – but I need you to help me, Hermione,” Nasir’s voice had nearly dropped to a whisper, and she could feel his cool breath ghosting across her face as the hard glint in his eyes softened. “I need you to trust me. Please.”
Her eyes welled again as the pain in her chest fractured.
It felt like he was speaking Harry’s words. Like he was reading her mind and trying to find the exact right thing to keep her head above water. She didn’t know if he was – she couldn’t tell. Her head was throbbing and cluttered with fragmented memories. She could hardly tell up from down in this moment as the sky flashed above him. She had no idea if he was in her head, and honestly, she didn’t care anymore as she lay there broken in his arms.
She swallowed the acid in her mouth as she felt Harry open the bond fully, one final time.
The cool breeze of an ocean ghosted over her skin as a dull flicker of firelight illuminated the ground before her. Harry was sitting on the sand, and Nasir was by his side.
They looked comfortable there like this was not the first time that they had met in private, and in the depths of her consciousness she suspected that it wasn’t.
The stars were bright, the night was beautiful, and a familiar low baritone filled the air.
“Voldemort must be the one to do it.”
The words echoed with those from Snape’s memories that were floating in her head.
“If you are to have any chance of survival, that is, and if we are to have any chance at taking him out,” Nasir said quietly, and then he looked toward Harry. “The fragment in your body is large – removing it will weaken him more than any of the others. But as we discussed, Harry, you must be willing to die. You must accept it. Otherwise, this will not work, but more than that – if you don’t, I will not do it.”
“I know.”
It was Harry’s voice that responded, and it struck through her heart like a physical blow as her nails dug so deeply they broke through Nasir’s skin. But he didn’t even flinch.
A dark and deeply saddened look was spreading over Harry’s face as he turned to look at Nasir. Yet despite the obvious agony, he almost looked peaceful.
“I’ve always known it,” Harry whispered, a sad smile gracing his lips as he dropped his eyes to the sand and twisted the fabric of his sweater between his fingers. “You know that, Nasir. And you know that I accept it. I’m ready to die. And when the time comes – I will go to him to die.”
“Good,” Nasir replied, and Harry’s green eyes glinted in the night as they shifted back up to see Nasir nod at his statement.
Harry watched without an ounce of concern as Nasir drew out his silver dagger. Then, Harry pulled out a small vial of blood from his sweater pocket – pausing mid-lean as he reached forward to hand it to the man.
“If I do truly die, my words still stand,” Harry said quietly, his eyes burning intently as he held Nasir’s dark gaze. “You will take care of her. She’ll need you, more than she’ll want to admit. The others won’t be able to help her. Arthur will try, and she needs him too – but it won’t be easy. Even when I’m gone, she won’t let me go.”
“I know,” Nasir nodded again and Harry passed him the small vial. “I will keep her safe, Harry.”
“And please tell her I’m sorry,” Harry whispered, a deep agony filling his heart as he spoke the words. “Tell her I love her, and tell her that this was my idea – that it was the only way.”
The cold rain and darkness flooded back into view and her eyes burned with tears. Her vision blurred, and she gripped Nasir so tightly she could no longer feel her hands. Then Harry’s voice echoed through the bond, and she felt her already broken heart crumble into dust.
‘I love you, Hermione.’
No.
She couldn’t do this.
She was falling apart and breaking in two.
She stared up at the man above her, her eyes pinching in pain as bile burned the back of her throat. She understood what he was doing now, and she knew exactly what this was. Nasir was making her say goodbye – making sure that she got the chance to do it. He was forcing her to face this directly because if their plan failed, he didn’t want her to lose her only opportunity because she was lost in despair. He wanted her to at least have this moment.
But she couldn’t.
She wouldn’t.
She wanted out of this nightmare.
She wanted to run.
She tore her eyes away from him only to feel his hand turn her head once more.
“Look at me,” Nasir murmured.
His low voice was barely audible through the rain, but it pulled at the broken pieces of her heart. She forced herself to meet his dark gaze once more as a ragged inhale filled her lungs and lightning flashed across the sky.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said slowly as emotions she had never seen him display before began to shift behind his gaze. She watched his dark eyes crease in pain – as if he knew how she felt. As if he had been here before and understood exactly what she was going through, and he wanted her to know that she wasn’t alone.
Then his gaze grew darker, and his voice took on a heartbreaking tone.
“Tell him, Hermione,” Nasir whispered, the deep rumble of his words resonating through her body as his thumb grazed her skin to brush away the fresh tears that had fallen. “Say it – before you lose your chance and have to regret it.”
Her eyes creased and her face crumpled as a swell of hot tears left her eyes.
But she didn’t look away.
And she forced her mouth to open as a shaky breath left her lungs.
“I love you too, Harry.”
She spoke the words out loud as she sent them through the bond, and the wave of love that hit her in return made a choked sob leave her lungs.
She listened to Harry’s heartbeat. It was steady, calm, and strong as she gazed up into the piercing black eyes above her. A wave of panic flooded her body as the bond was slowly narrowed, and Harry closed it back down so only his pulse remained. Her eyes grew wide. Her chest started to constrict. She could feel herself shaking violently against Nasir’s chest as the rain poured down her face. It mixed with the tears that were rushing from her eyes, and she knew she wasn’t breathing.
She wanted it to stop.
She wanted to go back so she could fix this.
Her eyes and throat burned as the anticipation of what was to come ripped through her heart and tore into the very depths of her soul.
Her fingers sunk deeper into Nasir’s skin, and he gripped her tightly in return as he held her terrified gaze – unblinking, unyielding – unmovable, like a physical anchor for her to latch onto through the storm as Harry’s pulse flatlined, and the bond within her mind went completely dark.
This chapter is dedicated to OonaLala.
Your investment in this story gives me life. Your ideas for an epic adventure mystery relic hunter story arch post-war is not only ingenious, but it is always incredibly fun, amusing and inspiring. Thank you for being a part of AFON. Thank you for sharing your beautiful plants with us. Thank you for being so kind. Thank you for posting your reactions which make my day, and most importantly, thank you for being you. You are wonderful <3
-x-x-
Warnings:
This chapter contains: death, emotional anguish and trauma, as well as other not so awesome things.
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The rain was lessened by the trees. The wind cut through the branches above his head, breaking off sticks which fell to the ground by his feet in silence much like the pieces of his heart as it shattered in his chest. He could feel the thunder rumble through the earth. Each new roll radiated up his legs through the heels of his boots as the dulled flashes of lightning illuminated the leaf-bare trees. The noise of the storm was unnerving and unnatural like the fire that had caused it – but it didn’t compare to the racket that Hermione had made when he left. He had felt her screams in his bones. He had felt the earth shake beneath his feet as she lunged after him and tore Nasir’s tethers from the stone.
He would never forget the sound.
He would never forget the sight.
And it killed him that that would be the final memory that he had of her – that he had done that to her. He had been the cause of her pain and suffering.
It wasn’t how he had wanted things to end, but he knew in his heart that there had been no other option because she would never let him go. They were bound together. Tied and tangled so deeply it was nearly impossible to tell where one of them ended and the other began. She felt his pain. He felt hers. They had been through so much, accomplished so much that no one would ever understand the extent of what they meant to one another. No one would ever know just how attached they had become and just how deeply they relied on each other.
Which only made his actions even worse and left his heart in tatters – because he knew that his death would nearly destroy her.
It would be as if someone had physically ripped away a piece of her body and soul. She would never recover. Not entirely. He knew this, and it would haunt him forever, but he also knew that she wouldn’t be alone. He knew that she would survive this, and she would carry on. Arthur would make sure of it. That man was her humanity – he would keep her grounded and ensure that she didn’t slip into darkness while Nasir kept her alive and safe. Shacklebolt would protect her from the fallout after the war as promised. He would make sure that she didn’t become a public spectacle, and he would keep her out of the spotlight and let her live in peace. Fleur and Ginny would love her unconditionally, despite her inability to properly participate, and they would be there with all the others until the end of time.
Together, the lot of them would ensure that Hermione was safe. They would do what they could to make her happy, and they would become the foundation for her continued survival. Harry knew this. He believed it with every fiber of his being, and it was the only thing that had made leaving possible, knowing that even though he would be gone, he wasn’t truly leaving, and she wouldn’t be alone.
Not ever.
And if a fragment of his soul survived this and there truly was an After, he would wait for her. Always. And he would see her again.
He let out a quiet breath as he moved down the small overgrown path into the darkness and pushed those thoughts aside. At this point, he just had to trust the others to finish the job and take care of her. Dwelling on his actions would do him no good, as it was, he felt like he had been here before a hundred times over. Thinking and re-thinking. Endlessly wondering if he had done the right thing – not in choosing to die, that he knew was the right thing to do and that was unquestionable – but in how he had decided to leave.
He had traced this trail of thought before, and no matter how many times he did, it always ended the same way. If he had told Hermione in advance, she never would have allowed him to go through with this. She would have made sure that he couldn’t leave, and then defeating Voldemort would have been even more impossible than it already was, and he would have continued to walk the earth as a Horcrux. Which, after additional research and discussion with Nasir, was even more dangerous than Harry had initially understood it to be.
The cold hard truth was, his body was a ticking time bomb, and with every moment he lived, he put the entire Order at risk.
He suspected that the only reason that he had not fallen victim to Voldemort possessing and all but stealing his body thus far was because the demon seemed to be unaware that Harry was a Horcrux. But that wouldn’t last forever and given the size of the soul fragment tangled within his body, it would be incredibly easy for Voldemort to try and take control. Likely easier than his previous resurrection had been. After all, Voldemort had damn near done it in fifth year, and that was without him understanding what their connection was. If he found out, Harry could easily become Voldemort’s new vessel while his subconscious was pushed into the background. And the risk of that happening was exceptionally high if they destroyed the other Horcruxes first and took out his current form.
And that was assuming that they would be able to kill him while Harry lived.
For all Harry knew, that was impossible. Voldemort’s resurrected body was made from Harry’s own blood – their souls were tied, their lives twisted and intermingled in a way that had never been seen before. There was a very real possibility that they would not be able to kill him while Harry remained alive and intact as his largest Horcrux. It was impossible to say and impossible to know – but the risk was too great to chance it, and there had been no other viable options.
The truth was, Harry didn’t know what would happen when he died – even Nasir wasn't sure. But he knew for certain that his death would make Voldemort significantly easier to kill. It would weaken him more than any of the previous Horcrux destructions, and it would give the Order a massive advantage.
And that was worth it. That – was the only option.
His resolve had not wavered in the slightest since he first spoke to Nasir and decided to die. If anything, it had only hardened and grown more resolute. He meant what he had said to Dumbledore tonight in the Headmaster’s office – he was ready to die and had been since he was eleven years old.
Maybe, if he had realized his situation sooner or spoken to Nasir about it when they first met, he could have looked into other options and tried something else. But Harry doubted that it would have gone any differently. Dumbledore had known for well over a year before his death that he was a living Horcrux, and while Harry had his issues with the old dead man, Dumbledore’s knowledge and ability to wield magic were undeniable. Even Voldemort hadn’t questioned that fact, and he had all but hid from the old man until he regained his body and full strength. And even then, his interactions with the old wizard had been careful and calculated.
So, as a result, Harry trusted that there were no other options.
Even if he had known years in advance, he would still be standing here today, alone, in the dark, carefully walking through the trees and ready to die.
A small and exhausted smile tugged across his lips as he made his way through a shallow puddle. He wasn’t alone. Not truly. He, like Hermione, had the support of their friends and family behind him, and he could feel their love like a physical weight on his shoulders as he walked. Since the day that he left the Dursleys and made his way onto the crimson steam engine that brought him into this insane and magical world, he hadn’t been alone. Even in the worst moments, Hermione was always by his side, and the others were not far behind.
He had friends, family and hope for a better future.
And he knew in his heart that everything was going to be okay. Maybe not today, and maybe not even in ten years – but eventually, everything would be alright.
He ignored the feeling of being watched as he moved. Instead, he focused on the calm in his heart as he slowed his pace even further to draw out the time. He had stopped sprinting the second that he reached the treeline and sent up a stream of white sparks before pocketing his fake wand.
Voldemort knew he was here now; he could feel it in the odd tension and unease that sat in the forest. Someone must have seen his signal and immediately alerted the demon of his presence because the second the white sparks touched the night sky, the woods grew quiet and still. Perhaps Voldemort had seen the sparks himself and given the order to back down. Harry wasn’t sure, but he could sense countless bodies in the dark around him, he had confirmed their presence by casting a silent homenum revelio.
Yet, no one approached.
They all lingered out of sight. Not a single one moved as they waited. Voldemort was allowing him to approach at his own pace – why, Harry wasn’t sure. Maybe he was scared. Maybe he was cocky. Maybe the deadline no longer mattered because he was getting what he wanted in the end. Truly Harry had no idea what motivated the monster, but he didn’t care because he had already successfully managed to buy the castle more time as he continued his steady and confident pace across the waterlogged underbrush of the forest, then veered off the overgrown path to the left toward where he knew he would meet his end.
They had sent up blue sparks in response to his supposed surrender, and he was getting closer and closer to the origin with each step he took. He slowed his feet as the trees started to thin, and he paused to look up at the sky.
He didn’t have any regrets. Just that he wished that he could have spent more time with her. He wished that he could have said a proper goodbye, but he knew that in that moment Hermione had been beyond reason. She wasn’t listening because she didn’t want to listen, and there was nothing that he could have said or done to make the situation easier.
She was hurt, rightfully so – his tactics had been underhanded and cruel. Overburdening her mind through the bond so she couldn’t move and couldn’t act was the worst thing that he had ever done to her. But trying to talk to her to explain would have been impossible and only put the castle in more danger and threatened the lives of everyone there. So, he’d had to leave abruptly – it was the only way – though he had been hopeful that he might be able to reach out to her one last time before the end.
He squinted through the rain, watching as lightning streaked across the sky and the air in the forest grew colder.
Nasir had promised him that he would prevent Hermione from following and that he would do his best to calm her – and while Harry had believed the first half of that commitment, he had been skeptical of the second. He hadn’t initially been sure if Nasir would be able to reach her through her rage and anguish, but apparently, the man had managed to do something because Harry could feel her heart slowing with each and every beat. It was still fast, still laced with pain and aching with heartbreak, and he could feel her emotions rolling like a storm as her vitals flared with pain and trauma.
But she was listening.
She was lucid now, and he might actually get his dying wish.
Letting out the breath that he didn’t even realize he was holding, he cracked open the bond and pushed a wave of love through the connection. He shivered as the wind brushed over his wet skin, and he felt her respond to his call. She was shaking. Crying. He couldn’t see it, but he could feel it and his throat burned as he pinched his eyes closed.
She was barely hanging on – but she didn’t lose control at his contact, so he pushed a second wave through and forced himself to inhale.
He wanted her to know how much he loved her. He wanted her to know that everything was going to be fine. He wanted her to know that he was sorry. That he knew this wasn’t fair. That he knew life had been cruel to her. She had already given too much, and she had deserved so much better – more than what he had been able to give to her. More than what he had done to her just now. She deserved to know the full truth, everything, all of it – and now that she was listening, he would give it to her.
He pushed the memory of his Wednesday night conversation with Nasir through the bond, being careful not to feed the scene too quickly as he opened his eyes once more. Then, he reached into his pocket, pulled out his fake wand, and dropped the useless stick to the ground.
He wouldn’t need it. Not anymore. Not where he was going.
The gesture seemed to shift the atmosphere in the forest, and he could literally feel the tension ease from his body as he let his shoulders drop. Then he opened the bond completely and reached out to her through the storm.
‘I love you, Hermione.’
He sent it with everything that he had, and the pain of it tore through his heart as his eyes started to sting. It would never be enough. He would never be able to truly put it into words. He would never get enough of her, and letting her go was the single hardest thing he had ever done in his life. He waited. His heart pounding soft and steady like a drum as he forced himself to inhale once more.
Would she answer him?
Would she ignore him?
At this point, if she did ignore him, he honestly wouldn’t even blame her. But he knew that she had heard his words because he had felt her heart breaking through the bond as they entered her mind. He wished he could say more. He wished he had more time to see if she would respond – but he knew he couldn’t wait any longer.
It was time.
So, he pushed the thoughts from his head. He locked up the ache in his heart, and he forced his gaze to focus on the darkness before him as he stepped toward the clearing. He made it six paces before he froze, his foot hovering above the ground as the unexpected response slid across the bond.
‘I love you too, Harry.’
It was strained and rough – like broken glass ripping through his skin as they entered his mind. But they were hers. Her words. And he felt his heart explode with love as his foot touched the ground and a heavy sigh left his lips.
It was all that he had wanted.
The only thing that he had needed in this moment so he could die in peace – to hear her goodbye and to know that she still loved him in the end. He would take it. Carry it. Hear those words as he closed his eyes and accepted his fate. An odd calm rolled through his body as he set off across the moss-covered ground again and closed down the bond. She was with him – always – and she would stay with him until the very end.
It didn’t take long before the scattered figures came into view. Some he recognized, others were strangers, and a few were missing limbs. They looked exhausted and worn – like the battle had been just as hard on them as it had been on the Order and the students. Their ranks were obvious by the way they stood – as was their loyalty by the expressions on their faces.
Some looked pleased; others looked terrified. Bellatrix looked deranged as she lingered off to the left near Nagini, her shoulder still trickling out a small stream of blood. Lucius looked about ready to fall over, and he was gripping a nearby tree for support. Narcissa was standing stock still with a perfectly impassive expression plastered across her face as she stared at him intently. He caught her gaze for a brief moment, noticing that she was one of the few who didn’t have her wand aimed at his chest, but their silent exchange betrayed nothing, then his eyes shifted to the tall figure who stood before them.
To the only person that Harry had come here to see.
“Hello, Tom,” Harry said as he slowly walked out into the small clearing, his empty hands hanging loose and relaxed at his sides.
“You're alone,” Voldemort answered, his eyes shifting across the space surrounding Harry before they fixated on his face. He almost sounded surprised – as if he had been anticipating Harry deceiving them in some way and bringing along a small army.
“Yes.” He nodded, keeping his tone level and controlled.
“And you came to surrender,” Voldemort hissed, taking a small step forward.
“No,” Harry breathed, a small smile tugging at his lips as he watched several of the Death Eaters around Voldemort tense. “I came here to ask you to stop.”
“To stop?” Voldemort repeated flatly, his glowing gaze intensifying as something deeply disturbed twisted across his face.
“Yes,” Harry whispered, knowing that in the unnerving quiet of the small clearing, everyone there would be able to hear him. “Stop the attack. Leave the school.”
“And then what?” Voldemort mused, his face shifting into a sickening smile, his voice growing more theatrical as he took another step forward. “You won’t kill me?”
“No, I'm still going to kill you,” Harry said calmly, watching the way the demon’s eyes narrowed at his words.
It was an odd and incredibly freeing feeling to be standing before the man that had so fundamentally destroyed his life and ruined his future without feeling an ounce of fear in his body. But he supposed that was the gift that came from accepting your own death and having the person you loved most in the world stay with you in your mind. There was nothing that Voldemort could do to him to hurt him. Nothing else that he could take. There was nothing to be afraid of anymore because he knew exactly where he was going, and he knew exactly how this would end.
“But it doesn’t have to be like this,” Harry continued, his low voice dropping to an almost casual tone. “Too many people have died fighting your battle tonight, Tom. This needs to stop.”
He paused, watching the way that Voldemort’s expression darkened, and those around him grew stiff and awkward. This was clearly not what they had been expecting when he entered the forest, and he couldn’t help the small scoff that left his lungs as he looked at the tall, disfigured man.
“Don’t you think it's time that you stepped in to fight it yourself?” Harry asked, arching a brow in question as his voice grew curious. “Or are you really that afraid?”
Voldemort’s eyes pinched, and Harry could have sworn that the skeletal figure actually stiffened at his words – but the motion had been so quick it was gone before he blinked, and suddenly the tall man was moving. He took a long step forward, then another and another. His horrible glowing gaze was empty and cold as he stalked across the small clearing with the most unnatural and disturbing gait Harry had ever seen.
“Oh, I'm not afraid,” Voldemort hissed, his voice so low and thick that it vibrated in the air between them. “But I am afraid that you have been misinformed, Harry Potter – I'm not going to stop. I've only just begun.”
Voldemort stopped less than two feet away, and the stench of rot flooded Harry's nose as the unnaturally tall being reached out to grab the front of Harry's jacket. Before Harry could blink, he was yanked across the ground like he weighed nothing. His boots dragged on the forest floor as he was lifted into the air until only his toes scraped the moss beneath his feet. He could feel Voldemort’s breath on his face, his red gaze burning only inches away from his own as his stomach instinctively curled in disgust at the heavy dark magic and death that seemed to surround the demon.
“Or is that what he told you?” Voldemort whispered, his eyes creasing in amusement as a cruel and bitter laugh cut from his lips. “Harry, Harry, Harry… how foolish you have been. I'm here to kill you, yes, and anyone else who stands in my way, but I'm afraid that tonight – I'm largely here to put an end to a longstanding truce that your newest colleague just broke. But he didn’t tell you about that, did he? You don’t know about our deal, do you? He must have conveniently forgotten to mention it.”
Harry fought the urge to vomit as the rank smell of decay filled his mouth, and Voldemort’s grip on his jacket tightened, but he didn’t say a word. He knew Voldemort wasn’t looking for a response. This speech was for his followers more than anything else. It was a show of power, a show of control, a way to make Harry and the Order seem like less of a threat – if he managed to terrify Harry in the process, that was only an added benefit – but it wasn’t the goal.
“He sent you here to ask me to surrender, didn’t he?” Voldemort hissed, his tone growing more amused as his sharp grin grew wide once more. “He told you that this would work, just like he told you that he would help you – didn’t he? Foolish as the old man was, Harry, Dumbledore had very good reason to never allow that man in his company, let alone in his head. He’s gotten to you. He’s used you like all the others. But he didn’t tell you about them, did he? And neither did Shacklebolt, because that man is as blinded as you are – so desperate for help that he chooses to ignore the obvious and continues to feed the devil in a pathetic attempt to try and keep the Revenant at his side.”
Voldemort's smile darkened as several of the Death Eaters behind him laughed, but Harry remained silent as he continued to meet the demon’s gaze with the most impassive look he could manage. This man was taunting him. Baiting him. Trying to break him and shake his confidence in Nasir and Shacklebolt – the two people that he was relying on to see this plan through – but it would never work. Voldemort might be able to pull this shit on his own Death Eaters and spew lies because they didn’t know any better, but Harry knew far more than Voldemort realized, and he had already been warned to expect this.
“If Shacklebolt had any brains, he would have killed that man years ago when they had the chance. Now, he will take what he wants while you die here in my grasp like the fool that we always knew you were. Tell me, Harry, what did he ask you for?” Voldemort hissed, his words ghosting against Harry's cheek as he leaned in so close Harry could no longer breathe. “What did you give him? Did you ask him for help? Or did he make you an offer that you couldn’t refuse because he, too, was stupid enough to believe in that prophecy? Because he wanted to use it to change the tide and take my place?”
“I didn’t ask him for anything,” Harry whispered, forcing the words out as he tried not to gag. He kept his gaze locked to the unbearable red above him even though his body was urging him to try and pull away. “But I’m asking you to leave the school – now – and I won’t ask again.”
His shrill laugh broke out once more, the awful sound cutting through the trees and making those around them shudder as Voldemort dropped his hold on Harry. He staggered as the flats of his feet hit the ground, and Voldemort stepped away.
“You're far more naive than I thought you were, Harry Potter,” Voldemort mused, his deranged smile returning as he circled the small space and his eyes flashed around the small clearing. He stopped a few feet away again, then turned to face Harry once more as his gaze suddenly and instantly burned with crazed malice. “And it will be your end as it was your parents.”
He drew his wand quicker than Harry could process and pointed it at his chest. Then, the air grew even quieter as if a vacuum surrounded their bodies while the cold sunk into his bones. Voldemort’s gaze was burning. The amusement was gone. It was as if a switch had been flipped, and there was nothing but hatred, disgust, and a violent burning rage in his red eyes as his voice dropped to a low and serious tone.
“You shouldn’t have come here tonight, Harry Potter,” Voldemort whispered, his voice so dark it made Harry physically cringe. “But I'm glad that you did. I'll make sure to thank Nasir for gift wrapping you so nicely – while I carve out the heart that he stole and cut off his head. Even I could not have anticipated his involvement leading you to me so blindly and with such stupidity.”
Harry felt his shoulders relax as he stared at Dumbledore’s wand. It looked so incompatible in the long white fingers that held it, but he couldn’t help the twitch of his lips as he stared at the familiar twisted shape. Somehow, it felt suiting that this wand would take his life, given that Dumbledore had been the one truly leading him to his death all along.
“Any last words, Harry Potter?”
Harry blinked, his gaze gradually shifting back up to the vile abomination before him as he felt the peace in his heart grow as his pulse started to slow.
No, Harry thought as his mouth twisted into a sad but peaceful smile. I already said the only ones that matter.
At his calm silence, the red gaze turned to one of barely contained rage, and Harry closed his eyes to block it out. Not because he was afraid. Not because he couldn’t handle the eyes of death that would have most wizards cowering in fear. He did it because he wanted his last thoughts to be of her.
To be of Hermione.
He felt the wind brush gently against his skin as a few scattered raindrops fell in his hair, and he let out a quiet breath as his entire body relaxed. He could feel her hands in his hair as she cut it on the beach. He could hear her laugh. See her smile. He could taste her lips. Feel the way that she had held him, touched him, loved him, and been with him for the last few months.
He nearly chuckled as he remembered their gangly appearances back in second year – they had changed so much. He thought about all the times she had helped him with his homework and how she had stuck with him through everything. He could see her in her Gryffindor scarf, cheering on his match. He could see her in her formal gown, twirling around at the Yule Ball as she smiled. He could see her sitting on the edge of the cliff in the dark as the blue flame flickered between them – the intense pull like magnetism between them as they stared into each other's eyes. She was standing in the snow. She was laughing, rolling, and dodging his attacks as they trained in the forest. She was curled up on their couch, her hair an absolute nightmare – piled onto her head as ink stained her fingers and cheek, and she tried to solve their next problem.
“AVADA –”
He could remember the first time that he kissed her. How her body had trembled beneath his fingers, and electricity shot down his spine.
“KEDAVRA!”
He could feel the desperate heat of their kiss as he held her in the rain and clutched her to his chest. He could hear her last words. They echoed in his mind like a gentle breeze – warm, soft, full of life and love. He took one last breath as the flash of green light flooded his vision, and then everything disappeared.
-x-x-
“We need to stand up now.”
The words were gentle. Warm. Far different from the indifferent tone that she had grown used to, and it sounded strange as it echoed in her ears, almost as if her head was underwater. Rain was falling into her eyes again, blurring her vision as it slid down her face and smeared the mud and blood that still covered her skin. Or maybe those were just her tears. She didn’t know; she couldn’t tell anymore because she couldn’t feel anything.
Everything around her was cold and wet – dark, like her mind.
She had felt Harry die, and it had been so much worse than losing a heartbeat through the tags because she had experienced it in her head, her heart and her soul. The void of it was deafening. It rang out empty and silent as if someone had physically carved out a piece of her being and left a barren cavern in its wake. And she was lost to it.
“Hermione.”
She blinked the rain from her eyes, and her blurred vision refocused on the man above her – but she felt nothing but pain as she looked up at him. He had told her to trust him. He had told her that he would help her. He had told her that he would try to bring Harry back, but right now, that felt impossible as the silence of their bond ate away at her soul.
She blinked again and stared at the dark eyes that were watching her with concern. He was waiting to make sure that she was truly there, waiting to make sure that she was truly listening. She felt his thumb shift against her face again, and she shivered. He had asked her for her help. He had said that he needed her; that Harry needed her. He had told her that she wasn’t done yet, and while his words had tugged at her broken heart, she still could not swallow them because the truth was, she felt done.
And she didn’t want to do this anymore.
She didn’t want to be here – not without Harry. She knew that Nasir intended to try and bring him back, but what if it didn’t work? What if their gamble failed? What if Harry was actually gone, and she was left here alone? What if what he managed to retrieve wasn’t Harry at all? That thought made her sicker than she already felt, and she was certain she would die of grief.
She knew what she needed to do, but her body and mind were rejecting it as her scattered thoughts continued to race. She couldn’t carry this weight; she couldn’t carry the burden of the dark magic that she had used any longer when it felt like she had been run over by an erumpent and trampled by a herd of thestrals. She couldn’t be what Harry and Nasir needed her to be right now, and she couldn’t be what the Order and the school wanted her to be.
She was too tired, and she was done.
Broken, exhausted, and all she wanted to do was lay here and drown in the rain. If this plan failed and Harry was dead, Nasir could have her. He could take her soul, her heart, her body – she didn't care, because she couldn’t do this anymore. He could take whatever he wanted, carve her up into pieces and use her parts for his research or mark her skin with runes. It didn’t matter. She would let him do it.
In fact, she might even ask him to – ask him to kill her.
She blinked again as she felt the warmth of his magic ghost across her body, mending her bones, healing her muscles, and patching up her battered frame once more so he, the Order, and all the others here could use her one last time. The bitter resentment behind that thought struck her like a bludger and plummeted into her gut with a hollow emptiness that made her stomach lurch.
Where had that thought come from? Had that underlying resentment always been there or was it a slow process that had been carved into her after months of agony? Or had this animosity set in after the fire on Hogsmeade hillside where she irreparably marred her own soul?
She swallowed and tried to push the crude thought aside – knowing that it wasn’t truly her own – it was just the manifestation of her hurt and pain over losing Harry.
She knew it wasn’t fair to think like that. This wasn’t anyone’s fault, and she could not fault the students or the Order for desiring her help even when she was broken. They needed everyone that they could get, they were all in the same position, and she was the one who had offered herself up. She had promised to fight until the end. She had vowed to give herself to this war completely, whatever the cost, and whatever was needed in order to put a stop to Voldemort and end this bloodshed.
Harry, Nasir, and the others were simply holding her accountable to her promise.
This was her doing, no one else's. She was the one who had put herself in this position, and she didn’t blame Harry for the choice that he made. He hadn’t had much time to come up with a plan, and even she could admit that she would have made things more difficult for him. She would have stopped him and she would have refused. She didn’t fault him… but she did blame herself. She should have figured out he was a Horcrux sooner. If she had been paying better attention, she would have, and maybe then she could have stopped him. Maybe then she could have found another solution. Yet as those thoughts circled her mind, Nasir’s words echoed in her head.
It was his choice to make.
She closed her eyes, feeling the rain wash over her skin again as the cold hollow in her heart grew darker under the weight of the rune on her chest.
Nasir was right.
He was right, and she hated him for that. She hated that this was out of her control. She hated that Harry had decided to leave. She hated that he made the decision on his own without her. She hated that she hadn’t been given the chance to try to find another solution, and she hated this fucking war because it took and it took, and she had nothing left to give. And yet, even with the unbearable agony in her heart and the utter anguish that was breaking through her chest as fresh tears rolled down her face, she knew she would stand again.
She knew that Harry had known that she would rise once more – because she had to. She needed to.
Regardless of the anger and hatred in her heart, regardless of the pain and the heartbreak that tormented her soul, she knew that she had to get back up.
What other choice did she have? Had there ever been any other ending to this story? She was broken beyond repair, soaked in dark magic and drenched in death – realistically, what the hell kind of life had she been expecting to have outside of this war?
Moving into Grimmauld Place with Harry and finishing her NEWTs had been a pipe dream to help her get through the trauma and force herself to continue. It was a coping mechanism so she didn’t suffocate. It was never going to happen. Harry likely knew that when he asked her to move in with him. And he certainly knew it when they had talked about their future after the success of the werewolf bands.
She and the others of her generation had become tools of war – that was her purpose now – there was nothing else anymore. So there was no point in fighting it. This war was happening with or without her. Harry knew that she understood this, and the logical part of her brain was already instinctively packaging away her broken and blunted emotions, stuffing them into a battered box and shoving them into a corner beneath her pain.
Voldemort didn’t care that her heart had just been shattered. He didn’t care that he had killed innocent people today, that there were children still inside the school, or that her sanity was hanging on by a thread so thin it was nearly transparent. Harry might be gone, but nothing had changed; she still needed to end this, and if she wanted to die, she might as well give her life taking out the abomination that had wrought nothing but destruction and pain throughout the wizarding world.
She might as well destroy the thing that had destroyed her.
She felt Nasir shift as he finished mending her femur, and she opened her eyes as the tethers fell away from her body. All of them disappeared without a word. All of them, but one. She could feel the final thread attached to her sternum, warm and secure, tying her to him because he was still unsure if it was safe to let go. She blinked again, her vision clearing as her eyes grew hard and a frigid cold shifted through her body.
But it wasn’t from the rain…
It was radiating from her heart, and she could feel it pulsing through her blood as she stared up at Nasir through the storm and felt her fingers dig even deeper into his skin.
“I’m going to kill him.”
The words were dark and baleful. She could taste the acid of them as they slid across her tongue, and her body began to tremble once more – but it had nothing to do with the pain or the exhaustion that clung to every muscle fiber of her being. This was something else, and she could feel the sinister sensation inching through her bones like a poison.
“I’m going to carve out his heart,” Hermione whispered, her grip on him tightening as the darkness swept through her body. “And tear him into pieces so small that there is nothing left.”
“I’ll help you,” Nasir murmured, his deep baritone vibrating through her chest as she felt his grip on her body finally loosen. “But there is something that we need to do first, and I need your help.”
She nodded, and he moved once more. Lifting her up from the ground like it was the easiest thing in the world. She could feel herself detaching as he placed her on her feet and her legs trembled with renewed energy beneath her. Her mind was retreating into the shadowy silence at the back of her skull as she stuffed her heart into a box and locked it behind an iron door. There was no place for it here in battle, and she couldn’t afford to allow it out for risk of it being her downfall. It had very nearly killed her already, and she wasn’t done yet. So she would close it off and shut it down until this nightmare was over and she watched the life drain from those red glowing eyes.
After that, she didn’t care. The darkness could take her.
Nasir handed her two vials, and she drank them both without question. She didn’t even register the taste of the liquid or the colour as she tipped them down her throat and swallowed them robotically. He pulled out three more for himself, rapidly draining them before he vanished the blood from his face and snapped his broken nose back into place. A tiny pang of guilt thudded through her heart, but she pushed it aside, ignoring it for now. She could hear people moving around them, but she ignored that too, blocking everything out as she vanished the empty vials and watched Nasir pull out his dagger.
“Give me your hand.”
She did, holding it out to him freely and not flinching or even acknowledging the pain as he cut a thin line down her palm and drew out a small stream of blood. She watched it pool into the air, floating there like a glistening orb the size of a grape. Then he quickly sealed the cut into a thin silver line and murmured a spell to roll up both of his own sleeves.
She watched him in silence. The blue glow from the flames that littered the courtyard cast a ghostly shadow across his face as he sliced open his own palm to draw a matching sphere of blood – but he didn’t seal the wound. Instead, she watched him quickly drag his finger through the air before his body, releasing his masking charm in its entirety and exposing his scars and runes for the world to see.
But those weren’t what she was looking at.
Her eyes immediately fixated on the symbol that covered his right forearm above his two existing runes. It was a large black triquetra overlaid with a blood-red valknut, and she knew that it had not been there before because she had memorized every symbol on his body the day that he returned and allowed them to heal him. This was new, and she took an unconscious step towards him as he reholstered his dagger.
“What is it?” Hermione questioned, her eyes shifting up to his face once more as a crack of lightning flashed across the sky.
“It is how I intend to return Harry’s soul to his body,” Nasir said as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny vial of blood. He bit out the cork, then poured the contents into the air next to the other two orbs. “Assuming there is anything left of it to retrieve.”
“Has this worked before?” Hermione asked him as her heart rate began to increase.
“I’m not sure,” Nasir said, his eyes glinting in the darkness as he glanced down to meet her gaze. “Possibly once thousands of years ago – but the records were vague, and I’ve never had the chance to test it.”
“Okay,” she swallowed, nodding her head as she stepped closer once more and sealed up the last of her broken emotions. She refused to allow herself hope in this moment because she could not handle feeling anything else. “What do I need to do?”
“You will call for him,” Nasir said, his eyes creasing in concentration as he looked back to the floating orbs of blood and muttered something beneath his breath. “When I tell you to – grab onto the target on my arm and call for him through the bond.”
“Alright.” Hermione nodded in understanding, unable to look away from the flurry of wandless hand movements Nasir completed as a low mutter of words left his lips. She quickly circled around to his right and prepared to do as he ordered. Watching as he collected all three orbs of blood into one spinning mass, then grabbed it with his cut hand and smeared it across his forearm over the strange symbol as if it were some kind of ritualistic step to a sacrifice. “What is this called?”
“Anima Avocaret,” Nasir’s deep voice rumbled, and she watched with widened eyes as he rapidly drew out his dagger once more and drove it into his right forearm through the center of the symbol. The movement was so forceful and violent the dagger sunk down to the hilt and burst straight through the other side of his arm. “I am his guide. You are his calling. Harry is our target.”
His words echoed in the night, vibrating with magic and darkness. Blood was pouring down his arm and soaking into his robes. His skin around the dagger seemed to harden as the hiss of extreme heat filled the air, and the rain evaporated into steam as it collided with his skin. His eyes pinched in pain as he held onto the dagger’s handle and clenched his jaw tight – then the glossy red surface of his skin cracked and fractured like a log on a fire. Dull orange light glowed through the fissures that extended across his arm, and suddenly, he was pulling a physical chain out of his forearm.
It was crimson red.
It flickered like the flames of a fire as he tugged it through the air with his bloodied hand. It rattled in the cold, heavy and thick. His forearm grew darker, cracking and popping like coals beneath the flaming chain as the fractures crept up and down his arm. The deep glowing orange grew brighter as it radiated from each new crack that split across his skin – as if his limb was physically burning.
She could see sweat forming across his forehead as his eyes creased in concentration. He was muttering again – low, deep, and terrifying words that she had never heard before. They grew louder and louder in her mind, and she could feel it in her chest as her skin began to tingle. Before he could even open his mouth to give the instruction – she felt it – and she grabbed his cracked and burning forearm with her left hand as tightly as she could.
“C-Call – him, Hermione,” Nasir stuttered, forcing out the broken words as his eyes pinched in pain. He pulled on the chain with more force than humanly possible as the burning heat from his arm began to scald her skin. “And we will finish what you started.”
-x-x-
White.
Everything was white.
Harry could see it everywhere, and it was so all-encompassing that he could practically smell it and taste it – though he wasn’t sure how he could possibly describe it. He squinted his eyes and tried to focus on his surroundings, but there didn’t seem to be anything surrounding him.
It was all just white.
He wasn’t even sure if there was a floor, let alone walls or a ceiling for that matter. He couldn’t make out anything distinct. No shadows. No edges. No end to the emptiness that stretched on forever before him and seemed to be silent as a vacuum.
Harry shifted, twisting to look behind him only to notice that his clothes and movements made no sound, and the space behind him was just as white and just as endless as the space before. He squinted again, peering into the void over his shoulder for a moment longer only to give up and turn back to face forwards once more. Or whatever way this happened to be – since it could very well be up or down for all he knew, as there was no point of reference aside from his own position within the emptiness.
He stiffened, realizing at that moment that he couldn’t feel anything beneath his feet.
Tilting his head to look down at himself, he saw that he was still wearing his clothes. They were the same ones that he had worn into battle, but they appeared neater. Tidy. Clean. As if they had been freshly washed, dried and pressed – and he had been re-dressed in them. They looked strange. Almost too perfect, like they were a representation of what his clothes were more than being real clothes themselves. And he was fairly certain that he could not feel them against his skin.
Speaking of skin…
Harry lifted his arms and watched as the two limbs rose into the air at his command. They were his hands. He recognized them, but the Lichtenberg scars were missing – as were all the tiny little silver knicks that had collected across his fingers during training. Without pausing to think, Harry pulled up his sleeves – confirming, as he had already suspected, that the tags on his forearm were gone too.
He frowned.
He was himself, and yet he wasn’t. The wear and tear from his life seemed to be missing.
He dropped his hands back to his sides and looked up once more. He still couldn’t see anything. It was still a vast nothingness with no shapes, sounds or movement. Yet despite the quiet and the unnerving white that encompassed him so completely, he felt oddly calm and bizarrely well-rested. The ache from his body was gone. His muscles were no longer torn and worn. The dull thudding sensation in his hand from his broken bones was non-existent, and his heart didn’t feel like it weighed as heavy as the ocean.
But his mind felt strange.
Different.
His thoughts were his own, mostly, but they were stunted, and he struggled to put words to it as he stood there unmoving. His mind was calm, passive – and the natural flow of thoughts seemed to be restricted, but not because he couldn’t form them; instead, it was just that he didn’t feel the need to have them.
He struggled to stay focused on anything for too long, and his thoughts tended to be more linear than how he knew he would usually think. He knew that he should have more questions. He knew that he should have more concerns. He knew that he should have more sentiments than this – but he didn’t, not really, or at least not in the same way that he used to. If something entered his head, he could address it, but everything about it felt detached and abnormal. He felt like he should care more about being here – and yet he felt perfectly calm.
He frowned again.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Harry muttered, and his quiet voice seemed to get sucked into the empty void of white. He didn’t like the way that it sounded, and he knew that he didn’t like being here, even if his body seemed totally fine with it.
Looking around once more, Harry tried to focus on his thoughts, carefully working through each one as they came into his head and not allowing the calm to push them aside before he was done.
Why is it all white? Harry thought as he tried to find something to see within the vacuum.
He knew that he and Nasir had talked about this at length. He knew that the killing curse severed the soul from the body and destroyed it. He knew that it vanished the target's soul from existence, thus making it impossible for the person to ever come back. The spell was finite and irreversible. It prevented people from moving on to whatever came after because there was nothing left to move on.
When they had met by the campfire Wednesday night, Nasir had hinted that there was something else after life. A space or a plane that existed beyond the world as Harry knew it, but Nasir had not described it. In fact, the man had been exceptionally vague when Harry tried to ask him about it. Whether that was intentional or simply because he couldn’t be specific due to his runes, Harry would never know – but there was one thing that he knew for certain at this moment.
A part of him still existed in some form – or he wouldn’t be here.
Nasir had been exceptionally clear that souls were obliterated and destroyed by the killing curse. If the killing curse that Voldemort cast had been successful, he wouldn’t be anywhere. So, if he was standing here, wherever here was, it meant that he hadn’t died.
At least not completely.
Something else must have happened.
“Which means that my soul wasn’t obliterated,” Harry murmured as he took a slow and cautious step forward. He couldn’t feel the ground beneath his feet, but he didn’t fall or drop as he shifted across the empty expanse. “At least not completely – some part of it must have survived.”
He paused after a few more steps and looked around again. His eyes skimmed to the left, and he saw the faintest outline of a familiar shape. It hadn’t been there before, but then again, maybe it had, and his eyes had simply adjusted. He focused on the outline, taking another two slow steps toward it until he realized why it looked so familiar.
It was a bench.
He squinted his eyes harder and willed his mind to see – then slowly, the world around him began to materialize. Everything was still piercing white, but he could now make out the edges. There was a column to his right, a dip in the ground off to the left, and what appeared to be many more benches lined in a row down the center of the endless space before him. The distant sound of a familiar whistle made his body still as he looked up once more, and his eyes scanned the space looking for the train that he instinctively knew was coming.
“Is this King's Cross Station?” Harry wondered, the low whisper disappearing just as instantly as he spoke the words.
Unable to find the train, he returned his gaze to the empty bench on his left, then looked around the platform once more. There wasn’t a soul in sight, nor a single sound aside from the faint whistle and his own voice when he spoke. His eyes scanned over the visible surfaces – they were much easier to see now, but there wasn’t a single blemish anywhere.
No scuff marks. No dirt. No nothing.
His eyes went back to his hands, and he turned them over to examine them more thoroughly. It wasn’t just the Lichtenberg scars and silver knicks that had disappeared – it was everything. Even his ‘I must not tell lies scar’ had disappeared. His hands were smooth and unblemished. The callouses that had started to form from knife training were gone too, and his hands looked pristine – as if they had never once been marred or damaged.
Like his clothes – they were perfect.
He was perfect.
“So, I just regular died,” Harry said slowly, and for some reason the words felt comforting. “And this is what comes after.”
He wasn’t sure how he knew it – but he knew it was true.
Either his body had been killed during Voldemort’s attack and his soul naturally passed on; or, his soul had been severed from his body by the killing curse but not destroyed and was thus sent on to the place that Nasir had hinted at when they spoke. Either way, Harry wasn’t with his physical body anymore, and he knew that he wasn’t on the plane of the living. He had indeed died within the Forbidden Forest at the hands of Lord Voldemort, and his life had officially ended.
He looked around again and felt his face shift into a frown as he forced his mind to focus on his thoughts and questions. He had never been one to complain, but if this was ‘heaven’ or the ‘afterlife’ it seemed rather dull. And he had no idea what he was supposed to do here. Did he just wait for the train? Would there be people on it? Would it take him somewhere else?
Maybe this was just the waiting room.
But that thought felt stupid, it seemed a bit ridiculous to assume that he was the only person on the entire planet to die in the last few minutes, so he couldn’t understand why there wasn’t anyone else here.
He heard the train whistle blow faintly again as he continued to frown, yet his emotions seemed to be maintained at a steady level of indifference. He hadn’t noticed it right away, but he was fully aware of it now. He could shift his face into different expressions to emote his thoughts – but the emotions didn’t come with them, and he couldn’t feel very much.
In fact, now that he was focusing on it, he couldn’t feel his heart beating in his chest like he knew that it should be to match the growing concern that was festering in his mind. He wordlessly cast a diagnostic spell, and much like he had anticipated, nothing happened. So, he quickly brought his fingers to his neck, and in a matter of seconds, he proved his suspicion correct.
He had no pulse.
No heartbeat.
Not even a single dulled thud. And on top of that, his skin was missing any sort of warmth that came from being alive.
“Wait a minute,” Harry murmured, his eyes creasing with thought.
He tried to inhale, sucking in a deep breath only for nothing to happen. His lungs didn’t inflate. His chest didn’t move. He tried to expel the air that he didn’t have and still, nothing. His organs were entirely lifeless – or maybe he didn’t even have them anymore. His brow furrowed in thought as he ran his hand through his hair and felt the familiar haircut slide between his perfect fingers.
“Well, at least that didn’t change,” Harry muttered as he dropped his hand back to his side. He knew that he wanted to feel sadness, but the emotion didn’t come. So he let out a non-sigh and made his way over to the nearest bench and sat down. “Well, if this is the Afterlife, it pretty much blows.”
Yet the bitterness of the thought didn’t stick, and it drifted away into the calm.
There was no tension in his shoulders, and there was barely any inflection in his voice. Everything he said came out calm and level. In his mind, he knew it wasn’t how he wanted the words to sound, but he didn’t seem to have any control over it. Everything was just flat, and it made it harder to care about anything. Which made it hard to focus his mind on the thoughts that he knew he cared about when the emotions attached to them didn’t seem to be there.
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he stared at the toes of his pristine boots and traced through his thoughts once more.
So he was dead – but not gone. His soul was still intact. But if his soul was still intact, why couldn’t he feel anything? Wasn’t the soul the defining aspect of a human? Wasn’t it the place that harboured emotions and made up his person as Nasir had explained it? Wasn’t that why Nasir had no emotions – because he had no soul? So perhaps, he wasn’t really a soul right now at all? Or maybe, his emotions were just temporarily blocked off?
Or maybe, Harry thought. The killing curse was partially effective, and it damaged my soul. Maybe I’m in pieces, and maybe I lost my ability to feel.
He let out another non-existent sigh and dropped his head into his hands, trying to clear his mind as he closed his eyes tight. There was a nagging feeling in the back of his brain that he couldn’t seem to focus on, but he couldn’t ignore either. He felt wrong, and he was struggling to wrap his head around this. There was somewhere else that he was supposed to be right now, and the unnatural calm that encircled his body was making him angry – even if he couldn’t feel the emotion.
He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t think that he belonged. He disliked that he was entirely alone. Something must have gone wrong. He wasn’t in the right place – weren’t you supposed to be greeted in the afterlife? Wasn’t there some kind of reunion with loved ones?
“Though I guess it makes sense that there wouldn’t be anyone here,” Harry said quietly as he threaded his fingers into his hair. “Anyone dead who would want to see me was killed with the killing curse – they don’t exist anymore.”
Harry opened his eyes and stared blankly at the white ground before him.
“Well,” he said slowly, forcing his mind to follow the train of thought. “Except for–”
“Harry?”
Harry’s head shot up at the familiar deep voice that rang out before him. His non-existent heart rate would have skyrocketed at that moment if he’d had it, and his body would have been filled with joy and surprise if the odd calm that encompassed his body wasn’t smothering him like an unrequested blanket.
“Sirius?” Harry’s voice was toneless, but he quickly pushed himself up from the bench because he knew that he was excited and surprised.
The tall, dark-haired man was standing before him, his robes elegant and crisp, not a mark on them. His face was free from the stress and worry lines that used to mark his skin, and he looked younger and healthier than Harry had ever seen him. Before the odd calm in his body could prevent the motion, Harry instinctively closed the distance between them and grabbed the man in a tight hug.
He had forgotten how tall his godfather was. He must have been at least 6’3” because Harry's head only came to his chest. He gripped the man tighter and heard the familiar rumble of Sirius’s chuckle. He had missed that sound, and he let out what would have been a deep sigh as Sirius hugged him in return. He didn’t want to let go, but finally, the older man let out a breath and broke the hug so he could step back and look Harry over.
“Harry, you look older – your hair, what did you do to it?!” Sirius asked, his face wide in a beaming smile as his fingers brushed through Harry’s hair and traced over his face and shoulders. Harry instinctively smiled up at the man even though he couldn’t really feel anything.
“Hermione cut it,” Harry responded, feeling an odd sensation in his gut as he uttered her name. It was the closest thing to an emotion that he had felt since getting here, and his non-existent heart ached as he watched his godfather’s hungry gaze sweep over his frame. It was as if the man was starved, and Harry was the first piece of food he had seen in years.
“She did a good job,” Sirius said, his eyes shining with tears as he gripped Harry’s shoulders tight. He swallowed, then something shifted behind the man’s grey eyes and his voice became more controlled. He smiled again. “Well, except maybe the back, though I hardly think that Hermione would have made a mistake, so this must be a new fashion trend – it does make you look very devil-may-care.”
“That's what the twins said too,” Harry said as the ache in his chest compounded and then flitted away. He could remember what happened before he died. He could remember leaving her, and he knew that he was devastated, but the brief flickers of emotion kept slipping through his fingers. He grimaced, struggling to hold onto the feeling as the calm began to wrap around his body once more.
“Sirius, where are we?” Harry asked, a small pulse of agitation flashing through his veins at the impassive sound of his own voice. He really didn’t like that he couldn't emote when in his head he knew that he was drowning beneath unanswered questions and pain. So he grit his teeth and forced himself to push the questions out, before the calm could shove them away. “Did you die behind that veil? Is this the afterlife? Is there anyone else here? What have you been doing this whole time? Are there–”
“Harry, Harry – slow down,” Sirius cut him off with a sad but gentle smile. “I'll answer your questions, I promise – but let's just go one at a time, yes? First, tell me how you got here.”
“I died,” Harry said flatly, his brow furrowing with the agitation that he couldn’t quite seem to feel. “I think I did anyway. I went to see Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest. He cast the killing curse, and it hit me in the chest. Then I opened my eyes, and I was here.”
“Hmmm.” Sirius gave him a curious look, his brow creasing as he looked at him. “Well, then it would seem that his killing curse was not all that successful. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.”
“Right, that's what I had been thinking too since the killing curse destroys the soul – but so, then where is here?” Harry asked, looking up to his godfather in question.
“Well, that’s hard to say exactly,” Sirius said slowly, his gaze leaving Harry to look at the white space around them. “Apparently, it looks different to everyone who comes through here, but regardless of the physical makeup of what you see, it is the same plane. It is the space before the After.”
“So, it's not the afterlife,” Harry said slowly.
“No,” Sirius shook his head to confirm, meeting Harry’s gaze once more. “This is the step in between – the Afterlife is much different than this, but it isn’t something that I could possibly describe with words. Out of curiosity, Harry – what do you see here?”
“White,” Harry responded quickly, and Sirius gave him an amused smile. “It sort of looks like King’s Cross Station, there is a row of benches over there, and I keep hearing a train whistle.”
“Ahh, I see, that makes sense.” Sirius nodded.
“Wait – what do you see?” Harry’s brow furrowed in confusion.
“Nothing, just you,” Sirius said calmly, placing a hand on Harry’s shoulder once more. “This area appears black to me save for you standing in the middle of it.”
“This area?” Harry said slowly, his eyes searching Sirius’s gaze. “You mean there are different areas besides this in-between space and the After?”
“Indeed there are, but typically people only get to see this space and the After,” Sirius confirmed. “But my situation is a bit different than most people’s, Harry.”
“Is that because of the veil?” Harry asked, the flow of questions coming more easily now as he grew used to fighting against the calm. “Did it not kill you?”
“Yes, it’s because of the veil,” Sirius replied almost sadly as he let out a heavy sigh. Harry could see the pain radiating from his eyes, the sadness, the concern, the –
“Wait,” Harry said suddenly, his eyes growing wide with realization. Without hesitating, he reached up to Sirius’s neck and placed two fingers against his skin. Had he been fully capable of panic and disbelief, he would have felt them at that moment because Sirius’s skin was warm and his heart beat firm and steady against his fingers.
“You have a heartbeat,” Harry said, removing his hand from Sirius’s neck and watching as the man let out a small breath. “And you’re breathing?”
Harry stared up at the man in disbelief, trying to force his struggling mind to process everything going on.
“You’re not dead at all, are you?” Harry asked, taking a step forward as he looked up at his godfather. “You – you’re still alive?”
“Sort of,” Sirius said, a strange look crossing his face before his lips tipped into a smile. “To be honest with you, Harry, I’m not entirely sure what I am. From what I can tell, I don’t seem to age, I don’t grow tired, I don’t need to eat, and yet my heart keeps beating, and my lungs keep breathing. I still have all my memories; I can still feel, and I’m still very much myself – except that I’ve had a lot of time to think and become at peace with the past.
“I’m not sure what the veil is – or how the object came to be in the Ministry’s possession – but I’ve been here long enough and run into enough souls to know that it was not intended for human use. They believe that it may have been created by Merlin himself ages ago as a portal of sorts, to jump between planes. Though every time that topic comes up, it starts a rather lively debate about whether or not Merlin was fully human, and we don’t get very far, but I digress,” Sirius waved his hand as if to brush the argument aside. “What I do know is that I’m able to slip in-between places – or planes as they call them. None of them have names except for what I’ve decided to call them so I can keep track of them in my head – but I am not, however, able to come back to the world of the living. That is impossible – or at least, almost nearly impossible.”
“Wait – hold on. What do you mean by they?” Harry asked, shaking his head in confusion. “Are there other people here like you?”
“Yes.” Sirius nodded. “There is a group of them actually, and they came here together. They claim that at one time, there were twenty-one of them in here, but there are only three left now. There were six when I first arrived, but the other three have disappeared over the last two years, which makes me think that we must eventually die or cease to exist in some way when our time comes. We’ve talked about it at length, and we’ve largely agreed that it happens naturally – that our bodies just die when it’s their time, likely when they would have perished on the plane of the living. It’s the most sensible explanation given the ages of the group and the times at which people disappeared. They all came through here in 1939 as part of some experiment. The first to disappear was the oldest, the second was the one with the worst health, and then that pattern continued over the years. Our best guess is that we are in here waiting out our natural clocks.”
“But you can’t leave?” Harry questioned, watching as Sirius’s expression grew sad once more.
“No, Harry,” Sirius shook his head and gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “Nor would I want to. According to the others, all twenty-one members of their experiment got stuck the second that they crossed through the veil. They spent years trying to find a way out – five of them did, but the price to cross back to the world of the living is both exceptionally painful and exceedingly large – and it’s not one that I am willing to pay.”
“What’s the price?” Harry asked quietly.
“Your soul,” Sirius said, giving Harry a grim look. “In its entirety. Your humanity. Your ability to feel, to relate, or to exist with any sort of meaning. Not only would you be giving up your capacity to be human, you would also be giving up your place in the After when you finally do meet your end. Only certain people would be physically and magically capable of such a sacrifice, and fewer still would survive it. It tears you apart, Harry – most of the others that remain here don’t speak of it. They didn’t even want to tell me about it because of how brutal and disturbing the process was. They’ve still refused to explain it in full, and as it stands – they still don’t even know if the process was successful. We can’t look into the world of the living, so it is impossible to say if those five actually made it back or if they simply tore their souls to pieces for nothing. Either way, whatever was left of them wouldn’t be human by definition, and their life would be empty.”
Harry swallowed, a faint and uneasy sensation creeping down his spine as he thought back to the notes that he had read in Nasir’s journal and the memories that Snape had shown him. He felt like he knew the answer, but he wasn’t sure that he wanted to say it.
“So you still have your soul?” Harry said slowly.
“I do.” Sirius nodded, and a small smile touched his lips. “And I plan to keep it so that I may join those we’ve lost in the After once it is my time. It’s what we believe happens when we fade from existence here – we rejoin the natural process, and our souls move on to the After. It will be a long wait, but I think it’s worth it.”
“I think it is too,” Harry agreed, a small smile touching his lips as he met Sirius’s warm gaze. Then his smile dropped, and his non-existent heart ached once more as he thought about never seeing Hermione again. “Do I still have my soul, Sirius? Because I don’t feel like myself. I am – but I’m not – I don’t feel much of anything. Our soul is what makes us human – isn’t it? If I had it, wouldn’t I be able to feel? I’m trying to, but it keeps slipping away from me. Something isn’t right, everything is blunted, and I’m having a hard time thinking and focusing on my questions.”
“I know,” Sirius said gently, gripping both of Harry’s shoulders tight as he gave him an understanding look. “But that’s normal here – you’re just fighting it. You still have your soul, Harry, I promise. Otherwise, you would not be here.”
“Then why can’t I feel anything?” Harry pressed, his hands clenching at his sides even though no anger existed in his chest. “Was my soul damaged by the killing curse? Or is this what the After is? Just a bunch of emotionally blunted people wandering about aimlessly? Because if it is, I don’t want it.”
Sirius chuckled, his eyes creasing as he smiled in amusement.
“No, Harry – your soul isn’t damaged, and that’s not what the After is,” he said, giving Harry’s shoulders one more squeeze before he let go. “Things work differently here, and it’s hard to explain. Even the others aren’t entirely sure how it functions, and they have been here for years studying it. But from what I can tell, it seems like desire and want don’t truly exist in this space – or at least not in the way that living beings can understand it. This plane is for the dead, Harry, and their needs are different from those of the living. Worldly desires are replaced with something else. Right now, you’re in the ‘In-Between’ as we call it. Your emotions and thoughts are still there, but they're buried deep within your heart. They’re just tamped out and inaccessible. You’ll regain them when you pass through, but they will be altered.”
“Altered how?” Harry asked, feeling a flicker of panic shoot down his spine. He didn’t want to change. He didn’t want to lose his desire to stay with Hermione, and he didn’t want to never be able to feel again.
“You’ll become something else entirely,” Sirius said gently, and he seemed to know what Harry was thinking because his next words were spoken softly. “But you won’t lose your feelings towards the people you care about. It will just be different. It’s tranquil over there, Harry, and that’s why the others and myself don’t belong here. We’re unnatural, and we go against the very essence of what this space is meant to be. We’ve neither physically died nor had our souls cast from our bodies – we don’t belong. People weren’t supposed to be here like this, and it’s why we cannot visit the After for much longer than a few moments at a time.”
“So, then what do you do while you wait?” Harry asked, his nails biting into the skin of his palms.
He didn’t like this. He didn’t like any aspect of this. He could hear the loneliness in Sirius’s voice; he could see the sadness in the man’s eyes. Harry was desperate to respond to it, yet his emotions remained out of his grasp, and it was the most frustrating thing in the world – even if he couldn’t truly feel the agitation.
He didn’t care if things would be better on the other side in the After. He didn’t want to become ‘something else entirely’, and he didn’t want to exist without Hermione. Every time he thought of her, he could feel that tiny ache in his chest, and even though it was painful, he clung to it because he didn’t ever want to let her go.
“Explore,” Sirius answered, giving Harry a small smile. “Slip between planes to see what’s going on and try to find new ones. Jacob comes with me, and we discuss theories on life and death and the veil and how it all works. We tell each other about our lives, try to find ways to keep ourselves busy and keep track of time. He was the youngest of the group from 1939, so he would be about seventy-eight or seventy-nine now, depending on the month. Though he still looks like a spry twenty-year-old.”
Sirius’s eyes softened as he looked down at the strained expression on Harry’s face, and he shook his head.
“It’s not all that bad, Harry, so don’t pity me for a second – I’m here as a result of my own actions and brash nature,” Sirius said gently, though his voice took on a serious tone. “I’ve had many days to reflect on what happened and examine my life. I shouldn’t have gone to the Ministry that night in the mindset that I did, and I certainly shouldn’t have been so careless in my duelling. What happened was my fault Harry, no one else’s. My only regret is that I never got to say goodbye to you. That I never got to watch you grow up and that I knew you would blame yourself for my death.”
Sirius let out a heavy sigh and reached for Harry, pulling him into a tight hug once more as the train whistle sounded in the distance. Harry could feel the man’s warmth through his robes as he gripped them tightly and felt the dull pain in his chest ache.
“I’m sorry that I wasn’t there for you these last few years, Harry,” Sirius murmured, his voice low as the dull pain in Harry’s chest began to grow. “I don’t know what’s happened in the war, but if you’re here – then it’s even worse than I imagined.”
“It was,” Harry whispered, his voice briefly catching in his throat as Sirius stepped back once more and then slung an arm over his shoulder. He followed the tall man as they slowly made their way along the row of benches. “But it’s not over yet, and it may still end with a victory. It’s a long story – but it turns out that I was a Horcrux all this time. Part of Voldemort lived inside me all these years, it wasn’t intentional, but it happened. He made others on purpose which we were collecting and destroying – but I needed to die in order to defeat him.”
“So, is he dead?” Sirius asked, his brow arching in question as he looked down at Harry. “Was he supposed to die when you died?”
“I’m not sure,” Harry said, shaking his head as he let out another non-sigh. “I don’t know how time works here or what happened after I died – but Hermione, Nasir and the Order were supposed to take him out.”
Sirius stopped, his face contorting into a curious expression. “Nasir?”
“Yes,” Harry nodded, looking up to meet Sirius’s gaze once more.
“Harry,” Sirius said slowly, his eyes tracing over Harry’s face with concern as he seemed to rapidly piece it all together. “What’s his last name?”
“I have no idea,” Harry admitted as he let out another breath. “But he is probably the same person that you’re thinking of – the one Jacob must have told you about. He was an Unspeakable for the Ministry, Sirius – and he came through the veil and returned.”
“So it worked,” Sirius breathed, his head shaking in disbelief before concern flashed across his eyes again. “Harry, why is he helping the Order? What happened?”
“He is a friend of Shacklebolt’s,” Harry said slowly, his face pinching as the dull ache in his chest thudded with pain while he thought about everything that had happened. “He’s our mentor – he trained Hermione and me.”
He looked up at Sirius, feeling his face contort with the agony that he knew he should feel in this moment. It was there just beneath the surface – and he wanted it. He didn’t want to be numb to the grief that he felt. He didn’t want to be calm and peaceful. No matter how badly it hurt, he didn’t want to forget the pain of everything that had happened this past year. And he didn’t want to forget all of the people who had died in this war. He didn’t want to forget Hermione. He didn’t want to let her go. He could feel something cracking in his chest, and he heard his voice become strained.
“I’m not the same person that you knew before you died, Sirius,” Harry struggled to get the words out, his voice breaking with pain as he spoke. “Things got bad. Really bad. A lot of people have died – a lot of innocent people, Sirius. Shacklebolt brought Nasir in to help when Voldemort started building a werewolf army out of enslaved muggles. He buried hordes of inferi around the school. He took over the Ministry and gained control of the apothecary supplies. We – Hermione and I – we’ve had to do things to survive. I’ve learned a lot of very questionable and very dark magic, and I’ve done horrible things. Unforgivable things. I’ve killed people, Sirius.”
Harry stared at the man before him as a dull tremble started to twitch through his body. It felt like his blunted emotions were churning beneath the surface and fighting to burst through the shield that was keeping them at bay. He wanted to feel them. He needed to feel them. And his throat started to burn as he looked at the utterly devastated but purely loving expression on his godfather’s face.
“And I’ve never been more proud of you,” Sirius’s deep voice rumbled into the void, and Harry swallowed hard as the tall man squeezed his shoulders tight. “You did what you had to do, Harry. You did what needed to be done, so don’t ever regret the actions that you took in a war that was never your fault – in a war that was shoved upon your shoulders by the generation that failed you. You died to save not only your friends but to give the wizarding world a chance to start over. To be better. It was an honourable death, and you should be proud of what you have done.
“Anyone who would say otherwise or would dare to question the actions that you took that allowed you to survive has never experienced the brutality of life,” Sirius said firmly. “They don’t understand the horrors that you have faced. For if they did, they would understand that life is complicated – it’s not always black and white, Harry. People are not so simple, and they cannot be categorized into neat little boxes of good and evil. It took me a long time to realize that, and I’m proud of you for figuring that out so young.”
Harry nodded slowly as Sirius pulled him tighter to his side, and they set off once more along the row of benches.
“So what happens now?” Harry forced himself to ask as the whistle blew and the faint outline of steam puffed in the distance. He didn’t like the idea of a train arriving – and as much as he was glad to see Sirius again, he didn’t want to be here.
“Now you wait,” Sirius said calmly, but his words didn’t soothe the ache in Harry’s chest. Instead, he felt a shudder of anxiety flash down his spine as his mind blatantly rejected the idea. “And based on what you said you see here, I imagine that you are waiting for a train to arrive.”
“And this train,” Harry said slowly, forcing his mind to focus on the uneasy feeling that was growing in his body. He dug his nails into it, clinging to it as the painful thought of leaving Hermione flooded his mind once more. “It will take me to the After?”
“It will,” Sirius nodded. “It will take you to the After, and once you’re there, you won’t be able to leave.”
Harry froze mid-step as a sharp pain shot down his spine.
“But I don’t want to go.”
He could feel it breaking through, all the stifled emotions leaking out into his hollow chest as his nails dug deeper into the palms of his hands. He couldn't go. Not yet. He refused. He clenched his teeth as a flash of pain surged through his right hand – the bones were broken again; he could feel it – and he forced his mind to fixate on it.
“I c-can’t go.”
The words broke from his lips in a hoarse and bitter whisper. The whistle of the train grew louder, and Harry could see the outline of the engine as it curved into view. Panic erupted in his chest, flooding through his body in a wave of rejection so primal and guttural he felt like someone had just punched him in the stomach.
He wanted to go back.
He wanted to be with Hermione.
He wanted to see this through. He didn’t want to leave her. He didn’t want to go. He wasn’t done yet – not even close. He loved her too much. He loved her more than his own life – more than anything in this world. More than the peace and calm that was desperately trying to wrap around his body and shove his emotions back beneath the surface.
He had accepted his own death – but that didn’t mean that he had liked it.
He didn’t care that life was agony. He didn’t care that it was unfair and painful – that it tormented him, took for him, hurt him and tore his heart into tiny shreds that could never be repaired. He liked his anguished life, and he missed it. He didn’t care that this was easier. He didn’t care that this was calm. He wanted his miserable, broken and horrid life back. He would take every second of agony that it had given him over and over again just to breathe another gasp of fresh air; to feel his heart beat in his chest and to see Hermione once more.
He didn’t care that it hurt. He didn’t care that life was pain. He would willingly trade his ability to find tranquillity in the Afterlife for a life with Hermione in the land of the living – and he would make that trade every single time.
Always.
“I’m not – done – yet,” Harry grunted out as something hot ignited in the center of his chest. The train was getting closer. He could see it slowing down. Alarm bells were ringing in his head – telling him to get out. Telling him to leave. Calling for him to breathe.
He staggered on his feet as something ghosted against his mind. Then his eyes shot wide with pain as he was yanked backward across the ground. He struggled to stay on his feet, a deep and agonizing cry splitting from his lips as pain erupted in his heart like a burning volcano. His hands came to his chest, clawing at his clothes like they were crushing him. Squeezing him.
He couldn’t breathe.
He couldn’t breathe.
He –
Harry was ripped backwards once more as something tugged through his chest. He collided with the ground twenty feet away and skidded across the white surface. He could hear the jangle of a metal chain. He could smell the burning of flesh as something called to him in his mind. His eyes blurred with tears as Sirius called out his name and rushed across the ground to his side.
“HARRY!! Harry! What’s going on – are you okay?! Harry?” The panic in Sirius’s voice was piercing, and it made it clear just how much emotion the man had been keeping at bay when they had been speaking. “Harry – what’s wrong?!”
“I – I can’t,” Harry stuttered as a third tug yanked his body so hard, he was certain he would break in half. He slid another ten feet across the ground away from the train and screamed out in pain as the burn began to shift across his chest.
He desperately needed to breathe – but his lungs refused to inflate as his fingers clawed at his jacket. His vision was blurring; it was spotting with red and black as Sirius raced to his side once more – dropping to his knees and ripping Harry’s frantic hands away from his chest.
Harry.
Sirius ripped his jacket open and tore the shirt down the middle as Harry screamed out in pain.
Harry.
The fourth tug made him gag as fire traced down his spine, and Sirius froze, his hands trembling above the glowing black and red symbol that marked Harry’s chest.
“Harry, what did you do?” Sirius whispered, his eyes wide with fear as a deep fissure cracked through the center of the symbol. A dull orange glow started to seep through the fractured skin, making the blood-red vegvisir stand out even more prominently against the black triqueta that it sat on.
HARRY!!
The voice screamed into his skull as his mind exploded in pain – but beneath it – he could feel it. He could feel her. He knew that voice. He knew her voice. He would recognize it anywhere, and he felt hot tears pour from his eyes as a twisted smile of relief broke across his face.
“A-Anima Avo-Av-ocaret,” Harry rasped, his head hit the ground so hard he nearly saw stars as he writhed in pain from the fifth tug. Sirius was wavering in and out of focus above him, but he saw the man’s eyes widen in understanding before a smile ghosted across his lips.
“Then this is where we say farewell, Harry,” Sirius whispered, his voice rough with emotion as he gripped Harry’s shoulder tight. “For now – but I will see you again. Don’t fight it, follow it, Harry – it’s okay. Let it take you.”
He felt the sixth tug before it even started.
Hermione’s voice rocked through his mind with a violent wave of love that rushed through his body like a hurricane as a glowing red chain shot from the center of his chest and wrapped around his body.
HARRY – COME BACK TO ME!
His dead heart thudded in his chest, and his body convulsed.
Then the sixth tug came, the chain tightened around his body, and he was slammed into the ground. The sound of shattering glass broke through the void as the white floor cracked beneath him. His lungs screamed for air. His vision flooded with red. Fire burned through his veins. The floor gave way with the deafening crack of stone, and he was ripped from the space so violently he thought he might die again.
Sirius was getting smaller and smaller – King’s Cross Station was fading from view. He was being dragged through the black, empty vacuum below the In-Between. He screamed as the symbol burned hotter – his blood began to boil, his ears popped, his skin burned, his bones were breaking, and everything went red.
Then his chest inflated, and damp cold air flooded his lungs.
This chapter is dedicated to every individual who reached out to me while I finished this story. You know who you are. Thank you.
-x-x-
Warnings:
This chapter contains: death, blood, extreme violence, descriptions of gruesome injuries and events including but not limited to burns, loss of limbs, loss of skin, decapitations, explosions, war and other not so awesome things. If you are squeamish, be wary.
******************************************
Waiting… it’s the worst.
Despite being a patient and tolerant man, waiting was something that Arthur Weasley disliked most in the world. You would never know it by looking at him, as he had spent years cultivating the ability to sit quietly and actively listen to those around him. It was a skill that Arthur had invested in when he was young because he saw the benefit of being able to wait things out. Whether that be waiting for information, waiting for his wife to calm down, waiting for his children to come home, waiting for results at work, or waiting for opportunities to present themselves – Arthur understood and appreciated the value of being able to wait.
So, he learned how to do it even though deep down he still disliked it, which he knew was a trait that several of his children had inherited from him. Most would blame his wife for that particular behaviour because she was so forthcoming it often came off as impatience, but in truth, he was the culprit of that attribute within his children. Usually, he would breathe in deeply, hold the air in his lungs for several long seconds, and then let it out along with the built-up tension. It would typically be enough to ease his body and mind so he could wait a little longer without feeling anxious, but that tactic was not working tonight. It had barely worked while he waited to hear about the Gringotts mission. It had hardly worked while he waited for Voldemort to attack them as the shield rocked and buckled above his head, and it certainly wasn’t working now as he stared at the two darkened figures in the middle of the courtyard before him.
The rain had dampened his robes despite his charms. He could feel water dripping down his spine as he stood motionless in the cold. His thinning hair was stuck to his forehead, leading small streams of water down his face and into his eyes, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to care. He was distracted by the ache in his heart.
It hurt.
Looking at her physically hurt, because he knew that she was broken beyond all measure. And he was starting to doubt his ability to help fix this. Arthur had never been one to give up, and he wasn’t about to do it now. He wouldn’t. Not ever. He refused. Things could only grow more difficult, not impossible – yet even still, resolved as he was, Arthur couldn’t deny the anxious dread that pumped through his veins as he watched Hermione stand rigid as a board by that tall man’s side.
Even in the dark, he could see the strain across her body. Her hand was grasping Nasir’s sleeve, and every so often, it would tremble. She was using him as a physical crutch, and Arthur could hardly blame her for that. Though, a part of him doubted that she even knew that she was holding onto the man. He doubted she cared. He doubted she was aware of the strange and terrified looks she had been getting from those that stood behind her. He wasn’t even sure if she was in complete control of her own body right now – it was possible that Nasir was making her stand.
Making her fight.
Making her do this.
Later, bystanders who had no real place to comment on the matter would condemn the mysterious man for it… but how was it any different than what they had done themselves?
His heart thudded painfully in his chest, and Arthur felt his hands clench at his sides as his eyes burned with unshed tears. She deserved so much better. They all deserved so much better. He and his generation had fundamentally failed these children, and now they were paying the price. Yes, this was their war too. It was everyone’s, and he had meant what he said about them all being willing to fight and having the right to do so, but it was a result of his generation’s failure and that needed to be remembered. They were the reason why these kids were becoming tools of war.
He could taste bile at the back of his throat as the thought circled his mind for the umpteenth time since he had watched Nasir calmly lift Hermione Granger’s battered body from the ground, only to stand her back on her feet so she could pick up the fight where it had left off.
Nasir had used her.
The Order had used her.
Arthur had used her.
They were all using her – they had used Harry – and now they were using Nasir too because they all knew that they didn’t stand a chance without the three of them. And that reality would be a regret that Arthur would carry to his grave. He would never forgive himself. He would never let it go, and he would never forget it, just like how he would never forget the way that Hermione had looked or the sounds that she had made as her heart was shattered into pieces and her world fell apart.
Arthur had been directing a group of the remaining students down to the greenhouses when it happened. It had come out of nowhere, and Arthur was ashamed to say that he hadn’t seen it coming. In hindsight, there were so many clues. So many moments where he should have understood the double meaning but hadn’t. So many chances where he could have talked to Harry, and so many missed opportunities to try and do something to prevent this.
One minute the unlikely trio were making their way across the courtyard, and the next, Shacklebolt was screaming out new orders and calling for the eastern front forces to fall back to the castle as Nasir did the same. Confusion had broken out as Arthur left the small group of exhausted students to see what was going on as the tag on his arm buzzed with the new directions.
Then, Hermione’s scream had ripped through the night like a dagger.
It sliced through the cold air with a broken desperation that instantly filled his heart with terror. His eyes had found her in the chaos. She was kneeling on the ground, her face contorted in pain, screaming out in agony as a dark figure retreated toward the opposite side of the courtyard. The new orders continued to call out through the air – orders which he had known nothing about. Bodies were moving all around him. Students were stopping to look as they tried to figure out what had just happened. The rain was growing heavier. The collective panic was surging. There was too much going on to process, and yet as his eyes locked onto the scene, Arthur instinctively knew what was happening.
Harry Potter was going to the Forbidden Forest, and he was leaving Hermione behind.
The realization had been like a physical blow. Arthur’s fatherly instincts kicked in, and he acted without stopping to think. He managed three steps toward the girl before a strong hand grabbed his arm and yanked him back.
“Arthur, stop!”
His eyes had narrowed in confusion as he turned to look at the tall man gripping his sleeve. Then they widened in horror as the reality of the situation struck him hard once more, and he staggered on his feet.
“You knew!” Arthur wheezed as all the air seemed to leave his lungs. He felt the bitter sting of betrayal as he yanked his arm from Shacklebolt’s grasp, only for the man to grab hold of him once more.
“Arthur – there is nothing you can do for her right now.”
“Shacklebolt – what in Merlin’s name are you thinking, why–”
But the question had died on his lips before Arthur could finish it when Hermione surged up from the ground and screamed out for Harry once more. But the boy didn’t stop, and he disappeared into the night as Hermione’s screams grew even louder. Arthur could hear her voice breaking, and his chest constricted so tightly he could hardly breathe as he tried to understand what was going on. He could see her fighting against an invisible force holding her in place. He knew it was tethers, and he knew exactly who had done it.
“Nasir,” Arthur breathed out as rage ignited in his core, and he moved forward again.
“Arthur, stop,” Shacklebolt yelled in between calling out more orders. The man’s grip tightened, and Arthur halted mid-step as an unbearable crack split through the air.
The ground beneath Hermione’s feet had shattered as she lurched forward. Magic was rolling off of her in visible, dangerous waves. Nasir was holding the back of her shirt now as he continued to call out orders over his shoulder – he was screaming at Lee Jordan, who was standing with a group of students off to the left looking absolutely terrified while Shacklebolt rapidly called out something else to a group of students on the right. With one hard tug, Shacklebolt pulled Arthur away from the chaos before another wave of magic crackled across the broken stone of the courtyard.
She had broken the tethers.
Even now, he still couldn’t believe it. He had never seen anything like it in his life. He had watched in awe as she staggered another step forward before Nasir turned his full attention to her and asked her to stop. She wasn’t listening. The man’s desperate attempts to gain her attention went unheard, and it grew increasingly apparent he was losing control of her. The stone cracked again, and Nasir had to physically grab hold of her as she ripped more tethers from the earth, but it was like watching a man trying to wrangle a Nundu by hand.
She hit him.
Hard.
Arthur heard the crack of broken bones as the girl screamed and spit out blood. Students backed away. Some froze in terror at the unbelievable scene. He could practically taste their fear in the air as Hermione grew louder and louder, and Nasir continued to struggle to hold her back. Arthur hadn’t been able to breathe, and he couldn’t look away from the insanity as hatred and pain poured from her body in waves of bright white magic. Her motions grew desperate. Her screaming got worse. She hit Nasir so hard his head snapped back, and he nearly lost his hold. Blood splattered across the muddy ground as the man’s face pinched in pain, but he didn’t let go.
Fear inched through Arthur’s bones like ice, and for the first time in his life, he was afraid – afraid of her. Afraid of her anger. Afraid that he had lost her. Afraid that she would never come back to them. Afraid, because deep down, he knew he couldn’t help her. Not now. There was nothing he could do. He couldn’t hold her back. He couldn’t stop her. She had long ago surpassed his ability to fight or duel, and in that moment, she was beyond all reason.
Another blow to the chest and Nasir nearly doubled over. Blood was dripping down the man’s face. He was barely managing. Another broken scream tore from her lips as she staggered forward four more steps until Nasir tackled her to the ground with a heavy thud.
“Why?” Arthur had whispered as he forced his eyes to look away from the two tangled bodies as Hermione continued to fight with everything that she had, and Nasir pinned her to the ground. He met the agonized gaze of the tall man beside him as he forced his feet to remain where they were, and he felt his heart break.
“There was no other choice, Arthur,” Shacklebolt had whispered. “Harry is a – he’s – he’s a Horcrux, Arthur.”
Arthur’s blood ran cold. His limbs had grown limp. Of all the things in the world, he never would have guessed that that was Harry’s reason for leaving. He would never have even considered it a possibility. Most people didn’t even know what a Horcrux was, let alone the implications of Shacklebolt’s statement or the meaning behind Harry’s gesture. The only reason Arthur knew the term was because of a chance conversation with Alastor Moody years prior after a raid found several unidentifiable artifacts that Moody suspected might be Horcruxes. They weren’t – but that conversation was one that stuck with him, and as a result, Shacklebolt’s words filled his head with a million new questions as he watched the rain drip down his friend’s face while Nasir yelled at Hermione to breathe.
“That’s what they have been doing, Arthur – hunting and destroying them for the last ten months,” Shacklebolt had said as he finally let go of Arthur’s arm and his eyes creased in pain. “I didn’t know. I swear to you – I didn’t know. Albus never told me, and Harry only told me tonight because he had no other choice. He needs our help, Arthur – he can’t do this alone. I need your help, Arthur.”
He could hear Hermione sobbing twenty feet away as more students began pouring into the courtyard from the east, while Nasir sat in a pool of bloody water holding the girl’s now motionless body. He couldn’t hear everything they were saying; only the odd word slipped through the sound of the rain as thunder rumbled across the sky, and his head shook in rejection of Shacklebolt’s words.
It wasn’t right.
It shouldn’t be like this.
“I promised him, Arthur,” Shacklebolt said, swallowing hard as determination started to radiate from his eyes. “I promised him that we wouldn’t let all this be for nothing. That we would be there for her when this is over to keep her safe, but that will come later. Right now – there is nothing we can do. You know if there was, I would do it in a heartbeat. You know that if I saw any other way out of this, I would have picked it. But there isn’t, and Harry understood that.”
“HERMIONE, LOOK AT ME!”
Arthur jolted at the harsh words as several of the returning students froze along the edge of the courtyard near the others, their eyes darting to the man sitting in the pouring rain as he held a girl in his arms. It was unbearable to watch, yet nearly impossible to look away from.
“Arthur.”
His eyes felt heavy as they shifted back to look at Shacklebolt. He couldn’t believe this. He couldn’t accept it. He wanted to argue, and yet nothing came out as his gaze met Shacklebolt’s, and pure anguish passed between them.
“We have to get ready, and I need you to help me. I need you to focus. I need you to trust me. You have to make sure that the eastern front is cleared, Arthur – your daughter and your sons are down there,” Shacklebolt had said as he rolled up his sleeves and drew out his wand. “And Merlin knows I need you to live through this night so we can pick up the pieces of whatever remains tomorrow and find some way to piece this world back together. I can’t do this alone, and Hermione cannot do this without you. She’ll need you when this is over, Arthur, and we need to use the time that Harry is buying us, or we don’t stand a chance. I’ll shoulder the consequences of this decision when the night ends, but for now, we have to remain focused. We have to keep going. We have to, Arthur – we don’t have any other choice. Go – I’ll get the courtyard set up and prep the south.”
The words had been a plea, but they were also an order, and Arthur had heard the regret. Every fiber of his being had wanted to yell at the Shacklebolt. He wanted to scream into the night until his throat went raw and his lungs failed him. This was too much. This was too far, and yet he knew that the man was right.
Even though his heart ached and urged him to run across the cold, wet stones to reach Hermione – he knew that he couldn’t. He knew that this moment wasn’t the time that she needed him, and he forced his stiff legs to move in the opposite direction as his heart shattered with grief. He tore his gaze away from the crumpled figures on the ground, and suddenly, everything made sense and all the little previously unnoticed details fell into place.
This was why Harry had separated from Hermione tonight with no complaints. This was why Nasir had trained the duo so vigorously the last two weeks. This was why Harry had been pushing Hermione to spend more time with Arthur and everyone else at Shell Cottage. This was why Nasir had fought so hard to keep him alive, why the man had placed that symbol on her neck and afforded her protection while giving himself the means to stop her impending explosion. It was why Nasir had easily listened to Harry’s instructions tonight without complaint or question, and why Harry had seemed so unbothered by the idea of dying in this war – because he had always known that he was going to.
This was the plan all along, and it had been Harry’s plan. He just didn’t realize it until it was too late. They were all unknowingly his chess pieces. He had trained them. Helped them. Lead them. Gave them courage and encouragement while he did everything that he could to set them up for success after the inevitable end of his life. This was a choice that Harry had made on his own, and just like with Hermione, Arthur knew there was nothing he could do about it. At least not right now, and he refused to waste the unbelievably selfless act that Harry had just orchestrated. So, he had done the only thing that he could do.
He followed Harry’s plan.
He cleared the eastern front in silence.
He got everyone back to the castle.
He ignored the curious questions of some of the older students and steered them away from Nasir and Hermione, who remained in the middle of the courtyard. He followed Shacklebolt’s directions, reorganizing their numbers and memorizing the new plan and details as his heart continued to break in his chest. He sent a massive collection of students back inside the castle to evacuate while helping to hand-select a small number to stay.
And now, while he waited, Arthur watched the girl he considered to be his second daughter as she stood in the rain like a stone statue. Weathered by the world around her and hardened by the unbelievably harsh life that she had been granted. Her hand shook once more as the wind cut through the courtyard and tugged at her borrowed clothes. She gripped Nasir’s sleeve tighter but remained otherwise motionless, looking nothing like the girl he had once known her to be. She was so much older than any of the other students here. She had lived more than twice her age in the span of ten months, and he knew in his heart she would never recover from this.
She would never recover from losing Harry, because she couldn’t live without him.
He had seen the signs of their unhealthy codependency when they were together at Shell Cottage, but he hadn’t known what to do about it. Molly had wanted to talk to the two of them about it, but Arthur had refused.
What was he supposed to have said?
They were doing what they had to do in order to survive, and at the time, he hadn’t felt it was his place to judge them for it, let alone comment on it. It hadn’t been his place to try and parent them, especially when their relationship was more mature than most others he knew.
In the back of his mind, he supposed he just assumed it wouldn’t be a problem because after the war, they would deal with it and learn to cope in healthier ways. He had always known that the pair might not make it through the fight, but somehow – rather idiotically, he realized now – he had just assumed that they would always be together. That if the battle was won, they would both survive, and if not, they would go out together in a blaze of unbelievable magic.
He had never once, not even for a second, considered that only one of them might live, nor had he thought about the corresponding ramifications if that were to be the case.
He wondered how long Harry had known. He wondered how many nights the boy had laid awake dreading this day or if he had readily accepted it. He wondered how long Nasir had known and if they had tried to find another solution. He wondered if Nasir had helped to formulate the plan or had Harry always had this in mind and simply added Nasir in because he needed the extra help. He wondered how carefully they had worked to get all these pieces to align and how on earth Harry had managed to hide it from Hermione while blindsiding the rest of them.
He wondered if he would ever forgive himself or the others of his generation for allowing a boy who hadn’t even reached his eighteenth birthday to sacrifice himself so absolutely and in every facet of the word, just to give them a fighting chance, because Harry had known and accepted that they didn’t have a viable alternative plan.
And he wondered, as his eyes began to burn uncontrollably, if Hermione would grow to hate them all because of their inexcusable failures. He wondered if there would be anything left of her when this night finally ended, or if he and the Order would fail her once again and feed the remaining pieces of her existence to the war as a final sacrifice.
Something touched the sleeve of his robes, and Arthur started in surprise. His head rapidly turned to look down to his right in question, only to find his daughter staring back up at him. Neville was standing beside her, and she was holding the boy’s hand tightly. Fred and George were next to them. George had his hand on Neville’s shoulder – he was muttering something quietly. Beside him, Fred remained motionless and silent as he gripped Lee Jordan’s hand like a vice. Next to them were Shacklebolt and Minerva, then another small set of carefully selected students. Arthur’s eyes skimmed down the line, his heart nearly bursting as he saw how the students were standing – close, latching on to one another for support – before his gaze circled back to Ginny.
There were questions in her eyes. Endless streams of unsaid words, and yet, to his surprise, she didn’t say a thing. She just gripped the fabric of his sleeve harder, her fingers knotting into the damp material so tightly it must have hurt as she stood by his side in the rain.
She looked older too. The world had taken far too much from her as well. The long scar that ran across her face was likely painful. The skin was still too freshly healed for it not to be, and he knew the mark was permanent. His eyes swept over her face, and his heart clenched even tighter in his chest. He could see the bags under her eyes. The tiny creases that had formed around them decades too early from incredible amounts of stress. Blood was caked in her hair. She was too thin. The damp black sweater she was wearing hung loosely off of her shoulders, making her look like a ghost of her former self.
His throat started to burn, and in seconds, his tears were mixing with the rain that trailed down his face as he forced himself to give his daughter a reassuring smile.
He would die here if he had to, to save what little remained of Hermione, his daughter, his sons, and these children. He would fight with everything that he had so he could reach the moment that Shacklebolt had spoken of – the moment after the bloodshed when his family and these kids would need him most. He would stay by his daughter’s side until the end. He would fight next to Hermione no matter what, so she knew she wasn’t alone, and if by some stroke of luck, they made it through the night, he would dedicate the rest of his existence to making sure that she and the others left haunted by this war were safe.
For Harry’s sake.
For the sake of their future.
He would give them hope. He would keep them safe. He would do exactly as Shacklebolt said, and exactly what Nasir had kept him alive for. He would be the one to pick up the pieces when this was over. He would be the one to keep Hermione from the darkness in her own mind. He would be the one to protect Ginny and Susan and give them normalcy once more. He would be there for these kids, all of them, no matter what.
Because Arthur Weasley never gave up.
Not ever.
-x-x–
There was a dull ringing in his ears.
He couldn’t feel his legs. Come to think of it… he couldn’t feel his arms either. He couldn’t feel much of anything of his body. Cold, damp air was entering his lungs. He could smell the moss, the pine, and the wet – but the movement of each breath was slow as if his lungs were barely functioning. Everything else was numb and dark. He couldn’t open his eyes. His bones felt cold like someone had placed him in a freezer and left him there overnight.
He tried to move something, anything – but nothing happened.
He tried to inhale deeper, but it didn’t work. Barely any air came in, and everything remained dark.
In the back of his mind, he could hear the dull murmur of voices, but he couldn’t tell where they were coming from. He wasn’t even sure if they were real. He couldn’t make out the words, and without being able to move, he couldn’t check his surroundings, so he just laid there. Or, at least, he assumed he was lying there. He could have been standing – he wasn’t sure. It was truly impossible to tell.
His brain seemed to be functional, mostly. There was something soft and wet against his face. He inhaled again, the breath so shallow and frail he was sure he might suffocate. It smelled like moss. So he rationalized that he was definitely lying on the ground. Cold radiated through his clothes, and the damp was sinking into his skin like a toxin.
How long had he been here?
Where was here?
He tried to move a finger, but nothing happened – or at least he didn’t think it did. He honestly couldn’t tell. He tried to open his eyes again, but still, they would not budge. They seemed to be permanently closed, and for a brief second, his brain clouded with concern – wondering if he’d taken so long to return to his body that perhaps it had decomposed and was entirely useless. But he forced the thought aside and calmed his mind. That was ridiculous. Hermione would have come for him. She would have scoured the forest searching for his body, and she would have found him. She would never leave him here.
Unless she died because we lost the war.
His barely functional heart clenched in his chest. The thought hit like a cold stone in his gut as his mind spiralled with panic. The idea of losing Hermione was impossible. It was unbearable. There was no way, and he refused to consider it. Not only would she fight to stay alive, but Nasir would keep her safe. Arthur would keep her safe. Shacklebolt would keep her safe. He refused to consider the possibility that she had died, and so that meant that he couldn’t have been dead too long.
Perhaps his body just needed time to adjust, if that was indeed where he was.
He tried to swallow but seemed incapable of doing so. He tried to scrunch his nose, move his lips, flex a toe – anything – and nothing happened. He wasn’t really sure what to do. He could feel the memories of everything creeping in as he laid there. He remembered the In Between. He remembered the conversation with Sirius. He remembered Nasir yanking him back to the world of the living as Hermione screamed at him through their bond.
The bond.
Something ached through his heart, and he tried to access it. He felt like he could feel it in the back of his brain, but he couldn’t seem to reach it. There was a dull voice there if he concentrated on it, but again, he could not make out the words and no matter how hard he tried to send a message, nothing seemed to happen.
Maybe the bond was severed?
Maybe dying damaged it, or maybe he still wasn’t properly reconnected to his body, and thus he couldn’t use it like normal?
He would have sighed if he could, but he couldn’t, so he just laid there concentrating on what he could feel and forcing his brain to register each signal. There was a sharp pain coming from the right. His shoulder. It was digging into something wet, cold, and hard. The ground. He was on his right side, and his face was pressed against a patch of moss. He inhaled again and noticed water on his face. It was raining, and it was cool. So it was either still night or early morning.
Night would definitely be better than morning. He couldn’t imagine that it would have been good for his body to lay on the ground all night, but that might explain why it wasn’t working. Maybe Nasir hadn’t been able to summon him back until after the fight? Maybe Hermione was combing through the underbrush looking for him now? He hoped that he hadn’t been blasted back into bushes or someplace that would make it hard for her to find him.
Another slow, painful moment passed before the ringing in his ears began to fade, and when it did, the dull murmur he could hear grew louder. It was coming from behind him. It sounded unfamiliar. He didn’t recognize the voices. He strained his ears to listen and heard his name being uttered. It wasn’t friendly. It didn’t sound good. A tingle of pain ran down his spine as some of his cold muscles tensed. He could hear footsteps approaching. They were slow, cautious, and light. His heart thudded in his chest, and his eyes shifted behind their lids as the noise grew louder. Whoever it was was getting closer, and he knew that this could not be good.
A twig snapped behind his head, and he urged his body to listen as he tried to open his eyes.
He couldn’t defend himself.
There was nothing he could do.
He could hear the voices getting louder, and his blood ran cold as Voldemort’s shrill and dangerous voice cut through the air.
“IS – HE – DEAD?!”
Someone was touching his arm. It was gentle. They rolled his face off the ground. Warm fingers touched his skin. His back eased against something firm as his eyes slowly and painfully cracked open. It was dark. Wet. Difficult to see. He could just make out a flash of blonde and a pale face hovering above his own before something encased his body, and he realized it was a silencing charm.
“Don’t move.”
The voice was barely a whisper, but the tone registered sharply in his mind because he had heard it before. It was the one that had told him not to fight. The one that had told him to save his energy. His eyes pinched as he forced them to focus and her face swam into view. She looked exhausted. Her eyes were bright with fear. He could see concern and pain stretched across her beautiful features, but underneath that, there was something else that he couldn’t name.
“Can you hear me?” she whispered as Harry blinked the rain from his eyes and met her shining blue gaze.
“Yes.”
The word came out like broken glass. It hurt his ears, and he saw her eyes pinch at the unbearable sound as her gaze hardened with resolve. Then her mouth moved once more as two voices rang out behind her.
“It’s not time yet,” Narcissa whispered, discretely shifting her hand toward his face. “I’ll tell you when.”
Her cool fingers touched his lips and something cold and terrible poured down his throat. He would have gagged if it were possible. He would have asked her what it was if he could. Instead, his already weak heart slowed, and his body grew frigid. It felt like death. It hurt, it ached, and even though there was nothing that he could do to stop her, he wasn’t afraid.
His eyes fell shut as the potion entered his stomach like a blizzard and curled through his veins. The little function he had gained over his body fell away. His limbs went limp. The air left his lungs as the silencing charm disappeared, and her voice rang out once more.
“He’s dead.”
-x-x-
Something was wrong.
She could feel his faint heartbeat in her head, but no matter how many times she called to him through the bond, he didn’t respond. She sorted through his vitals, but they didn’t look promising. His body was struggling. It was technically ‘alive’, but because she couldn’t communicate with him, she had no idea what had come back from the other side. For all she knew, Harry’s corpse was a vegetable, and nothing was in it. Perhaps only a tiny piece returned, and it wasn’t enough for him to be functional.
“Anything yet?” Nasir’s low voice sounded just inches to her left, and she shook her head.
“No.” She fought against the urge to vomit, her eyes stinging with the constant threat of tears as she gripped his sleeve tighter. She knew that people were watching, but she didn’t care, and she continued to cling to the man at her side as she kept her eyes focused on the dark edge of the courtyard. “You’re sure it worked?”
“I’m sure that the process worked,” Nasir said evenly, but when she glanced at his face, she could see his concern. “But I have no idea what the results will be. I won’t know until we see him. Keep calling him for now; we need to know what we’re dealing with.”
She nodded, swallowing hard as she continued to reach out to Harry through the bond. Each time he didn’t answer, she could feel her heart being torn to shreds, and she had to fight to keep herself standing. He couldn’t die. Not now. Not after all this. Not after everything.
She refused.
She flatly refused to accept it, and she all but screamed at him through the bond as she stood there in the rain. It was long after Voldemort’s deadline. Harry had bought them time and saved countless lives so he couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t. They weren’t done yet, and she couldn’t do this alone.
Her fingers twitched on Nasir’s sleeve as the cold wind ripped over her still mostly dry clothes. She could feel her heart rate increasing as suddenly Harry’s already weak pulse slowed, and his vitals plummeted. She tensed. Her hand shifted, grabbing Nasir’s forearm instead of his sleeve as her panic rose. She turned to him, opening her mouth to speak only to freeze when an unexpected tag on her arm buzzed.
Her eyes dropped to her arm as Nasir turned to look at her. She let go of his body to pull up her sleeve to read the message, and then she stilled. Her heart started to race faster. Her eyes went wide. She felt a slew of blunted emotions twisting through her body as she stared at the words and struggled to breathe. Then, her lip twitched, her eyes creased, and she turned her head to look back up at Nasir as her chest started to burn. His dark gaze was locked to her arm, and she could have sworn she saw a flicker of relief flash across it.
She grabbed his forearm tight once more and stepped closer to his side as the words she had read echoed in her head.
-x-x–
She felt their presence before she saw them. Even before McGonagall notified the group that they had passed beyond the edge of the wards, Hermione knew that they were coming. It was like a dark storm approaching – a horrible terror that seemed to sweep across the grounds with force and sink into their bones without explanation.
Voldemort.
He was here, and he was bringing his followers and army with him.
According to McGonagall, a vast number of them were lingering just inside the edge of the wards. But for some reason, and Hermione assumed that it must have been because of Harry’s death, Voldemort himself had exited the Forbidden Forest and was crossing the wards to approach the school with a small collection of followers. Perhaps his confidence now exceeded his concern. Perhaps he thought that this was over, given that he had killed Harry Potter, fulfilled the prophecy, and eliminated Snape to possess the Elder Wand completely. Or maybe he had finally lost it. She would never be able to understand that psychopath’s train of thought, but he wasn’t wrong to assume that he had the upper hand.
She was injured, exhausted, and worn. Nasir was too – as were all those who stood behind her looking ready to collapse. They had suffered Voldemort’s wrath for hours, and they had little if nothing left to give. She still had no idea what to expect from Harry or if she could expect anything at all. Even after receiving that message, her nerves flared with fear. Her small smile of relief had been fleeting. It was confirmed that he was alive, but alive could have meant anything. The details given were vague at best, and she had no means to contact the woman to confirm.
‘Alive’ could mean he was a vegetable with no mental functions. ‘Alive’ could mean that he spoke but could not use his body.
He still wasn’t answering her calls. She had no idea what would happen when they got here, and she saw him. Would they need to pull him out from battle? Could he even fight? What condition was his brain in? Her questions were endless, and yet there was nothing she could do but wait to see what happened and deal with it then. For all she knew, Harry was down for the count, and she and Nasir would face this battle alone, save for the Order’s support.
Had the conditions been more favourable, had Nasir not helped them with Gringotts, fought on the eastern front tonight, saved her from her uncontrolled fiendfyre explosion and done all that he had in the last twenty-four hours, she knew they would stand a much better chance. But as it currently stood, despite her dedication to push forward and continue, she was not confident in their odds, and she didn’t know where Nasir ranked in comparison to what was coming. But based on the limited information she had and the few comments that he had made tonight – they were in for the fight of their lives. This was going to be hard, possibly impossible, and they very well might fail.
Yet despite this, Nasir stood rigid, unmoving, and unafraid by her side as the tall skeletal figure slowly came into view.
Silence encased the courtyard. Then the sound of footsteps filled the air. She could hear the shuffle of robes behind her as several students fought to maintain their posts. The air grew colder, the pressure unbearable as all the air seemed to be sucked out of her lungs.
She had spent months imagining this moment – years picturing his downfall. Yet never once had she anticipated what it would feel like to watch the demon approach. Cold terror filled her veins. Horror sunk into her bones. It inched down her spine like poison as bile burned at the back of her throat.
He moved across the ground like a whisper. His dark robes and pale, white feet were silent as a ghost while his most loyal followers trailed behind him, and the rest of his army surrounded the grounds near the boundary of the wards, awaiting his signal. His red eyes gleamed. She could feel the death, rage, and destruction rolling off of him in waves as he made his way across the courtyard, and time seemed to slow.
She couldn’t breathe.
She couldn’t think.
Her eyes darted between the monstrous figure and the others that surrounded him as her panic began to surge. Nagini was by his side. Bellatrix was all but trembling with barely contained excitement. Most of his followers looked pleased with themselves, which made sense. They had the advantage after all. Why wouldn’t they be confident? Their Lord was strong. Their cause was just. Harry Potter was dead, and he was being floated across the wet cobblestone by none other than Narcissa Malfoy – like a trophy on display – as they made their way up the grounds.
Hermione stiffened.
She gripped Nasir’s right forearm tighter. Clenching her jaw as she stared at Harry’s limp form. His heart was barely beating. To any detection spell or diagnostic he would register as dead. He was pale, motionless, and cold. Her eyes flicked up to Naricssa’s, but the woman’s expression was entirely blank and gave nothing away. She could feel her chest starting to constrict, every blunted emotion churning like a vicious storm that threatened to make her sick.
What if she was wrong to believe those words?
What if Harry had been wrong?
What if they were all wrong, and this didn’t work?
What if they didn’t stand a chance?
Every single person that she cared about was here in this courtyard, and if they died tonight, it would kill her. She would hold herself accountable. She would never escape the guilt, and she would never forgive herself. If Harry didn’t make it, she would never survive.
She could feel the chaos in her center spiralling out of control as her body started to shake. She could smell the death and blood. She could feel the dark magic that oozed from his inhuman-looking body as he grew closer and closer. Her breath came in pants. The tension in the courtyard grew thick with the cold. He was crawling into her head, digging into her mind, and scalding her brain as the scent of decay filled the air. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t do this. Her rune was too heavy. She wanted to scream. Her mind was going to cave in on itself. It was going to burn her alive, consume her inside out. They were all going to die. Harry wasn’t moving and–
“Hermione.”
The deep baritone cut through her turbulent thoughts, pushing them aside as something soft and gentle brushed her mind. Her body relaxed, and the shake in her bones slowed as a calm sensation inched into her skin. She could feel it radiating from the Helm of Awe, and she knew it was him, lending her his calm. Her head turned to look at the man by her side. His gaze was locked to the approaching figure, but his low voice spoke only to her.
“Stay focused,” Nasir murmured as the rain continued to pour and the wind tugged at her borrowed shirt. “Do not let him get in your head; he doesn’t need legilimency to do it. This is your fight, Hermione, and you have come too far to succumb to fear now. I will do everything that I can to keep you both safe – but I need you here with me, and I need you to breathe. Can you do that?”
She swallowed the bile at the back of her throat, inhaling deeply before letting it out. Then she stepped closer to his side once more until she could feel the warmth of his body seeping into her side.
“I’m here.” The words were hoarse and shaking, but she forced them out and gripped his arm tighter. “I can do this.”
“Good,” he said as the figures grew closer. “Wait for my signal.”
She nodded, then turned her gaze back to the slowing shadows and watched as Voldemort stopped less than fifty feet away.
No one moved.
Nothing happened.
Her heart thudded in her throat as she gripped Nasir like a vice.
‘Harry?’
Still no answer.
The seconds ticked by as Voldemort’s red gaze gleaned over the small crowd through the rain. She could feel the tension growing. She could hear people squirming behind her as she herself fought to remain calm. Every bone in her body screamed at her to run away. His very presence seemed to activate her survival instincts, and they all urged her to run.
But it didn’t matter if she felt like she couldn’t do this, because she had to.
Nasir was right. This was her fight. Every battle and hardship that happened before this moment was irrelevant. They were nothing but a collection of fleeting moments, stepping stones all leading up to this point. So she leaned into Nasir's calm, using it like a crutch to support her own crumbling mind.
Harry had left this in her hands when he went to die, trusting her to be strong enough to withstand the pressure and do what needed to be done. And now, despite all odds and reason, he was less than fifty feet away with a beating heart. She gripped Nasir tighter still and forced her body to remain motionless despite the terror in her bones. She would not give up now. She would not allow this demon to get in her head and ruin what little capacity she had left when he was so close she could almost touch him.
‘Harry?’ She whispered again. ‘Can you hear me?’
Still nothing.
His body remained motionless. No one said a word. The tension was unbearable. The silence was excruciating. A disturbed smile started to form across Voldemort’s lips as Bellatrix twirled her wand in anticipation, and Hermione’s stomach rolled over.
‘Harry, please,’ she called to him. ‘Are you there? Can you hear me? I need to know if you’re there.’
She heard someone in the line behind her move. The rain grew heavier. The wind pulled at the loose strands of hair hanging by her face. Voldemort seemed content to let them squirm under the crushing pressure of his presence as he took them all in. His eyes grew darker with each passing second, and his smile spread wider until pointed teeth showed.
Then he moved.
“Well, well, well,” Voldemort said, his voice travelling across the courtyard with ease as he took two unnatural and calm steps forward. “I never thought I’d find you standing at the forefront of the Order’s surrender–”
His eyes shifted to the motionless man at her side.
“Nasir,” Voldemort hissed, the word coming out like venom before his face twisted into a deranged smile once more. There was a faint tremble to his skeletal body. He seemed incapable of suppressing the rage and excitement that poured from his dead eyes. “I figured you would have disappeared by now like you always do. Take whatever was promised to you and leave. That is what you do, isn’t it? That, or you would be lurking around the castle looking for spoils. It’s been a long time, and I must say, I’m surprised by what I see–”
His glowing red eyes slowly traced down Nasir’s frame, lingering on the handless arm she was gripping for a moment before his eyes darkened one more.
“All those runes,” Voldemort whispered, his low voice taking on a mocking tone as he stared at Nasir once more and took another step forward. Then he grinned, the change in his expressions happening so rapidly it was like someone was flipping a switch on and off at an erratic pace. A scoff left his lips. “And you still couldn’t even manage to save both hands. Tell me, Nasir, how much damage is lingering beneath that mask of yours? Is there anything of your original body left? Or is it nothing but broken scraps and stitched-up tattered remains?”
Hermione cringed at the deadly tone of the words, but Nasir didn’t even flinch. He remained unmoving, his dark gaze glinting in the low flicker of blue light that surrounded them.
“Six pieces,” Nasir said slowly, and she nearly jumped in surprise as his voice rang out by her side.
She hadn’t been expecting him to respond. He wasn’t the type to be engaged by goading, but then again, he might just be buying them more time. So she used it to call out to Harry once more.
“Fifty-two years, a dozen different wands, and this was all you could come up with.” Nasir’s deep baritone filled the air as a crack of lightning streaked across the sky. “What do you have left on that vessel, Tom? A year? Two at most? Pathetic, even by your low standards. Though you never did have any talent. Always too busy chasing power to practice your basics. I can’t say that I’m surprised, given that I never expected you to amount to anything.”
Silence rang out through the courtyard as a dark smile crossed Nasir’s lips. Then his voice dropped low.
“Still, you’ve disappointed me.”
Voldemort’s face visibly stiffened as the air grew tight. The glow in his red eyes flickered, and she saw his boney fingers twitch on his wand.
“I see you found yourself a new pet,” Voldemort whispered, his low voice cutting through the rain like a knife as his eyes slowly shifted to Hermione. She couldn’t stop the shudder that ran down her spine as she met the demon’s gaze. “Did you tell her what happened to the last one? Or were you planning to tell her that later?”
Nasir stiffened. She felt it in his arm, but he remained otherwise emotionless and unmoving to those around them as Voldemort’s pointed tooth smile returned.
“You never were any good at keeping people alive,” Voldemort taunted, his voice growing dark as he took another step forward. “Much like Shacklebolt. Much like the Order. Much like Harry Potter.”
His red eyes flicked to the small crowd once more.
“Your prophecy was a lie, and your hero is dead,” Voldemort said. His voice was hard and hollow, and it dropped like a stone. “All these magical lives lost. All these years of foolish resistance at the word of a man who couldn’t even save himself, let alone protect any of you. And for what? For nothing. I should kill you all where you stand – I should burn you alive and watch as the flesh drips off your bones, but I am a merciful Lord.”
Voldemort’s eyes took on a crazed glint. The disturbing smile had entirely vanished again, and he stood there like a demon from the underworld as the pressure in the air became immense. She could see several Death Eaters flinching, but he paid them no mind as he took yet another step forward.
“I will accept your surrender,” Voldemort announced, his tone deadly as the glow in his eyes grew. “Drop your wands, step forward, and you will live.”
No one moved, and Hermione stiffened in anticipation.
‘Harry,’ Hermione called to him as her pulse started to quicken. ‘It will be soon. We’re running out of time. I need to know if you’re okay – can you hear me?’
No answer.
“Otherwise,” Voldemort whispered, but his voice easily filled the air. “I will kill you right now.”
There was a long stretch of silence, then Neville stepped forward. Voldemort’s eyes flashed to the movement, and his deranged smile returned.
“And here I thought you might choose to follow in your parent’s footsteps,” Voldemort mocked, the cruel words making Neville flinch as he stopped just a few steps to Hermione’s right. “Smart boy.”
Voldemort’s eyes shifted back to the rest of the small group as the air grew tense, but no one else moved.
“Such a shame,” Voldemort all but purred, and Hermione’s skin crawled at the sound. Then his glowing gaze returned to Nasir, and his face darkened. “Are you really willing to die here with them? Were you foolish enough to believe that prophecy, too, and think that you stood a chance to take my place tonight? Or are you just sticking around to pick through the bone pile?”
Nasir’s eyes darkened, and Hermione felt the tether on her sternum give a single gentle tug.
‘Harry!’ She reached for him through the bond as she clenched her teeth tight. ‘Harry, it’s almost time. Please!’
“How did the heart work out?” Nasir asked, staring at Voldemort from across the shadowed courtyard as a dark edge that she had never heard before slid into his voice. It made her stomach knot and the hair at the base of her skull prickle with fear. “Still beating? Or did you lose that one too?”
The silence that followed the remark was deafening as the rain began to downpour. Voldemort’s body all but rippled, warping in the low light as he took a final step forward and suddenly, the air grew impossibly cold.
“I’m going to tear mine from your chest,” Voldemort hissed as the air crackled around him with rage. “And cut off your head to keep in a jar!”
‘HARRY, PLEASE!’ Hermione screamed at him as she met Narcissa Malfoy’s blank gaze and inclined her head. ‘I NEED YOU!’
“That would be impossible,” Nasir replied calmly, and she felt the unbearable tension come to a head. It was like a clock winding up, but time was slowing down. She could see the coil getting ready to snap as Voldemort’s body tensed, and Nasir met his eyes without an ounce of fear. “I replaced it twenty-two years ago. It was too weak.”
Lightning cracked across the black sky. Hermione’s pulse doubled as Nasir tugged the tether on her sternum hard, and Voldemort’s rage snapped. Then everything seemed to happen all at once.
“NOW!!” she screamed as she pulled out her wand, and her arm buzzed with the signal from Shacklebolt.
Narcissa moved. The woman was faster than Hermione could have ever anticipated. She grabbed Harry’s face, opened his mouth, and poured a bright crimson liquid down his throat, all before Hermione could even lift her hand. Black flames erupted from Aberforth’s wand, snaking along the ground across the courtyard as Arthur and Shacklebolt cast a massive shield, separating them and the line of students from Hermione and Voldemort’s forces as McGonagall shut the wards tight. Neville launched the firework that he’d had concealed in his hand. An explosion went off to the south. Bright colours streamed into the air as Hermione was yanked to the left, narrowly avoiding the green strike of light that flew at her chest as Nasir raised his hand to attack.
“HAAARRRRYYY!!!” she screeched as she raised her wand high and aimed it at his floating form. The purple jet of light erupted from the end without her needing to speak a word as his pulse skyrocketed and his vitals soared. “I CAN’T DO THIS WITHOUT YOU – GET UP!!”
The purple bolt collided with his form as a deep, agonized cry split through the air. It left his lungs at a volume no human should be capable of making, and she wondered what the hell Narcissa had poured down his throat. She saw him convulse. His eyes shot wide. Her blunted emotions rolled within her chest, and her heart all but exploded as she saw him come to life. Narcissa dropped the charm holding him in the air, grabbing his wet jacket and yanking him away from the core group as the purple light encased his body and chaos broke out.
‘Hermione?!’
His voice filled her head as he staggered on his feet, clutching at his chest as he roared out in pain. It was all she could do to breathe as she blinked back tears and fought to maintain control of her body. She wanted to throw up. She wanted to cry. She wanted to run to him and grab him and never let go. Instead, she dodged the next attack and forced herself to breathe.
‘I’m here!’ she called to him through the bond as his rampaging vitals reached dangerous and violent levels. ‘Harry, I’m here. You’re okay – it’s okay. You’re back, I’m right here, and I’m not going anywhere! We just need to finish this! Harry, we are so close – can you do this?!’
She dodged another attack, sending out three counters of her own.
‘Yes.’
The word felt battered and exhausted, yet it was laced with adrenaline like he had been electrified and revived by the storm raging above them. Voices broke out across the courtyard as Harry stood tall. He raised his wand hand and Voldemort’s face exploded with rage.
Then absolute insanity broke out.
Neville pulled the sword of Gryffindor from his pocket as his firework exploded in the center of the courtyard before the Death Eaters, creating a mess of colour and smoke. Narcissa began attacking those around her, using their confusion to her advantage as she backed up toward the shield. Explosions erupted to the east as Voldemort’s forces stormed the grounds, and his shrieks of rage filled the air and dug into her skull. Bill, Fleur, Remus, and Augusta Longbottom led the attack on the south – smoke and fire pouring into the night as they let loose and unleashed everything that they had on the lingering army forces. Every single student in the line behind her began launching attacks as Ginny, Arthur, and the twins surged forward toward Neville.
It was impossible to see it all.
Impossible to track the mess of movements and light.
Yet none of the surrounding mayhem mattered because she only had one job and one target. The war would not end until he fell. His forces would keep fighting. His Death Eaters would remain. This chaotic firestorm of rampaging death would grow larger and larger, putting everyone at risk until the life finally left his eyes. Her only shot – their only shot – was to focus, work together, and use everything that she had while trusting those around her to keep the others off their back.
The ground shattered beneath her feet seconds after Nasir yanked her to the side once more.
“Tell Harry we must try to push to the east!” Nasir yelled from behind her as his hand gripped her shoulder tight. “This is a killbox! He doesn’t care about collateral damage – we have to get him away from the school and the others! Go – NOW!”
She barely managed to nod before Nasir all but threw her to the left as a violent blast of light erupted from Voldemort’s wand and cut right toward them. She landed on her feet, ducking into a roll and turning just in time to see Harry come rushing through the cloud of smoke and fire like a phoenix rising from the ashes. His eyes were ablaze. His body was covered in mud, sweat, and ash. He moved swift as lightning, deadly and dangerous, as he took out two stunned-looking Death Eaters aiming at Narcissa while cutting across the broken ground.
He was rageful. He was powerful. He was fearless. He was alive and bursting with more emotion than she had ever seen – and she knew in that moment, without a doubt in her mind, that it was him.
It was Harry.
It was her Harry.
He was back. He had returned to her. He had heard her call, and he had come home – and she would do anything and everything to keep him here.
Her hand tightened on her wand as her opposite reached toward her pocket. Rolling away from a crackling blast of magic, she summoned a strength potion, rapidly bit out the cork, and then downed half the bottle as she sprung up to her feet in one fluid motion. Heat surged through her limbs. Fire raced down her veins. Every muscle in her battered frame spasmed painfully as a rush of energy swept across her body, and a ragged yell broke from her lips like a battle cry.
‘East!’ Hermione called to him through the bond as her pulse tripled and her body shook with renewed energy. ‘Harry, push him east!’
She ran across the ground, her heart thudding in her chest like a drum as she fired off attacks toward the cluster of Death Eaters scrambling around.
‘On it!’ Harry called back, and her heart swelled at the sound of his voice in her head again. ‘Let’s end this.’
He darted his way across the courtyard toward her as Voldemort fell back to get behind his Death Eaters. A loud crack rocked through the sky as the ground beneath her feet rippled, and stone spikes erupted from the courtyard. One clipped her leg. She narrowly avoided the second as she heard a scream from behind her. She fought the urge to look over her shoulder as Nasir moved up the center, dodging spikes and raising his left hand once more.
The echo of metal colliding with stone filled the air as thousands of needles poured from the sky, striking the ground around Voldemort so hard that they sank into the ground. It took her a moment to realize it was Nasir, and he had transfigured the rain into an attack, but just as her mind processed the sight and she sent off a sectumsempra, a massive wave of water caught her feet, and she slid to the ground. The rock beside her head exploded. She felt each piece smashing into her shield charm as Nasir blocked the rubble and sent off another stream of rapid attacks. A spell shot over her head. Long, furry legs went flying as an acromantula exploded.
“HARRY!” she screamed out as she rolled across the wet and broken ground, sending out a tether to yank him away from the banded werewolf that was darting in from his blind spot on the right.
It narrowly missed his head, Shacklebolt took it out, and not two seconds later, the castle trembled as a blast hit the southern side and cracked up the stone. She clambered onto her feet once more, mentally thanking whoever had just saved her life from the massive spider as she rapidly took down the next few that swarmed into the courtyard. She split three open, then kicked a smaller one away before driving her dagger through its body. Blood splattered across her arms, but she pushed on, dodging an attack by a stray Death Eater as she tried to move forward. Rolling across the ground below a flash of green, she clutched her dagger tight and sliced it across the surprised man’s legs, severing his achilles tendons before someone behind her took off his head with a sectumsempra.
Hermione continued to push forward, launching an explosion at the glowing, red-eyed figure fifty feet away. He blocked it. It ricocheted. She saw the archway to the left explode as Voldemort’s glowing gaze met her own, and then she dropped to her stomach in the water as three green bolts hurled at her face.
This was insane.
It was too crowded.
There were too many people.
Spells from the Death Eaters flew over her head as they tried to attack her, Harry, and Nasir while the Order and the students did everything that they could to lessen the blow – but more spiders kept coming. The army he had held back was growing closer, the fastest of which were already reaching the courtyard in small but incredibly dangerous numbers, and their efforts weren’t enough. Voldemort wasn’t trying to leave. Instead, he just kept backing up little by little to make room to attack, but he had no intentions of going east as they had hoped.
Why would he?
He had the advantage here. He had a clear line of sight to everything going on while they got bombarded from all sides. A massive explosion from the eastern front rocked through the air, and fireworks lit up the sky – that option was out the window now. He obviously suspected that the front was rigged and had sent more sacrificial forces in to test it out. There was no chance of him going there now, and the result in the courtyard was a bloodbath. It was a miracle they hadn’t died yet and a damn good thing the eastern front had already been evacuated.
But it was a huge problem for them, because now they had no solid plan of attack that didn’t endanger the people watching their back.
‘This won’t work!’ She sent the words just as Nasir whirled around and decapitated the Death Eater that was trying to flank Harry. ‘He’s not leaving! He won’t go east now that it’s blown up – we need to find a way to force him back more!’
‘I know!’ Harry called back as he darted across the ground. ‘Get out of the water!’
She jumped onto the rubble, taking out three acromantulas as Nasir raised his hand. He shouted something back at Shacklebolt, then the foot-deep water on the ground shifted toward Voldemort like a wave as another shield shot up behind them.
‘Clear!’ Hermione sent through the bond, and the second the water was past Nasir’s feet, Harry’s voice screamed out.
“Orcus tempestas!”
The crackle of lightning split through the air. She saw Voldemort’s eyes grow wide for a fraction of a second as the water surged forward. The few Death Eaters still before them scrambled to get out of the wave as black lightning sprawled out across the ground and spread through the water, electrifying everything in its path. It looked alive as it moved, flashing and flickering, crawling across the broken stone as it rushed toward Harry’s target. She heard the screech of pain to her left as a cluster of acromantula were caught in the field before Voldemort’s body morphed, warping and twisting into a black whirl of mist as he shot off into the sky, forced to retreat to escape the crackling wave.
She saw him descend as the electric wave faded away. He was aiming for the far edge of the courtyard a few hundred feet away, refusing to shift to the east or south, which was exactly where they wanted him to go. Psychotic or not, the demon wasn’t stupid. He was going to let the others fight. He was going to attack from afar, out of range of the Order while his army got closer and the Death Eaters tried to pick them off – but he was not going to go anywhere they tried to direct him.
If she had to wager a guess, he was going to unleash something terrible while keeping himself out of the crossfire. Yes, they had wanted to push him back, but this wasn’t far enough or in the right direction, so they would need to follow, or they wouldn’t stand a chance.
“WE CAN’T LET HIM GET SPACE!” Hermione screamed, taking off at a run across the broken courtyard through the water. She dodged the flashes of magic that shot all around them as she chased after the stream of black mist streaking through the air toward exactly where she knew he would go.
“HOLD THE WARDS!” Nasir’s voice boomed as the tags on her arm buzzed with new orders.
“DO NOT LET HIM LEAVE!” Harry bellowed.
The sound of footsteps rapidly approaching filled her ears as she nearly reached Harry. A warm hand grabbed the back of her neck. She saw a blunt arm reach out toward Harry’s outstretched hand. Then the world disappeared. Her stomach lurched as her body rapidly compressed under the agonizing pressure of Nasir’s inner ward apparition before everything twisted back into shape and her feet touched the ground with a loud crack.
She groaned out in pain, barely managing to look up in time to see Voldemort turn around as his body reformed fifty feet from their landing. His snake-like face twisted, a deranged look of rage splitting across his features as his eyes shot to Nasir, who was still gripping her neck. She could see the flash of understanding. It crept across his face like a sickness as the air around them compressed so tight she could hardly breathe.
“Lapis Glacierum!” She forced the words out in a strangled cry.
Voldemort dodged the attack as Nasir dropped his hold and the ground exploded between them. She staggered to the right, rolling to escape the onslaught of spells that the dark wizard fired at her head. They were out of range of most of the remaining Death Eaters now, but if anything, this only felt harder. Her breath came in pants. She struggled to cast any attacks as all her energy went into ducking, dodging, and evading the onslaught of Voldemort’s fury.
He looked insane.
He had always looked crazy. He had always looked dangerous. He had never been stable, but it was as if his realization of Nasir’s ties to Snape had broken the tiny thread of self-control he did have, and it had unleashed a wave of madness in the form of ungodly power.
Nasir blocked six attacks, dodged one, then stopped two from being lobbed over their heads at the school. One he countered careened off course, rushing through the air until it hit the astronomy tower with the force of a projectile missile. She could hear the stone shatter as the tower broke off and started to fall to the ground. Harry managed to counter the third and sent it soaring into the night’s sky, punching a hole through the clouds. Nasir’s damaged leg buckled, and she barely managed to latch a tether to him to get him out of the way as Voldemort sent a brand new slew of attacks in his direction while fending off the vicious onslaught of magic Harry started to hurl at his chest.
She gasped for air.
Dodging another two hits and getting clipped by a third that knocked her to the ground as Voldemort’s cruel laugh broke out through the chaos. Her shield blocked the worst of it, but her leg ached with pain as she forced herself to stand. She saw Nasir down a potion – then a second. Harry flickered from view only to show up thirty feet closer, hurling more spells. Black lightning erupted across the ground again as chains shot from Nasir’s blunted arm, and Hermione surged forward in the middle to cast yet another two explosions and one violent sectumsempra.
Nothing hit.
Nothing landed.
On and on they attacked, working like a single seamless unit, fighting to get closer only to retreat back towards the courtyard to avoid critical blows.
They couldn’t get near him. They couldn’t hit him. Twice Nasir apparated to get closer, but he was the one that Voldemort was watching most closely, and the second the unpreventable crack split through the air, the demon would move to avoid the oncoming blow – dancing around the edge of the courtyard and grass, shifting toward the bridge and doing whatever he had to to stay at his range point while evading their spells.
He wasn’t fighting fair. She had never expected him to, but facing it was something else. Every few attacks, he would lob spells over their heads at the castle because he knew that they wouldn’t let them pass. He knew they valued those behind them and would do everything they could to stop him from obliterating the courtyard. So he attacked it in between attacking them, then attacked them while they tried to stop them. But he did it in a random order that she could not track.
She fired spells to her left and right, aiding Nasir and Harry while sending attacks up the middle of the ground to try and land a blow, but he blocked everything they sent. Twice she sent the killing curse, and each time he dodged – only to send four more back in her direction which she desperately fought to avoid.
She recast her shield. She could feel her body growing weaker. She could feel her movements starting to slow as even the strength potion wasn’t enough to keep up with the speed at which he attacked. It shouldn’t be possible for anyone to move that way. It wasn’t human – but that was the problem.
Voldemort’s body wasn’t human.
It was a vessel – a tool. It was created specifically for him, and he could use it any way that he wanted, seemingly without the restrictions that she and the others faced.
She didn’t know how much longer she could do this. Harry’s heart was skipping beats and Nasir was obviously hurting. Her body was shaking with fatigue and pain. Her soul hanging in the balance by a thread. She could feel her heart grinding in her chest as if it were pumping mud – but stopping wasn’t an option.
The screams and explosions rocking through the air only made it worse. A ball of fire erupted to the east, her arm buzzed, and she knew that Shacklebolt must be sending people there to hold back the army that managed to make it through the warzone.
Maybe they should have stood farther out to meet him? Maybe they should have gone to the edge of the Forbidden Forest to keep him from getting so close to the school?
But as the thoughts floated through her head and she split open an acromantula making its way in from the south toward Harry, she knew that those options wouldn’t have been much better. On the contrary, they would have possibly been worse. They needed to be close enough to the Order to initially coordinate attacks. Getting too close to the wards would have given Voldemort the chance to escape before McGonagall could lock him in. It also would have put them too close to the rest of his forces. Thus, making this fight even worse. At least right now – danger to the Order, castle, and students aside – they weren’t being bombarded by the full-scale force of his troops, and the number of enemies would be lessened as they were forced to approach through the rigged minefield of the east.
She groaned out in pain as Harry’s tether attached to her chest, and he pulled her away from a bolt of green shot from over Voldemort’s shoulder. Part of his army was arriving. They were crossing the bridge and sending out attacks to support him. Her next spell missed her target but collided with the first of the approaching figures behind Voldemort. His body exploded. She could hear the sound of his wet limbs landing across the stone before five streaks of red light sped towards her.
She jumped, attaching a tether to one of the last standing columns and using it to haul herself out of the way as Harry sent off six more strikes while Nasir threw up a shield to stop the chunks of rubble from the latest explosion from colliding into those behind them.
They weren’t going to get anywhere with this, but unleashing anything else was out of the question. As it was, Harry’s black lightning was a risk, which was why he was using it sparingly, and she knew it was why Nasir had yet to whip out anything else aside from straight-laced attacks. But if they didn’t find a way to land a hit soon, it wouldn’t matter how careful they had been with trying to protect the school and those behind them – Voldemort would wear them down. He would hit them eventually. As it stood, he had hit her three times; she had just gotten lucky that none of them had been the killing curse and her shield took the brunt of the attacks.
But they could not depend on luck in this fight.
The crack of Nasir’s apparition split through the air. She saw Voldemort move, shifting to the right in reaction to his oncoming strike only for his eyes to go wide as Nasir appeared beside him, having anticipated his move. She forced her legs to push her forward, sending out two sectumsempras and an explosion aimed at the demon’s chest as Harry attacked from the right. Nasir’s dagger swung out, narrowly missing a critical blow as Voldemort lunged to the side at the last second. She saw the hit land. The knife cut through the fabric of Voldemort’s robes before the ground erupted and spells poured down on them from behind.
‘HARRY, IT NEARLY HIT!’
Another crack split the air. Nasir landed to her left, rapidly dowsing the fire that burned on the sleeve of his robes as she and Harry unleashed another wave of counterattacks to cover him. It was the nearest they had gotten, and she saw Voldemort’s face twist into an ugly mess as he dodged the blast Harry sent his way before rapidly retreating even farther away down the bridge. Then, he raised his wand, and her heart stuttered in her chest. She saw the words form on his thin white lips before she heard the noise, and her blood ran cold.
No.
The terror of it sunk into her bones as she watched the fire ignite at the end of his wand.
No.
She had never wanted to see it again.
No.
She had never wanted to feel it again.
No.
The rune on her chest grew heavy as her hand instinctively raised into the air, and her feet shifted across the stone ground. The stance was automatic – to the point that it almost felt natural to her bones even though they quaked beneath her fear.
She had cast this spell nearly a hundred times on the beach at Shell Cottage. It always hurt. It had always been brutal. But the hillside that smouldered to the north was something else entirely, and up until now, she had forced herself to block it out. She didn’t want to remember it. She didn’t even want to acknowledge that it had happened, but it seemed that she wasn’t allowed to lock that part of her away in war.
No matter how bad it burned.
Logically, she knew this would not be the same. What had killed her the most on the northern front was the death toll. It was the sheer number of lives that she had taken and the uncontrollable size of the blaze because she had lost it completely. It wasn’t the magic itself that haunted her soul. It was what she had done with it.
Still…
She felt her heart sink as it grew cold in her chest. Her shoulders dropped. She inhaled deep, pushing her chest out as she levelled her eyes to the imaginary skyline.
… she had been hoping to never use this again.
But if it meant protecting Harry, she would do it. If it meant creating an opening for him to attack, she would do it. If it meant preventing him from experiencing this agony by having to block the attack himself or preventing the school from being engulfed in the burning flames of hell, then she would do it a hundred times over.
And she would do it without question.
The ground shook as the fire poured from Voldemort’s wand.
Massive.
Scalding.
She could feel the heat of it from over a hundred feet away as the army behind him came to an abrupt halt, and she knew in her gut that he was going to burn this school to the ground. Voldemort was done. They had gotten too close. He was going to end this in one blazing ball of glory and burn anyone in the way, whether they were supporters or not.
She stared at the bright burning ball of fire as her heart ached in pain, then she spoke the words before she could even allow herself to rethink them.
“Dæmonia Coruscare.”
They came out as a whisper, but the flames instantly ignited. She saw them spill out onto the ground, warping and churning as Harry’s voice sounded to her right, and he started running towards her.
‘Hermione, wait!’
‘He’s not going to stop, Harry,’ she whispered as she felt the chaos in her abdomen churn. ‘I won’t let him hit the school with that – I won’t let it end this way.’
The water on the ground sizzled as it evaporated. Voldemort’s fire was growing fast. It was nearly three times the size of her own. She gripped her wand tighter, concentrating on the unsteady chaos churning in her gut. Heat blasted across her face as Voldemort’s small blaze erupted into a wall of fire. It surged into the sky like a wave, illuminating the grounds as more explosions echoed by the greenhouses. Then it morphed, a giant three-headed snake forming in the sky as the flames burned blue and the heat surged through the air.
She heard him laugh.
Or maybe it was just in her head.
Maybe she had finally lost it, because she could swear that she could see his burning red gaze through the blue flames. Her eye twitched. Her heart began to beat erratically as the darkness she had desperately tried to tuck away came rushing back in. She let out a breath then opened the already busted tap in her abdomen. Her fire surged, a roar rumbled through the air as the raging flames took shape faster than ever before. Four paws dug into the ground. The long, spiked tail whipped through the air. Her arm started to vibrate. The chaos was threatening to burn out of control. Her Nundu stood at the edge of the broken courtyard like a barrier, rippling with rage as an ungodly roar split from its mouth. The fire turned white and just when she thought her control would snap and she would be dragged back to hell – a familiar hand gripped her neck.
“Breathe.”
She exhaled, then felt a surge of foreign magic jolting into her body through the symbol on her neck as Harry’s voice rippled in her mind.
‘I know, but we’ve got you this time.’
It was warm. It was gentle. He stayed in her head, keeping the bond wide open as he flooded it with love. She could feel it surging through her body, and her heart nearly broke.
She loved him.
She loved him so much she would do anything for him. Even this.
Yet somehow, this time, it didn’t hurt quite so bad, and the chaotic storm in her chest wasn’t formed out of rage. There was no desperate urge to destroy or obliterate everything before her and consume it all in the fiery blazes of her hellfire. Instead, it was a burning desire to protect everyone around her, and she felt something calm sliding down her spine.
A peculiar sense of balance. As if she herself were standing in the center of the hurricane that whipped around her body with them both.
She could feel her eyes burn as Voldemort’s fire surged. A god-awful hissing sound filled the air as the flames rippled, doubling in size before the beast lunged forward. Her Nundu roared, blue fire pouring from its mouth toward the bridge as clawed wings split from its back. She heard a low growl. A sound she had only ever heard once before as Nasir’s blunted arm outstretched above her own and his Horntail surged to life.
Heat washed over her like a wave, but her mind was steady, and she exhaled the air like a physical release of the fear lingering in her chest. She wasn’t afraid, and it was surreal. It was unreal. She felt disconnected from her body as she watched the wings of Nasir’s fiendfyre spread out through the sky like a wall, scorching into the ground, burning deep channels through the earth as it blocked the onslaught of blue fire. Its head rose out of her Nundu’s back, a horrible cry filling the air before more fire poured out onto the earth until an electric charge washed over her skin and Harry’s voice sounded by her side.
Her body buzzed.
Her hair nearly stood on end.
Then black fire poured from the abomination’s mouth and lightning was pulled down from the sky as Harry and Nasir took on the brunt of the death that obliterated the grounds. She could all but feel the weight leaving her body through the chaos, as if it was being physically removed. Thunder rocked the earth. Her eardrums popped. Her body shook. She heard the bridge breaking. It was nothing but a mess of blue and white flames as burning black electricity danced across the bodies of the fiendfyre beast and poured into the earth.
She could see the wall of blue fire falling back, crumbling under the immense pressure of their attack. She could see it pressing down on Voldemort’s tall form and encasing his body. She could see it hit him. She urged it larger, feeling Harry’s grip on her arm tighten as the storm of fire and lightning built before them.
There was a crack.
Smoke filled the air.
Her lungs filled with heat.
Wind ripped at her face as her feet slid across the ground.
She could hear screaming in her mind as the violent storm of colours became unbearable to look at. Then the blue vanished, the flames cut out as Nasir capped her fire, and the earth exploded. She was thrown back by the force of it. She collided with the ground, rolling through the rubble as Harry’s calls echoed in her head. Debris filled the air as steam from the scorched earth rose into the sky. She staggered to her feet, legs shaking uncontrollably as she raised her wand and coughed out blood.
She couldn’t see anything.
She could barely hear anything.
The ringing in her ears made her vision blur. She forced her eyes to blink away the mud and water.
‘Harry!’ she called, coughing out more blood as her eyes swept the shattered mess. “Nasir!”
She found him through the mess of darkness. Harry’s body swayed as he slowly staggered to his feet and her heart flooded with relief. His arm was bent the wrong way, but he looked otherwise okay. Her eyes swept to the left as her tag buzzed, and she saw Nasir stumbling forward from a mess of rubble. Somehow, unbelievably, they were both alive. She coughed again, summoning a bottle of dittany from her pocket and forcing the awful potion down. She grimaced in pain, wiping the mud, blood, and ash from her face as she peered through the darkness.
Then her body stiffened.
“No,” she whispered as her eyes landed on the hunched figure barely visible through the steam that oozed from the earth.
Mud caked his robes. Smoke sizzled off his body, but there wasn’t a physical scratch on his pale white face. The bridge behind him was obliterated. Not a single other soul was left standing as the final traces of black electric current flowed across the ground – but he stood there unmoving.
Alive.
The red glow of his eyes was unmistakable.
He had survived it.
She saw his body straighten. The motion was inhuman and disturbing. Her stomach curled as he reached his full unnatural height. Dust and ash fell from his robes to the blackened ground beneath his feet. The red glow of his gaze darkened with bloodlust.
Then, it shifted, and bored into her eyes.
“Impossible.”
-x-x-
>>Please Read<<
The completed story will be 87 chapters long. The final chapter of ITFOD should be uploaded before the end of November. In addition to this, I wrote a twelve chapter Alternate Ending (the ITFOD Alternate Dark Epilogue Timeline) which will be posted as a separate story, linked as a series.
So get ready and fasten your seatbelts. This is going to be a crazy next few days as I unload over 250k more words across the two endings.
If you have questions regarding the fic, the characters, the plot, interpretations of lore, etc., etc., feel free to send me a question on Tumblr here:
https://t3tohru.tumblr.com/ask
Love,
Tori
This chapter is dedicated to Greca and Ginny, without whom, this final chapter would not have been possible.
Thank you.
-x-x-
Warnings:
This chapter contains: death, blood, extreme violence, descriptions of gruesome injuries and events including but not limited to burns, loss of limbs, loss of skin, decapitations, explosions, war and other not so awesome things. If you are squeamish, be wary.
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May 2, 1998
Hogwarts, 2:47 am
Bill ducked the flaming ball of rock lobbed at his head as he darted across the muddy ground.
“GET THEM AWAY FROM GREENHOUSE FOUR!!” he screamed at Percy, chopping the legs off the acromantula swarming from the center. He made his way toward the group of students led by Angelina Johnson pinned down by the massive oak tree that was burning above their heads.
The students had been remarkable thus far, surviving far longer than he had ever anticipated they would in this chaos. Moreover, they had proved to be invaluable. They watched the skies and sent off warnings for incoming dementors, stunning anything that crept out between the two closest greenhouses as they set up shield after shield to cover Augusta Longbottom, who continued to obliterate the oncoming attackers with a violence Bill had never before seen.
The woman was something else.
Without her, they would have been dead, just like he knew that without Aberforth and Shacklebolt on the eastern front with Hermione, Harry, and Nasir, they wouldn’t have made it this far. The school would be burning, and this war would be over. Yet despite the pride that he felt towards the courage displayed by the students of Hogwarts, his stomach churned with sickness, and his heart broke with pain.
There were bodies scattered across the ground.
So many of them that he could no longer keep count, and they were buried beneath the rubble of the fight – caked in mud and debris – so much so that it was impossible to tell friend from foe as he heard their bones crunching beneath his feet. The sound made him sick. He’d already thrown up in his mouth, but he had pushed it back down as he fought to remain in control. He couldn’t stop. He wouldn’t stop. Not until his soul was ripped from his body by a dementor or he was shattered in the next explosion – he would push on until there was nothing left.
He dodged another attack, rolling beneath a blast of green light as fire broke out in Greenhouse Six. He could feel his heart thudding in his ears as he watched Remus and Cho Chang take on the last troll while Fleur and a Ministry ally unleashed a hailstorm of spells to his left, trying to fend off the oncoming acromantula. He didn’t want to leave her side, but he trusted his wife, and he knew that she would hold their side as he raced toward the cluster of students in need of help. He didn’t know how many forces Voldemort had left, that was the trouble with magic. Even a small army could cause massive amounts of damage, but it appeared that everyone trapped within the wards was attacking outright, and they weren’t holding back – so he didn’t have any other choice. They were all making sacrifices here today, and they were all making hard decisions.
The Devil’s Snare was burning in the distance. He could hear the unbearable hissing and popping sounds as it struck out against anything stupid enough to attack it or come close enough to its grasp. Anthony Goldstein had rushed down there with Michael Corner to try and put out the flames and lay more defences, but they had not come back yet. Bill hadn’t stopped them when they rushed off, and he knew if they didn’t make it back, it would be just one of many decisions that he would regret for the rest of his life, and he would carry the weight of their death to his grave.
His foot slipped on the slick skin of something dead beneath his feet as Augusta charmed the trees burning before them to attack. Then she blew a hole in the edge of the Forbidden Forest, scattering rock and dirt through the air as she prevented another horde of acromantula from sidelining them. He heard someone screaming. He heard Remus and Cho yelling as they desperately worked together. Explosions rattled in his skull as he slid across the ground and took out two more approaching snatchers as he grew closer to the students pinned down.
His eyes darted back to Greenhouse Four. It looked ready to blow, and he caught sight of Percy, Penelope, and Horace Slughorn as they rushed toward it to help the students trapped there retreat as six Ministry allies covered them from behind. Madam Rosmerta was just to their right, hauling a student away from a streak of green before casting a blast over her small piece of cover.
“ANGELINA!!” Bill screamed, ducking another attack as the girl beneath the blazing tree pulled a student away from an incoming spell. Then, the wind shifted, the rain came down harder and fire from the tree above them started to rain down on their heads. “MOVE – MOVE NOW!!”
The girl nodded, her blood-covered face pinching in pain as she started screaming at the younger sixth and seventh years students to move. She shoved them back, shielding them as best as she could as Bill sent out a round of attacks to cover their escape. One kid got clipped, Angelina hauled him from the ground as a burning branch broke from the tree above them, crashing down from the sky with a deafening crack.
“Wingardium Leviosa!”
The words cried out from one of the youngest students. The boy managed to slow the branch just enough to spare his peers as Bill rapidly cast his own spell and shoved the burning limb out of the way. He launched it toward the oncoming swarm of acromantula just as an unexpected sound broke out through the night.
It was hooves.
Dozens and dozens of hooves.
Bill darted across the remainder of the distance, grabbing the boy who had slowed the branch around the waist and diving to the side as the rest of the burning tree limbs began to drop like flaming comets in the night. Something grabbed the scruff of his jacket, yanking him from the ground and pulling him away from the mess of fire as he heard multiple voices breaking out across the grounds.
Blinking the smoke and dirt from his eyes, he looked up in disbelief. “Firenze?”
The centaur nodded, setting him down and ducking a spell cast from the edge of the forest as Bill shoved the student he had grabbed toward Angelina and her retreating group.
“What are you doing here?” Bill asked, casting a shield and using the massive collapsed burning tree as cover while he continued to block the attacks so Angelina could get the younger students closer to the castle doors. Their initial position had been fine, but they were slowly losing ground. The group was much better suited to long-range attacks than being in the thick of it, so they needed to fall back, or they were all going to get picked off. “Shacklebolt said you wanted no part in this?!”
“That was before he invaded our lands, poisoned our earth, and set fire to our forests,” the centaur responded, using his bow to pick off an acromantula as Bill sent out a slew of attacks. “This war may not be ours, but we are now part of this fight. We protect our home and those who defend it by our sides.”
Bill ducked another attack, covering the centaur from a blast before shifting closer to his side.
“Well, regardless of the reason,” Bill yelled over the chaos as the centaur took out a snatcher. “I’m glad you’re here.”
They worked together for several minutes, covering each other until Angelina’s Patronus raced to his side to let him know that her group of students was clear. Then they pushed back to the left. He could see more centaurs coming from the trees, rushing to help Remus and Cho take down the troll. Two made their way toward Augusta, covering her movements as she pushed forward, trying to take back the ground they had lost. She used the very earth itself as her weapon, reshaping the land, bending it to her will. He watched as the ground swallowed up a cluster of attackers, only for dirt spikes to impale another group seconds later. Then mud rose into the air, forming a massive wall and forcing their enemies to scatter. He could hear more centaurs in the woods, taking out snatchers and attacking acromantula before they even got to the defensive line.
He glanced to the north – bright colours were erupting in the sky there too, and he wondered how many they had lost. He wondered if Hermione, Harry, and Nasir were battling Voldemort directly or if the demon had managed to escape. He wondered if his father was still alive and if his mother was safe. Was his sister still fighting? Were his brothers okay? Were they and everyone else defending the castle on the eastern front managing to keep their heads above water in this insanity?
Three centaurs darted up the muddy ground clearing the way as Percy and Penelope fought to cover a group of seven older students that they had pulled from Greenhouse Four. Horace Slughorn wasn’t with them, and when the greenhouse exploded in a massive blazing ball of glory, he felt his heart sink. Firenze broke off to the right to assist his brothers. Bill heard more screaming. Dirt and small stones struck across his face as his side ached in pain.
Nasir had managed to get the wound to close, but he could feel the charmed stitches and strange cream-coloured fabric acting as temporary skin tearing as he twisted and rolled beneath another attack. It wouldn’t last – just like their defences. It was only a matter of time before they were ripped open, and then they would bleed to death.
As it was, the southern side of the school had already been damaged. One of the few Death Eaters on this side had bombarded them with attacks right out the gate, and the school had been hit. Now, there was a massive crack running up the stone wall of the castle. When it had happened, Padma Patil had notified him that the southern door was still intact and holding, but she was concerned that it would not withstand an outright attack. Apparently, the wall beside the great oak door was severely damaged, so they would not be able to hold it closed if they needed to fall back. Which was less than ideal, especially since he knew that the hallways inside the school would do nothing to afford them an advantage if the attacking forces were to push their way inside.
He just had to hope it wouldn’t come to that.
He battled his way back over to Fleur, watching in horror as something struck her arm and it bent backwards with a sickening crack.
“FLEUR!” Bill bellowed, firing a shield charm towards her. The purple encased his wife as she bent to pick up her wand from the ground with her left hand. Then she continued to fight even though bone was protruding from her skin and she wasn’t ambidextrous. “DUCK!”
She dropped to the ground at his word, narrowly missing the streak of green rocketing towards her face as Bill took out the snatcher who had cast it and scrambled across the broken ground. He could barely breathe. He could barely think. Panic surged through his body as he watched his wife’s face grow pale while blood poured from her arm. Fleur struggled back to her feet, staggering as Professor Vector stepped to her side and helped her to stand.
“TAKE HER!” Vector screamed at Bill, hauling Fleur away from the chaos as more centaurs rushed toward them and two Ministry allies tried to cover the gap. “I’M SHIT AT HEALING SPELLS!”
Bill sprinted across the final distance, his heart beating so hard in his chest he was sure it would explode as warning sparks shot up into the sky above their heads, and the air grew frigid. He rapidly cast a Patronus and saw only three more launch into the dark – meaning they were down two people capable of casting as he finally reached his wife and took her from Vector’s arms. The witch nodded to him then turned on her heel, darting back into the chaos as Bill looped Fleur’s good arm over his shoulder and retreated toward one of their remaining blocks of cover.
He could hear her groaning in pain every step of the way. Sweat covered her forehead. Blood smeared her cheeks. Dirt and mud were caked in her hair, and still, she was the most beautiful being he had ever seen as he ducked behind the block of cover and carefully set her on the ground.
“Are you okay?” he breathed, his eyes sweeping over the rest of her body before they quickly dropped to her broken arm.
“I’m fine, Bill,” she panted, but he could see her eyes shimmering with unshed tears as she grew more and more pale. She was going into shock.
“Drink this,” Bill said, rapidly summoning one of the few blood replenishers he had left and bringing it to her lips. She diligently swallowed, groaning in pain as Bill touched her arm and felt his stomach roll. “This is going to hurt – I have to reset your bones.”
“Just fix it quickly,” Fleur said, her eyes shining as she met his gaze. She used her left hand to summon the crimson bottle that she had been saving from her pocket. “We don’t ‘ave time to waste.”
Bill nodded, rapidly summoning a bottle of wound cleaner from his pocket and biting out the stopper before he tethered his wife to the rock behind her and met her gaze once more. He could taste the bile at the back of his throat.
“I’m sorry,” Bill whispered, dumping the vial over her arm and cringing as her shrieks rocked through the air.
He added a tether on her arm to hold it steady, rapidly disinfecting his hands before grabbing the bone and jamming it back into place. She screamed. She screamed so loudly and so painfully he could feel it shooting down his spine, burning his nerves like fire as tears poured from her eyes. He rapidly healed the bone using the spell he had been practicing for the last few weeks, casting two spells to wrap the limb tight before grabbing the crimson bottle she had summoned and ripping out the cork. He swallowed half of it, then brought the rest of her lips and forced it down her throat as she choked out cries of pain.
Her screams morphed into a ragged roar as her body was forced into overdrive and his own pulse doubled. Her eyes shot wide. Her pupils dilated fully as her breath came in pants. Bill’s muscles convulsed, and he grit his teeth so tight he felt one crack as he let out a groan of pain. Without stopping to think, he reached for her face, kissing her hard as he released the tethers keeping her in place. He felt her fingers digging into his jacket as she kissed him back; then, they both pulled away, and he hauled her to her feet.
“Do not die on me, Bill Weasley,” Fleur said, gripping her wand tight with her left hand as her eyes shone with tears in the dark. “I need you.”
“I won’t,” Bill said, and his heart ached in pain as they both bolted out from behind their cover, racing back into the chaos once more.
He may have just lied.
That kiss might have been the last one.
Making her scream out in agony as he fixed her broken arm might be the last interaction he ever had with his wife.
He wished he would have told her that he loved her. He wished that he would have held her closer these last few days. He wished he had taken the time to memorize her features once more before this night began. He wished he had told her just how perfect she was. Just how kind, how caring, and how utterly beautiful she was as a person. He had told her these things before, of course, but somehow now, it didn’t feel like enough.
It would never feel like enough.
And the pain of knowing that he might never get the chance to tell her once more ached like a dagger through his heart.
His legs moved faster than ever. His heart beat like an unstoppable drum in his chest, pushing him forward like a steam engine as he took out anything and everything he could hit. Fleur darted back toward Professor Vector as Bill shot down toward the middle to assist Remus and Cho. He could see them losing more ground as spells continued to hit the castle on the east. He unleashed everything that he had as Augusta fought to hold her position. Then Greenhouse Six exploded, the forest caught fire, and the ground shook beneath his feet.
He saw Cho stagger, Remus barely grabbing her hand in time to haul her out of the way of an attack before the both of them were sidelined. The ground exploded. Dust and debris went everywhere as a massive boom rocked through the air, and Bill glanced over his shoulder to see the astronomy tower get blown clean off the castle.
“FUCK!” Bill cursed, rushing forward through the dust and smoke of the explosion as his muscles burned with pain. “REMUS! CHO!!”
He could barely see anything.
“REMUS!!!”
Something clipped his shoulder, and he collapsed in the mud. The air grew cold. Sparks shot up into the sky. He cast a Patronus, willing it to take shape as he groaned and hauled himself from the ground. He staggered to his feet only to get knocked back down as another explosion went off, and he collided with the ground.
“Bill!”
He groaned, wiping mud from his face and coughing up blood as he fought to crawl to his knees. He could see more fire burning across the ground. The rain was coming down harder. Augusta was screaming out and calling for everyone to fall back as his arm buzzed violently.
“Goldstein?” Bill said in disbelief as he watched the approaching boy help Remus carry Cho’s motionless and bloodied body out of the cloud of dust. Bill clenched his jaw and forced his legs to stand. “Where’s Corner?”
“He didn’t make it.” Anthony shook his head, which was bloody and covered in mud. “But we set the charges, and the fire on the snare is out.”
“Good job,” Bill said, moving towards them to relieve the boy. “You did well. Now get back to the castle, tell Angelina to get everyone inside and have Padma start evacuating our backup. We can’t hold here any longer – and the south door won’t withstand an attack, so everyone needs to get as far into the castle as possible.”
The boy nodded, wiping mud from his face as he staggered into a run toward the school.
“Remus,” Bill said, turning to look at the dishevelled man beside him. He knew that he was barely hanging on. He could see it in the man’s eyes. He was lost, utterly devastated, in shock and entirely disconnected from everything going on around him. But he was still fighting, almost dangerously and obsessively. “What happened? What hit us?”
“Augusta’s wall failed,” the greying man groaned, limping along beside him as another explosion rocked the earth. “Whatever was left in the Forest is pushing out now. Two werewolves attacked, and I saw more circling the edge of the woods. I think they were sent over from the east.”
Bill spit out the blood collecting in his mouth, letting out a breath as he managed to get them behind a feeble block of cover.
“What about your leg?” Bill asked, setting Cho down on the ground and rapidly casting a Patronus toward the castle to check on the others.
“It’s fine,” Remus bit out, though blood was seeping from a gash along his calf. “I don’t know what hit Cho – I didn’t see it.”
“Here.” Bill summoned the last of his dittany, tossing it to the greying man before looking at the motionless girl beside them.
Remus dumped the vial over his leg, groaning in pain as green smoke billowed into the air. Then he forced himself to move, popping up to check their surroundings and fire off a stream of attacks. Bill’s eyes skimmed over the girl, but his simple diagnostic charm showed nothing but a faint heartbeat.
“There’s nothing,” Bill said tightly. “There’s not a mark on her.”
“I know,” Remus groaned, ducking a streak of green. “Get her back to the castle. I’ll hold this spot. Percy and Penelope are on their way up with the last of the others.”
“You can’t hold this on your own,” Bill said, double-checking Cho’s pulse as Augusta’s cries for retreat grew closer. She was falling back quickly. She couldn’t be much more than twenty feet before them, and he knew that the wave she had been keeping a bay would be on them soon. He heard hooves making their way along the edge of their defensive front, and he knew the centaurs were moving toward the school as well. “I’ll have someone come get her.”
As soon as he spoke the words, there was a loud bang, and the ground exploded. He heard screams. Lightning cracked across the sky as debris pelted the ground around them. His arm was buzzing again, but he didn’t have time to look at it. He recast his shield, standing up with Remus to fire off attacks only to see his brother Percy get struck down as he defended a battered group of students and several Ministry allies making their way up toward the school.
“PERCY!!” Bill screamed, jumping over the block of cover and launching a stream of attacks. How the fuck did so many kids get down there?!
He didn’t know if they had slid by on the right to try and help at Greenhouse Four or if they were kids from the kitchens who had tried to make a run for the Forbidden Forest and failed. Either way, some of them were far too young to be out here, and he would not let them die. He raced forward, grabbing a student who was struggling to walk as Remus darted over the cover behind him. He raced the boy back, handing him off to Remus before rushing toward the others once more.
“CARRY CHO BACK WITH YOU!” Bill ordered, hurrying the students forward and sending out attacks to cover their retreat.
He couldn’t find Percy. His eyes scanned the chaos, but his brother was lost somewhere within it, and his stomach twisted with sickening doubt. He saw Fleur’s Patronus shoot into the sky on his left. He heard Remus yelling. One Ministry ally went down. Two centaurs were cut in half. Augusta got clipped on the shoulder as a wall of black fire traced across the rubble. Something hit the school. Bill felt his left hand break as he yanked a younger-looking student out of the way and got clipped by someone’s spell. A groan of pain broke from his lips. He could see bone as his legs grew unsteady, and a series of explosions where the Devil’s Snare had been went off like gunfire.
Then the ground rumbled once more. His side screamed as his stitches finally tore out. He could feel the blood leaking down his side as his eyes pinched in pain. He staggered toward Augusta, raising his wand to help, only for the witch to wrap the black fire around herself and cut the rest of them off.
“AUGUSTA!” Bill yelled, staggering back from the wall of fire. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”
“GET THEM OUT!” she bellowed.
Her voice rolled through the air like thunder as her wall of black fire spanned out across the southern front, joining up with one rushing toward them from the eastern side. Bill’s heart stuttered in his chest as he staggered back from the woman, clutching his side. His legs were starting to shake. Too much blood was dripping from his torn skin. He grabbed a struggling student from the muddy pit of death and pushed them forward before falling to his knees.
“MR. WEASLEY!”
An unfamiliar voice screamed nearby as he struggled and failed to get to his feet. He felt someone grab his arm then fight to haul him from the ground.
“We have to go! Get up, Mr. Weasley!”
A ragged groan split from his lips as he forced his legs to move. More blood spilled from his side. He leaned on the student next to him, looking down to see a young girl that he had never seen before in his life. He forced his legs to keep moving as they rushed back up the grounds behind the others as an ungodly hissing sound filled the air. Then his eyes turned to the sky and he felt his heart drop in horror as blue fire erupted into the night.
-x-x-
“NOW!!”
An explosion rocked the earth from the south.
“HAAARRRRYYY!!! I CAN’T DO THIS WITHOUT YOU – GET UP!!”
Hermione’s voice cut through the air like a knife, and the world around Ginny exploded. Neville unleashed a firework. Harry’s limp form bolted upright, coming back to life with a ragged roar that rattled her ribcage. Magic erupted through the air. Green light filled the sky. Narcissa began attacking the Death Eaters behind her as black fire poured out across the ground. She watched Lucius Malfoy’s face twist with horror and fear – the man tried to bolt, but Aberforth was faster, and the blonde lit up like a roman candle, consumed by the black fire circling the courtyard with a sickening shriek.
It was chaos.
It was insanity.
Yet Ginny charged forward with her father and brothers by her side regardless, raising her wand as Neville drew out the sword of Gryffindor.
They had three tasks: defend the school entrance to prevent the Death Eaters from getting inside, cover Harry, Hermione, and Nasir so they could attack Voldemort, and take out that cursed snake. She didn’t fully understand why the snake was so important, but that didn’t matter. Those were her orders.
Before the chaos had ensued, Shacklebolt had approached the two figures in the center of the courtyard only to return seconds later with the sword. He gave it to Neville, assigning them the task of killing the snake before issuing final instructions to the rest of their meager defensive line. He may have been the one to give the order, but Ginny knew the direction came from Hermione, and Ginny would follow that witch to the ends of the earth.
She didn’t care what anyone else said. She didn’t care what everyone else thought of Hermione’s violent display of magic only moments ago. Ginny trusted her. Ginny trusted her with her life, and she knew that if Hermione said the snake needed to die, then it needed to die, and she would follow those instructions if it was the last thing that she did.
Susan was inside the school with a small backup crew of injured students who had elected to stay behind and help despite Shacklebolt’s warning and despite their own physical limitations. Her mother was in there with them. They were intended to be the very last line of defence between this warzone and the rest of the students desperately making their way toward the Room of Requirement and kitchens to be evacuated. A large number had already left the grounds, and some were on the boats with upper years who could apparate, but there were still countless people inside at risk.
She wouldn’t let it get that far.
She couldn’t.
She refused to let them get inside the school, and she refused to stop until her heart gave out.
She knew this was their only shot at victory; she would have known that even if Shacklebolt didn’t make a speech. She could feel it. This was the storm that had been approaching for years, but seeing it now was like nothing she could have ever imagined. She couldn’t keep up with it. Rain stung her eyes, but she didn’t dare blink. To blink would mean death as a slew of magic filled the air.
She heard her father call something out. Then purple encased her body. She watched Harry charge through the firework as she disarmed a stunned-looking Death Eater before George severed his head. Professor McGonagall unleashed an attack that cracked the ground, hitting two Death Eaters who had turned to attack Narcissa. The blonde witch stumbled, nearly getting hit by a streak of green before Shacklebolt tugged her out of the way at the last second. Ginny dodged something yellow, then something blue. Her heart raced in her chest as fear slid down her spine. Then out of the corner of her eye, she saw Hermione throw an empty vial to the ground and release a violent battle cry.
It was unnerving.
It was disturbing.
It was incredible.
It was hard not to watch her – it was hard not to watch them.
They moved like a single unit, firing off spells quicker than she could track as she and Neville fought their way across the courtyard with Fred, George, and her father. Everything kept exploding. Bits of rock and debris flew past her face as spikes shot up from the ground, and she heard Lee scream. Something attached to her chest, and she was yanked to the side – Fred caught her, then shoved her away again as a bolt of green flew toward their faces. It was all she could do to keep moving, all she could do just to breathe.
She saw her father explode an acromantula jumping for Hermione before Shacklebolt sliced down a werewolf, and Narcissa retreated to McGonagall’s side to cover the older woman while their small team fought to push ahead. She could see the snake through the chaos, weaving beneath legs and feet. Aberforth had managed to cut off any escape to the south, and she could see the flames racing further along the edge of the courtyard toward the forest to prevent the attackers from the south from flanking them.
“Neville!” Ginny screamed, ducking beneath another spell and firing an explosive spell toward the small crowd of Death Eaters and snatchers that were pushing back against their defensive line. “We have to get Nagini out of that crowd! We’ll never hit it!”
“We need to thin them out!” Fred yelled, launching an attack before he dodged behind a broken piece of stone for cover. “Dad!! We need to divide the group!”
She saw her father nod, then his voice rang out, and Shacklebolt yelled something to direct more attacks at the cluster of Death Eaters. Something clipped her leg, and she stumbled.
Don’t stop, she urged herself as she dodged a streak of crackling white light. Don’t stop!
She saw Bellatrix take out two students, dropping them like flies as a sickening laugh poured from her lungs. Blood splattered across the ground, and her stomach twisted. She could taste bile. She could smell blood. It filled the air with the rancid smell of death, and she knew she would never be rid of it.
Don’t stop.
She ducked and dodged, her muscles screaming with pain as she fought to stay alive and fired attacks at anything that moved across the courtyard. But there weren’t enough people on their side. She could see more and more acromantula pouring in from the east as the archway exploded and stone shattered out through the air. Some of it hit the shield. One large block of stone rolled across the courtyard, taking out a Death Eater as Bellatrix pushed her group forward.
They were losing ground.
She had already fallen back several paces to avoid getting hit as spells were lobbed at them from Voldemort himself. Their efforts weren’t going to be enough.
She managed to hit two spiders, then leg-locked a snatcher before the ground exploded by her side, and she was blasted back another six feet. She collided with the cold, wet stone as a broken wheeze left her lungs, and she wondered how the hell she wasn’t dead. Then someone grabbed the back of her waterlogged sweater and tugged her up from the ground as another explosion rang in her ears.
“GINNY!!”
She groaned, spitting out mud and blood as she looked up at her father. “I’m alright.”
He barely had the time to nod before they ducked another onslaught of spells. She felt like her head was inside a tiny metal room that was being bombarded with bombs. Everywhere she looked, there was blood and magic. Her legs were starting to tremble. Her breath was becoming ragged. She pulled one of the strength potions she still had left from her pocket and downed half the vial without thinking before tossing the second half to her father. He took it without question, finishing the potion as her pulse sky-rocketed and warmth flooded her veins.
“Move!” Arthur yelled, grabbing her sweater yet again and tugging her out of the way as another blast flew over their heads.
It collided with the castle behind them, sending a deep hollow bang through the night air. Then the cold sank in, like a whisper of death shifting through the darkness. She felt them before she saw them – black shadows in the night, weaving through the rain and chaos, looking for lone bodies to pick off. Panic flooded her bones. It curled in her gut like a festering disease, threatening to consume her alive.
DON’T STOP!
She forced herself to stand, rushing along behind her dad. Through the insanity, she raised her wand and thought about the happiest moment of her life – Susan. Going to sleep with Susan in her arms and knowing she was safe.
“Expecto Patronum!”
White light filled the sky as she, her father, Aberforth, and a collection of others unleashed the spell in unison. Then Aberforth pushed forward, warping his black fire across the ground toward the attacking group to try and split them in two while Shacklebolt unleashed a stream to the east. The fire moved as if alive, cutting across the stone and sectioning off the courtyard as it forced the Death Eaters to break apart. A handful of spiders were caught in the flames. She saw Bellatrix dart inward, taking a small group with her as they pushed toward the castle, and Nagini was forced to follow.
“They’re making for the doors!” Neville called out as the defensive line took another collective step back toward the school.
She could see the group naturally splitting. McGonagall, Narcissa, Aberforth, Shacklebolt, and a dozen or more students were shifting north to hold the courtyard as she, the twins, her father, Madam Hooch, Neville and the rest of the students and Ministry allies all fell further back to try and take out the group attempting to sideline them.
She watched Ernie’s head separate from his shoulders and fall to the ground.
She vomited.
She watched another student whose name she didn’t even know go flying through the air before hitting a piece of jagged stone with a sickening crunch.
She gagged as her eyes stung with tears.
She watched as none other than Narcissa Black yanked a kid out of the way of an attack from Bellatrix before casting a shield on the small group of students holding their ground.
She saw Fred go down, screaming in pain as something clipped his left arm.
Her father changed course, directing her to fall back to the door with the others as he made for Fred under Shacklebolt’s cover. George pressed on by her side. Neville’s shoulder was starting to bleed again. Lavender rushed to her side. The girl’s eyes were pinched in pain, and blood was pouring from her bandaged arm. Aberforth managed to take two more Death Eaters out, creating a perfect window to strike – then Ginny felt magic ripple across the earth as McGonagall warped the stone courtyard and drove a massive wedge through the group, cutting off their attempted sideline and separating Nagini from the others with an enormous physical wall of stone.
“NOW!” Neville screamed, darting forward behind the others, sword and wand in hand.
Ginny reached into her pocket, pulling out her Peruvian instant darkness powder as Lavender and George both cast explosions to keep the snake pinned down. She threw the powder, giving Neville cover as the monstrous snake reared back to attack. The first swing missed as Neville darted through the darkness, and Ginny cut south to head off the creature. The wall of stone rumbled. Spells rained down overhead as those stuck behind it began lobbing attacks.
An angry hiss filled the air.
Six spells narrowly missed her head as Madam Hooch hauled her out of the way. Fire burned through the sky from the south. The sound of metal hitting stone echoed as the crackle of lightning erupted into the night. She barely caught sight of a massive wave of electrified water rushing into the sky of the courtyard behind her as Shacklebolt yelled something unintelligible. The darkness faded, and Nagini lunged, narrowly missing Neville’s leg before striking twice more.
It was all they could do to dodge.
Nothing they fired hit the creature, and George stumbled back on the slick stone, his damaged right leg giving out as he desperately dodged the bite aimed for his chest. Neville swung again, barely missing the beast’s neck before getting hit with something that fell from the sky. Madam Hooch grabbed him, hauling him up away from the snake’s thrashing tail as she cast a stream of counter-attacks over the makeshift wall. A crack split down the stone. It rumbled against another set of explosions from those trapped behind it.
“MAGIC ISN’T WORKING!” Lavender screamed. “WE HAVE TO TRY SOMETHING ELSE!”
There was a flash of green and black.
Nagini struck in one violent motion – so fast it was hard to see. Lavender moved, her body twisting out of the way as time seemed to warp and Ginny’s mouth opened in a scream.
“LAVENDER!!”
But she wasn’t quick enough.
Nagini’s fangs landed a hit – and Lavender’s already damaged arm ripped clean off.
Her scream broke through the air.
Blood spilled across the ground.
She saw the girl drop to her knees, her face going white with terror as the venom burned through her veins. Ginny threw everything that she had at the creature – spell after spell – curse after curse – but nothing worked. Just as Lavender had yelled, it was like any sort of offensive magic didn’t affect it, and the thing wasn’t even trying to dodge. Instead, the great snake rapidly twisted over the broken stone, aiming for her next. She could see the strike coming. She could feel her heart beating so quickly it was surely going to burst. She raised her wand once more – then grunted in pain as something collided with her body, and she dropped to the ground.
“KILL IT!!! KILL IT NOW!!”
The ungodly shriek that left Lavender’s mouth tore down Ginny’s spine like acid. She heard the thump as Lavender hit the ground by her side. Then a choked and bloodied cry of pain poured out as Nagini’s fangs sunk deeper into Lavender’s chest – and Ginny realized the girl was gripping the snake tightly.
Her single arm was wrapped around it just below the head. She was holding onto it like a koala would hug a tree. It had all happened so quickly Ginny wasn’t even sure what happened, but Lavender had lunged forward and thrown herself into the attack, and without thinking, Ginny pushed herself up off the ground and threw herself on the middle of the writhing creature.
“KILL IT!!” Ginny shrieked, casting as many silent sticking charms as she could manage – fastening herself and the great snake to the ground just as Lavender had done. “NEVILLE, KILL IT!!!”
There was a crack like a gunshot. Her hands scraped against the stone, getting bloodied and mangled as she fought to hang on. Nagini struggled to lift her face away from the ground. Something black jetted into the night sky as screams echoed through the air. Another loud crack cut through the night. Nagini managed to dislodge herself from Lavender’s dead body, tearing through the sticking charms with one giant heave. Then the snake twisted around to face her as Neville lunged forward, and Ginny stared up through the rain.
It was like watching time come to a stop.
She could have counted every single drop of water as it fell, illuminated under the strikes of lighting and magic that burned through the air.
One heartbeat.
The stone wall McGonagall made shattered with a deafening crack, pieces flying everywhere as small debris struck her face.
Two heartbeats.
Her father was screaming, and George was trying to run to her.
Three heartbeats.
Bellatrix was cackling somewhere off in the distance.
Four heartbeats.
Nagini’s mouth opened wide, her fangs dripping with blood as she lunged down, and Ginny’s nails sunk into her scales. She cast seven more sticking charms, and then her heart started to calm.
She would never let go.
Never.
Five heartbeats.
The fangs were getting closer.
Six heartbeats.
Silver streaked through the air as Neville called out her name, and she cast five more sticking charms, plastering herself to the ground across the snake’s middle to keep it in place.
Seven heartbeats.
The noise around her became a blur. The rain clouded her eyes. She couldn’t breathe. Her nails sunk deeper. Every muscle in her body grew tense as a horrible hissing sound filled her mind, and the rank smell of death flooded her nose.
Then metal cracked against stone. Blood splattered across her face. It was hot and thick. Time warped once more as Nagini’s head was cleaved straight off, and then a wave of dark magic washed through the air. She gagged as she was thrown to the side and bathed in the waterfall of blood that erupted from the snake, but she didn’t hit the ground. Something sturdy grabbed her out of the air as blood trailed down her face, into her mouth, and up her nose.
“Miss Weasley!”
She tried to inhale, but she couldn’t breathe. The blood was so thick she was suffocating under it until someone’s hand was touching her face and wiping it away. She blinked through the red, inhaling sharply as someone set her back on her feet.
“S-Shacklebolt,” Ginny wheezed, groaning in pain as the tall man quickly jerked her to the right, blocking off the attack that whizzed by her head.
“Are you alright? Can you stand?”
“Yes.” Ginny nodded, spitting out blood as something purple encased her soaking wet body once more. Her head jerked up to see her father, wand outstretched as he all but carried Fred’s body back toward them with three other students by his side.
“Good.” Shacklebolt nodded, glancing down at his bare arm quickly before wiping more of the vile-smelling blood from her face. There was a gash on his temple and a tremble in his arm, but his eyes were practically shining with tears as he looked at her. “You were incredible, Ginny – just incredible. I need you to get Neville and your brother now and get inside. I need you to tell your mother to get the remainder of the students out – we can’t hold like this for much longer, and they need more room in order to finish this. Go – now!”
Ginny barely managed a nod before the man stepped away and began screaming out something as he unleashed another massive wall of black fire. She could see some of the other students starting to fall back as she staggered toward George, who was helping to haul Neville from the rubble as Madam Hooch covered their backs.
Dust hung heavy in the air where the makeshift wall had been. She could feel a sharp pain in her side, and she knew some of her ribs were broken. Her eyes rapidly scanned over the debris as she moved, but she couldn’t find Lavender. The girl must be buried under the stone, because the only thing that remained where Nagini had been was a smouldering strip of black flesh that reeked like decay.
She gagged, vomiting as the smell filled her nose before she sent out two more attacks to help provide cover for the retreating students. She managed to reach Neville and George, wiping her dirty sleeve across her lips and eyes as the rain washed more blood from her hair and down her face. They backed up toward the castle while her father, Shacklebolt, McGonagall, Narcissa, Terry Boot, Lee Jordan, Aberforth, and what was left of their Ministry defences and allies continued the offensive attack.
Against the impossible, they made it to the doors, stumbling and staggering every step of the way. Hooch pulled them open with a heave, ushering them and a few other injured students inside before rapidly closing the doors behind them.
“Ginny!?” Susan’s voice filled the air as the sound of explosions reduced to a dull thrum.
“Ginny!!” Her mother’s voice quickly followed. “Oh my – Merlin – are you alright?! George! Where is Fred?! Where is your father?!”
“We’re alright,” Ginny said quickly, hissing in pain as she hobbled across the ground, helping to support Neville, who was just as covered in blood. “They’re still out there – they’re fine, but Shacklebolt wants everyone who remains evacuated now. Harry and Hermione need more room – they’re fighting Voldemort with Nasir, but we need to get everyone out. They can’t hold much longer.”
Her mother’s face was pale. Her eyes shone with worry. Ginny could see the tension in the woman’s muscles as her eyes raked over their bloodied and battered forms with concern. She looked ready to lose it. She looked ready to explode – but to Ginny’s surprise, the woman nodded.
“Hannah,” her mother said quickly, snapping her attention to the girl standing just off to the right. “Run down to the south and tell them all to get to the kitchens immediately! Help them! Tell them to do what they can to convince any of the house-elves still sitting around to help!”
“Yes, ma’am!” Hannah nodded, turning on her heel and racing down the hall at an incredible sprint.
“The rest of you,” Mrs. Weasley said, turning back to look at the remaining students as the two Ministry allies who had been inside made their way toward the door to head outside and fight. “Make your way up to the Room of Requirement and follow Padma Patil’s directions – she is leading the exit with Thomas. If it’s moving too slowly, tell her to have the house-elves focus on the youngest students first. If there is anyone left who can apparate, start taking groups to the boats and get as many out of this school as you can!”
The students nodded, several of them turning on their heels and bolting down the hall toward the staircase right away while a few, who seemed reluctant to leave, lingered. Explosions rattled through the entryway as the door cracked open and the Ministry allies slipped out into the chaos.
“What about those too injured to apparate?” Susan asked, stepping forward on her makeshift wooden leg. “Madam Pomfrey won’t leave them behind, and they’ll get stuck if the attacks come inside.”
“They’ll have to be brought to the boats or snuck out through the forest past the wards.” Mrs. Weasley nodded in agreement. “We’ll need someone to–”
“I can do it,” Susan said quickly, summoning a small strength potion from her pocket and yanking out the cork.
“Susan,” Mrs. Weasley breathed, her voice raspy as she shook her head. “You should head to the Room of Requirement. With your leg you–”
“I said, I can do it,” Susan said firmly, downing the last of the small vile and clenching her jaw tight as her pupils dilated.
“I’ll help, too,” Ginny said, wiping more blood from her face as she stepped across the stone toward her girlfriend. “George – get Neville to the seventh floor.”
“Ginny–”
“Are you kidding me?” Neville cut off Mrs. Weasley’s protest as he forced himself to stand on his own and repocket the sword. “I’m not leaving.”
“Me either.” George shook his head along with the rest of the students who had lingered nearby, including all of the ones sent back inside. “I’m sticking this out. The evac still isn’t done – everyone waiting around the kitchens and the seventh floor are sitting ducks. We need to head them off here.”
“If they get into the halls, this is over,” Neville said, nodding in agreement. “I respect Shacklebolt’s direction, but I’m not going anywhere. We still have to hold these doors or–”
Stone shattered across the floor. The sound of rain, thunder, and explosions filled the entryway as the wall was blown out and water poured inside. It froze into ice, catching three students and freezing them up past their ankles as a mad cackle split through the air. The next attack was so quick Ginny barely had time to register it. It hit like a hammer, shattering the stone, sending bodies flying – she heard a godawful crack, and she knew that one of the student’s frozen legs had broken.
Ginny scrambled on the ground, raising her wand as Bellatrix and two others poured in through the hole – then chaos broke out. She could hear voices screaming outside as their offensive team rapidly tried to come to their aid. Her mother was screaming at the students to run as she raised her wand and cast a plethora of purple spells around the room – first encasing Susan, then rapidly shielding as many other students as she could before the ground exploded once more.
George and Neville rolled off to the left.
Susan and four others escaped to the right.
Ginny and her mother narrowly dodged the hunk of stone that came flying out of the ground.
Bellatrix’s laugh filled the air, her single eye burning with crazed rage as she sent off a collection of spells. She quickly disembowelled one of the Ministry allies who had rushed back inside before severing the head of one of the students who had lingered behind before her mother could cast a shield.
“BELLA, STOP!!”
The unfamiliar voice that screeched through the air was raw with a tone of desperation that Ginny had only ever heard come from her own mother. A bloodied and dirty blonde tumbled her way through the opening, her wand raised and face streaked with mud.
“They’re just children!” Narcissa screamed. Her voice broke on the words. They were pained and agonized, sounding as if someone had shoved a white-hot poker down the woman’s throat. Her eyes were burning. She looked on the verge of going mad as she yelled out once more in a wretched shriek. “STOP IT!”
Bellatrix stiffened.
Her single-eyed gaze shifted to her sister, and it filled with rage. It was like watching a switch flip. Bellatrix’s disturbed smile faded and twisted with uncontrolled hatred. Her eye grew dark. Her body bristled. The air around them compressed as she turned fully and raised her wand, pointing it at her sister.
“BLOOD TRAITOR!”
A flash of green split through the air, narrowly missing Narcissa’s head before the crazed witch began launching attacks at a pace so incredible it made Ginny’s blood grow cold. Narcissa blocked what she could before getting hit by something that made her stagger. Another body burst through the hole, colours streaked through the air, and her mother shielded two students, then sent them running up the hall. Neville and George were taking on one of the snatchers who had initially burst in. Ginny sent out hex after hex, desperately trying to hit the madwoman in the middle of the room as she fought her way over to Susan, who was stuck near the ice on the far side battling the second snatcher.
“Susan!” Ginny screamed, ducking an attack before closing the distance to her side.
She reached her girlfriend just as Susan’s hex hit the snatcher, and the man collapsed to the ground, then he was hit four more times by the other students who had been helping her before Susan yelled at them to run. Explosions and screams continued to ring out through the air. Something clipped Susan’s shoulder, and she staggered. Ginny reached out, managing to catch her mid-fall. Then out of nowhere, a bolt of bright yellow shot from Bellatrix towards their heads and Ginny’s heart faltered.
“NOT MY DAUGHTERS, YOU BITCH!!” Mrs. Weasley’s voice bellowed as her protective shield formed inches from Ginny’s face, blocking the attack seconds before it struck.
Ginny could hardly breathe.
She had never seen her mother move that fast. She had never seen her mother look like that. The woman’s eyes were blazing. Her movements were strong. She unleashed a flurry of spells so rapidly Ginny was convinced the woman might be possessed. Then Narcissa staggered out across the ground, blood trickling down her arm as she raised her wand – and began attacking her own sister outright. Ginny grabbed Susan tighter, quickly hauling her up from the ground before raising her own wand once more and unleashing everything that she had.
Bellatrix blocked and dodged.
She evaded their attacks with a skill that was unnatural.
The crazed glint in her eyes grew more violent as her magic ripped across the room – but even she could not fend off six attackers as Madam Hooch rushed inside with Terry Boot by her side.
Bellatrix staggered.
“Duro!” Narcissa clipped her arm.
“Lapis Glacierum!” Mrs. Weasley screamed, hitting the woman straight in the chest.
Bellatrix stumbled back.
It was like something from a dream, and it seemed even Bellatrix herself could not believe it. Her dark eye went wide as her arm turned to stone and frost spread out across her clothes. Her body seized, each motion slowing down until she froze in place completely – half stone, half ice.
“Bombarda!”
The word tore from Mrs. Weasley’s lungs like it was the explosion itself. Ginny watched the spell connect – and Bellatrix Lestrange exploded.
Chunks of dry ice and stone flew everywhere. Madam Hooch threw up a shield, and Ginny turned away, covering Susan’s head as the pieces tore like shrapnel through the air. But her mother remained motionless, standing before both her and Susan like a physical wall as she was pelted by bits of dry ice and stone.
Everything went silent as the final snatcher inside the school fell to the ground.
Then, Ginny felt it.
The unmistakable rumble that would haunt her nightmares forever.
It was the beast that lurked in the deep dark and should never be woken. The terror, rage, and anguish that was caged within Hermione’s heart. The destruction of immeasurable proportions that had scalded the northern hillside and reduced the grounds to a melted, twisted mess.
It sounded like a river rushing in her ears. Violent and deadly, vicious and strong. Blue light flooded the sky outside, getting larger and larger until it looked like the world was burning. A tremble ran down her spine as a horrible hissing sound filled the air.
“That’s not Hermione’s,” Ginny whispered, her eyes growing wide with terror as she stared out the hole through the castle, and she felt her chest constrict.
What happened?
Did they die?
Did he win?
Had they just lost this war?
Would they all burn here tonight in a blazing ball of fury?
She could just make out the heads of three massive snakes on the skyline, and her body grew weak as everyone around her stood there in silence. She reached for Susan’s hand, knowing that there was nothing she could do – then red fire erupted like lava from a volcano, racing across the grounds and shooting up into the sky as a burning wall of blood. She saw the tail whip through the rain. The head came next, rising like a demon from the flames of hell until it burned white-hot, and a godawful roar rocked through the air.
“That – is Hermione,” Susan said hoarsely as those inside the castle took a collective step back, and Ginny gripped her hand tight.
“Yes,” Ginny whispered as she stared at the sight in awe, watching as wings ripped from the abomination’s back and black lightning crackled over its skin. “But she’s not alone.”
-x-x-
“Impossible,” Hermione breathed, her chest burning from the heat of the fire as she stared at the red glowing eyes of death locked on her face.
How was he standing?
How the fuck did he survive?
She could see the ground sizzle and crack beneath his bare feet; nothing but ash and ruin surrounding his pale form. There wasn’t even a bone from his army left, and yet there he stood, completely unharmed except for the dust that covered his robes. She couldn’t breathe. She struggled to process it. She could feel the terror inching back in as his eyes pierced her soul, and she couldn’t look away.
How the hell were they supposed to end this if he wouldn’t die?
How did he make it through that raging inferno?
They had hit him – she was sure of it.
It would have been impossible to miss unless–
“YOU ARE DEAD MUDBLOOD!”
Her thoughts cut off as Voldemort’s demonic voice sliced through the air. She rapidly dodged to the left, her body reacting to the bright streak of green magic soaring toward her chest before her mind could catch up. More spells followed. She could hear Harry and Nasir battling their way over to her as Voldemort unleashed a hailstorm of hexes and curses she didn’t even know the names of. The ground exploded, stones melted – she dodged attack after attack as she sent out her own – but her realization remained at the forefront of her mind.
And she knew it was true.
‘Harry!!’ Hermine called out through the bond as she rolled across the broken ground to avoid another attack. ‘He’s using a permanent shield!’
‘A shield?! Did you see it?!’
‘No – but he has to be! It’s the only explanation – otherwise, he would be dead. I’m sure we’ve hit him! I’m positive I’ve seen a few of our attacks land, but they don’t do anything.’
‘It’s got to be one like ours – he probably wears it permanently.’
‘Exactly!’ Hermione thought as she rolled behind a broken piece of rubble and rapidly sent the messages through the tag on her arm to Nasir. ‘That’s why he’s so dangerous. That’s why no one could take him out. He’s probably been wearing the thing for years – we couldn’t have been the only ones to discover the spell, Harry!’
‘But how long can he hold it in place? We’ve been at this for ages, and he hasn’t faltered once – we can’t keep up with this forever.’
There was a loud crack, and Nasir appeared by her side. He grabbed her hand tightly, rapidly apparating her away seconds before a spell blasted apart her cover. Bile burned her throat as the world warped back into focus, and they landed next to Harry.
“Are you sure you saw something land?” Nasir asked as he fended off the next attack, and Harry sent off three more killing curses.
“Positive!” Hermione yelled, blocking an attack before she grabbed Harry’s muddy jacket and yanked him out of the way of another. “I saw the fire hit! It was wrapped around him. I know it was! And moments before that, I’m sure that I saw your dagger clip his shoulder.”
They all shifted to the left, jumping out of the way of the next explosion before Nasir put up a shield and Harry deflected two lobbed attacks aimed for the castle. Hermione grabbed Harry’s still broken arm, giving it a painful twist back into place before healing the bones. He was lucky that crimson potion was still numbing the pain in his body, or he might have passed out.
“You’re sure?” Nasir yelled above the racket as he glanced at her over his shoulder. His eyes were burning, and his face was covered in blood and ash as Harry fired off another round of attacks. “You saw it land?”
“Yes!” Hermione nodded, adding sticking charms to her feet to keep her balance. The ash on the ground had grown wetter and turned into sludge. She tried not to think about it being bits of people and just focused on staying alive. “I’m positive! I saw his robes rip and–”
The following realization hit her like a bludger. Then a wheeze left her lungs as Harry shoved her to the side out of the way of the next attack.
“Oh my god,” Hermione whispered, hauling her chest up from the ground and wiping the ash from her face as she took in the war-torn landscape before her with fresh eyes. “He’s only shielding against magic!”
She scrambled up to her knees, rapidly recasting her own shield charm as her mind raced a mile a minute. That was why they couldn’t hit him. He was wearing a shield just like them. He was good at dodging – but he wasn’t that good. She was sure she had seen him only narrowly avoid some spells and possibly get hit by others. She had just assumed that they missed because it all happened so quickly, and nothing happened to the demon.
Of course he’s wearing a fucking shield, she thought as she tore across the ground back toward the others. He’s probably spent years cultivating the skill and can hold it for hours. But he’s not blocking physical attacks!
“Nasir!” Hermione screamed, ducking a blast and firing off two counters as she rushed across the slick ash-covered stone. “Can you get near him?!”
“Possibly!” Nasir yelled, ducking another attack as Harry was forced back by a slew of magic. “But I cannot dampen the apparition – he’ll know I’m coming and move out of the way. I got lucky the last time!”
Hermione threw herself to the right, launching everything that she had at the skeletal-looking demon as her heart thudded in her chest. He must be tired. He had to be. After shielding against a fiery blast of that magnitude, surely even he was reaching his limit. He had yet to ignite another fire – so either he was too tired to do it, or he had deemed it too risky.
Maybe he figured they would block it again.
Maybe he realized that he was outmatched when they all worked together.
Maybe he had determined that large-scale attacks would only backfire in his face, weaken his shield, and put him at risk of physical injury. Maybe that was why he had gone back to firing at them directly and lobbing occasional blows at the castle to try and catch them off guard. Maybe he was waiting for an opening, waiting for them to slip up.
Her legs shook as she moved and sent out six more deadly spells.
He wasn’t wrong.
It was going to happen. She was going to falter. She was going to misstep, and Voldemort knew it. Her shields weren’t holding as long. Her movements were slowing faster than his. He was reserving his energy. He was trying to outlast them. He was forcing them apart again, targeting Nasir and Harry to drive them farther away from her and off to the sides. He was waiting them out. He would exhaust them, push them into making mistakes and then pick them off. She could already see it happening. Harry’s foot slipped on the stone, and he nearly got hit. Her arm started to shake more violently as her aim got increasingly worse.
They were going to die.
This might have gone differently had she not fought on the northern front and had they had time to rest after Gringotts. But they were disadvantaged, and Voldemort had made sure to keep himself out of the fight until the end.
He was stronger than them.
He wasn’t as tired as them.
He was more ruthless than them.
As it stood, they were going to lose.
If they did not find a way to get close to him and physically attack him without magic to bypass his shield, this was over. But they couldn’t get close. He was making sure of that, and the ground between them was a sizzling mess. She had inadvertently given him a buffer they couldn’t cross.
She could feel her body starting to fail.
She could feel her heart starting to ache.
If Nasir made a move now, it could go poorly – even if they covered him, it had to be perfectly timed. They couldn’t afford to waste any more energy. They couldn’t keep trying random attacks and hoping to land a blow. Any time they got near him, they were at risk of getting hit by a close-range attack, and each time they did it, their odds of success would diminish.
He would track their movements just as they were tracking his. He was already doing it – anticipating their moves and launching spells where he expected them to dodge, and he had managed to hit her twice more already.
The only reason she wasn’t dead yet was because her shield took the brunt of the blow, but that wouldn’t last forever. They needed a plan. She needed a second to think, but she didn’t have a second. She could hardly fucking breathe between attacks.
FOCUS!
She forced herself to inhale, ducking another attack. She forced her mind to calm as she ran through every single scenario, but they all came down to the same inescapable facts.
They had to cross the scorched land.
They had to get close.
But more than anything… they had to split up.
Nasir couldn’t successfully land a blow on his own if Voldemort could dodge it. Someone had to try and find a way to keep him pinned down – but firing attacks from afar wouldn’t cut it. They had already tried that and failed. Long-range attacks gave Voldemort too much room and time to respond and counter, and they wouldn’t work anyway since he was shielding against magic.
So they would need to get close.
Two of them had to throw themselves into this chaos – close the distance so he was forced to face them – put themselves at risk of getting hit like sacrificial lambs to create an opening. Then a third person would need to be open to attack after the physical blow landed and Voldemort was pinned in place. It was risky. It was dangerous. It was possible that the two of them who closed the distance wouldn’t make it out. She knew this, but she knew it was the only way, and she knew exactly who was best suited to each of the tasks.
And she knew there was no time to debate it.
She felt her pulse slow as an odd calm encased her body, and she let out a breath. Then she sent the message through the tag as she recast her shield charm one final time.
Hr–Nasir, summon me
Her head turned to the right as her throat started to burn, and Harry’s voice echoed in her head.
‘HERMIONE, NO!!’
But her hand was already moving, summoning the very last crimson bottle from her pocket as Nasir blocked another attack aimed at the castle, then turned to look at her through the chaos and nodded. She ripped out the cork, downing the entire contents in one rapid motion as Harry rushed across the stone toward her.
He was livid.
He was desperate.
She could feel his rage and anguish burning in her mind as his love poured through the bond. He would never forgive her, but she would never allow him to do this himself. He had sacrificed too much already. His body was failing faster than hers. She had checked his vitals through their connection, and they both knew that he would never make it across the scorched land in one piece. He couldn’t take another potion or his heart would legitimately fail. His body had died just over an hour ago, and it was suffering greatly.
There was no other choice.
He couldn’t do this – but he could end it.
She felt her blood pressure surge. Her body convulsed. Her eyes shot wide as a ragged yell of pain tore from her lungs, and her legs vibrated like an earthquake was rocking through her bones. She glanced back at Harry, feeling his turbulent emotions explode in agony as her own flooded through the bond.
He had seen her thoughts.
He knew what was coming.
He was rejecting it with every fiber of his being, but she trusted him to do what he needed to do when they gave the signal.
‘I love you.’
She sent it through the bond with everything she had. Then she took off. Disappearing under a silent disillusionment as she rushed the ground between her and the skeletal demon, her legs moving faster than ever before as her pulse thudded in her ears.
She could hear her boots hissing as they started to melt.
She could smell the death and dark magic that clung to the earth.
She ducked and dodged the oncoming spells as Harry and Nasir did everything they could to cover her rapid attack. She cast two tethers, using them to pull herself across the ground faster as her lungs burned from the heat. She could feel Harry in her mind. She knew he was talking to her, but she couldn’t hear the words as her eyes stung with tears and her breath came in pants so loud everything else faded away.
Closer.
An explosion rocked the ground to the south.
Closer.
She couldn’t feel her feet.
Closer.
She felt the muscles in her legs tear as her heart stuttered in her chest.
Closer!
She launched herself over a broken pile of stone covered in ash, ducking into a roll and trusting her shield to stop her back from burning as it skimmed across the ground. Voldemort’s eyes tracked her movements, but he couldn’t watch her in full as Harry and Nasir bombarded him with attack after attack.
CLOSER!!
She could see the dust on his face clearly now as she closed the distance to under fifty feet. It was smearing in the rain. His eyes were narrowed in hatred, the glow like fiendfyre burning in the night. The exhale that left his lungs rattled like a storm and made terror race down her spine as he turned toward her. He wasn’t human. He was hardly even alive. Green split from his wand; she threw herself to the left to dodge the attack, then a crack split through the air.
He moved.
Just like she knew he would.
Harry sent off four attacks to keep him from bolting completely as Hermione forced her legs to move. Groaning out in pain, she shoved herself forward with everything that she had as Nasir materialized twenty feet behind Voldemort. Green and blue careened at her face. She ducked beneath them, rolling across the steaming ground once more as she pulled out her dagger seconds before she felt the tug across her chest and then everything happened all at once.
The world seemed to warp around her as everything slowed.
She watched Voldemort turn to attack Nasir, ducking Harry’s bolt of green light as she sent out a slew of sticking charms aimed at his feet. Then her own left the ground as Nasir summoned her body across the space between them. The smell of decay flooded her nose. Air rushed past her face. The rain and heat stung her skin as Voldemort’s unnaturally tall form turned around to face her once more, and she saw his eyes widen.
The summoning stopped.
Green light propelled toward her face.
Harry’s heart stuttered dangerously in his chest.
A violent tug yanked across her sternum. It was familiar and strong, just like it had been all those times in training as she was pulled roughly toward the ground. But this time, without pausing to question it, Hermione leaned into the force. She tucked her chin, collapsing into a roll and narrowly missing the killing spell that shot over her head.
Her legs screamed in pain. Her heart beat erratically in her chest as the toll of the potion ached through her bones. She grit her teeth, unable to breathe as her lungs felt like they were going to explode. She forced herself back up to her feet using the momentum from Nasir’s pull and drove her dagger through the air with more force than humanly possible.
Blood splattered across her chest as her elbows buckled and her wrist snapped. Hermione screamed, her voice breaking as she looked up at the demon above her and shoved her dagger up through his chest with a ragged roar.
She met his red gaze.
She felt him slip into her mind.
She screamed out in pain as he tore through it like a madman – consuming everything that he could with a desperation that left her sick to her stomach. She heard the air leave his lungs like a hollow wheeze, and the stench of his breath brought bile up her throat. A massive crack cut through the night, then a warm flutter touched her mind, and Voldemort was ejected from her head like a bullet from a gun. Silver flashed as Nasir landed directly behind him and drove his dagger into the demon’s back with so much force Voldemort’s legs actually buckled.
She blinked the tears from her eyes as her entire body shook with pain.
She could see the shock.
The disbelief.
The rage.
The hostility.
It poured from his blood-red gaze like a disease as his stench sunk into her skin. She would never get rid of it. She would never recover, never move on, and never be free of all the horror he had caused. This war was a part of her, and his hatred had been permanently etched into her body and soul – but she would make sure it never happened again. She would make sure that breath was his last.
Over two dozen tethers latched to his skeletal body, buckling his knees further as Nasir connected every inch of his frame to the ground before locking them in place. Forcing her limbs to move one last time, Hermione used every bit of strength she had left to twist her dagger, yanking it to the side toward his heart as Nasir’s deep voice rang out.
“NOW, HARRY!”
The crackle of lightning filled the air. She could hear Harry yelling behind her. She could feel his love flooding the bond with his voice as he told her to move.
The hair on her skin stood on end as the electric charge washed across the ground like a wave. She could see a boney white hand reaching for her throat, and she knew she would never escape it on her own. Her body was done. Her lungs were failing. She couldn’t inhale. She tried to shift her feet, but they wouldn’t move as her legs trembled, and she knew that she had used the last of her energy to go for his heart.
Her vision spotted with black as a sharp pain traced down her neck through her spine all the way to her feet.
‘Do it, Harry.’
He couldn’t wait. If he did, Voldemort would surely find a way to weasel out of this attack.
‘NOW!’
She heard the rush of lightning approaching as Voldemort’s cold fingers grazed her neck, then her head was yanked away from his grip. A similar sensation tugged across her sternum. Someone was grabbing her hand. Her legs gave out beneath her as her heart all but stuttered to a stop. A small breath left her burning lungs – and she smiled.
“It’s over,” she whispered.
Voldemort’s scream broke out with a rage so deep and so violent she felt it in her soul. Green light flashed before her eyes; then her body was violently yanked to the side – squished and twisted – compressed like an accordion. The world came rushing back in a blur of colour as the air left her lungs like a gut punch. She groaned as she collided with something hard. Arms wrapped around her, Nasir catching her out of the air mid-fall as his rapid apparition failed and they both tumbled backward to the ground. She heard him grunt in pain as they rolled across the muddy stone, him clutching her to his chest and covering her head until he managed to stop.
His magic flooded her body through the tag, forcing her lungs to inhale as she struggled to open her eyes and look back at the ruined bridge.
“HARRY!”
The killing curse meant for her raced across the ground as Harry raised his left hand. She heard his voice scream out. Her eyes went wide as she watched him dual cast for the first time and green light erupted and shot above his black lightning. The two bolts of green collided, and it exploded like a bomb. She felt Nasir’s fingers curl into the bloody sleeve of her shirt, turning her away from the explosion as a second tether attached to her chest, and they were thrown into the air once more. Fire and debris poured down from the sky as a ball of white light pulsed like a beacon at the center of the detonation. Her eyes clenched shut. Her shield charm failed. Something hit her foot as Nasir gripped her tight, and the world around them shattered.
Then everything went dark.
She couldn’t see.
She couldn’t breathe.
The ringing in her ears echoed like artillery fire as water poured in her mouth.
Hermione.
One hard smack against her chest.
HERMIONE!
Warmth flooded her body through her neck, and she felt her limbs convulse as her eyes shot open with a ragged cry of pain.
“Don’t move!”
“Harry,” Hermione wheezed, coughing out blood as she fought to focus on the dark figure hovering above her. “N-Nasir – w-where’s Harry?”
“I don’t know.”
His voice was strained. She could see the concern in his eyes as the odd warmth in her body continued to dance across her skin. His brow was pinched in concentration. She knew it was him – his magic flooding her body, but her brain was too jumbled to process it.
“W-What are you doing?” She tried to sit up but hissed out in pain as she felt the warmth grow hotter across her chest and arms before it circled her heart and lungs, then finally flickered out.
“Healing you,” Nasir said quickly, grabbing her outstretched hand and hauling her shaking body from the ground.
She staggered on her feet, her mind spinning out of control as she struggled to stand. She couldn’t focus. She could hardly breathe. Every inch of her hurt. She was sure parts of her body must be missing because she couldn’t feel them all. In fact, she could hardly feel any of them. She fought to find the bond through the mess in her head as Nasir gripped her tightly to his side – keeping her from falling over. He brought a vial to her lips, and she drank it without question.
“We have to find him,” she breathed, leaning on his side as he rapidly downed two vials himself. “We have to find him – I can’t find him in my head!”
“We’ll find him,” Nasir said, his dark eyes glinting as he grabbed her tight once more and all but carried her across the ground.
It was unrecognizable.
She wasn’t even sure where they were.
It looked like a crater, but dust and burning debris hung so heavy in the air she couldn’t even see the edges.
“HARRY!!” she screamed the words out loud, trying to shove them through the bond she could not find. She heard Nasir cast a detection spell, but nothing came up. Her heart started to race with panic. She could taste the vomit in her mouth as her eyes rapidly traced over the broken remains looking for any sign of life. “HARRY! HAARRRYYYY!!!!”
What if he didn’t make it?
What if, after everything, it still wasn’t enough?
What if he had died in the thick of this? What if he was buried under the rubble? What if Voldemort was still here? What if this still wasn’t over? What if she had been wrong and his role was the riskiest?
She hadn’t been able to see what had happened. She didn’t know if Harry managed to take him out, and she didn’t know if he was caught in the blast. But she couldn’t just summon him – what if he was injured? Summoning him would be the death of him, and his tag was only accurate to a hundred meters.
“HARRY!!!”
She felt her throat tear as tears burned her eyes. Nasir began to move them across the ground faster and faster – casting detection spells as they went. Her arm buzzed with messages from Shacklebolt as dull voices started to ring out through the air. Each step grew quicker than the last. Her body trembled worse and worse with each new move. Her nails were sinking into Nasir’s waist as she gripped him for support, and then she froze.
A dull whisper.
Like an echo in the back of her mind.
‘Harry?’
‘Hermione.’
It was faint. Broken. But the second she heard it, she latched onto it like a string. His vitals swam into focus, and her mouth fell open as a sob left her lungs.
“Oh my god – Harry.” She forced her legs to move as Nasir picked up their pace yet again. “He’s alive – I can feel his heart, but it’s fading!”
“There!” Nasir grabbed her hard, picking her up and darting across the shattered ground toward a large chunk of stone.
‘Harry, I’m here! We’re coming – it’s okay! You’re going to be okay.’
Nothing could have prepared her for the sight as Nasir dropped his hold on her waist to move a massive rock aside. Nothing could have stopped the noise that left her lungs as she collapsed to the ground and began screaming out into the night.
“WE NEED HELP NOW!!” The screech tore from her lungs as her shaking hands reached for Harry’s chest – or what was left of it. “BRING POTIONS! NOW – WE NEED THEM NOW!”
She could feel her arm buzzing like crazy as Nasir dropped to the ground across from her and rapidly began summoning everything from his pockets. She caught the blood replenisher he tossed her and instantly poured it down Harry’s throat before summoning what was left of her own meager supplies and dumping yet another two vials in his mouth as Nasir tore away the rest of Harry’s shirt.
It was a mangled mess.
She could see his organs.
She could see his bones.
There was a chunk of stone protruding from the center, right below a red and black symbol that was burned into his chest. A diagnostic charm appeared in the air, and it was all she could do not to vomit. She poured wound cleaner over the gaping hole, and Harry grunted in pain. She cast a spell to slow his heart to conserve blood but still, it poured out. Green smoke billowed into the night as Nasir poured dittany over Harry’s wound and started to remove the stone that was protruding from his chest and pinning him to the ground. She screamed out to the others once more, sending the message through the tags as she worked, knowing that they would never have enough potions between the two of them to fix this.
“Hermione.”
The low whispered words caught her ear, and she felt something brush against her hand.
“Harry,” she breathed, gripping his hand tight as she turned to meet his open eyes. There were tears pouring from the corners as rain collected on his face. His pupils were dilated, and she realized with horror that he had not lost consciousness at all because the crimson potion Narcissa gave him was still in effect. “Don’t talk – okay? You’re going to be okay. I’m going to fix this. You’re going to be okay, just – just save your breath, okay? We can talk after.”
His eyes traced over her face, and she could have read his expression even without the bond. It was sad. Solemn. She could see the pain and love radiating in his eyes as he gripped her hand tighter. Grabbing the blood replenisher that Nasir handed her, she bit out the cork so she could keep holding his hand. She poured it into his mouth. He didn’t resist, and he swallowed, but she could already see the quiet acceptance in his eyes.
Nasir began screaming out something over his shoulder. She could hear yelling in the distance. She could see the tall man pulling pieces of stones from Harry’s chest from the corner of her eye as his diagnostic began to flash. She gripped his hand tighter, bile burning up her throat as her entire body began to quake. She slowed his heart a little more, but the blood kept pouring from his chest. She gave him the last of her blood replenisher when his vitals faltered – then, having nothing left to give him, she split off a sleeve to press against the left side as Nasir worked on the right.
“Are you out?” Nasir asked, his dark eyes glancing up to hers as he quickly healed the right side of the hole after pulling out a chunk of stone.
“Yes,” Hermione answered, her voice breaking as she spoke it. “I don’t have anything left – he’s bleeding too fast, and I can’t slow his heart any further, or it will stop.”
“Open this.”
Nasir wandlessly summoned a plastic package from his pocket, never once stopping the motion of his hand as he continued to try and repair the hole in Harry’s chest. Hermione used a tether to keep her shirt sleeve tightly in place and caught the bag, dropping her hold on Harry’s hand as her eyes widened in understanding.
“I’ll give him my blood.” She nodded, using her teeth to rip open the bag and pull out the long plastic tube.
“No,” Nasir said darkly, just as she was about to flick her arm and grab the needle from the bag. “You will give him mine.”
“Yours?” She faltered, her eyes growing wide in confusion. “But we never tested your blood and–”
“I’m a match.” Nasir cut her off, nodding his head toward the plastic tube in her hand. “I need you to do it – I have to keep working to stop his internal bleeding, or sealing this chest wound won’t do us any good.”
“Okay.” She nodded, choosing not to argue and grabbing the needle.
There was no time to ask about how he knew he was a match when they had never tested it. Perhaps he and Harry had tested this alone. Perhaps he had secretly tested it himself. Either way, it didn’t matter. She connected the needle to the tube, reaching across Harry’s mangled body to roll up Nasir’s sleeve. His veins were good – she didn’t even need to make a tie around his arm, and she quickly slipped the needle under his skin before tapping the tube to charm the blood to flow. She waited until two drops poured from the end, then she inserted the other end into Harry’s vein.
She sat back on her heels, watching as the flow of red rushed out of Nasir’s body and into Harry’s. She ripped off her other sleeve, pressing it against the open wound before trying and failing to summon a blood replenisher. It was possible there weren’t anymore. It was possible one was coming from inside the school, but it would need time to soar through the air. It was possible it wouldn’t matter because Harry’s only remaining kidney was starting to fail, his burned lungs refused to inflate, and his heart started to stutter.
“Hang on, Harry,” Hermione breathed, handing Nasir a bottle of dittany when he asked as she shocked Harry’s heart into submission. She could see sweat pouring from his brow as pain radiated across his face. “It’s going to be okay.”
Harry’s diagnostic flashed, and her blood ran cold. The healed skin by Nasir’s hand broke open and more blood poured out. She saw the man’s brow crease in concern as he summoned a fresh shirt from his pocket, gave it to her to press over the wound then uncorked another bottle of dittany. Green smoke billowed once more, and Harry groaned in pain when she reinflated his lungs. She heard footsteps in the distance. Harry’s pulse dropped lower; then, he touched her hand again.
“Harry, don’t move,” she said instinctively, but when her eyes darted down to meet his, she stiffened.
“I love you so much.”
The words were hoarse and broken. She could barely hear them over the growing voices, but they made her throat constrict.
“Harry, don’t–,” she shook her head, her throat closing and cutting off her words.
She didn’t want to hear this. She didn’t want him to say it. She couldn’t do this – not again. Not this time. Not after everything. Not when he was right here in her arms. Not while his slowing heart beat in her head and his love flooded their bond. Not after she had already done this once – she couldn’t fail again.
She wouldn’t.
“It’s – okay, Hermione,” he whispered, and her eyes started to burn.
“No.” She shook her head harder, gripping his hand tighter as a sob broke from her lips. She could see his diagnostic flaring. She could feel the blood that was seeping from his chest soaking into her clothes. “No – stop. Stay with me.”
“I-It’s okay,” Harry repeated, the words leaving his damaged lungs like a broken wheeze as his grip on her hand started to loosen. “You’re – going to be – okay.”
“No, I won’t!” Her voice broke as her eyes darted up to his diagnostic, then back down to the blood-red tube connected to his arm before she met his gaze once more. She gripped his hand tighter, refusing to let go as the voices grew closer and closer. “I need you – I need you, Harry. I need you here with me. We’re in this together until the end, remember? This isn’t the end. Not yet. Not now. We still have so much to do, and I can’t do it without you. You can’t leave me yet – I can’t lose you again. I won’t lose you again!”
His eyes traced over her face, his gaze filling with tears as his pulse started to slow lower than she had charmed it. She could feel his grip growing weaker as each beat came quieter than the last. A collection of foreign memories started to creep into her mind, and her soul shattered in pain.
“Please,” she whispered, shaking her head once more as tears poured down her face and the rain soaked through her hair. “Harry, please – stay with me.”
But the memories didn’t stop. She could feel them collecting slowly like a puddle in the center of her brain as a warm rush of love flooded her mind.
“I’m so – g-glad I got to see you again–,” The faint whisper left his lips as blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.
She couldn’t breathe.
Her heart faltered.
Pain was exploding from the center of her chest.
Nasir’s voice rang out dark and urgent.
The sound of footsteps and hooves thundered in her ears as a loud crack split the air, then Harry’s voice dropped to a ghostly whisper.
“I’ll wait for you,” he breathed as his hand went limp and his diagnostic flatlined with an array of colours.
‘Always’
This epilogue is dedicated to the incredible members of the AFON server, without whom, I certainly would not have ever finished this story.
Thank you for joining my discord server. Thank you for being such kind and understanding individuals. Those of you who know me know that I have a bleak outlook on the world and I easily get lost in my own existential anguish, but all of you give me hope. Together we have created such a safe, caring, and open space to hang out and it warms my heart that so many of us from all over the world can exist together and just have a good time while celebrating the things that we love. I plan to keep the server open and will continue to be there so long as people want to use it. I can’t wait for more movie nights, card exchanges, trivia, games, and more.
I love you all, and I appreciate you more than words could ever describe.
Thank you for being good people, and thank you for joining me on this crazy journey <3
-x-x-
Warnings:
All previous noted warnings apply to the epilogue chapters. Specifically, please note these include explicit language, dark and mature themes, explicit smut, PTSD symptoms, survivor’s guilt, blood, anger, screaming, family drama, injuries, discussion of past injuries, amputations, triggering topics, depression, nightmares, talk of substance abuse, suicidal thoughts, and the many struggles that come when dealing with loss and managing anxiety.
Individual chapters warnings will be given to address smut.
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May 7, 1998
Thursday, Grimmauld Place, 12:17 am
Her body felt heavy as she made her way down the dark staircase toward the kitchen, her feet carefully navigating each step despite her exhaustion. Her muscles still hurt. Her bones still ached. They were better than they had been right after the Battle, but she was far from fully healed because she just didn’t have the time or capacity to rest properly.
She couldn’t remember the last time she had naturally slept outside of small naps beside Harry’s bed or dozing off at the table. Twice, after falling asleep during dinner, she woke up in the spare bed that she had added to Harry’s room with a start only to calm when she remembered where she was. She thanked Nasir afterward, knowing it was he who had done it, and both times, she wondered how the hell she would have managed any of this without him – without any of them. Because right now, Nasir, Arthur, and Shacklebolt were the only things holding her sanity together as she navigated the utter chaos and destruction that was the post-Battle magical world.
She still hadn’t had a chance to properly talk to Nasir after everything that had happened between them and within the war. She knew that she needed to. She had a thousand things to say, an endless stream of questions, and the matter of their agreement yet to be settled. But every minute of every day was a bloody nightmare, and lives were hanging in the balance. So all of those questions had been pushed to the back of her mind because as much as they ate away at her and she desperately wanted them answered, they were not truly important.
At least not right now.
It had been only five days since Voldemort fell from power, and his burnt and broken corpse was located beneath a giant heap of stone. Somehow, those one hundred and twenty hours felt like a lifetime. Then again, everything felt like a lifetime ago now when she thought back to it. She felt as if she had aged several decades in the last eight months only to age another two more in the last few days.
Her shoulders dropped in exhaustion as she checked Harry’s vitals through the bond for the umpteenth time since waking. She couldn’t help it. She never wanted to leave his side again, and she knew if she had lost him for a second time, she would have been destroyed beyond repair. Yet as much as the panic of leaving him upstairs alone ate away at her fragile calm, she knew it was completely unreasonable, and her stress was completely unnecessary. He was safe. They were both safe, and she couldn’t stay by his side every hour of every day, even though she desperately wanted to, especially when she knew he wasn’t going to wake up yet.
Despite the endless streams of blood, his heart stopping, and his body completely failing – they managed to close his chest wound and keep him alive.
Nasir stopped his internal bleeding, donating a dangerous amount of his own blood in the process until several house-elves showed up with more potions from the Malfoy Manor provisions. Hermione had shocked his heart, again and again, forcing it to beat as potions were handed to her by those who had run across the battleground to help. A young student she didn’t even know the name of had followed her instructions and helped to inflate his burnt lungs until Shacklebolt arrived. Then they forced the oxygenated blood to circle his body and feed his brain, manually keeping his body from dying while Nasir finished his work. But similarly to Griphook’s injuries after the Gringotts break-in, the damage was so severe Nasir had to place him in a magical coma to heal. Otherwise, he probably would have died from the trauma, and he would remain in the coma for at least another day or two whether she sat by his side or not – so she had been keeping herself busy as she carefully watched his vitals.
She let out a low sigh as her bare feet soundlessly touched the cool wooden floors of the main hall, and she ran a shaking hand through her hair. If not for the bond that allowed her to monitor him so completely, she wouldn’t be able to handle this. As it was, she could barely manage to eat most days, and it was difficult not to fall into the darkness of her own mind. She had been practicing her occlumency and trying to regain control over her thoughts and memories, but it was much easier said than done. She would have caved in on herself and imploded if not for the relentless support of the others around her and Harry’s steady heartbeat in her head.
Without their bond, she would have been a mess – even more than she already was. She would have been sick to her stomach with worry, stuck to his side like a leech, eyes glued wide open as she watched his diagnostic charm.
She wouldn’t have been able to function.
In many ways, she still couldn’t. She struggled to remain calm. She struggled not to cry at random moments as it felt like her mind and her heart were hanging above a giant cavern about to be swallowed whole – lost forever. Then she would hear Harry’s heartbeat. Arthur would call her name. Nasir would force her to keep moving, and Shacklebolt would tug on the thin fraying thread that was still connected to her heart, and suddenly, she would be pulled back to safety.
She still felt sick nearly all of the time, but at least the sickness wasn’t debilitating, and no matter how bad things got, she knew he was alive. She would focus on the slow, steady beat of his heart in her mind. She would listen to him breathe, and it would help her recultivate her fake sense of calm. She would convince herself that they were okay, that he was okay, and that soon he would be with her again.
She made her way down the hall toward the familiar dark wood door, making a mental list of all the things that she needed to do first thing in the morning. It was hard to keep track of everything. She had started a physical list and pinned it to the wall in the kitchen because each day was a blur, and they all melded together. Yet no matter how blurry it got and no matter how tired she was, she could still remember every detail of that night.
There had been so much blood.
So much death.
She could hear each scream that filled the air as people cried out in pain, bodies lost in the rubble of the explosions and desperately seeking help.
She could see it every time she closed her eyes. The stench of death would fill her nose. The heat of the fire would burn her skin. The red glow of Voldemort’s burning gaze would bore into her mind as Harry bled out before her, and she would wake screaming in terror. She knew that the nightmares would never go away, and she knew that she would never be able to sleep until Harry woke up – but that didn’t matter. There was too much to do to sleep right now anyway.
Countless people had been injured and needed to be healed. Potions were in short supply. Everyone who could manage it was working overtime, and St. Mungo’s was inundated with patients. Shacklebolt had been rapidly elected as the temporary Minister for Magic, a decision which was supported by what was left of the Wizengamot, and he was working round the clock to try and coordinate everyone’s efforts. While she agreed that he was the best man for the job, she also couldn’t help but get a bitter taste in her mouth when she thought about the Wizengamot’s comments of ‘support’. They all ‘adored him.’ They wanted him to ‘step in’, ‘fix the problems’, and ‘lead them out of the chaos’. Yet not a single one of them had shown up at the Battle or done anything to help with the war.
The irony of it was disgusting, though she supposed that was how politics worked. It needed to change, and she would fight to change it, but for now, there were a lot of other pressing issues to address.
It had taken nearly an entire day with the assistance of every single Hogwarts house-elf to clear the school grounds and find all the dead bodies. Dozens upon dozens had been infected with lycanthropy, and there was a full moon coming up on the 11th. They had given wolfsbane to as many people as they could, but the supplies were short, and there simply wasn’t enough. So she had been creating a few more test bands as backup, but she was hesitant to spread word of their existence given that the design was incomplete and unprotected. Thus, as it stood, the current plan involved creating safe transition spaces while planning for a better course of action in June.
To say that her life was busy would be the biggest understatement of the year.
After stabilizing Harry, carrying him back to the remains of the castle, and confirming Voldemort’s death, Nasir had apparated to the edge of the smouldering school grounds and destroyed the diadem in one final blaze of raging fire before he assisted with tending to other injuries. Hermione did what she could to help, working on those less injured that could come to her side as she stayed next to Harry and monitored his vitals. Thinking back on it now, she had no idea how she did it. Perhaps it was the lingering effects of the potions she had drained during the fight. Perhaps it was sheer force of will. She honestly didn’t know, but she healed so many people she lost count, and she didn’t stop until Nasir apparated back to her side, grabbed her shaking hands, and forced her to stop.
It was only at that point she realized that she was shaking dangerously. Tears were pouring from her eyes. She couldn’t feel her body, and her heart was racing far too quickly.
She blacked out seconds later, waking up inside the shattered remains of the Great Hall as the sun started to rise. It was quiet. Harry was unmoving by her side, but his heart was still beating. Nasir’s robes were folded under her head like a pillow, and Arthur was there waiting for her. The second she saw the redhead and his missing leg, she broke into tears, and he let her cry on his shoulder without saying a word.
Getting back to Grimmauld Place hadn’t been easy.
Similar to Snape and a few of the other more critically wounded students, Harry’s injuries were too severe to use apparition, so they ended up using thestrals, brooms, and muggle cars for transport instead. After Aberforth confirmed that St. Mungo’s was secured, some of the students were sent there while others headed to Shell Cottage and the Burrow. Hermione had refused to go to either and instead asked Nasir to help her secure Grimmauld Place so they would use it as a base instead. It had taken a little bit of time since Harry was unconscious and Kreacher had died at the school helping with the evacuation efforts, but upon the completion of a careful inspection and the addition of several more alarms and wards, the house was deemed safe. Then, within seconds of their arrival at the cobweb-infested house, Walburga Black was removed from the wall.
Hermione had no idea what Nasir did with the portrait. One moment she was there, the word mudblood screeching from her lips, the next she was gone, and Nasir hadn’t uttered a word.
After a brief discussion with Shacklebolt – where they both agreed that sending Snape to St. Mungo’s was out of the question and that going to the Burrow, Shell Cottage, or Spinner’s End would only make things unnecessarily difficult and risky – she agreed to bring the unconscious Headmaster to Grimmauld Place, where she and Nasir would monitor him and keep him alive until the new Minister could review the memory fragments and decide what to do.
So even though she knew he would be pissed about being here when he woke up – if he woke up – she had settled him in on the first floor in the bedroom across from the drawing room, the one that she and Ginny had stayed in back in fifth year. Casting a plethora of cleaning spells across the room, she had managed to get the majority of the dust cleared before Nasir carefully placed him on the bed. It was the best spot for him. Fewer stairs for when he woke up and got moving around – and there was a bathroom just down the hall that he could use as his own.
She set Harry up on the second floor. It was the same room that he had stayed in with Ron, and she chose it simply because it was nearest to the stairs and the small third-floor bathroom. Plus, the window got a decent breeze. With Nasir’s help, she had managed to pry the thing open, then hauled the second twin bed across the room so it was closer to the one they had placed him on. If he wasn’t so injured, she would have just made the bed a double and slept by his side. But given the extent of his injuries and the fact that she kept waking up in a panic, she knew it was safer to sleep in a separate bed for the time being with a shield in place between them – even though she hated it.
Nasir took the room across the hall from her. Whether or not he actually slept in it, she had no idea. For all she knew, he was camping in his tent and simply using the window for access each morning. He was so quiet she never heard him. She only ever saw him in the kitchen, when they were checking on Harry and Snape, or when they were working on something – which was always – but she had never once actually seen him ‘go to bed’. She doubted he was sleeping much. The man was working just as much as she was, if not more.
She let out a quiet breath and mentally checked Snape’s vitals next.
His heart was beating, but only just. In between brewing, helping Nasir and Shacklebolt, working on the werewolf transformation accommodations, and making additional bandings, she had started researching ways to try and repair Snape’s battered body. Once they got him to Grimmauld Place and had the time to really look at his vitals, she realized his condition was so much worse than she had initially thought. She had skimmed over the excessive damage and lingering injuries to his body as she was saving his life in the Shrieking Shack, but she hadn’t really had the chance to properly assess it, and now that she had, the findings weren’t good.
If he woke up, he would probably die.
The only reason he hadn’t died yet was that his nearly hardened heart was beating so slowly, and his lungs were moving so weakly that his organs were able to manage it. Barely. But the second he tried to move or demanded much more from his body, his heart would give out and seize up like an old motor. Thus, the second they completed a full scan of his diagnostics after moving him, Nasir made the decision to put him into a coma, too, as it would buy them more time to properly assess their options and decide what to do.
Fixing his body was at the top of the list for tomorrow’s activities. It wouldn’t be easy, but in a messed-up way, she was glad for that. It would require all her focus, which would keep her from losing her mind as she waited for Harry’s body to finish recovering.
She forced the obsessive and anxiety-riddled thoughts from her head as she pushed the door to the kitchen open, only to blink in surprise at the low glow of light behind it. There was a dark figure sitting at the table. His head was resting against his blunted right arm, and he seemed to be scanning over a collection of different papers spread out on the hard surface before him. But at the sound of the door, his head instantly lifted, and his dark eyes met hers.
“Hermione,” Nasir greeted. His familiar low baritone filled the quiet kitchen as she stepped inside and let the door close behind her. “I hope I didn’t wake you?”
“No,” she said, giving him a tired smile. “Just can’t sleep.”
“Would you like some dreamless sleeping draught?” he offered, but she shook her head.
“No. I’m still trying to manage with the every other day approach until my liver gets a bit better.”
He nodded in understanding. After all, he regularly checked her diagnostic, and he knew full well just how much damage she had suffered from all the potions she took during the final Battle. She was managing it so far, dancing around the problem like a delicate ballet as she limited her chunks of dreamless sleeping draught-induced slumber and supplemented it with brief and restless naps until her organs healed. He had offered to put her in a coma, too – but she had refused. There was too much that needed to be done. Everyone was tired, not just her, and it wouldn’t be fair for her to sit it out unconscious while they all worked round the clock to save lives. Besides, she wanted to keep an eye on Harry. She would sleep when he woke up and when things had calmed down.
“Why are you still up?” she asked as she made her way to the counter. Then she paused, her panic instinctively rising in her chest. “Did something happen?”
“No,” Nasir said calmly, and she let out a breath. “I was just reading through the latest supply counts from Shacklebolt.”
“Oh.” Hermione grimaced, already knowing that they likely weren’t good. “How bad is it?”
“It’s not ideal,” Nasir answered as she reached for the kettle, then tapped it to fill it with water. “We’re going to need to increase our potion production by at least three cauldrons. Fleur will need to increase hers by one – and that’s just to start. We still can’t identify what hit some of the students in the courtyard and by the greenhouses. Since those who cast the spells are dead and their wands are either still missing or destroyed, there is no way to figure it out. Two of the students improved enough to be moved out of critical care, so I will be trying legilimency on them tomorrow to see if I can see anything that might help us figure it out. In the meantime, the only course of action is managing the bleeding and infections until we can find a permanent solution.”
“I suppose Shacklebolt wants to stay away from runes,” Hermione said as she leaned back against the counter and tapped the stove to heat the kettle.
“Correct.” Nasir nodded. “Though they would likely be ineffective anyway. In your case, I was able to examine the device that cursed you and form the necessary rune around that. I cannot form a rune for protection based solely on symptoms. The results would likely be disastrous, and I doubt many of the students would be able to withstand the procedure.”
Hermione nodded at his words, thinking it over as her brow creased until the kettle whistled at her side.
“Tea?” she asked him as she summoned her favourite mug from the counter. “Or are you going to sleep?”
“Tea would be great, thank you,” he said, though his eyes remained locked to the papers before him.
She made up the two mugs, adding sugar and milk to her own while leaving his black as he preferred before bringing them over to the table. She took her seat across from him, nodding at his thanks as she dropped her elbows to the worn wooden surface and watched him read.
It felt weird sitting here in the middle of the night. Not because she was sitting with him; she had long ago grown comfortable being alone with the man. Instead, it was the eerie near-silence of Grimmauld Place, the dingy hallways and the odd creaks and groans that rattled through the house during the night. It was unfamiliar and unnerving. A part of her wished they had just returned to living in their tent on the beach.
She picked up her mug, blowing across the surface of the scalding liquid. She watched Nasir’s gaze flick over two more sets of paper before she realized this was the first time they had actually had a minute to sit down together since the war ended, and suddenly, her mind was flooded with questions and itching thoughts. There was so much that she wanted to say, and she didn’t know where to start. She had pushed everything down in order to survive and do what needed to be done because her concern was centered first around Harry and second around ensuring the safety of everyone else. But now, as the branches of the overgrown tree outside scratched against the kitchen window in the dark, there was finally room for other things to creep back in.
She wanted to tell him she was angry with him.
She wanted to tell him she was sorry for doubting him, and she wanted to apologize for screaming ‘fuck you’ in his face while he was only trying to help.
She wanted to know exactly what he had promised Harry, and she wanted to know what Harry had offered in return.
She wanted to know why he did it. Why he gave her the Helm of Awe, which had saved her life during the final explosion. When he had told her that he was healing her, he hadn’t been lying, but he hadn’t been telling her the truth, either. She found out two days ago that he had actually given her some of his own life and used it to mend her body; the process had even smoothed out some of her old scars. She wanted to know why he did it and why the hell he had been willing to give Harry his blood.
Was it purely because of their agreement? What was he going to ask of her in return for saving his life? Did he want part of her soul too? She could feel her pulse starting to quicken as she stared at the man in silence, and her grip tightened on her mug.
Then his eyes flicked up to meet hers, and she stiffened.
“Are you okay?” Nasir asked, his dark gaze shifting over her face in the low light as he assessed her.
“Yes,” she replied instantly, the response of denial so ingrained into her over the last few days she couldn’t even stop the word from leaving her mouth. Then she frowned at herself, lowering her mug back to the table as she shook her head and let out a sigh. “No – I’m not.”
He stared at her for a moment, then his posture shifted, and he sat back, dropping his hold on the papers before him as he gave her his full attention.
“I still have questions,” Hermione whispered as the air seemed to grow tense. “Everything has been so crazy I haven’t even thought about bringing it up, but you promised me we could talk.”
“I did,” he said slowly, inclining his head at her words. “And that statement still stands.”
She stared at him for a long moment, her jaw clenching tight with anticipation as she tried to figure out where to begin. He watched her in silence, waiting for her questions, but that only made her feel more overwhelmed.
What would he say? How would he answer? What if he couldn’t answer? How many would he answer? Did she need to pick and choose? Was there a time limit on how long they could talk?
She could feel the storm building in her chest as her blunted emotions churned. She didn’t want to push her luck and ask too much too soon, but she was also tired of not knowing what was going on around her. She was tired of assuming. She was tired of everyone telling half-truths or outright lying. She wanted to be honest with him, and she wanted to be able to say everything in her head without fear, because she couldn’t handle playing any more games.
“I’m mad at you for lying to me about Harry,” Hermione said, finally deciding to just tell the truth and start with the giant erumpent in the room. She watched him stare at her for a moment, then he shifted.
“I never lied to you,” Nasir said calmly.
“Leaving out critical details that you know are relative to the situation is lying by omission,” Hermione said tightly. To her surprise, he didn’t react negatively to her harsh tone. Instead, he let out a quiet breath, and his shoulders dropped.
“It was Harry’s information to share, Hermione,” Nasir said softly. “Not mine.”
He was right. Those words were true, but they only made her irritation spike.
“Fine,” she said bitterly as all her buried anger about the topic came rushing up. “But I’m still mad at you. I’m mad at you for not telling me – and while we’re at it, I’m mad at Harry, too! I’m mad at both of you! I’m mad about all of it!”
“I know,” Nasir said quietly.
He didn’t flinch at her outburst, and he remained motionless as he met her glare from across the table with a calm expression. She swallowed hard, her heart racing in her chest as she closed her eyes and let out a painful exhale that she felt she had been holding in for decades.
“I’m so fucking angry,” she whispered, and she felt her eyes start to sting. Her throat was burning, and it hurt so much more than she thought it would to say those words out loud. She inhaled sharply, then slowly let the air out as she blinked the tears from her eyes and opened them once more. Then she felt the wave of anger wane and simmer down to a low boil. “But – I understand why you did it, and for that reason, I forgive you. And I’m sorry that I yelled at you, hit you, and told you to fuck off. I know you were only doing what needed to be done. I know you were only trying to help. But I don’t want anything like that to ever happen again. I don’t want either of you to ever keep something like that from me and work behind my back. I know I’m just as guilty, and I did it too. So I understand his reasons, and I’m going to talk to him about it as soon as he wakes up – but I can’t do this again. I can’t handle any more lies or convoluted answers. I won’t live through it.”
“I know,” Nasir said again, his dark gaze watching her intently. “It won’t happen again.”
“Good,” Hermione breathed, somewhat surprised by his easy acceptance of her words. She watched him for a moment longer before her shoulders dropped in exhaustion. Angry as she was, she simply could not maintain it. She didn’t have the energy, and it wouldn’t be fair. Especially when she knew her own actions had been just as underhanded as Harry’s. She let out another sigh, and then her voice dropped to a whisper. “Do you think he will be okay?”
“He needs to remain in a coma for at least the next two days,” Nasir answered slowly, and she could see the thought behind his gaze. He was probably checking his own tag on Harry and completing another assessment. “I’ll take him out of the coma Sunday morning, and he should wake up on his own within the next three days. What condition he’ll be in mentally is impossible to determine, but yes, I do think he will be okay.”
“How can you be certain?” Hermione whispered as she fought against the tears that burned her eyes once more. “We still don’t know how much of him came back. I want to believe that it was all of him, and I know his body is getting better, but he was functioning on a potion during Battle. One that nearly ate through his liver and stomach. What if he isn’t okay? How do you know he’ll be fine?”
“I don’t,” Nasir said quietly, and she felt her heart sink.
Her eyes dropped to the table, and she struggled to swallow as she bit the inside of her lip. Her heart was thudding painfully, and she could feel the sickness in her stomach starting to churn as her anxiety spiked once more.
“But he crossed the Abyss between the world of the Living and the plane of the Dead to get back to you,” Nasir said quietly, and her head jerked up to meet his dark gaze. It was soft again, filled with hints of emotions that she had only ever seen once when he held her in the rain. “Even with the Anima Avocaret, that is an incredibly difficult task, and the desire to return here has to be stronger than a human’s inherent and biologically pre-programmed need to reach peace within death. He fought against the very fabrics of human biology, Hermione. It went against nature and the desperate pull that would have been urging him to stay. I have never been one to believe in romance, let alone be capable of it – but it is quite clear that he belongs by your side regardless of where you are. You are meant to be together, and your bond transcends the time and space around you.”
She stared at him in disbelief, unable to find her words as her eyes searched his face.
“I–,” her voice cut out, and she struggled to swallow.
She let out a breath then closed her eyes as her chest burned with the raging fire of all her blunted emotions. Yes, she was still furiously mad at Nasir. Yes, she wanted to pummel the bejesus out of Harry when he woke up and scream at him for what he did. Yes, she was still terrified that he wouldn’t be okay and that what was left of him would be nothing but broken pieces – but Nasir’s words were like a balm against the ache on her heart that she had been suppressing for days.
And they had been exactly what she needed.
She forced herself to inhale, her hand instinctively reaching out across the table looking for support, and she felt it curl around his warm fingers as she opened her eyes. She wiped a stray tear from her cheek as she gripped his hand hard, and to her surprise, he gripped hers in return.
“Thank you,” she whispered, her rough voice even more hoarse than normal. “For saving his life.”
Nasir nodded, “Don’t mention it.”
She sat there for a long moment, gripping his hand tightly as she fought to steady her heart. When it finally felt like it was no longer going to explode, she let out a low breath and met his gaze once more. He was watching her closely, but he looked completely calm and comfortable despite the fact that she was crushing his only hand like a vice.
“Can I ask you something?” she murmured as the low light in the kitchen flickered across the table. “And will you answer it honestly?”
“You can ask me whatever you want,” Nasir said quietly, and she felt her heart falter at his unexpected response as he met her gaze with an even stare. “But as you are already aware, I may not be able to answer. However, I do promise that I will try, and if I cannot, I will tell you. Just as I will tell you if you ask something that I do not want to answer.”
“Really?” she breathed, the disbelief audible in her voice.
“Yes.” He nodded slowly. “You deserve honest answers, Hermione. It is a fair request. Just remember that you may not always like my responses.”
“Okay,” Hermione whispered as her pulse quickened again. “I’ll try to format my questions for yes or no responses when I can if that helps?”
“It does.” He nodded again, and then he seemed to hesitate a moment before he pulled his hand out from under hers and reached toward his robes. “But there is another option.”
She watched as he pulled a small vial from his pocket, the contents twisting around inside it as thin wisps of black. Each tendril jerked almost violently as he set the small vial on the table and then slid it towards her.
“What is that?” she asked, though a part of her felt like she already knew the answer.
“Memories,” Nasir said, his voice flat and detached as he left the vial two inches from her hand.
“Yours?”
“Yes.”
“The runes didn’t stop you from taking them out?” Hermione forced her eyes away from the twisting tendrils to meet his gaze once more.
“It made it more difficult,” Nasir said quietly. “Those are copies.”
“I saw those in Snape’s memories,” Hermione said slowly as her brow furrowed in confusion. “Why did you give these to him?”
“I wasn’t sure what would happen,” Nasir said slowly, and she saw this throat move, but no sound came out. “After – so I left those with him to give to you in case I did not return to Shell Cottage.”
“But why?” Hermione pressed, leaning forward against the table as she stared at him in confusion. “Why did you want to give them to me?”
“I’m not sure,” Nasir replied, and the honest expression on his face caught her off guard. “I suppose because I thought you deserved to know. I want you to know. There are things in there for you to learn that you will not find anywhere else. Things that I cannot teach you directly because there is no way for me to ever explain them. And I suppose the desire to leave something behind is so ingrained into human DNA, that even I could not escape it when faced with the possibility of death.”
“You wanted to leave a legacy?” Hermione whispered.
“If that is how you wish to see it,” Nasir said. “It would have been a waste to have died with everything kept to myself.”
His voice sounded indifferent, but she knew this meant more to him than he was expressing. She had seen his emotions as he held her in the rain, and she knew he was capable of feeling something, even if it might not be much. Those emotions had faded the day after the Battle, so it was clear his capacity might be limited by time duration as well. She had yet to figure it out – but she had a working theory festering in the back of her mind, which she would need to ask him about later. For now, there were other things she wanted to confirm.
“So your soul is completely gone,” Hermione said quietly, and he inclined his head. “And when you die – what happens? Harry pushed a bunch of his memories through the bond before he flatlined. I saw him in the In Between. He met his godfather there, who went through the Veil in the DOM by accident two years ago. Sirius said there were still people in there from the experiment but that some had managed to get out. That was you, wasn’t it? You were one of the five that came back.”
“Yes,” Nasir said quietly, and she could see his eyes darken. “It was part of the cost.”
“Part of the cost?” Hermione stilled. “So you gave more than just your soul to come back?”
“I gave my humanity,” Nasir replied. “Which is tied to the soul. So to answer your other question about my death – nothing happens. When I die, I simply cease to exist in the same way that one would when killed by the killing curse.”
“That was the experiment you were involved in from your journal – the one from 1939?” she asked, and he nodded once more. “All twenty-one of you went in, and you and four others came back?”
He nodded once more, but the motion looked stiff.
“Was Anna one of them?”
He nodded again, and she could tell he was uncomfortable.
“Is she–” Hermione hesitated, swallowing hard as the memory of that night filled her mind. “Is she the reason Voldemort called me your pet?”
“She was not a pet,” Nasir said slowly, his voice growing dark. “And neither are you. Anna was a colleague. She was young and ambitious, she looked to me for guidance, and I failed her – along with many others, but that was a lifetime ago.”
“What happened to her?” Hermione said quietly. “What happened to the other four of you?”
“I killed them,” Nasir responded flatly, the tiny flicker of emotion behind his eyes going blank.
“Why?” she whispered. She knew as soon as she asked it he would never be able to tell her, but he answered her anyway.
“That would be something that only the memories could explain.”
She stared at him for a long moment, her eyes tracing over his unmasked face. He had stopped wearing the charm around her long ago, yet every time her gaze traced over his scars and runes, she always felt like she saw more details than the time before. Then the next question fell out.
“How many runes do you have?” Hermione whispered, and she saw him stiffen slightly in his chair. “I know all the ones on your chest, back, and arms – but you have more, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Nasir said slowly, but he didn’t say anything else.
“How many?” Hermione pressed, wondering if this was one he would reject.
But he didn’t. Instead, he let out a low sigh and sat back in his seat.
“Forty-three,” he said finally, and she felt her body still.
“One soul would not be able to handle that many,” she said knowingly. “And neither would two.”
“No,” Nasir agreed, his voice slow as she held his dark gaze. “Two could not.”
“How many have you taken?” she asked, her words barely audible.
“A few,” he said quietly.
She could feel the nervousness in her gut returning once more as Snape’s memories circled her head. “Why don’t any of the other runes on your body have red borders? Why was Snape’s the only one? Or are the others just hidden elsewhere?”
“His was the only one that I split and did not immediately take and use,” Nasir’s low voice responded. “The red border is a summoning target constructed from a blood bond, which was necessary given the distance between us at the time at which I took it. Otherwise, no target is needed.”
“I see,” Hermione said slowly.
She had always known that this man was no saint. She wasn’t naive. She didn’t have any false ideas about his past. She knew the world was grey, and she herself had done some questionable things to get through this war. But after everything they had been through together, she had grown fond of him, and the idea of him taking souls from others besides Snape left an odd sensation in her chest.
“So you just took them?” Hermione said, watching his face as she spoke. “Preyed on the desperate, taking pieces of their souls in exchange for what – your services? Your help?”
He stared at her for a long moment, his eyes tracing over her face before he sat forward once more and crossed his arms on the table.
“How you described it isn’t inaccurate,” he said finally, and his voice remained indifferent. “But it isn’t necessarily correct either.”
“How so?”
“As exploitative as my methods may have been, I don’t believe in manipulating someone and then exploiting them,” Nasir said quietly, and though most others may not have believed his words, Hermione did. Especially given the other memories that she had from Snape and her own experiences with the man. “Each person who came to me sought me out on their own. They made their request, I told them the price, and they agreed. They may have been desperate, but they were desperate before they got to me. I didn’t force them to find me. If anything, I made it a challenging task. They made their choice knowing the consequences, and in most cases, they were better off for it. You know better than most that a human can survive with a damaged soul, and taking a piece of it does not condemn the person in the After.
“But I do not condone taking things from people without consent, Hermione,” Nasir said darkly, and she saw something shift behind his gaze. “I have lived it, and I have no desire to ever inflict it. So on the rare occasions that I ever did take something from someone without their prior agreement, it was for good reason. Severus was the first person to agree without knowing the price beforehand, but he did truly agree. He wasn’t lying when he said that he would give me whatever I wanted. Though at the time when I told him that I wasn’t sure what that was, that was also true. I wasn’t planning to ask for part of his soul, but my plans changed after meeting you.
“That said – I have never claimed to be a good person,” Nasir said quietly, and his eyes grew darker as he watched her face through the low flickering flames. “If you are starting to question your ties to me and whether or not you want to keep them, not only is that understandable, but it would be the ‘reasonable’ human response. The feeling of discomfort that you are experiencing now will only increase if you watch those memories, Hermione. My hands are stained in more blood than you could possibly imagine. I have done many terrible things, and I will not hold it against you if you ask me to leave. My presence here alongside the Order after the den has always been conditional on you wanting it.”
She stared at him, wondering if this was the real reason why he was giving her his memories. Did he want her to be his judge, jury, and executioner – have her decide if he had a place in the world and within her life after everything that he had done? That thought made her stomach twist worse than it had at the idea of him taking other souls. She couldn’t imagine her life without him after everything that he had done for her, and in the end, no matter how bloody his past may be, he was choosing to be someone that they needed.
“I’m never going to ask you to leave,” she whispered, shaking her head as she reached for the memories and grabbed them tightly. She held his gaze as she picked them up and stuffed the vial into her sweater pocket. “I will watch these – not because I want to judge what you did – but because I want to know who you are. And my opinion won’t change because I believe that people can change and they can choose to be who they want to be. I have to believe that, or all of this was for nothing. Soul or not, you are still a person, Nasir. So until the day comes that you do something so horrible that hurts the innocent people around us – I don’t care what you did in the past. As far as I am concerned, there is a line in the sand between what you did before and when you met us. And these memories won’t change that.”
She brought her hand back to her now cold mug and cast a silent warming charm to heat it up as she held his dark gaze.
“There is always more to the story than the actions themselves. You’re not the only person in this war who did terrible things in the past,” Hermione said firmly, and she saw his shoulders shift at her words. “Alastor Moody’s track record was far from clean, and I would have picked him to stand by my side any day. You saved my life. You saved Harry’s life. You saved Arthur’s life. You saved Ginny and Susan’s life. You saved countless others that night – by choice, by your choice and your free will. I may have been the reason why you joined the war, but I didn’t make you save all those students. You can claim they were needed for the Battle so we would have enough bodies to compete, but that wouldn’t explain why you chose to help them after the fight. Most of them, you healed while I was blacked out. You did that – not me – and you saved countless lives as a result.
“You were instrumental in this war, Nasir,” Hermione continued as he watched her intently. “And I think you deserve the chance to become whatever you want to become outside of it and outside of whatever you were before. I’m not naive enough to believe in ‘good’ people anymore. I know there aren’t any – there are just people – and people do what they need to do to survive. They do the best they can in the situations they’re in. Yes, some may be more selfish than others, and some may be more giving. But at the end of the day, categorizing people into boxes of good and evil based only on actions without understanding the intent or the reason behind it is something I will no longer do, because it won’t get us anywhere.”
She stared at him, watching the way his eyes glinted as he looked at her but remained eerily still in his seat.
“Besides,” Hermione whispered as she let out a low breath. “I’m tired of seeing people who are considered dangerous getting used when it is convenient, then tossed aside the second they aren’t needed because they’re suddenly considered a threat. The Ministry’s track record is littered with that kind of behaviour. It isn’t hard to see it even though they try to hide it, and I know Shacklebolt hates it too. I have no doubt that you fall into the mess somewhere – but I’m done with it. I want no part in that bullshit mentality. It’s not like I’m a good person either.
“I illegally used magic on muggles – multiple times. I had Alastor Moody help me confund my parents and move them to Australia after I removed their memories to keep them safe. I kept Rita Skeeter in a jar for over a week and then blackmailed her. I broke into the Ministry last year, trashed it on the way out, and destroyed Gringotts this spring,” Hermione said, a scoff leaving her lips as she thought of all the other things she had done throughout her life. “And that’s barely scratching the surface. I’ve killed people. I’ve hurt dozens of others. My track record is far from perfect, and I selfishly want to keep you around because I like having you here. I’m biased. I recognize that, but I’m choosing to ignore it, and I’m trusting my gut that this – who you are now – is who you want to be, and I think that it has very little to do with me.
“I know that the world is a better place with you in it,” Hermione said firmly. “So I’m not ever going to let them try and box you away somewhere because suddenly you’re no longer needed or you no longer fit into the fucked up mould they keep trying to pretend exists, because it doesn’t. So as long as you are happy and willing to stay here – you are always welcome to be here. I’m never going to send you away.”
She couldn’t describe the expression that crossed his gaze as he looked at her, but something about it made her heart warm, and the rune on her chest lighten. She had meant every word she said. She wanted him to stay. She wanted him to live. She wanted him to be free to live his life without people being afraid of him or trying to use him. She wanted to know him. She wanted to learn from him, and she firmly believed that he deserved to be here regardless of what he may have done in the past.
“That means more than you could ever possibly know, Hermione,” Nasir said quietly, and she felt her heart clench. “And I would be happy to remain a part of your life.”
“Good,” she whispered. “I’m glad, because I like having you around, and I meant every word of what I said.”
“I know.” His lips twitched, and then he smiled. It was soft and small. Genuine – his eyes creasing under the movement he rarely ever made.
“I’m glad you believe me,” Hermione said quietly as she smiled back. Then her brow arched in question. “Which was always something I wondered about. Can you read minds?”
“Yes,” Nasir answered, and her eyes grew wide. “So can you. It’s how legilimency works.”
She stared at him dumbfounded for a moment, then snorted, covering her mouth with her hand in surprise at his joke. He didn’t make them often. In fact, in the entire time she knew him, he had displayed this new sense of humour maybe only once or twice, but whenever he did, it was always flat and dry, and she couldn’t help but laugh.
“That’s not what I meant,” Hermione said as she brought her hand back to her mug and traced her finger along the heated side in amusement.
“I know,” Nasir said, and she could see the glint of amusement in his eyes. “No – I can’t. Not like how you’re thinking, but I can tell when people are lying.”
“Any lies?”
“Yes.”
“That’s handy,” Hermione breathed, taking another sip of her tea. She could feel the weariness in her bones growing as her shoulders started to sag, but she didn’t want to go to bed. She already knew she wouldn’t sleep, but her eyes were starting to feel heavy.
“Is there anything else that you want to ask?” Nasir said quietly after they had sat there in silence for a moment drinking their tea.
“So many things,” Hermione breathed, and his eyes glinted in amusement at her words. She grinned again, feeling lighter than she had in days yet more tired than ever. “It might take me some time to get through them all, and I’ll feel bad if I’m keeping you up all night just to bother you with questions.”
“You’re not,” he reassured her as he took another drink of tea. “I require significantly less sleep than you do.”
“Really,” Hermione mused, sitting forward and leaning on her elbows once more. “How much per night?”
“Three, maybe four hours,” Nasir said, returning his mug to the table.
“No wonder you get so much done,” Hermione sighed, leaning her chin on her hand and staring at him in thought. She watched him for a moment, debating what to ask next since there were just so many questions that floated through her mind. She traced her eyes along his runes again, not really staring but just thinking as more questions circled, then she stilled. “Nasir?”
“Yes?” he asked, meeting her gaze again.
She hesitated, wondering if this was even something that she should ask at all. She knew she probably shouldn’t – but he did say that she could ask him anything she wanted, and she had been curious since she first saw it.
“You – you don’t need to answer this,” Hermione said slowly, watching his indifferent face carefully for reaction. “But the roman numeral nine on the back of your neck – it’s a regular tattoo, isn’t it?”
“It is,” he said slowly, and his low voice all but vibrated through the cool air in the large room.
He didn’t say anything else, and Hermione hesitated as she debated asking the subsequent question. It was personal. It was none of her business. Yet as she mulled it over, he sat there unbothered and waiting – almost as if he knew what was coming and was simply going to allow her to say it.
“Was–” Hermione faltered, then forced the words out. “Was it given to you without your consent?”
“It was,” Nasir answered, and she felt her heart sink.
“I’m sorry,” Hermione whispered, already knowing what it meant without needing to ask anything else.
“Don’t be,” Nasir replied, still genuinely unbothered by it. “It was a long time ago, and those that put it there are dead.”
She nodded, but it did little to ease the strange feeling circling through her chest. She wondered what age he got it. She wondered how long he had been a victim to it. She wondered if he was the one who had killed those that did it, and as that thought crossed her mind, she knew in her gut that he was. He had gone back – to wherever it was – and he had probably killed every single one of them.
They sat there in quiet but comfortable silence for a long while as Hermione grew more tired but refused to go to sleep.
“Can I ask you something else?” Hermione murmured as she stared at the final remains of her tea. She glanced up to see him nod; then she asked the next burning question that was eating away at her mind. “You figured out Harry was a Horcrux on your own – did you know right away?”
“Not until after I started training you,” Nasir said.
“How did you know?” she asked curiously.
“His magic was unstable.”
“Because Voldemort’s soul was affecting it?”
“Exactly.” Nasir nodded. “Human Horcruxes are extremely complicated, and as I’m sure you have already expected, magic is tied to the soul. So, if you have two souls coexisting within the same body, you inevitably will have two different magics existing. Harry was very fortunate that his magic was compatible with Tom’s, or he would have died the second the soul fragment attached to him.”
“I see,” Hermione said slowly, then her brow furrowed in confusion. “Wait – then how does that work for you? You’ve taken multiple pieces of souls into your body. How did you know Snape’s magic would be compatible with yours? What did you do with people who came to you before? Did you turn some of them away because they weren’t a match?”
“No,” Nasir said, choosing his words carefully as he spoke to avoid being cut off by the runes. “My body acts as an empty vessel. There is – nothing there for the – fragment to interact with, and my magic – it’s neutral. So even though it affects me, it isn’t an issue.”
“Neutral?” Hermione questioned. She knew about compatibility, but she didn’t know there were ‘names’ or ‘terms’ in which to classify one’s own magic. “Was it always like that? Or did that happen after coming back? Do other people have neutral magic?”
“No, they don’t,” Nasir answered. “Which is partially why it is so hard to find blood donor matches. Neutral magic is inherently unnatural, and it doesn’t typically exist on this plane. It happened after coming back. As a result, my magic and blood are compatible with anyone, so long as it is given freely – but it still impacts the person who takes it. It carries the same risks as any other magical blood transfusion. They won’t die from accepting it, but they will still feel it within their body like a foreign object. It will affect their own magic, and for some, those effects can be quite unbearable. So it isn’t something that I would ever do unless there was no other choice.”
He hesitated for a moment, his eyes creasing in thought before he continued.
“The time dilation between the two planes has never been measured, so I cannot say for certain, but depending how long Harry was there, his magic may have been impacted,” Nasir said, and Hermione couldn’t help but lean forward with interest. “Which in his case would be ideal, because it will lessen the negative side effects that come from the blood transfusion that I gave him. That said, even if his magic and body weren’t altered by being in the In Between, they are altered now. My blood will impact the rate at which he ages going forward.”
“How?” Hermione asked, her heart pulsing with concern
“It will delay it,” Nasir answered, and Hermione let out a breath of relief. She doubted Harry would mind living longer. “My appearance isn’t entirely the result of runes, Hermione. I know you have guessed what a few of them are for, and you’re likely right in your deductions, but none of them prevent ageing. That cannot be truly accomplished with runes. You can adjust your physiology or your metabolic rates, and you can even freeze your external appearance – but you cannot stop ageing.”
“So you don’t age because you went through the Veil,” Hermione summarized, nodding in understanding.
“Partially, but not exactly,” Nasir said slowly, and she could see he was struggling to select words he could say out loud. “You’re frozen at the point in which you enter. That is the form in which you proceed to the After, which you already know, but it only works that way on that plane. If you – try to cross back without paying the price, your body would simply disintegrate to dust. If you pay the price – you return the same, but – there’s a cost.”
“A cost.” Hermione’s brow furrowed. “You mean beyond your soul and humanity?”
“Yes.” Nasir nodded, and he opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
“Is it related to you not ageing?”
“Yes,” he said again, then he let out a breath. “There was a reason why Tom said what he did before the fight.”
Hermione’s mind raced back to the Battle, and her mouth dropped open in understanding.
“Wait – you actually took his heart?” Hermione said in disbelief, and Nasir nodded. “Wait, wait–”
She dropped her hold on her teacup and flicked her finger. A diagnostic appeared next to his head, and her eyes skimmed over the three bubbles looking for a small line that she knew existed. She had skimmed over it once when practicing on Harry, but it was never one she had ever paid close attention to before. Nasir didn’t say anything, and he waited in silence as her eyes located the thin line and locked onto it. Then she flicked her finger to rotate through the data until her mouth fell open once more.
“The cells in your heart – they’re replicating too quickly,” she murmured, placing her hands on the table and leaning across it toward him to squint at the faint line more closely. “Much too quickly. It’s functioning fine, but it’s almost as if – as if it’s ageing at least–”
“Four times faster than it should,” Nasir finished, and Hermione lowered her gaze to stare at him.
“How many times have you replaced it?” she whispered, her eyes searching his face with concern.
“Three.”
“How do you do it?”
“It’s complicated,” Nasir said slowly, and she cancelled the spell but remained leaning over the table. “But it isn’t an issue provided I can locate a new one.”
“How do you get them?” she said slowly, then her brow furrowed once more. “And why did you take Voldemort’s?”
“I needed it,” Nasir said simply. “I am a universal donor, Hermione, not a universal recipient. Magical incompatibility isn’t something that I need to worry about with soul fragments, but biological compatibility with blood or organs is. It is difficult to find compatible replacements, so I usually keep one on hand as a spare. They’re either taken from those who no longer need them or duplicated from willing people as payment in place of a soul fragment. Tom was a bit… of a unique situation. He came looking for me, but he was seeking something that he shouldn’t have – his was the only one which I ‘stole’.”
Hermione slowly sank back to her seat as her mind continued to race.
“So you duplicated his heart?”
“No,” Nasir said quietly. “I took it.”
“And left him without one?” Hermione asked in disbelief.
“I gave him something,” Nasir said vaguely, and Hermione’s brow furrowed in thought.
“Will Harry have the same issue?”
“No,” Nasir said, and she felt relief flood her veins. “I’ve already checked his heart, and it seems to be fine. I will continue to monitor it, but I don’t expect it will be an issue.”
She nodded, gripping her mug once more even though it was empty.
“What about you?” she asked slowly, meeting his level gaze. “Based on the current rate, you’re going to need to replace it in the next few years. Do you have a spare?”
“Yes.” Nasir nodded. “I have a spare, so it won’t be an issue. I was hoping not to need it for a while longer, but unfortunately, the potions I used during Battle did a number on my current heart, so it’s been ageing more quickly.”
“I see,” Hermione said slowly, then she hesitated. “What about the next one? Where will you get that heart?”
His lips twitched in the dull light again, and she saw the dark glint in his eyes grow.
“Don’t worry about that,” he said, and his low voice made her shiver in the cool air. “I was fortunate enough to meet a donor several years ago who was willing to let me duplicate their heart as necessary. I’ll make a few spares this year.”
Hermione stared at him in silence, and suddenly the switch in her head flicked.
“Shacklebolt,” she said, a small breath leaving her lungs as she shook her head in disbelief. “Is that why you work with him? He stocks your heart supplies?”
“Partially,” Nasir said quietly, and he almost seemed pleased that she had figured it out. “But it isn’t the sole reason.”
“So what about Snape then?” Hermione asked as she looked at the man across from her curiously. “Can you replace his heart, too? I started looking into it yesterday and was going to mention it to you tomorrow, but organ transplant is a very muggle concept. I wasn’t sure how it would work magically or if it was even possible. Can you perform the procedure on him as well?”
“I can.” He nodded. “And I have been looking for a donor. It just takes time to find one compatible.”
“What about me?” Hermione asked, the thought hit her so quickly she didn’t even think about the words before they poured out. She could feel Snape’s faint heart beating in her head as her own started to rise. “I know my heart is a bit damaged. It’s not in the best condition, but it’s better than what he has. I already know I’m magically and blood compatible with him. Could you duplicate mine?”
Her eyes scanned Nasir’s face, and she faltered.
“You already know,” she said quietly. “You already know I’m a viable donor and you weren’t going to tell me.”
“I was going to tell you my plan tomorrow,” Nasir corrected as he leaned forward against the table once more. “But no, I was not going to ask you. You have given enough, Hermione. You do not need to give anything else to this war.”
“Does it hurt?” she asked, and Nasir’s head tilted.
“Does what hurt?”
“Having your heart duplicated?” Hermione clarified. “Does it have any risks or complications associated with the procedure?”
“Hermione, I–”
“Please just answer the question,” she sighed, her eyes creasing as she looked at him in exhaustion. “I said that I didn’t want to do this again. It hasn’t even been a day, and you’re already only giving me half the information. I know you mean well, but I don’t need you to try and lessen the impacts that cleaning up this mess will have on me or my body unless it’s genuinely needed. I know I’m not fully healed yet. My heart isn’t the best option, so you’re probably trying to find another one to spare me, but just tell it to me like it is – like how you did with the wand core surgery.
“If there are risks or complications to the procedure, or you think it’s a bad idea, then just tell me that,” Hermione said quietly. “I know I can be difficult and pushy, but I do respect your opinion. I do trust you. If you don’t recommend it and you explain why that is to me, then I promise that going forward, I’ll stop being such a pain in the ass about it. If you tell me no, and there is a valid reason and explanation – I will listen, and I won’t argue with you about those things anymore. But if I can help, I want to help. Snape saved my life countless times over the years. He may be a complete asshole, but I still owe him my life. Without him, I wouldn’t have met you, and Harry and I would have surely died. Hell, without him, I wouldn’t have even made it to seventh year, and I would definitely still be a partial cat.”
Nasir’s eyebrow rose at her words, but he didn’t interrupt her as she continued.
“But even if that wasn’t the case – I would still donate my heart for duplication. I would donate it to anyone who helped us end this war. If any of the students need it – if there is ever anything I can do, I’ll do it. Especially if there are no risks,” Hermione said sincerely, and she felt her heart ache with the words. “I know you respect autonomy. So if this is just a case of you or Shacklebolt trying not to ask anything else of me – don’t. Let that be my decision to make. Please.”
He stared at her for a long moment, and she held his gaze hard, waiting to see what he would do.
“There is no pain, and there is no risk,” Nasir finally said, and she felt her shoulders relax. “The procedure is rather straightforward. It requires sedation, stunning, and a small incision no longer than the tip of your index finger. There are no lingering side effects on the donor’s side. The risk and potential drawbacks fall completely on the side of the recipient. You are correct that you are a compatible donor, but I wasn’t trying to hide it from you, Hermione. It seemed inappropriate to ask after everything that you have already done.”
“I know.” Hermione nodded. “But you’re not asking. I’m offering. There’s a difference, and you know that. If you can find a better donor, that’s great. That would actually be better for him and anyone else I’m compatible with who needs a new heart. I’m aware of just how damaged my heart is right now, so I agree that an alternate donor would be ideal because it would mean a healthier organ. But we can’t keep him in a coma forever. Even though his pulse is low and his body is managing, there is still a chance that he might die before he wakes up. The longer we wait, the higher that risk becomes. So if you cannot find one, I’m asking you to use mine. We can always swap it again in a few years if we find a new donor – assuming he even lives that long.”
“Alright,” Nasir said slowly, but she could tell that he was still hesitating.
“If Shacklebolt is the one who told you not to ask me, then I’ll tell him myself tomorrow that I figured it out, and I offered,” Hermione said, getting up to make herself a second cup of tea. “Want another tea?”
“Sure,” Nasir answered, and she summoned his cup from the table. She had just started the kettle again when he spoke once more. “If I cannot find a suitable donor by the end of tomorrow, I will replicate your heart in the evening.”
“Good,” Hermione smiled, glancing over her shoulder at him as she prepared their drinks. “Take a spare while you’re at it in case someone else needs it – and you can show me how to complete the procedure.”
They drank their second tea in mostly silence. Hermione was, amazingly, too tired to ask many more questions, and her head was busy buzzing with thoughts. Nasir worked through a few more of the papers that Shacklebolt had given him, and they discussed the next batches of potions they could start to make the following few days given their current supplies. As he worked, she watched him, leaning her head on her hand as the low light danced around the room.
She wondered if they would ever find a cure for the students in St. Mungo’s currently hooked up to IV bags and downing blood replenishers every few hours. She wondered if legilimency would help. She wondered how Arthur was managing at the Burrow without a leg and if she and Nasir could find some time soon to try and build him a better prosthetic. They could make one for Susan, too, but her nerve damage was far more severe, so they would need to be careful.
She wondered how Ava was managing at the farmhouse with Charlie and Liza, given that the place was still filled with students. Shacklebolt had sent over another ally to help along with Fred and George, but the place was a madhouse, just like all the other Order hideouts. She wondered if Fleur’s arm still burned with pain. She wondered how Bill’s side was doing and if Nasir’s latest quick fix was still holding up.
They would need to find the time to sit down and truly address the wound, just like they would need to find a way to better heal Neville’s shoulder. In the meantime, the temporary fixes were working – she just hoped that they would hold long enough for them to get ahead of this insanity. They were fighting to get on top of things and prioritizing each item. They really didn’t have the manpower or the resources to treat everyone at once, so injuries were being assigned risk factors, and people were being put on waitlists.
She didn’t like it, but there wasn’t much else they could do.
Her eyes dropped, and she stared at the mug of tea clenched tightly in her nearly silver hand. It had been that way since she removed the crisp white bandages that Nasir had used to heal her arm after the first fire. She wondered if the skin would remain that way forever or if it would slowly change over time. She doubted it. Based on Nasir’s healed injuries from the fire at the den, her right arm, all the way from the tips of her fingers to three inches past her elbow, would always be this light, silvery shade. But she was okay with that. She was just happy to have both arms.
She frowned, wondering if they would need to amputate Fred’s left arm or not. Right now, the prognosis wasn’t good, and she knew that St. Mungo’s would refuse to do it. Instead, they would leave him with a gimpy, non-functional limb that would eventually shrivel away into nothing.
She refused to let that happen.
She had already promised Fred that if they could not find a way to rehabilitate his arm, she would cut it off herself if he wanted her to. He had hugged her when she said the words. He was doing a good job at pretending not to be bothered by it and using it as a means to lighten the dreadful mood that often hung around the injured students. He would gross them out with it. Accidentally leave it hanging in things and pretend not to notice, then chase Liza around the house with it as she laughed and avoided the limb.
It had turned into a bizarre game of ‘don’t let the limp limb touch you’ that always got the others laughing – but Hermione knew better than to trust the smile on the redhead’s face. She knew how it felt to have your arm taken away from you, and she knew he wasn’t happy about it. The games and jokes were a coping mechanism. So when she made the offer, she had made it in private, and Fred had nearly cried in relief.
It was the least she could do, and she would have offered that service to anyone.
She took another drink of tea and closed her eyes as she swallowed the warmth. How many more mugs would she drink before this was over? Would it ever be over?
She let out a quiet sigh and slumped her weight against her hand. She knew in her heart it wouldn’t end, just like she knew that she would never escape the dark hole that sat in the middle of her chest like an impossible weight. It was the death, the pain, the rune, and the dark magic she had abused to get them to this point. It would never go away – but oddly, she was alright with that. It had been worth it, because she had Harry. She hadn’t been able to save everyone, the truth of which would haunt her to the grave, but she had managed to save some of them. And if her carrying this weight meant that Arthur, Ginny, Susan, Fred, George, Neville, and all the others didn’t have to – then she could carry it until the end, and she would shoulder whatever else was necessary to make this world a better place.
She was already broken.
There would be no saving her soul.
So she would dedicate what was left of it to ensuring that no one else ever had to bear this burden. She would remain a tool of war, but she would do it on her terms, and she would do it because she wanted to, not because someone told her to.
She could feel cool air moving past her face. It tickled against her nose and ghosted across her cheek. She was moving – she could feel her body shifting as something warm pressed against her side. Confusion flooded her mind, and for a brief moment, her heart flickered with panic as her blurry eyes cracked open. It was dark, and she was so tired she could barely get them to work. Everything was unfocused, but her eyes managed to pick out the shadow of a familiar banister, and she let out a quiet breath as her brain finally caught up.
“I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” Hermione murmured, her eyes fluttering closed again under the heavy weight as all the tension left her body, and she grew limp once more. “You didn’t have to carry me – you could have just told me to walk.”
“Would you be able to walk right now?” came the low baritone reply, and a small breath puffed from her lungs.
“No,” she muttered, turning her head so it leaned against his chest.
She could just barely feel his body shifting as he reached the first floor then turned to take the second flight of stairs. She inhaled deeply, her body feeling like it weighed a metric ton even though he carried her with ease. The familiar scent of night air filled her lungs. It always clung to his body, but as she breathed it back out, she forced her eyes to crack open once more, and she glanced up at him through the haze.
“Harry smells like you now,” Hermione murmured, watching his impassive face as he made his way up the second flight of stairs. “Is that because he crossed over?”
“It is.” Nasir nodded, glancing down at her. “I was never able to figure out why.”
“Hm.” She closed her eyes again, a flurry of disjointed thoughts circling her mind as he made his way up the last few steps. “A mystery.”
He carried her to Harry’s room, carefully opening the door as he continued to hold up her dead weight. She would have attempted to be a better passenger, but she honestly didn’t have the energy. She was so tired it was unbelievable, and it was all she could do to keep her mind awake as he placed her on the empty bed just a few feet from Harry’s side.
“Are you going to sleep?” Hermione whispered as she buried her face into her pillow and felt her body grow completely limp against the mattress.
“No,” Nasir answered quietly, and she felt something cover her body. “I was going to do some research.”
“Will you do it in here?” she asked, using the last of her energy to crack one eye open and look up at him through the dark. “You can turn on a light – I don’t care. It’s just that sometimes when I wake up in the night and see him there, he looks dead and I – I can’t – I don’t–”
She faltered on her words as the quiet of the bond echoed in her head.
“Can you work in here?”
He stared at her, and for a moment, she thought he might say no to her ridiculous and somewhat childish request, but to her surprise, he nodded.
“Alright,” he said quietly.
She watched him shift to the other side of the room, conjuring a chair against the wall as a small warm ball of light appeared in the air. He sat down without a word, pulling a few papers from his pocket before sitting back and focusing his eyes on the content. She let out a sigh, closing her own eyes as her heart ached in pain.
Maybe it was stupid.
Maybe it was weak.
Maybe she truly was just a lost and frightened child who needed a bloody night-light to sleep – but she didn’t care. The low glow of light eased the constant ache in her heart. It made the room look less dead, less empty, and less hollow. It made Harry’s eerily unmoving form look less like the bloody corpse from her nightmares, and it made it easier for her to focus on the steady beat of his heart in her mind. She let out a deep sigh, knowing that Nasir was there watching over them both, keeping them safe as she drifted off to sleep.
-x-x-
The alternative story starts here:
The Alt ending is sad, and it won’t be for everyone. All the triggering topics that I tagged are included and touched upon. That said, the alternate dark ending also has moments of humour, joy, triumph, and feels.
It is an experience. It is a story about grief, loss, learning to survive, and coming to terms with the fact that accepting help from those around you is okay. It is a story about two lost souls who don’t belong in this world finding some tiny semblance of peace.
There is something deeply cathartic about it, and I do encourage you to check it out unless you really don’t want to. You can tap out at any time, and I will not be offended.
But I will say, give it a shot and see for yourself ;) It’s good to let yourself feel things sometimes.
Warning:
This chapter contains: explicit smut (which does include some relationship/plot progression)
-x-x-
May 12, 1998
Tuesday, Grimmauld Place, 7:35 am
It was warm – cozy, even.
If he had to describe the feeling that encased his body, that would be it. Cozy . Like a cocoon. Maybe this was why butterflies did it. Honestly, it seemed like such a tremendous evolutionary idea, spend a portion of your life wrapped up tight in a snug blanket and just rest. Genius.
He liked it.
But the more he thought about it, the more he realized that he had no idea where he was. It was like his mind was waking up from a deep slumber, one clouded with emptiness that surely would have been agonizing if not for the warmth and calm that seemed to wrap around his body and penetrate his mind. It felt like waking from the dead but much less painful. Come to think of it, it felt nothing like waking from the dead – he was pretty sure that he had done that once before, and this was certainly different. Actually, it felt an awful lot like waking up in first year after Professor Quirrell nearly killed him – except his mind was more disjointed, and he still couldn’t feel his body properly aside from the general sensation of warmth and safety.
He let out a breath.
Or at least he thought he did. He wasn’t sure. He couldn’t hear anything, and he couldn’t feel anything, so it was possible he did nothing. He tried to focus on what he could feel – which wasn’t much – but the practice of trying to locate his body felt old and familiar. Like he had done the exercise countless times before, and in the back of his cluttered and foggy mind, he suspected that was accurate.
How many times had he woken up, unable to move and unsure of where or what he was?
Too many times to count.
At least five.
Maybe more?
He could feel everything slowly resurfacing in his head like a submarine coming up for air for the first time in months. It was slow. It was sluggish. It was heavy like the weight that was settling on his chest, and yet no matter how heavy the sensation became, he felt fine, because he knew in his heart he was alright. Everything was alright, and it was going to continue to be alright.
He just knew it.
Images from his life started to flash behind his eyes, but he didn’t panic. Instead, he watched them in silence – as if it were a movie and he was simply observing. He could feel it all settling back into place. Each piece and each memory finding its old home within his mind and sinking in like a piece of a massive puzzle. Or maybe they were all already there, and his brain was simply locating each piece again and relearning how to find it. He wasn’t sure, but they came in faster and faster like a wave of rushing water until the dull sound of birds hit his ears, and he felt something warm on his hand.
He moved it – twitching a finger twice before he heard a familiar sound, and his heart thudded like a drum in his chest.
He knew that voice.
He would recognize her voice anywhere, and with it, all the pieces seemed to rapidly find their home. He could feel the cold air on his face as the rain poured from the sky. He could see the bright flashes of light as everything came rushing in, and he remembered the final Battle. People had been screaming. So many had been injured. He had attacked Voldemort as Hermione stabbed him through the chest – but that wasn’t the end. He could remember looking up at her blood and ash-stained face as his body grew cold. She was crying. He could still hear her crying – but she didn’t need to cry anymore because he was here and he wasn’t going anywhere.
He wasn’t going to leave her.
Not ever.
The memory faded from his mind as a painful sensation ached in his legs. He could feel his lungs moving, but they burned with each breath as if they had been ripped out and put back in. He couldn’t get as much air as he wanted, and it ached. His arm twitched at his side. His eyes pinched at the uncomfortable jolts that coursed through his body, but his heart remained calm.
“Harry?”
The gentle word surged through his body like a vicious wave of love. It was Hermione, and he needed to see her. He felt his arm twitch once more as his eyes suddenly fluttered open and bright light stung his retinas. He hissed in pain, trying to bring his hand up to his eyes to block it out only to hit himself across the bridge of his nose with his own limb.
“Woah – slow down! Slow down, Harry – he said this might happen. You have to get used to your body again.”
His head turned as he blinked the pain from his eyes and forced them to open. Then he froze. His eyes locked to her face, his heart skipped a beat, and he felt a surge of love pouring into and out of the bond in his mind.
“Hermione,” he whispered, looking at the woman sitting on the edge of his bed clutching his hand tight. He couldn’t seem to breathe. She was more beautiful than he remembered and yet – “Why are you crying? What’s wrong?”
The words came out hoarse like he hadn’t spoken in years. Her eyes were shining as a breeze from the open window beside his bed gently tugged at her hair. She stared at him in disbelief, and then her eyes pinched in pain as a stunted sob left her lips.
“Why am I crying?” she whispered, her mouth falling open as she struggled to find her words, then shook her head in disbelief. “Why am I crying? Why am I crying?! What’s wrong ?!? Harry, you stupid idiot!! You almost died – AGAIN!!! I thought I had lost you! I thought you might not wake up! We didn’t know what would be left of you – and the first thing you say to me is ‘why am I crying’?! God, you’re unbelievable!”
She looked like she wanted to smack him, but Harry could only smile as he gripped her hand as tightly as he could with his weak body.
“I promise it’s me, Hermione,” he said gently, his eyes creasing as he memorized her face. “It’s me – you didn’t lose any parts of me, I promise.”
“I know that!” she almost yelled, her voice taking on a hint of frustration. “ Only you would wake up from a coma after having your entire chest obliterated and ask me what’s wrong! You are unbearable sometimes; you know that?!”
“I know.”
He barely got the words out before she wrapped her arms around him and gripped his shoulders tight. He could hardly breathe beneath her even though she wasn’t squeezing his lungs, and he struggled to get his arms around her properly as the feeling in his limbs continued to return – but he smiled as he buried his face into her hair and closed his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, and he heard her sob into his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Hermione.”
He held her as she cried, his grip getting tighter and tighter as the control of his limbs slowly returned. He felt like his heart was going to burst as all her raw emotions and memories crept through the bond into his mind. He didn’t know if she was doing it on purpose because she wanted him to know how worried she had been, how devastated, and how utterly anxious she was for his return, or if she had simply lost control of their connection and it was all leaking through as she fell apart in his arms.
Either way, he saw it all as she cried into his neck and gripped him so tight it seemed as if she might never let go.
There were endless moments of worry. Hermione pacing the floor by his bed as she tried to remind herself that he wasn’t dead yet. Her sitting at the table, exhausted beyond all measure but unable to sleep without nightmares. Brewing potions into the night as conversations with Shacklebolt circled her mind. Her heart breaking as he walked away from her and the explosion afterwards that terrified the entire courtyard. He could feel her rage. He could see her crying in the rain as Nasir tackled her to the ground and fought to get control.
His heart broke as he watched what he had done to her, then saw himself dying on the broken stone as they fought to save his life. He gripped her tighter still, murmuring in her ear as she let out all the pent-up emotions and clung to him through the storm. He had no idea how long they sat there, but he really didn’t care. He would hold her forever. He would never let her go. He closed his eyes as his hand circled on her back as she shook in his arms.
“I thought I had lost you,” she whispered when her tears finally stopped and her breathing levelled out.
“I know,” he whispered as she finally sat back to meet his gaze. “But I’m right here.”
She nodded, her eyes welling with more tears as she grabbed his hand once more. They stared at each other in silence for a moment, a million unspoken things passing between them until something else shifted behind her gaze.
“Oh – shit, I’m so sorry, Harry, you’re probably in pain,” Hermione said, turning toward the nightstand by his bed.
“Only a little.” Harry smiled, grimacing as a sharp jolt pierced through his chest.
“Here,” Hermione said as she grabbed a small vial, then turned back to face him. “This will help.”
“Thanks,” Harry said, accepting the potion and downing the whole thing.
He handed her back the empty vial, feeling relief rush through his veins as the calming draught took effect and eased the soreness in his stiff muscles. He could still feel a bunch of other strange pains in his chest and legs, but the sensations dulled with each thud of his heart. She carefully handed him a set of glasses, and when he put them on, he could see the tension in her jaw. It matched the turmoil of her mind that he could feel through the bond as she rapidly fluctuated between immense relief and vivid anger. He knew that she was barely keeping herself together right now.
They had a lot to talk about – but before she could open her mouth, Hermione’s eyes darted down to her arm, and she pushed up her sleeve to read a message.
“Everything okay?” Harry asked as Hermione met his gaze once more.
“Yeah.” She nodded, gesturing with her head towards the door. “Nasir just needs to run a few quick tests on you – then he can give you the all-clear.”
“Alright,” Harry said, his head turning toward the door as he heard the sound of approaching footsteps. “I wanted to talk to him anyway.”
“Sorry to interrupt,” Nasir said, his voice level and calm like always as he made his way into the room. “I just need to make sure that your mind came back in one piece – I would have waited, but the damage would be severe if a problem was left unchecked.”
Harry nodded in understanding as Hermione shuffled out of the way. She begrudgingly dropped her hold on his hand but remained standing close by his head as Nasir approached the bed.
“Better to know now,” Harry said, watching as the tall man flicked his finger and a strange diagnostic he had never seen before appeared before his face.
He didn’t move as the man assessed it. Instead, he watched in anxious anticipation as Nasir scanned over the multiple lines before casting another two spells. He moved quickly and efficiently, clearly intending to leave as fast as possible to give them space and privacy once more. Harry didn’t doubt that if he could have, he would have cast these spells from afar so as not to bother them.
“Is he okay?” Hermione asked, and Harry could feel her anxiety through the bond as her eyes flicked between the magical lines floating in the air and the tall impassive wizard by her side.
“It looks good,” Nasir said slowly, his eyes narrowing at the one line before he cast a regular diagnostic. “How does your chest feel?”
“Weird,” Harry said, but Nasir accepted the answer with a nod. “Tight. There is an ache across my sternum that’s pretty bad, and my lungs feel like they’re burning a bit, but otherwise, I think it’s okay.”
“I had to remove some of the damaged tissue in your lungs,” Nasir said slowly, cancelling the other spells as his eyes traced over the regular diagnostic. “It’s growing back right now, but it will take about a month for it to completely heal. You will be a bit short of breath until then, but you’re not in any danger. Your mind is okay – everything is where it should be. The ache in your sternum is from the blast. It should lessen over time, but it may never go away given the nature of the explosion. I had to remove your 10th, 11th and 12th sets of ribs, but that won’t cause you any issues. Most of your internal organs were damaged – you’re down one kidney, and you lost a few feet of intestinal tract but, once you’re fully healed, we’ll get you a new kidney. Unfortunately, there isn’t anything I can do about the–”
“Nasir.” Harry cut him off, and the man’s eyes dropped down to meet his gaze. “Thank you.”
Nasir stared at him for a moment, an odd look of discomfort shifting across his features before he finally inclined his head.
“Don’t mention it,” Nasir said quietly, cancelling the diagnostic charm.
He made to move away, but before he could, Harry grabbed his arm. The tall man froze mid-step, and Hermione’s eyes opened wide with panic as Harry forced his aching body to move and he hauled himself from bed.
“Harry!” Hermione shifted to grab his elbow, steadying him as he swayed on his feet.
“I’m alright,” he assured her, but she continued to grip his arm tight. “I’ve been laying there forever. I need to stand up anyway.”
He turned his head back to Nasir and met the man’s dark gaze. He was watching him intently, but his expression was unreadable. Harry stared at him for a moment, taking in the scars that trailed up his neck and across his face, the way his runes still stood out black as night against his skin. He was still just as unnerving and just as dangerous as the day they met – and yet – he wasn’t. He was different now. He was a friend.
He was more than that, and Harry would never be able to quantify just how much he meant to him.
Harry owed this man his life – but more than that, Nasir had saved Hermione’s life. He had done exactly what he said he would do that one night when they sat alone on the beach in the darkness. He had not only upheld his end of the bargain, but he had also gone above and beyond it and done everything that he could to keep her safe, including giving her a lifeforce bond through the Helm of Awe. Then, after all that, he had stayed here with her taking care of them both while they waited for him to wake up.
Harry would never be able to repay him.
He would never be able to thank him.
There was nothing he could do to return the gesture, and yet he knew that there was nothing that Nasir wanted. After they made their exchange and he wandered into the dark with a vial of Hermione’s blood, Nasir had shown him something that changed everything. And as a result, he trusted the man. He would always trust this man. It wasn’t something that he could explain, and he knew that no one else aside from Shacklebolt and Hermione would understand it. It didn’t mean that Nasir wasn’t incredibly dangerous, and it didn’t make him a good person – he wasn’t, but Harry didn’t care.
Like Hermione and like Shacklebolt, he accepted the man for exactly what he was.
Without letting go of the man’s arm and uncaring how stupid the gesture might be, Harry took a small step forward and hugged him. He felt the man stiffen, and he almost laughed as he gripped him even tighter and felt his lungs burn with pain.
“Thank you, Nasir,” Harry whispered, feeling Hermione’s emotions roll like a wave through the bond as she dropped her hand on his arm to cover her mouth. “For everything.”
There was a long stretch of silence, then Nasir shifted, and Harry felt his hand press into his back in return before his low rumble sounded.
“You’re welcome, Harry,” he said calmly, and Harry let out a low sigh. “But you really shouldn’t be standing this much. You’re still not fully healed.”
Harry laughed, grimacing as his eyes stung with tears of pain. Nasir stepped back, nodding at him once before glancing at Hermione with a serious expression.
“He needs to stay in bed aside from bathroom breaks,” Nasir instructed, and Harry saw her nodding as two silent tears fell from her eyes. “And he needs to go back to sleep in an hour – half a vial of dreamless sleeping draught. No training. No magic. No excessive movement. Strictly bedrest, food, and fluids for the next two days, then we reassess.”
“Alright, Alright.” Harry nodded as Nasir took his leave, and Hermione seemed to switch into work mode.
She helped him walk to the bathroom, then waited outside the door for him so she could help him back to bed. It wasn’t until he was seated in bed once more with pillows behind his head and after he had consumed nearly a gallon of water that he saw her face falter. She was seated cross-legged by his side on the now expanded bed, holding his hand as her eyes traced over his face and emotions rolled like a storm behind her eyes.
Despite being blunted, her emotions were turbulent. He could tell that his own were off, but it was nowhere near the level that Hermione’s had been affected. And that only made his chest hurt worse as he watched her.
“I’m so mad at you,” she whispered. The words were hoarse and broken. He knew that she was fighting to keep an explosion at bay because he could feel her pain trickle through the bond, and it broke his heart. “So fucking mad it makes me feel sick.”
“I know,” he said quietly, gripping her hand tighter.
“You should have told me.”
“I know.” His hand moved up her arm as her eyes pinched in pain, and he felt some of her anger leech through.
“You might not have come back,” her voice broke, but she let him pull her towards him as his opposite hand reached for her face.
“I know.”
“You left me – you left me behind. You left me alone.”
“I know,” Harry said quietly, sitting up against his pillows as his thumb brushed the tears from her cheek.
His eyes traced her face. His heart felt like it was breaking. He knew that she was torn – torn between grief and happiness, filled with pain but flooded with joy that rocked through her soul because he was awake.
She was a mess, and he had broken her.
He had shattered her to pieces and expected her to stand and finish their fight without him. He had left her in the dark. She had been barely holding it together when he kissed her in the rain – and yet he had followed through on his plan anyway, accepting the consequences of the damage that it would do to their relationship because he knew there was no other way. He had caused her unbearable anguish. He could feel the cracks in their bond. They were deep and raw, and no matter what he did, he would never be able to take them back. But he was mad at her too. She had all but sacrificed herself in the end and raced off across the scalding landscape without giving him a chance to argue. Yet he couldn’t truly bring himself to be angry with her because it was no different than what he had done.
Somehow, it was nowhere near as bad.
“You broke my heart, Harry,” Hermione whispered, her voice wavering as tears shone in her eyes.
“I know.” Harry nodded as his throat started to burn. His eyes searched her face, his heart beating desperately as he tentatively leaned forward. “And I’m going to spend the rest of my life making it up to you.”
He saw her swallow. He could feel the raging storm in her mind. She wanted to scream at him. She wanted to vomit. She wanted to smack him, then hug him. She wanted to yell at him. She wanted to kiss him, love him, hurt him, hold him – and he could see it all spinning behind her gaze as her eyes creased in pain. Then, slowly, she nodded her head.
“You had better,” she whispered. She let him gently pull her face toward him, and cautiously, he kissed her.
He heard the air leave her lungs in a rush as her hands rapidly knotted into the fabric of his shirt. He had meant to kiss her gently, but that’s not how it happened. It started that way, but then his lips were devouring her, and he could hardly breathe. His lungs ached in pain, but he didn’t care. He knew he was breaking the rules that Nasir had set out, but he shoved those thoughts aside as his hands found her body, and he groaned out in bliss. He never thought he would see her again. He never thought he would touch her again. It felt like a lifetime since his skin had brushed against hers, and it made his soul burn like fiendfyre in his chest.
This was where he belonged.
This was where he was meant to be.
His thumb brushed more tears from her face as she groaned into his mouth and shook beneath his touch. He couldn’t stop. He wouldn’t stop. He pulled her onto his lap. His hands tangled into her hair and her fingers sunk into his shoulders. He could feel his heart starting to race. It felt like it was going to burst. He would never let her go. He would never hurt her ever again – and he realized the words were pouring from his mouth between their kiss as his lips shifted across her face and she cried.
“I love you so much, Hermione,” he breathed, his mouth moving to her ear as she clung to him. “I promise, never again.”
“Never again,” she echoed, and his heart ached. “I love you – I’ve missed you, Harry.”
“I’ll always stay with you – always.”
“Always,” she repeated as her hands curled into his messy hair. “Never lie to me again.”
“Never,” he whispered against her skin, and he felt her shudder. “I promise – I promise you, Hermione. Never again. I’ll never lie to you again.”
She groaned as his hand slipped beneath the hem of her sweater and her hips instinctively rolled against his hardening length.
“Harry,” she breathed, moaning softly as his lips trailed down her neck to her shoulder. “We shouldn’t – you’re still injured.”
“I don’t care,” Harry murmured against her skin as he tried to taste every inch of her that he could.
“I care,” she panted, shivering in his hold again as he gripped her waist tight. “You need to rest.”
“I’ve been in a coma for days, Hermione,” Harry breathed, shifting his lips up her neck toward her ear. He knew he needed to be careful. He was perfectly well aware of just how injured he was because his body was riddled with pain, and there was a strange cool sensation pulsing through his veins. But he also knew that he was okay, and he knew that this was what he needed right now. “Let me love you – I can rest after.”
She shuddered at his words but shook her head.
“We can’t let your heart rate get too high,” she said as she pulled back from him, and he groaned in disappointment, but then she flicked her finger, and a diagnostic bubble appeared. “I need to watch a few of your vitals, including your oxygen levels. If your heart rate gets too high, we have to stop.”
“Alright.” He nodded, easily and readily complying with her demands. This wasn’t even about sex. He just wanted to be closer to her. He needed to be as close to her as physically possible to ease the ache in his heart, and he knew that she could feel it too.
He let her push him back against the pillows, allowing her to take the lead as he fought to lower his heart rate. Then he trailed his hands over her skin under her shirt as he looked up at her and took her in. She was exactly how he remembered her – but here were some new marks. He marvelled at the silver colour of her right arm, kissing her fingers as she carefully split open his shirt. He didn’t bother looking down at his own body; he knew it would be a scarred mess, but it wasn’t important right now. He would inspect it later and relearn his own appearance. Right now, he wanted to relearn hers.
His eyes trailed over the crimson symbol on her neck up to her face, which was unmarked save for a thin white scar that split through her left eyebrow. She took off her sweater, exposing a few other minor cuts along her chest and abdomen. There was one silver line directly above her heart that he did not recall being there before, but otherwise, she was remarkably untouched. The three red lines that ran across her chest were familiar, but somehow, they looked smoother – like they had been re-healed into tighter lines. He wondered how it had happened, if it had just improved over time or if it was something else.
He expected the latter.
He didn’t know exactly how the Helm of Awe worked, but he knew it was a lifeforce bond, and therefore Nasir may have used it to try and heal her in the final Battle. It wasn’t impossible to think that it might have repaired some of the lingering damage in her body. He trailed his hands down her sides to her waist, watching the way she shivered under his touch and enjoying the feel of her squirming on his lap as she tried to keep herself in control.
She was being the responsible one here; he knew that – because it certainly wasn’t him.
His fingers trailed back up her sides, skimming over the band of her bra before they curled into her hair once more, and she let him pull her down into another kiss. But this time, it was slow. The desperation was still there. He could feel it churning in his chest under the surface, itching to get out. He wanted nothing more than to flip her over on the mattress and crawl on top of her, but he knew if he tried it, not only would it be painful, but it would be the fastest way back into a coma. So, begrudgingly, he forced his body to slow as much as he could manage.
Besides… there was no rush.
They had all the time in the world now, and he could soak her in.
His tongue slipped into her mouth, and he revelled at the taste of her as he kissed her deeper than ever before. He could feel the tiny motions of her hips rocking against his groin, and with each roll, he got harder. Her hands curled into his hair again, and she moaned as he bit her bottom lip. He kissed her for what felt like forever, all while knowing it would never be enough. His hands traced over her skin, memorizing the feel of her once more and loving the way that she trembled under his touch.
He could feel the flurry of emotions and love through the bond, and he let his emotions pour through just as freely. It was intoxicating. It was almost overwhelming. He could feel every bit of her love for him, and it made his heart ache because it was her one clear emotion while the others seemed buried beneath a layer of fog. She rolled her hips again, and his hands dropped to her waist, moving to the button of her jeans. She didn’t stop him from undoing them, so he knew his heart rate and vitals must still be okay. She lifted herself off his lap to pull off her pants before she moved to undo the tie on his pajama bottoms. He didn’t complain when she just split the fabric to remove them, and he let his hands trail up and down her legs as she moved to straddle his length.
Merlin, he wanted her, but not just like this and not just physically.
He wanted her forever.
He wanted her always.
He groaned as she wrapped her hand around his cock and squeezed him tight, all while watching his vitals to make sure that he was okay. He fought to keep his heart rate in check as she brought him to her entrance and then hovered above him. He knew she was assessing him, checking him over one last time before finally, she shifted, and he sunk deep inside her.
He groaned out in bliss, all the air leaving his burning lungs as his nails bit into her skin, and his eyes nearly rolled from the pleasure. She was so wet. So hot. So tight. So utterly fucking perfect, he could barely handle it as she moaned into his neck and carefully sank low across his hips. He held her tight, kissing her neck as she carefully rolled her hips, and they both groaned.
“Fuck, you feel so good,” he rumbled, touching her everywhere as she carefully rocked her hips. “I missed the feel of you. You’re so fucking perfect, Hermione – I never want this to stop.”
He pushed up into her motions, being careful not to move too much beneath her as she dropped her forehead against his.
“I love you,” she whispered, kissing his nose, then his eyes, then his face, then his lips. “I love you so much.”
“I love you,” he answered, dropping a hand between them to circle her clit as she slowly ground against his hard length. He wasn’t going to last long, but from the way she was breathing and the vitals pouring through their bond, he knew she wasn’t going to either.
Each roll of her hips grew quicker. Harder, as she tried to get him even deeper, and they both pulled each other close. She was being careful not to press against his chest or lean on him in any way, but still, he could feel the heat of her body seeping into his own. His free hand skimmed up her back, knotting into her hair once more as he kissed her again and poured all his love into the bond.
His breath was coming in pants.
His body was getting tired.
He could feel his lungs starting to burn, but he was so close it was unbearable. He circled her clit faster, pressing against it more firmly as her motions started to grow jerky.
“Hermione,” he groaned, panting beneath her as she continued to ride his cock. “I – I’m not going to last. I – I’m going to come, I–”
The orgasm ripped through him like a gut punch, and he heard her moan as he came undone and filled her with his release. His hips jerked. His lungs burned. This was definitely, probaby, maybe stupid, but he didn’t care. He pulled her down to his chest, kissing along her neck, looking for that spot that made her toes curl with pleasure as his hand circled against her clit. She squirmed beneath his touch, gasping for air before her body jerked, and a low groan left her lips. He smiled against her skin as all the energy seemed to fade from his body, and he collapsed against the wall of pillows behind him.
She looked like a goddess.
The most beautiful creature he had ever seen as she sat straddled across his lap with his softening cock still deep within her tight channel. Her eyes were hazy. A thin sheen of sweat covered her skin, and it shone in the bright morning sunlight – making her look like a fantasy. He could feel her legs trembling. He could feel his own body starting to shut down from the effort, but there was only one thought in his mind as he stared up at her.
“Marry me,” Harry whispered, and he saw her still as her eyes grew wide.
“Harry?” she panted as her brow furrowed in confusion. Her eyes darted to the diagnostic with concern before she met his gaze once more. She probably thought he was delusional, but he only smiled as his eyes traced over her face.
“I love you,” he said, the words like a soft summer breeze as the curtains shifted in the sunlight. “Marry me, Hermione. Not today. Not tomorrow. It doesn’t even have to be anytime soon – but someday. Marry me.”
She stared at him a moment; each inhale coming in pants as her eyes traced over his face. Then her lips twitched, and a breath left her lungs as a smile broke across her face.
“Yes,” she whispered, swallowing hard as she nodded her head. Then she smiled again as a laugh broke from her lips. “Yes – yes, I will marry you. I love you, Harry.”
She leaned down to kiss him, and his hand cupped her face as he breathed her in. He loved her more than anything. He loved her more than life. He would spend the rest of his days making her happy, fighting by her side, and doing everything and anything that he could to try and make up for the pain and agony that he had put her through. Though apparently, he would need to pick that promise up tomorrow because he was down for the count. He laid there almost uselessly as she carefully pulled herself from his length, then vanished their mess. She cast a cleaning charm over his body, and he let her help him put his pajamas back on before she pulled out a vial, and he diligently drank it.
She moved his pillows around so he could lay back before she summoned her pants, panties, and sweater from the floor. She put her panties back on, then with a flick of her finger, she wordlessly transfigured the rest of her clothes into a loose, comfortable t-shirt and pajama shorts. His eyes were already closing as she tugged them on, but when the bed dipped at his side, he smiled into the pillow and turned his head to face her side. He wanted to tug her closer, but his limbs wouldn’t move, and he knew that she was being careful because his body was still healing.
He felt her hand grip his, and then she curled into his side as the world faded away and he sunk into the abyss.
-x-x-
Having sex with Harry was, medically speaking, a stupid idea – but she didn’t regret it.
He had needed it. She had needed it. They had both needed it, but not because they needed sex. They just needed to be close to each other. They needed to repair the damage they had done to their relationship and mend their bond. He had opened up his mind to her, and she had seen it, that same desperate desire for touch and closeness that she had been feeling for days. It wasn’t about sex. It wasn’t about pleasure – it was about connection, and for that reason, she convinced herself that it was okay.
She had monitored his vitals while she slowly rode him in the bright morning sunlight. She had made sure that he was okay, and the truth was – he genuinely was. Otherwise, she would have stopped no matter how badly she needed him. Honestly, it wasn’t all that surprising. Harry’s ability to heal and withstand trauma was remarkable. Despite the enormity of his physical injuries, he had already recovered quite significantly, and the sex had not hurt him. It had exhausted him, yes, but he was okay, and tomorrow, when he woke, he would be just fine.
Maybe a little more tired than he should be – but fine.
Overall, after coming back to life twice, Harry was remarkably unchanged, at least personality-wise.
Physically, he had massive scars across his chest that would never go away, but that didn’t bother her. His eyes were different as well, still bright green and filled with life, but now they were piercing and knowing in an eerie and unnatural sort of way. But that didn’t bother her either. She knew her own gaze was much darker and colder than it had ever been, and her body was littered with scars. All she cared about was him. All she had wanted was for him – all of him – to come back safely, and he had. Nasir had confirmed, and after talking to him and being with him, she knew in her heart it was true.
They had saved him.
Harry, her Harry, was safe.
She smiled to herself as she closed the door to his room and carefully made her way toward the stairs. Her legs felt stiff, and her body felt tired, but there was now a deeply satisfied and fulfilled feeling inching through her body.
It felt like a balm mending the ache on her heart and soothing the darkness in her soul. Despite this, she knew the nightmares wouldn’t go away, and the dark tarnish on her soul would remain. A part of her knew that she was repressing it, shoving it all down in order to function and that eventually, it would all break loose once more. But she hoped that with him by her side, it would become easier to deal with, that they could work through their damage together and that their love would keep her strong just like before.
That said, they still had a lot to talk about.
She was still mad at him. The cuts in her heart were deep, and they would take time to heal.
She still had an endless stream of questions for him, and she wanted answers. Their trust needed to be rebuilt, and they needed to work through everything that had happened, but as she inhaled the cool evening air, she knew in her heart they were going to be just fine. Eventually, once enough time had passed, their hearts would mend, and maybe the weight of what she had done wouldn’t be so bad.
In the meantime, she would do what she could to keep focused on the good – because as Arthur told her after the Battle, it was hope that would survive this war, and it was love that would save them. It was the drive to fight for something better that would allow them to heal and then move forward together. She had to focus on Harry. She had to focus on their goals, and she had to focus on the good just like Arthur had said, or she would never survive the pain in her heart.
She let herself smile again and pushed away everything else.
She would marry him someday.
She would marry him and love him and stay with him forever. She was his, and he was hers. It was just how it was. It wasn’t something that could be rationally explained by science or magic – they simply belonged together, to one another, equal and complete parts of a balanced equation. If she could, she would have stayed by his side all day and all night until he woke up next, but he would be asleep for at least another ten hours, and her stomach was aching for food.
Which was rare.
Eating usually left her feeling nauseous, so she knew she needed to take advantage of this and get some food into her stomach. Especially since she knew the lightness in her heart was temporary and wouldn’t remain. She was still blunted – still shrouded in agony and despair that sat heavily on her chest. She knew that tomorrow, she would probably struggle to eat again as the real world came rushing back in. So even though she hadn’t wanted to, she had crept from his bed after sleeping by his side all day to head downstairs for dinner.
She kept a close eye on his vitals even though she knew he was fine. She couldn’t help it, and she knew that the habit would probably linger long after they replaced his missing kidney and he was given the all-clear. She paused on the landing of the first floor, making her way over to Snape’s door and peeking inside. He was motionless, too – oblivious to the world and deep within his coma. She scanned over his vitals quickly before closing his door once more and making her way toward the last set of stairs.
The surgery nearly one week ago had gone well with no complications, and it had gone exactly how Nasir had said it would.
He hadn’t been able to find a donor that matched both Snape’s magical and biological profile. So, even though she knew he didn’t really want to, he agreed to use Hermione. After dinner, they made their way up to the first floor, and she stripped off her sweater, laying down on the spare bed in Snape’s room in just her tank top as he prepared for the procedure. He gave her a heavy dose of calming draught to slow her heart and ease her nerves, then made the small incision, stunning her briefly as he duplicated the organ and placed it within a jar.
He revived her moments after putting the exact replica of her heart into stasis and quickly healed the one-inch cut on her chest. After thoroughly double-checking her diagnostic to make sure that she was okay, he let her watch the procedure, and she helped him remove Snape’s damaged heart and replace it with a copy of her own.
The procedure was unlike anything she had ever seen – it was like the unnatural love-child of a muggle bypass operation and a magical phenomenon. Apparently, it was easier for him to do it on himself because of the way that his body functioned, but in Snape’s case, with his unstable condition and poor health, it was much more difficult. She had stood on the opposite side of the bed from him, handing him muggle tools and taking mental notes to add to her journal as he rapidly completed the procedure and explained what he was doing. It involved a spell of his own making to divert the blood away from the heart but continue to circle it through the body – which was easier in his own body given the modifications he had made to his biology upon returning from the Veil.
She watched in awe as Nasir carefully prepared everything before cutting into Snape’s chest through his ribs, then cast the spell to all but flip the switch and initiate the temporary magical pump. Taking out the old heart was easy. A few well-placed diffindos and Hermione took the barely beating muscle from his hands as Nasir summoned the copy of hers and quickly began reattaching the veins and arteries. That was the hard task, because he didn’t have a lot of time. The diagnostic above Snape had flared with warnings as Nasir carefully but quickly checked each connection before finally slipping her heart into its new home and closing everything off.
It wasn’t seamless.
At first, the thing refused to beat on its own, which apparently wasn’t an uncommon problem with the charmwork, and so Nasir had to place a shocking spell to convince it to function. The whole thing took nearly an hour from the moment he made the copy to the moment they carefully closed Snape’s chest and cleaned up all the blood. She’d had to pour blood replenisher down the unconscious man’s throat, forcing him to swallow the liquid as Nasir checked his vitals and cleaned off his equipment. It took another fifteen minutes for Nasir to be satisfied with her heart’s performance to remove the shocking charm, and to her relief, the organ functioned perfectly on its own.
After that, they spent the next two hours reviewing the rest of his injuries and discussing what, if anything, could be done to repair them.
After tabling several big-ticket items for later, she took the time to properly heal his nose. She didn’t change the shape or size of it, but she mended all the hairline fractures and did what she could to improve the quality of the bone, which had clearly been broken countless times throughout his life. Nasir was able to re-set one of his dislodged ribs that appeared to be an injury from decades ago, and she fixed his knees.
There was nothing they could do about the organ damage, aside from trying to find him new ones, but with his heart now replaced, he wasn’t at risk of dying. So they moved on and did what they could to lessen the scars on his neck and re-check his vocal cords, but she knew that they would never go back to what they were – just like her own.
She broke and re-set two of his crooked toes, mending the bones with a flick of her finger before moving up to his ankle and doing the same thing. She fixed three of his teeth that were cracked and then poured a potion down his throat to resolve his stomach ulcers. As she had worked, her shoulders drooped, and her heart started to ache with pain. Yes, Harry had instructed her to keep him alive, so she was following his wishes; and yes, Shacklebolt had told her to do so as well, so she was listening to his command as the Minister and leader of the Order – but even outside of that, she wanted to heal him.
And she couldn’t really explain why.
Maybe a part of her thought that keeping him alive would help her save herself. He was damaged and broken, but if he made it, then so could she. Maybe she needed him to live so she could feel less guilty about everything that had happened and how poorly the Order had treated him. Maybe she wanted him to be okay so she could ask for his forgiveness, because she had ignored his wishes and saved his life even though he had begged her to stop. Maybe she was just desperate to feel in control of something because, more often than not, it felt like her life was spiralling around her.
Or maybe , she thought as she made her way down the stairs, maybe she was just curious . Maybe she wanted to save him because she wanted to understand him. Maybe she wanted to talk to him and ask him the questions that were burning through her mind because no matter how many times she tried to figure him out, she couldn’t.
He didn’t make any sense.
The man was a paradox.
She knew that she didn’t know him, but her confusion went beyond that – she didn’t even understand him. He was like an unsolvable puzzle, and it was eating at her mind.
He hated them, but yet he had saved them time and time again over the years. He was cruel to her but used his last dying breath to apologize. Yes, she had seen his memories, so she understood why at a superficial level, but it still didn’t all make sense. Why would someone so gifted with magic allow these old injuries to remain? Why didn’t he care? Did he truly hate himself that much? Had he wanted to suffer? Did he think that he deserved the pain because he was responsible for Harry’s parents’ death? He easily could have healed these misaligned bones, and he easily could have fixed those ribs – but he hadn’t.
She had frowned when she saw the marks on his arms again while she repaired two damaged ligaments in his elbow. How old had he been when he made them? What happened to make him want to cut so deep and so long into his own arm? Why didn’t anyone notice? Was there not a single person who cared?
Or were they done as part of something else? That ‘ something’ being a thing that she had started to wonder about since the war ended and she was left with horrendously blunted emotions stuck beneath a layer of fog in her chest. She didn’t know, and she shoved the thought aside as she thought about how weak and frail the man had looked as she mended his broken body.
She would be the first person to stand up and condemn Snape for his shitty behaviour and tell him that he was a bastard and an asshole. She would be the first person to tell him that he was cruel, mean, and that he should be ashamed of his past behaviour. And yet, as she had moved to mend the fractured bones in his right hand and looked at his motionless form that day – at the way his ribs protruded from his chest, the way his cheekbones stuck out, the unhealthy undertone of his pale skin, and the dark rings beneath his eyes – she struggled to feel any real hate towards the man. Instead, the only thing she felt was sadness.
She let out a low sigh, pushing her hair back from her face as she reached the ground floor and made her way toward the kitchen. Her mind was too cluttered. She had too many questions and not enough answers, too many thoughts and not enough time. She needed to spend more time on occlumency tonight to get better control. But for now, she just needed to block it all out.
She could smell food, and her stomach rumbled in anticipation. When she pushed open the door and stepped inside, she wasn’t surprised to see Nasir standing at the counter dishing out a second plate of food using the spell he had taught her, which perfectly measured the minimum amount she needed to eat.
He had shown it to her two days after the Battle. He knew that she was struggling to eat, but he also knew that she was logical, and so he had reasoned with her that if she did not at least consume the minimum amount of calories she required, she would not be able to properly look after Harry or be there when he woke up – because he would stick her in a coma, too.
It hadn’t been an empty threat.
She knew he would do it. So, she learned the spell, and forced herself to consume the food and the vitamin shakes that he made her even though some days it made her sick. She just hoped her appetite would continue to get better, especially now with Harry being awake; his presence had always helped to ease the burden on her soul – because she wasn’t sure how much more unwanted food she could choke down.
“Hungry?” Nasir asked, turning to look in her direction at the sound of her stomach.
“Yes,” Hermione said, taking the plate that he handed her before he grabbed his own. “For the first time.”
“That’s good,” Nasir said, following her to the table.
“It is.” Hermione nodded, sitting in her seat and summoning two forks from the drawers. “I’m not naive enough to think it will last, though.”
“Maybe not,” Nasir agreed. “But it will improve with time. Feeling sick is a side effect of dark magic use. Over time you will adapt to it, but the less you use it, the better.”
“I plan to try avoiding it as much as possible going forward,” Hermione sighed, shaking her head. “Why aren’t any of these things written in books? Everyone universally agrees that dark magic use is bad, but no one has ever quantified it or documented exactly how it affects the body or how much.”
Nasir stared at her for a moment, and then he shifted in his seat.
“Probably because they were concerned that someone would do exactly what you are thinking right now,” Nasir said slowly, and she furrowed her brow at him in question.
“And what’s that?”
“Trying to find a way to optimize your use of it so as to combine the effects or nullify them. Knowing which spells you can use and when – how long and how much before it starts to hurt. Finding a way to maximize the effectiveness but lessen the consequences and the impact that they have on your body,” Nasir said evenly, and she felt her muscles stiffen. “That way, you can keep it in your arsenal but maintain a mental tally of the damage you have collected so you can better judge when and how to use it.”
“It almost sounds like that’s something you do,” Hermione said quietly as Nasir plucked his floating fork out of the air. His guess hadn’t been wrong. Of course she had thought about that. She thought about everything like that – calculated risk tolerance and knowing when the benefit outweighed the consequence.
“It is the logical way to look at dark magic,” Nasir said slowly, and he met her gaze with a serious stare. “Dark magic may be inherently dark in nature, but not all of it is inherently ‘ evil ’ the way that many people seem to believe. It has a place and a purpose in our world. Each spell has a different cost, and how it affects you is often tied to your intent when you use it. You learned this first-hand with the killing curse – which, despite being designed to grant a suffering person peace, is dark in nature. That said, in order to take that approach, data must be gathered – and gathering that data comes at a cost to someone.”
She stared at him, swallowing hard under his gaze before she spoke.
“How much data did you gather?” she whispered.
“Enough,” Nasir said calmly, and she felt herself nodding, accepting his short response without question as she had promised him that she would for these sorts of things. “I will share with you what I learned to an extent, but the best approach you can take moving forward is to avoid it at all costs unless you have no other choice. There is plenty of other magic I can teach you that will get you just as far.”
“Thank you,” Hermione said, nodding again. She dropped her gaze to her plate before she glanced up at him once more. “To be clear, though – I don’t actually want to use dark magic. I just like to be prepared.”
“I know,” he said. “Which is why I will continue to train you if you would like.”
“I would like that very much,” Hermione said sincerely, and she smiled. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
They ate their food in comfortable quiet conversation like they always did. Nasir asked how Harry was, and she told him his vitals were strong, and he would sleep well into tomorrow morning. They discussed the next set of potions. Hermione told him that she planned to message Arthur tonight before bed via their linked journal so she could tell him that Harry had woken up. They discussed what foods Harry could eat in the morning, and the next steps for the students still stuck in St. Mungo’s. Then they talked about the upcoming Order meeting this weekend and the plans Shacklebolt and McGonagall were starting to develop to repair the school.
Yet as they talked, Hermione felt something uneasy grow in her chest.
Harry had thanked Nasir after waking, and the man had told him ‘not to mention it’. Harry hadn’t offered him anything. Nasir hadn’t asked for anything. He had hugged Harry back then immediately returned his focus to his health and proceeded to make enough food for her to eat with him tonight. He offered to train her – and didn’t ask for anything. She had thanked him yet again for the hundredth time, and he told her not to worry about it.
The thought ate away at the back of her mind like a festering splinter, because still, since the Battle, despite their multiple conversations and the new questions she was asking him, he didn’t ask her to repay her debt, and she had not offered him anything. She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t yet. She had meant every word that she said to him, and she fully intended to pay the price. Nasir may have made a deal with Harry too, but he had followed through on their arrangement and saved Harry’s life for her.
So she owed him.
Maybe a part of her was selfishly avoiding it because she wanted more time with Harry, and she was worried whatever the cost was would sever that tie? Maybe she was still processing everything that had happened in the Battle, and her mind wasn’t completely caught up? Maybe she was too busy focusing on everything else, and the debt wasn’t a priority because she was more concerned with helping rebuild the world. She honestly didn’t know… but she knew she needed to do something about it because leaving it open and unknown was just one of the many things nagging away at the back of her mind and making each day more difficult.
When they were done eating, she followed him to the sink, dropping her dishes off to self-wash before making her way toward the hallway. She shivered in the cooler air, nodding to his words as he spoke about the latest numbers from Shacklebolt before she stopped and watched him move toward the staircase.
Why hadn’t he asked for anything?
What was it that he wanted that he was so willing to wait for?
Did he not want anything at all?
Her brow furrowed as she looked at him in the low light and tried to understand.
“Hermione?” he said, his low baritone startling her from her thoughts.
She blinked, realizing that he was waiting at the base of the stairs for her, and she had just been standing there in a daze staring at him in silence. She stared at him for a long moment, and then the words finally poured out.
“Why haven’t you asked me for anything?” she whispered, watching the way his brow arched at her words.
“What do you mean?” he asked quietly, and his confusion over her question only confused her more.
“I offered you whatever you wanted,” Hermione whispered, taking a step forward as she swallowed down the nervousness building in her chest. “I asked you to help me save Harry, and you did. And not only did you do it once – you did it twice . You pulled him back from the dead, then saved him from bleeding out. You saved my life too. You protected me. You helped us win. I owe you. You came to collect from Snape when his deal was done – ours is over, and you haven’t said a peep. I meant everything that I said to you in the kitchen six nights ago. You know that. You know that I want you to stay here. You know I want you in my life – but I still owe you. So why haven’t you asked me for anything yet?”
He stared at her in silence. She could see something shifting behind his gaze as his eyes circled her face, then his shoulders slowly dropped.
“Because I don’t want anything.”
His voice was quiet, and the tone sent a shiver down her spine as her mouth fell open in disbelief.
“You don’t want anything?” she whispered, and he slowly inclined his head. “You did all of that – and you don’t want anything from me? Nothing? Not a soul? Not an organ? Nothing?”
“No,” he said quietly, and then he shifted almost uncomfortably. “You have already given me more than I could ever ask for.”
Her brow furrowed in confusion. His words were not computing in her mind, and she felt the air leave her lungs as she took another step forward.
“But I haven’t given you anything.” Hermione faltered, her eyes circling his face as she tried to understand. “The Helm of Awe is one-directional – you can’t take anything from me through it. I – I haven’t done anything for you. I haven’t even given you a spare heart for your storage – at least let me give you a spare heart or – or something. Do you need a set of lungs? Something? Anything? There has to be something – what do you need? And what do you mean I already gave you more than you could ask for? If you’re too afraid to ask – don’t be. I promised you anything, and you know that I meant it. If you still don’t know what you want, then I understand that, but I–”
“The things that matter most in life are not physical objects, Hermione,” Nasir said quietly, cutting off her agitated ramble as he took a step towards her. “Nor do I need or desire a piece of your soul. You have given me something far more valuable than that.”
“What do you mean?” Hermione whispered. “What did I give you?”
“Purpose,” Nasir said, and his voice was so low she could hardly hear it. “Acceptance. Time. Company. Genuine friendship without ulterior motives. A place to belong in a world that neither wants nor needs me. Take your pick, Hermione – you have given me all of those things and more.”
She stared at him in disbelief, unsure how to process his words as his eyes slowly traced over her face.
“I have lived a long time and done many things,” Nasir said slowly, and she felt her body grow still. “I have already maximized the vessel that contains my existence and gathered nearly all the information that I initially wanted. That is the trouble one faces when they live for so long with no restrictions or concerns. They rapidly crush through their goals with little regard to those around them, and eventually, they accomplish everything that they set out to do. That was the final curse of the return. It took away all ties, all purpose, and all desires attached to this world. It strips a person of everything that once mattered to them, taking away what made them who they are – leaving them with only their single deepest desire or driving factor.
“But even that fades over time – leaving behind nothing but a genuinely empty container with no moral compass, no emotions, no obligations, no true desires, no future, no past, and no purpose,” Nasir said quietly, and he appeared to fight exceptionally hard to force several of the words out. Then a small exhale left his lungs as he looked at her in the dark. “It truly is a cursed existence to go through life not belonging in this plane or the next while having no meaning. Most returned because they had unfinished business to take care of – but none of that mattered when they came back, it meant nothing, and as a result, they all quickly got lost. You will understand when you watch my memories, Hemione, but there was a reason why we were eliminated. Some of us were worse than others, some found ways to adapt or find new meaning again, but that meaning was not always good for the people around them.
“And in the end,” Nasir said slowly. “We became nothing. I will become nothing. Everything I did would have been for nothing – I will cease to exist, I will be forgotten, and my life will have had no meaning because I have no purpose and no capacity to care about anything enough to create one.”
Hermione shook her head.
She could feel her throat growing tight as she stared at the calm, nearly emotionless eyes of the man before her and struggled to breathe.
“That’s not true,” she whispered hoarsely, unable to articulate exactly why his words made her feel like she had been stabbed in the chest.
He had come back to this world to do something. He had come back here because he had people that mattered to him, goals he wanted to complete, things he needed to do. He paid the price of the return because it had mattered to him so much that it was worth it – and then he lost it. He lost all of it, and that thought broke her heart because she could not imagine waking up one day and no longer caring about Harry. She couldn’t imagine waking up to feel nothing after sacrificing everything to come home, then being abandoned by those that had created you in the first place. He must have been so alone.
“You’re not nothing,” Hermione said, shaking her head once more. “Not to me. Not to Harry. Not to the people whose lives you saved in this. You won’t vanish when you die – I will remember you. I will always remember you, Nasir. You mean something. You mean something to me, and you have a purpose here.”
“I do now.” Nasir nodded, and her eyes started to sting. “Because of you, and that means more to me than anything else you could possibly give me.”
Her face crumpled. Then she felt the tears break loose as her throat burned from the agony swimming in her chest. She closed the small distance between them and grabbed him hard. She buried her face into his chest, stifling the small sob that left her lungs as her hands knotted into the fabric of his shirt.
“You will always be everything to me,” Hermione whispered, the words breaking as her face scrunched in pain.
It hurt.
It burned.
How lonely had his life been? How many people had he left behind? Was that part of the reason why he started taking souls – because he discovered that they would allow him to feel? Because they enabled him some tiny shred of humanity, and he could remember what it felt like to care about another person or want to keep them safe? Did he care about those he had lost now? Could he remember them and how important they were to him? Or were they still buried in the mess? How agonizing was it to simply move from one job to the next with no real purpose as your only desire in life started to fade, all while knowing that you could not truly leave anything behind or take it with you when you left?
The questions spun in her head like a storm as his arms moved, circling her small frame and gripping her tightly in return. She clutched his warm body tighter, and he didn’t pull away. He didn’t say a word. Instead, he simply held her, his blunt arm pressing firmly into her back as his hand gently landed on her head, and he let her cry on his behalf because he couldn’t do it himself. She squeezed him harder than ever before as another sob broke from her lungs, and the fractured wall that had been keeping everything back fell apart, and she bawled.
She had no idea how long they stood there, but she cried until she couldn’t anymore.
She cried for him. She cried for Harry. She cried for everyone they had lost, her own stunted emotions and her ruined youth she would never get back. She cried because the world was a horrible place and life was cruel. She cried because she understood his pain yet still had no idea just how awful it must be. She was blunted and broken, but at least she still had Harry. She may not feel in the same way as before – but her emotions were still there beneath the surface. Whereas she knew that his own were missing and the ones that he did have were borrowed.
She wondered how much of them he could feel. Were they like a whisper in his mind, or did his heart ache right now too? Could he only feel through pain, suffering, and exhaustion? Or did those things only exacerbate his emotions? It was something she had noticed over the last few days, and it was something that affected her too. She knew that someday she would ask him about it, but right now, she just wanted him to know that he wasn’t alone.
He was wanted.
He belonged.
He had a purpose, and his life was not meaningless.
She hugged him until her muscles started to hurt. And when her grip finally loosened and she lifted her head to look up at his dark gaze, she found that she didn’t know what to say. So she didn’t say anything at all. Instead, she stared at him in silence for a long while, pressed against his warm chest as her eyes traced his face until she finally took a slow step back. Then, she reached for his only hand as it dropped back to his side. She gripped it tight, threading her fingers through his as she turned to walk up the stairs by his side until they reached the small library on the second floor, where she finally let go, and they settled into their usual chairs around the small table to do some work.
Later, when they finally packed it in to head to bed, she hugged him tight one final time and thanked him for everything. He had looked uncomfortable with her gratitude, but he nodded regardless and told her not to worry about it. Then he went to his room across the hall, and she went to hers. She changed into her pajamas in silence, watching Harry’s sleeping form with a heavy ache in her heart.
She couldn’t stop thinking about it.
She couldn’t stop agonizing over how painful it would have been to lose everything and have no purpose. Yet what was most agonizing about it was knowing that Nasir wasn’t even capable of truly caring about having no purpose without a borrowed soul. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. The world was cruel.
She climbed into bed next to Harry, curling into his side and feeling more thankful than ever that she still had him. She felt her eyes sting as more tears traced down her face, but despite the horrible ache in her heart, her lips twisted into a small smile because she knew… that Nasir was across the hall – in a room where he was welcomed and wanted.
And for the first time in over fifty years, he had a home where he belonged and a family that loved him.
Warnings:
This chapter contains: amputation. If you are squeamish, be wary.
******************************************
May 20, 1998
Wednesday, The Burrow, 11:15 am
“How’s the leg holding up?” Hermione asked, dropping a small bag onto the cluttered table and flicking her finger to cast a diagnostic. It had been a few days since she checked it, and even though she knew he was fine, she still worried.
“It’s alright, Hermione,” Arthur said, gripping her shoulder reassuringly as he passed by and made his way toward his seat at the table. “Really – you don’t need to worry about me.”
“I’ll always worry about you,” Hermione responded, her eyes flicking over his diagnostic before they creased in displeasure. “The nerve damage is getting worse, Arthur. Does it hurt? Are the pain meds enough, or do you need a higher dose?”
“No, they’re fine,” Arthur groaned as he sat down and let out a heavy sigh. “I prefer not to have them numb everything completely, or I don’t notice it if I do any damage.”
“I know.” Hermione nodded, cancelling the diagnostic and then moving to lean against the table beside him. “But if it gets to be too much, tell me, and we can make some adjustments.”
“I will,” he said, looking up at her with a warm expression, and he sighed under her skeptical expression. “I promise I will tell you if it gets to be too much.”
“Good,” Hermione said, letting her body relax as she let out a sigh. “I’m sorry we haven’t had a chance to come up with something better for you yet.”
“Hermione,” Arthur said softly, and she forced herself to meet his gaze. “You have nothing to apologize for. Things have been crazy, and my leg is fine for the time being.”
“I know,” Hermione said quietly, dropping her eyes back to her hands as she folded them before her. “But I don’t like leaving it. I don’t like knowing that it’s causing you pain. I have some time tomorrow, so Nasir and I are going to start working on a better prosthetic design. It should be easier to complete now that we’ve gotten the students cleared out of here and the farm. It’s just the ones at St. Mungo’s and the northern safe house, but the healers are largely managing them, so as long as we don’t have any ingredient shortages and potion production remains steady, we can start moving on to other things. We should be able to come up with a better fix for you and Susan within a week. Then we’ll keep adjusting it as necessary and look for other solutions. It might take some time, but we’ll find something permanent that works. I promise.”
“I know you will,” Arthur said softly, giving her a tired smile. He let out a breath, then his eyes grew sad. “Fred told me that you’re going to amputate his arm this Friday.”
Hermione stiffened, swallowing under Arthur’s painful gaze.
“Yes,” Hermione said quietly, keeping her voice level. “We discussed it at length, and it was his choice. He doesn’t want it if it’s never going to work. Besides, I’m worried that if we leave it much longer, the dead tissue could spread further than his bicep. Initially, everything appeared to be stagnant, and whatever curse hit him wasn’t spreading, but when I re-measured the edges yesterday, it had grown another centimeter. I wouldn’t agree to do it unless there was no other choice.”
“I know,” Arthur said, and he nodded. “He told me.”
“Does Mrs. Weasley know?” Hermione asked quietly, thankful that the witch was currently at Shell Cottage helping Fleur with a massive batch of blood replenisher. She had timed this visit to avoid her intentionally, and she saw Arthur let out a sigh as he closed his eyes.
“No,” he said, another small breath leaving his lips. “But she doesn’t need to – knowing ahead of time won’t do her or anyone else any good. She’ll get upset and want to keep looking for a cure, but we both know there isn’t one. We don’t need to know which spell hit him to be able to tell the damage is permanent. Besides, Nasir, Shacklebolt, and two healers at St. Mungo’s confirmed it. His arm will never recover.”
Arthur sat back in his seat and met her gaze once more.
“But Fred is an adult. It’s his arm and his choice,” he said firmly. “Even if there wasn’t a risk of the dead tissue spreading, if he wants to get rid of it because he thinks it will help him move on, then I’m going to support that decision. I’m honestly a bit surprised it took him this long to ask you to do it.”
“I think he’s just been busy,” Hermione murmured. “Everyone has been, and I’m sure a piece of him was hoping we could find something. Having it just hanging there wasn’t an issue until it became an issue, and the dead tissue started spreading again.”
Arthur nodded at her words, and she felt her shoulders drop as she sagged under her exhaustion.
She had been right in her suspicion seven days ago. Harry waking up helped, but it did not magically erase all her problems. She still struggled to eat. She still had a hard time managing her thoughts, and sleep would evade her no matter how tired she was. She could grab a few hours of rest without potions if she curled into his side, but she still woke in cold sweats on the verge of terror. It wasn’t uncommon for her to wander to the kitchen and have tea with Nasir in the middle of the night. Sometimes she would stay there for hours talking with him or sitting in silence until the sun came up. Other times she would simply nod to him, then take her tea back upstairs to sit by Harry’s side and watch him sleep. Once, she had even passed out at the table mid-conversation, only for her to wake up by Harry’s side once more.
She was managing, just like everyone else, but it was difficult.
The occlumency charm didn’t always hold. Nasir was working with her, trying to help her improve. He would patiently sit with her in the evenings, entering her mind upon her request to help her try and organize it. It was difficult to sort everything and catching all the instances of each thought was a pain in the ass, but he was excellent at finding even the smallest hint of a memory. They had made a lot of progress, sorting things into neat little open boxes so she could still find and access them, but not have them running amuck. She was working on keeping her active mind quiet unless spoken to, keeping the chatter to a minimum so her anxiety didn’t rage out of control, and she had improved since they started.
That said – his help didn’t equate to a solution. It was still her mind, and she had to learn to control it. He could help, but she had to do the work. She had to fight against the urge to relive the horrifying events of her past over and over, or they would propagate like a festering wound. She had to fight to keep those boxes neat and tidy, and she had to fight to keep her rambling inner commentary calm – because it easily and readily spun into dark thoughts of doubt and bitter resentment.
She was getting better at distinguishing the difference between watching her own memories re-play versus obsessing over them and letting them take control of her mind. One was needed in order to properly process what had happened and deal with the war. She couldn’t afford to shove her thoughts down and bury them, just like she could not ignore the terror in her mind, because it would always be there – but she could gain control of it.
Someday.
And when that day came, she would be able to sleep. She would be able to eat. She would be able to walk around with less fear and not be so utterly terrified of going to new places. But it wasn’t easy. It wouldn’t happen overnight. There was so much inside her head, so many thoughts and memories and horrible things that threatened to eat away at her sanity. The progress was too slow to be completely effective with everything else that was going on. Thus, she still used the occlumency spell and dreamless sleeping draught to supplement her own efforts. Otherwise, she knew her body would start to fail her.
As it was, a dull tremor had reformed in her left arm. It was starting to creep into the rest of her body and affect her performance on basic tasks, like cutting up potion ingredients. So, even though she didn’t want to, she knew that she needed to take some dreamless sleeping draught tonight to prevent things from getting out of hand. Then, she needed to try and find an alternative solution to help buy her more time while she improved her occlumency skills. She had yet to grow addicted to the substance, and her organs would be able to handle it for a while longer before it started doing permanent damage and became a problem – but she didn’t want to let things come to that.
She wanted to find a different solution because others were going to need it, too. Not everyone could manage occlumency, and even if they could, it wasn’t a guarantee, because the mind was a fickle thing. Harry had just resumed his occlumency training with Nasir this morning, and he was struggling with it. But he, like her and so many others, couldn’t take potions forever. So, this weekend, she planned to start researching a way to adjust the dreamless sleeping draught to make it less toxic.
“How is Harry?” Arthur asked after a quiet moment passed.
“Better,” Hermione said, unable to stop her lips from twitching into a smile as she turned to look at Arthur once more. “He can walk around a lot easier now, and he has been helping me chop some potion ingredients, but he still has to sleep a lot. He gets out of breath from taking the stairs, and he hates it. The ache in his chest is still pretty bad, but he’s improving each day. In a few weeks his lungs will be completely healed, and Nasir will start letting him move around more. He should be able to start having some visitors in a day or two. I know he misses everyone. I think that’s what’s really bothering him – being bedridden and stuck at home. He wants to help, and not being allowed to is the worst form of torture for him.”
“I can imagine.” Arthur smiled, his eyes crinkling as he looked up at her. “He’s always been like that, and I know Ginny and Susan are anxious to see him. Well, everyone is – but maybe I can come by with the girls this weekend?”
“I think he would like that,” Hermione said, and Arthur smiled brighter.
“I’ll let them know,” Arthur said. “Though he doesn’t need to worry, we’re not going to run out of things for him to help with while he heals. Pushing too hard too quickly will only set him back. He needs to take the time to get better. Merlin knows he deserves a break.”
“We keep telling him that,” Hermione said, shaking her head as she thought about this morning when Harry had grown exceptionally close to throwing a temper tantrum over being told that he was not allowed to come with her to the Burrow to run errands. “I told him just this morning that the reconstructive work will be going on for months. He knows it – I know he does; he just can’t help but be frustrated. Helping is in his blood and making him wait around is like putting a dragon into a tiny cage. It eats away at him. He’s fighting against it, and he’s trying really hard not to complain about it, but – it’s hard some days.”
“I know. He’s always been like that – but so have you, Hermione. What I said goes for you too,” Arthur said softly as his eyes shifted over her face with concern. “You have done more than enough. If you need a break – take one. I know you feel responsible, and I know you feel guilty, but you shouldn’t. This mess is not yours. It’s everyone’s, and we will clean it up together. But if we damage what’s left of ourselves in the process, we’re not gaining any ground or getting ahead. We’re only hurting our own cause and taking steps backward. It’s okay to need a break if you need one. You and Harry can just spend a day together and relax.”
“You know I don’t know how to do that,” Hermione sighed, but she smiled at the man and felt her blackened soul ache. He didn’t know all the gory details of Harry’s injuries or just how much he slept in the day. She did spend her days with Harry. She spent every waking minute he had with him, then crammed the rest of her activities into the time that he was sleeping – like right now. “But – I know, Arthur. Nasir has been making sure that the both of us don’t overdo it, don’t worry.”
“I’ll always worry about you,” Arthur said quietly, returning her smile before his eyes creased in question. “How have things been going with him? Kingsley mentioned that he’s still staying with you – are you two okay with him being there?”
“It’s been really good actually,” Hermione said as she thought about how the last week had progressed since Harry had woken up. A tiny part of her had wondered if the dynamic would be weird having Nasir living in Grimmauld Place with the both of them, but the truth was, it wasn’t. Even with Harry awake, it felt strangely normal. “He’s really quiet and exceptionally clean. Honestly, when you come by, you won’t even know that he’s there. He keeps to himself unless we’re working on something together – which, admittedly, is almost always right now – but otherwise, he’s really good at vanishing from sight and minding his own business. I like having him around.”
“Does Harry?” Arthur asked curiously. She knew him well enough to know that he was just genuinely asking and didn’t mean anything by the question.
“I assume so.” Hermione smiled, her eyes creasing in amusement. “I was actually going to talk to him about it, but then yesterday morning at breakfast, Harry gifted Nasir Regulus’s old bedroom. He told him that he was welcome to use it and stay with us as he wanted. I haven’t had the chance to talk to him about it since, but I know how he feels, and I know he feels the same. I can’t really explain it, but honestly, it’s just nice having him around. I feel safer with both of them there. I’m sure over time Nasir will probably want his own space, but right now, it just makes sense having him there while we manage everything going on. It makes it easier on me, too – I’m not sure I would be able to leave Harry home alone. Like right now, he’s sleeping, and I know he’s fine, but that isn’t enough. I’m only okay being here because I know Nasir is there at the house with him.”
Arthur nodded in understanding. They both knew she only left the house because of him, Nasir, and Shacklebolt – all three of whom had told her in their own way that she could not stay cooped up forever and that she needed to continue seeing other people.
“I’m sure that we’ll establish some kind of ground rules as time goes on,” Hermione said, more to herself than Arthur. “But – I genuinely don’t think it’s ever going to be a problem. It might not make sense to anyone else, but it does to us. He’s not like a typical houseguest. He doesn’t linger, he respects our privacy, and it just works.”
“Good,” Arthur said, and his eyes crinkled with sincere happiness on her behalf.
She knew that out of everyone in the Order, he was probably the most concerned for her mental wellbeing, and he was doing everything that he could to help her better reconnect to those around her. As far as Arthur was concerned, if Nasir living at Grimmauld Place helped her and got her out of the house to come to visit him, see the twins, talk with Ginny and Susan, run errands, stop by the farmhouse to see Ava and Liza, and attend Order meetings without pitching a fit, imploding with anxiety, or having a panic attack – then he was happy, and Nasir could stay with them as long as they wanted.
That said, Order meetings were still difficult, and she struggled with groups larger than three or four people. But like with everything else, it was a work in progress, and as much as it made her uncomfortable, she planned to continue fighting to get better. If not for her own sake, she would do it for Arthur, because she couldn’t stand to see the pain and sadness in the man’s eyes when he watched her flinch or jump or close in on herself.
He was fighting for her to get better, so she would fight too.
“I’m glad that you feel safe there,” Arthur said gently. “It’s the least you deserve after all this.”
“Thanks, Arthur,” Hermione said quietly. “So, how are things here? It must be nice having Ginny and Susan at home.”
Even though she regularly saw him, she didn’t often have time to just talk to him, so she let herself take the time now to ask the questions.
“It is,” Arthur said firmly, but she saw his eyes crease. “Though that has come with its own challenges.”
“How do you mean?” Hermione asked, arching a brow in question.
She could see Arthur hesitating, like he was struggling to find the right words. Or perhaps he was debating telling her at all because he didn’t want her to worry – but she had asked him not to baby her. She wanted him to treat her normally and talk to her honestly. Otherwise, she would never improve.
“They’re attached at the hip,” Arthur said slowly, and she could see the love and concern radiating from his eyes as he spoke. “I worry about them. I worry about what this war did to them. I hear them screaming in the night sometimes, and I found them both in the kitchen two nights ago, just sitting there staring at the wall. Shacklebolt has them running some small errands now and helping at the farm with the twins, Liza, and Ava – which is good. I think it’s helping. Everyone needs a break to relax, but sitting around will only make things worse, so this is a good mix. They’re going to be starting on some potions prep this week, and I’ve been working on trying to get them to open up and talk about what happened at the school. I managed to get them to tell me about the quills, which explains why Ginny was wearing nothing but long-sleeve shirts, because she didn’t want me to know about all the words.”
Arthur let out a heavy sigh, and she could see the pain behind his eyes.
“It’s been a slow process,” he said quietly. “But I think it’s helping. Though there’s always the occasional wrench thrown into the mix as the muggles would say.”
“What happened?” Hermione asked. She already knew the answer, because she had run into Ginny and Susan yesterday while checking Fred’s arm, but she watched Arthur let out a long sigh while she pretended that she had no clue what he was about to say.
“They were late coming to breakfast the other morning, and Molly found Susan sleeping in Ginny’s bed when she went to get them,” Arthur said. He ran his hand through his hair before glancing at her once more. “I’m just going to assume that you already knew about that – there was a bit of an explosion.”
Hermione nodded, feeling a pang of sympathy both for this man, who only wanted the best for everyone around him, and for Ginny and Susan, who were clearly struggling. She had already gotten a brief summary of what happened, but she had no doubt that Ginny had downplayed the severity of Mrs. Weasley’s fit. The woman had come around on her daughter’s relationship, but she now treated them like every other unmarried couple under her roof, and that meant separate bedrooms. Hermione knew that the girls were sleeping together every night. Ginny had told her about the silencing charm they used to hide the apparition crack, but no matter how careful they were, it was only ever a matter of time before this explosion happened.
“I know they aren’t kids anymore,” Arthur said quietly, and he looked exhausted as he stared distantly at the wall. “But Molly still worries about them, and so do I. I’m worried they’re moving too quickly, and I’m worried about them becoming codependent. Just because they can’t get each other pregnant doesn’t mean that I don’t worry about their safety and their future. They’re still so young – it’s hard not to be concerned.”
“You’re her father,” Hermione said quietly as she twisted her hands into the sleeves of her own long-sleeved shirt, which she used to hide her scars from Arthur just as Ginny did. “It would be more concerning if you weren’t concerned about them.”
Arthur smiled, a small, sharp breath leaving his lungs as he exhaled in amusement.
“I suppose that’s true,” he murmured.
“That said,” Hermione continued, and Arthur turned to look up at her. “You’re right. They aren’t kids anymore. But Susan sleeping in Ginny’s bed isn’t about anything physical – they just can’t sleep without one another. They probably have nightmares, and those are hard to handle alone. They relied on each other to get through the last year at Hogwarts – this is no different. They’re just doing what they know works for them. She’s not trying to rebel or sneak around. Their relationship isn’t a fling, Arthur. They didn’t get together because of the war, just as they’re not moving too quickly because of it either. They’re together because they love each other, and they loved each other before things got bad – I know they’re young, but they really are good for each other.”
“I know,” Arthur said softly, and his eyes creased in sadness. “And Molly knows that too, even though it doesn’t always look like it. She can just be a bit reserved with certain things – but in this case, she just needs to find a way to deal with it because I’m not going to pitch a fit over it or give them an ultimatum when they slept in the same bed for nearly the whole previous school term.”
“She didn’t mention that she told you that,” Hermione said, glancing down at Arthur as he let out a sigh.
“She said it to get Molly worked up,” Arthur said, meeting her gaze once more before he shook his head and let out a breath. “But even if she didn’t, I’m not stupid. I might be old, but I was a student their age once. I’m well aware that you can’t stop kids from experimenting – that’s why Hogwarts takes the approach of providing protection instead of preaching for abstinence because that will never happen. Getting mad about it doesn’t make any sense, especially because I know how serious they are about each other.”
Arthur ran his hand through his hair once more. He looked older. He looked tired. He looked the epitome of a father struggling to deal with his ageing children and their desire to be treated like adults. He dropped his hand back to his side, then sat back in his seat as his face grew serious.
“But I don’t want them moving out right now while the world is still a mess,” he said slowly, and she could see the sincerity in his gaze. “I want them to finish school. I want them to figure out what they want to do with their lives and who they want to become. I don’t want them worrying about where they’ll live or needing to get a job. They deserve to get married when and how they want – it should be a celebration of their relationship, and it should be exactly how they always imagined it. Not just a rushed trip to the Ministry where they sign papers simply to prove their point. I already know their relationship is valid, and so does Molly. She just needs to come to terms with everything and accept that Ginny has grown up.
“It’s just hard,” Arthur said quietly, and she felt her blunted emotions roll within her chest as she watched her surrogate father completely open up. “It’s hard to see your kids grow up and become adults. It’s even harder to watch that happen during a war and harder still to watch them suffer in the aftermath. It’s much easier to revert back to being overprotective and trying to pretend as if nothing has changed.”
She knew his words were about more than just Susan and Ginny. It was about everything and about the loss of his three children. Hermione knew he was struggling with it, and Mrs. Weasley was too. Arthur seemed to deal with it by relentlessly pushing forward, giving extra care and attention to his remaining family while desperately trying to keep them all together and limit the tension that had always encased the Burrow. Mrs. Weasley was handling it a bit differently. She had become more worried and anxious – although slightly less overbearing as she tried to protect what remained of her family and ensure that everyone was happy, fed, and healthy. She didn’t always know when to stop when it came to pestering people about their wellbeing, but as annoying as it was, Hermione could hardly fault the woman.
She cared. She cared so much it was unbearable for her, and she was desperate to protect her family and friends. She would stay up late into the night making food and prepping ingredients. She worked herself to the bone just as Arthur did, and she was always dropping off more food and supplies than she could spare to other people. But coming back home to the Burrow after being independent for so long under the terror of the Carrows hadn’t been easy for Ginny and Susan, and they had yet to sort out a dynamic that worked in the Burrow.
She watched Arthur let out a deep sigh, then his gaze traced over her face. She could see the sadness shining behind it as his voice dropped low.
“But pretending that nothing has changed won’t get us anywhere,” Arthur said quietly. “Because everything has changed, and we all need to accept that. But just because it’s different doesn’t mean that it’s bad. It doesn’t mean that what we have now is anything less than what we had before. It’s just different – but that’s okay. Besides, when it comes to Ginny and Susan… you can tell just by watching them.”
“That they belong together,” Hermione offered when Arthur had gone quiet.
“Yes.” He nodded, and a genuine smile tugged at his lips. “Just like you and Harry.”
She felt her throat constrict as she swallowed hard. She had always known that Arthur supported her and Harry, but this was the first time he had ever said something so blatant, and it made her heart ache.
“I just wish that you all could have been kids longer,” Arthur said softly. “You became adults much too young.”
-x-x-
May 22, 1998
Friday, Grimmauld Place, 12:15 pm
“You held onto Nagini?”
“Yes.”
“Like physically – you physically held onto Nagini to keep her still so Neville could cut off her head?”
“Yes, Harry,” Ginny said again for the third time as she sat in a chair at the kitchen table and watched him with amusement. “You really weren’t joking about being out of the loop. Hasn’t Hermione told you everything that happened?”
“Actually, I didn’t know that either,” Hermione said, picking up her teacup to take a drink. “And to be fair to Harry, he’s only awake for about four or five hours a day right now–”
“Not by choice,” Harry interjected, but Hermione continued.
“So there’s still some stuff we still haven’t gone over yet,” Hermione said. “But I did give him a summary.”
The girls had been over for nearly an hour. Harry had been positively ecstatic to see them, and he had hugged each of them tight before hugging Arthur. They had all settled in for tea, talking about nothing and everything until Arthur discretely left to ‘run an errand,’ leaving the four of them alone at the table. Hermione knew it was because he wanted them to have a chance to talk without a parental figure in the room, and the gesture had been appreciated. Nasir was out, that or he was hiding upstairs and giving them space as well. Truth be told, she wasn’t sure where the man was, and after nearly jumping out of her skin when Arthur had knocked on the front door, she made a mental note to talk to Harry about the wards.
She wanted to modify them.
She had already done some research and knew it was possible – they could set the wards so that it notified them of the arrival of guests, and they could key the wards to each person’s biology so they knew who was there. It was also possible to change the internal wards so she would know where Harry and Nasir were inside the house so they could find each other more easily in an emergency.
There were five floors in this house, and already she was finding it a nuisance going up and down the stairs trying to locate who or what she wanted, and half the people in the house either couldn’t or could hardly move around. She couldn’t imagine how much of a pain it would be once Harry was fully mobile and Snape was awake – which would be soon. With a fully functional heart, his injuries had healed more quickly, allowing him to recover quite significantly over the last few days, and so Nasir had removed him from his coma. Once he was awake, he would be one more person potentially wandering around Grimmauld Place that she would want to keep tabs on. She was used to their single-floor open tent that didn’t have multiple rooms and hallways for people to come out of and startle her.
It would take some work to implement the changes she had in mind, but it was possible. She just needed to wait another few days while Harry recovered as he would need to be the one to make the adjustments and give her ward permissions. Until then, she had been doing what she could to try and settle her mind. To help manage her anxiety with being in this massive house, she had asked people to message her tag before knocking on the door. That had helped, among other little things like closing unused rooms and locking the doors.
Yet despite her general paranoia, she found she was surprisingly calm during their visit. Maybe it was because she was sitting close to Harry’s side, thighs touching beneath the table, and his hand on her leg. Or maybe it was because their guests, Ginny and Susan, were so calm and understanding. Or, maybe it was a testament to just how effective Arthur was at repairing her humanity. She wasn’t sure, but either way, she was genuinely enjoying this visit. And even though it hurt to be around people and talking was exhausting, it was a good kind of pain.
Which gave her hope that maybe someday she would be able to tolerate more.
“So, what are you two going to do going forward?” Susan asked, grabbing a biscuit from the plate on the table after they had moved away from talking about the Battle. It wasn’t an easy topic to discuss, and they had danced around it lightly; then again, nothing seemed to be an easy topic anymore. “Are you going to go back to school when it reopens?”
“I don’t know,” Harry said slowly, leaning forward to rest his elbow on the table. His hand gripped Hermione’s thigh more tightly, and she could tell by his vitals that he was getting tired, even though he was fighting against it. She could hear the strain in his voice as his still damaged lungs struggled to manage so much talking. “I’m not sure yet, but I do want to complete my NEWTs.”
“You could probably already pass them,” Ginny said, smiling at Harry before her gaze shifted to Hermione. “And you definitely could.”
“Maybe,” Hermione said slowly, and the redhead rolled her eyes, though it was friendly and not at all out of annoyance. “I was going to wait until things calm down a bit to decide. What about you – are you both going to go back? Right now, Shacklebolt and McGonagall are making plans for a January reopening.”
“Which is insane to think about,” Ginny muttered, and Susan nodded as Hermione took a small bite of a biscuit. “It’s going to take a lot of work to fix the damage.”
Hermione felt her stomach roll, and she dropped her eyes to the table as nauseating discomfort slid under her skin. She had yet to go back to the school grounds herself directly, but she knew the damage was extensive from talking to Nasir. And she knew that a large majority of the most difficult to repair damage was her fault. Suddenly the biscuit in her mouth tasted like sand, and she wasn’t sure that she would be able to swallow it.
“But I think we can do it,” Susan said, reaching for a biscuit as Hermione discreetly vanished the clump within her mouth. “Shacklebolt was talking about establishing some volunteer teams – there are a lot of people offering to help.”
“Yeah, they offer now that the war is over,” Ginny said bitterly.
Hermione glanced up to see the girl shake her head and felt her own shoulders sag. Ginny wasn’t wrong. The influx of support and people volunteering to help in the post-war clean-up was shocking, and while it was greatly needed and appreciated, it was also incredibly insulting, upsetting, and frankly put – disgusting. But she tried not to think about that as she took a drink of her tea to wash away the sandy biscuit remains.
“I think I would like to go back,” Susan said, bringing the conversation back around to Hermione’s question.
“Really?” Hermione asked, surprised by her answer.
“Yeah.” Susan nodded, a small smile touching her lips. “I want to at least try the half-term McGonagall is planning from January to June. If I can manage it, I’ll be done and can graduate and – I don’t want my last memories of that place to be the war.”
“I think I’m going to try going back, too,” Ginny said slowly, but she seemed less set on the idea. “Dad wants us to finish school – which, obviously, I will, but I’m not sure that living at home and trying to complete remote studies is really for me. It gets – a bit tense at times. I do better with my mum if I’m not living with her, and as Susan said, I don’t want the Battle to be the last thing I did there. I figured I might as well try, and if it goes poorly, dad said we can come back home any time.”
“I think that’s a great idea,” Harry said softly, and Hermione could see him fighting against the ache in his chest. He grimaced as he shifted, and Hermione threaded her silver fingers through his. “If it doesn’t work out, I’m sure that Shacklebolt will help to set up some remedial courses or organize more private NEWT sessions.”
“Exactly,” Ginny said, smiling at him. Her eyes skimmed over Harry, and Hermione could see the sadness behind them as she shifted in her seat. “We should probably head out, though. You look ready to collapse.”
“Really, I’m fine,” Harry said, but Ginny and Susan both scoffed at his words.
“You’re a terrible liar,” Ginny replied, standing up from the table first to help Susan get to her feet. The girl grimaced as she put weight on her temporary prosthetic. “Besides, I’m sure my dad will be here any–”
There was a knock on the front door, and Susan smiled.
“I’ll get it,” Hermione said, squeezing Harry’s hand once before pushing back her chair.
Sure enough, Arthur Weasley was standing just out the door. She let him into the house, her heart aching in her chest as she watched their guests say goodbye to Harry, who, in exhausted defeat, remained seated at the table throughout the exchange. Then she led them to the door, saying her own goodbyes and confirming that she would see them Sunday for the Order meeting before she made her way back to the kitchen.
“Harry?” Hermione said softly as she stepped toward the table.
His eyes were closed. His head was propped up on his hand, and his shoulders were slumped. He looked like he was asleep, but she knew from his heart rate that he wasn’t.
“I’m so tired of being tired,” Harry said quietly, and Hermione felt her body still. “I’m so tired of being this pathetic – my mind is perfectly awake. I have so much that I want to do, and I’m so pent up, but my body won’t let me do anything about it.”
“I know,” she said gently, moving to take her seat next to him once more. He had been handling his injuries well so far, and this was the first time that he had outwardly expressed any frustration over his body. She suspected these words had been circling his head for a while, and he’d just been fighting to keep them in. “It won’t be like this forever, though, Harry. Your lungs should be fully healed in the next two weeks, and things will get much easier after that. In fact, they will progress rather quickly because we’ll need to get you up and moving so your body can adapt to your new muscles and skin.”
“I know,” Harry said, but his voice sounded flat. He forced an eye open and looked at her sadly. “I just hate it. I hate sleeping all day. I hate sitting around here being useless. I feel like I’m wasting time and falling behind. I hate that I can’t go with you to run errands or help you with your work. I hate that my lungs hurt, that my chest aches, and that everything in my body feels so weird. I hate it. I just fucking hate it so much.”
“I know,” she murmured, shifting closer and taking his hand. He squeezed it, but his grip was weak.
“I’m sorry,” Harry said quietly, and her brow furrowed in confusion.
“What for?”
“For everything,” Harry murmured, his tired eyes searching over her face. “For all of this – for complaining about being injured when you’re working yourself to the bone. When your injuries were so much worse – you’ve been through so much more than me.”
“Harry,” Hermione said softly, leaning toward him and placing a kiss on his temple. “Your injuries were more severe – we had to rebuild your entire chest. That said, it’s not a competition. We’ve both been through hell. Everyone has, and I know it’s frustrating sitting here feeling useless, but I promise you, that will change. I promise you; you will get better.”
“I know,” he breathed, leaning his forehead against hers and letting out a deep sigh. “I’m just tired. It’s frustrating, and as much as seeing them is great, it just makes me feel worse.”
Hermione’s face faltered, and the rune on her chest grew heavier as she squeezed his hand tight. She understood how he felt. It was the same way she felt after the werewolf attack, how she had felt after her arm was destroyed and her rune was carved into her chest. It hurt, and it sucked – there was no other way to word it. Being limited by your body was one of the worst things to experience, and for Harry, it was just that much worse because he was so used to being involved in everything and was incredibly active.
“I know,” Hermione whispered, tracing her thumb over the back of his hand.
She stared at him for a moment, taking in his piercing green eyes, the scar that now ran down his jaw and the stubble that had been growing in across it. His hair was getting long again, but he had yet to ask her to cut it.
“Come to bed with me,” she said finally, whispering the words as she kissed him. “You’ll feel better after you’ve gotten some rest.”
“Alright,” he breathed, admitting to defeat. He cracked both eyes open again, looking at her once more. “Thank you for putting up with me – even if I am being a big baby about this.”
“You’re not being a big baby,” Hermione said, shifting to help him stand from his seat. “You’re just being you, anxious to help and pissed off that you can’t. Which I’m glad – I’m glad that you’re still you after everything that’s happened.”
“And I’m glad you’re still you,” he echoed, though his words made her heart clench as she looped his arm over her shoulder, and they made their way out into the hall.
“Am I, though?” she whispered, and she could feel his gaze on her temple. “Because I don’t feel the same anymore. I feel like a part of me was ripped out and crushed to dust. I think the same, mostly – but I don’t feel the same anymore.”
“You’re still you,” Harry said, and his voice sounded so sure and so confident. “None of us are the same after everything that happened, Hermione – but you’re still you.”
They made their way up the stairs in silence. Then she paused on the first floor to look at him, and she could see the love radiating from his eyes. But beneath that, there was something sad.
“I know your emotions aren’t the same anymore,” Harry said quietly, and Hermione stilled.
She had carefully avoided addressing her own issues for the last few days because she didn’t want him to worry while he was still healing. She hadn’t tried to hide it, and she had never lied to him or bent the truth when they spoke. They had promised to never do that again, but she hadn’t voluntarily brought up her emotional damage either. Though, it appeared that Harry had been thinking about it regardless of her trying not to make it a concern.
“I know they’re blunted. I know you’re struggling. I know you don’t feel very much anymore, and I know that seeing everyone is hard on you. Just like I know you try to hide it, you force yourself to smile, and you try to avoid bringing it up because you don’t want me or Arthur to worry about you,” Harry said gently, and Hermione could only swallow. “I know I’ll never fully understand just how difficult that is. I get it, sort of, but for me, the damage isn’t quite so bad. I can tell that it’s heavy, Hermione – I catch glimpses of it through the bond, and I know it’s unbearable. I can’t even imagine what it’s like to carry the weight that you bear on your chest, but I promise you, you are definitely still you. You still care. You still fight. You haven’t been swallowed up by the darkness in your mind, and that will never happen because you won’t let it – because that’s who you are. But you’re not alone. I won’t let it happen either, and I’m going to do everything I can to help you carry that weight. You’re still the most incredible person I have ever met, and you’re still the person that I want to spend the rest of my life with.”
Hermione couldn’t breathe. She could feel her eyes starting to sting as she looked at Harry and his eyes creased with emotion.
“I love you exactly the way you are, Hermione,” he said, and she felt a single tear trail down her face. “And I will continue to love you even as you change.”
She stared at him, her heart thudding painfully in her chest as she struggled to understand how she had ever gotten so lucky.
“I love you, Harry,” she whispered, gripping his waist tight. “And I will love you always.”
He smiled at her, and she smiled at him. She let out a ragged breath, closing her eyes for a moment before they resumed their climb, and she helped him up the second flight of stairs. She waited for him outside the bathroom, then helped him to their room. Her heart hurt, but it was another good hurt, and she found herself leaning into it as she helped him into bed.
“What are your thoughts on school?” Harry asked quietly as she pulled the blankets up over his legs. “We haven’t had the chance to talk about it since before the Battle, but I’ve been thinking about it.”
“So have I.” Hermione nodded, summoning a bottle of dreamless sleeping draught from the nightstand.
“Tell me,” Harry said as he raised his arm to wrap it around her shoulder as she sat down and curled into his side.
“You’re supposed to be going to sleep,” Hermione said softly, turning to look at him and leaning in close. “I know you’re exhausted. You’ve had a long day today.”
“Then just add another drop to the dosage, and I’ll sleep in later,” Harry said, closing his eyes as he let out a sigh. “I want to talk about it so I can think about it while I sleep.”
“You can’t do that; that’s the whole point of the potion,” Hermione said, shaking her head as a small laugh left her lips.
“Then just humour me.” He cracked open an eye to look at her and pulled her closer. “Please.”
“Alright, but you’re sleeping in tonight then and having a later dinner,” Hermione conceded as she sent the potion back to the nightstand and leaned comfortably into his side.
“Fine by me,” Harry breathed, a small smile tugging at his lips as he relaxed by her side. “So, what do you want to do?”
“Well,” Hermione started, her voice quiet as she wondered where to begin. “I don’t think I want to go back. I understand what Ginny and Susan are saying – how they don’t want their final memories of the castle to be a twisted mess of terror – but… I just don’t feel the same way.”
She turned to look at Harry, and his tired eyes were locked to her face, but he didn’t say anything as she spoke. Instead, he waited for her to continue, clearly wanting her to say how she felt without his opinion thrown into the mix.
“I don’t think I could handle going back,” Hermione continued, forcing herself to meet his gaze as she spoke the next words. “I have nightmares about the fire, Harry. I – I don’t think that I could handle going to school there and seeing those grounds every day. I can’t live in a tower with other students, and I can’t even stomach the idea of being cooped up in a classroom. But I do want to finish my NEWTs and graduate. I saw Shacklebolt this morning, he stopped by to drop something off to Nasir, and I spoke to him.”
“What did he say,” Harry prompted gently.
“He didn’t really say anything at first,” Hermione said quietly as she thought back to their conversation. She smiled, a small breath leaving her lips. “I think he’s a bit worried about influencing us – he seems committed to making sure that we get to do what we want and that no one pressures us into anything. I’m pretty sure that if we told him we wanted to disappear and become hermits in the mountains somewhere, he would make that happen, and he wouldn’t question it. That said, it’s also clear that he wants to work with us. He’s just been patiently waiting for you to heal, and he’s been so busy with everything going on he hasn’t brought it up again. But after seeing him lead – watching the way that he’s handling this mess and bringing people together – I want to follow him.”
She turned to look at Harry and felt something tug across her chest.
“I don’t think I can ever be in the spotlight. It was never for me in the first place, and it’s definitely not something that I can handle now. I – I don’t have the patience for it. I can’t talk to that many people. I can’t deal with nuanced politics, and I absolutely cannot stomach the thought of being so visible all the time and facing so much scrutiny,” Hermione said quietly. “But I also don’t want to fade away in the background. I don’t actually want to be a mountain hermit, even though the idea is tempting, and I don’t want to stop. Not after everything that we gave. Not after fighting so hard to get here and losing so much. I don’t want the wrong people stepping in and using this as an opportunity to push their agendas or create another terrible future. We need the right person to lead us, and I genuinely think that Shacklebolt is the right person.
“I want to do everything that we talked about,” Hermione said, looking at Harry as the warmth in her chest doubled.
It was a feeling that had been slowly returning over the last few days despite her exhaustion. It was the burning desire to take the world between her hands and mould it into something better. She had initially thought that the feeling might never truly come back because the final Battle had ruined her, scarred her, damaged her, beaten her into submission and made her crave death at more than one point. She thought it would only ever be a dull flicker in her mind, a whisper, like her emotions.
But she was wrong.
Completely wrong.
The feeling was returning, and if anything, it only burned more dangerously in her chest than ever before as she looked at the wreckage around them and wanted nothing more than to repair it and ensure that it never happened again.
“I want to do everything and more,” Hermione said as she felt the fire in her chest burn. “And Shacklebolt seems to want to do those things too. He’s a natural leader. He has good ideas. He wants to rip out the existing structure of the Ministry and completely rebuild it from the ground up, and I want to help him do that. I know I can help him do that. And if we work with him instead of on our own, not only will we have a better shot at being successful, we’ll also get to focus on doing the work instead of dealing with the politics. Shacklebolt will shield us from that, and he has already promised me that we won’t be bombarded by the media. He won’t let them harass us, and he won’t ask us to testify in any war trials, so we won’t get wrapped up in any of the proceedings unless we volunteer. I think he genuinely wants us to be safe and happy, Harry. I trust him. And I want to help him.”
“That sounds amazing,” Harry sighed, and he looked visibly relieved by her words. “I am so fucking tired of being in the middle of this. I don’t want to be a focal point anymore. No more prophecies and no more bullshit. I just want to help fix this mess and make this world safer.”
“Exactly.” Hermione smiled at him, and the fire in her chest surged. “Me too – but someone has to take the lead and deal with the parts we don’t want to handle. So if Shacklebolt is willing to step up and pave the way, then I will fight by his side and make it happen.”
“And what about your NEWTs?” Harry asked, his knowing eyes crinkling with warmth. “You want to skip those?”
“Of course not,” Hermione snorted, knowing that he already knew she would never take a free pass. “I told Shacklebolt this morning that I was interested in his offer from before the final Battle, but that I wanted to know more about his plans and talk to you before making any decisions. He said he would come by this weekend to talk to us both. I was going to tell you tonight – but my plan was to ask him about setting up a condensed NEWT session. I was looking into it, and it’s possible. I’m not sure that anyone has ever done all of them at once before. Usually they’re for special circumstances – like make-up exams in case a student gets critically ill – but I’m sure it wouldn’t be a problem. We could come up with a plan and maybe write them in October. I know some people will think it’s stupid, but I want to earn my NEWTs. I’m not going to take a free pass. I think that sends the wrong message.”
Harry nodded, his fingers trailing along her arms as she gripped his opposite hand.
“What about you, Harry?” Hermione asked him, turning to look at his tired green eyes once more. “What do you want?”
“I want to get better,” Harry said quietly, squeezing her hand once as his lips twisted into a sad smile. “Then I want to write my NEWTs with you in October and help Shacklebolt change the world. We can’t do this alone; that would also send the wrong message. We need a team – a group of people willing to do whatever it takes to sort this mess out, and I agree with you. I think that Shacklebolt is the one to lead it. I want to help him, and if it doesn’t go well and we change our minds, then we can deal with that then. But for now, I think it’s our best bet.”
“I agree,” Hermione said, then her lips twisted into a smile. “So much for taking time off.”
“Speak for yourself,” Harry sighed, rolling his eyes. “I’m taking tons of time off. Eighty percent of my day is time off – I’m bored with it already.”
“I know.” Hermione smiled wider, then leaned in to kiss his temple.
He turned his head and caught her lips, kissing her gently as his hand traced her skin.
“When I’m finally healed enough, you’re taking a day off,” Harry said quietly, and a shiver ran up her spine. “And we’re not leaving this bed.”
“Alright,” Hermione agreed, the weight on her chest getting lighter as she kissed him once more and nearly groaned at the feel of his lips. “Deal.”
-x-x-
She stayed with him until he fell asleep under his potion, then she sat there a little longer watching his motionless face as she traced the scars on his hand with her thumb. He had so many of them now. His arms were covered in lichtenberg patterns from casting his black lightning in the final blow, and some of them were scattered across his chest and legs. There was a thin scar that ran down his jaw. She had no idea what caused it, but it had healed into a smooth silver line.
She sighed.
She had stared at his new scars for so long over the last few weeks that she could hardly remember what his body looked like without them. The one on his chest extended all the way from his lower abdomen to mid sternum, trickling over his sides towards his back. The healed skin was silver like her arm, but it was laced with thin white lines and a single red patch of scar tissue in the center – almost like a starburst.
The skin was smooth, much like how hers now was, and above it sat the black triquetra overlaid by a red Vegvísir rune symbol, which had been burned into his skin with small fissure scars around it. It would remain forever like the mark on her own chest and neck, but he could learn to cover it with a masking charm if he wanted. She wasn’t sure if he would. Harry had never been overly concerned with his appearance, and he had accepted his scars after seeing himself in the mirror far faster than she had after being attacked last autumn. Maybe it was just his nature. Or maybe it was the fact that he had died twice and was no longer bothered by such worldly things.
He was himself, as she had said, but he was also different. He was calmer, except when he got frustrated about not being able to help. Otherwise, he seemed almost quietly pensive at times.
They had talked about his time in the In Between and how it had felt to be there. She knew that he hadn’t liked it. He had fought against it tooth and nail just as Nasir had said, but his time there did help him to understand just how blunted she was. He understood what it was like to not be able to properly feel the things that you knew you should. He knew how frustrating it was to not have your body react to match your thoughts.
His experience wasn’t exactly the same as what she faced now, and her emotions were not totally gone. But it was comparable enough that she knew Harry would always understand her struggle, and that helped to make her feel less alone in it.
She watched him for another long moment, absently counting each rise and fall of his chest until her alarm went off, and she forced herself to move. She kissed his forehead, making sure he was properly and perfectly covered up – fussing with the blankets for two whole minutes until she finally left his side and made her way downstairs to prepare for her second visitors of the day.
Fred and George Weasley.
They had debated where to do the operation, but ultimately settled on Grimmauld Place because there was no chance of them being interrupted. She made her way down the stairs in silence, pushing her thoughts aside and emptying her mind so she could focus on what she was about to do. She managed to get it nearly under control by the time she reached the main floor dining room that they had set up as a temporary potions lab. When she pushed the door open, she wasn’t surprised to find Nasir standing over a cauldron of blood replenisher, stirring it carefully counterclockwise.
She greeted him, and he greeted her, then she set to work on preparing a small table, chair and the potions that she would need before heading back into the kitchen to make tea. She brought Nasir a cup, then worked by his side in silence for nearly twenty minutes before the knock on the door sounded.
“Would you like to do the procedure alone?” Nasir asked, and she knew what he was really asking was if Fred would prefer him to be gone for this.
“I’m not sure,” Hermione said slowly, wiping her hands on a small towel and casting a cleaning spell. “I’ll ask at the door, and if he would rather it just be us, you’ll hear it.”
He nodded, and she knew that he would discretely vanish from sight if that was the case. She grabbed their empty teacups, sending them to the kitchen with a wave of her hand before moving to the main door. Pulling it open she found both Fred and George there as expected, but what she had not anticipated was seeing Liza.
“Liza?” Hermione asked, the confusion evident in her voice as the young witch grinned up at her. “How are you?”
“I’m doing well,” Liza said, walking inside as Fred ushered her ahead of him. “I came to learn if that’s okay? Fred said that I could – but – he also said that you had to say it was okay, too.”
Hermione arched a brow, lifting her head to look at Fred and George in disbelief.
“Is this appropriate?” Hermione asked hesitantly, moving out of the way so they could all come inside. “I’m not really sure that I’m the best judge of that given my life’s history. What did Fleur say?”
“Well,” Fred sighed, taking off his jacket and sliding it down his dead arm. “She was a bit hesitant at first, but given that Liza helped Ava treat a bunch of students and the majority of them were either limbless, bleeding out, or gushing puss – I guess she figured this was nothing in comparison.”
“I promise I won’t get sick,” Liza said firmly, her bright blue eyes shining with determination. “I only threw up twice the night of the Battle, but after that, I got over it, and it doesn’t bother me anymore. I want to be a healer when I grow up, and I want to start learning now because I want to learn everything.”
George smiled at the girl, closing the door behind them then turning back to arch a brow at Hermione. “It’s up to you. If you’re not comfortable with an audience, that’s fine. I’ll sit with her in the kitchen. We already tried to deter her, but – well – you know what she’s like because she’s exactly like you.”
“I promise I won’t get in the way,” Liza said, standing up taller as if she was trying to make herself look older. She was wearing one of Hermione’s old school sweaters and clutching a pen and notebook in her hand. “I brought my notebook. I’ll just watch from the side, and if I can’t manage it, I’ll close my eyes and raise my hand, and George will take me out of the room. You won’t even know I’m there.”
Hermione looked at the girl, her eyes tracing up and down her small form. Her black hair was tightly tied back in a ponytail. She had put in clips to keep the loose tendrils from falling in her face, and she was strictly business in every way. She looked older than she had a few weeks ago, and Hermione knew exactly why. She may not have fought in the war directly – but she was a part of it as much as anyone, and she’d played a critical role in their success.
She and Ava had taken over caring for some of the less injured students to help free up Madam Pomfrey. Anyone who could be apparated out by house-elves without winding up dead or worse off had been brought to the farmhouse where Ava and Liza worked to patch them up under Mr. Ollivander’s guidance. Apparently, less than twenty minutes into their work, Andromeda Tonks had shown up with two other allies to help. The witch had brought Teddy with her, putting him upstairs with Charlie and casting a Patronus to watch both children as she worked downstairs to help save lives.
Shacklebolt had given the woman access to the property before the Battle because he didn’t want Liza and Ava to be abandoned there alone if things went wrong. He had found them allies, both muggle and wizard, and he had taken steps to make sure that they would be taken care of if the world collapsed. Then, mid-fight, he had called in those resources to help them.
As a result, while Hermione was battling in the war with everyone else at the castle, Liza had stayed up the entire night tending to the wounded. She had cast diagnostic spells, which both she and Ava read out loud for the others. She handed out potions from her pack. She lifted the injured, shuffling them around to find space using her newly learned levitation charm. She bound wounds, wrapped broken limbs which Ava had set until Andromeda, Ollivander, or one of their other two allies could permanently heal the bone. She had shone her light so Ava could find a broken vein and stop a student from bleeding out. She had wiped up blood, vomit, and a mess of other things from the floor as they tried to stay on top of the injuries when more and more poured in.
When she didn’t know how to do something magically, she did it by hand. Then, she helped guide the students they had managed to heal enough to become useful and directed them around the old farmhouse just as competently as any of the others. Apparently, it had been quite the sight, a twelve-year-old girl who was barely able to use her magic was ordering fifth and sixth year students around – yelling at them to get more rags, showing them how to cast ferula, telling them which potions to summon when she ran out, and ordering them to get clean water when Andromeda called for it.
She even sent three sixth years to the barn to open a crate of supplies and get food and blankets. Then told them to start passing them out to some of the students. The only thing more impressive than Liza’s performance that night was the fact that the students had listened to her without question.
In fact, they had listened to all of them without question. They did as Ava asked when she asked it. They allowed the woman to stitch their smaller wounds closed while Andromeda tended to the more difficult problems magically. Andromeda had relied on both Ava and Liza to aid her several times that night, and then she sang their praises to Shacklebolt the following morning. In turn, he had told everyone in the Order, because it was the perfect example of how successful they could be when their two colliding worlds combined and worked together.
Hermione’s eyes circled back up to Liza’s face, and the girl held her gaze. She was so determined. So relentless. So eager to help and eager to learn, and George was right – she was exactly like Hermione had been at that age.
“I’m not sure it’s a good idea,” Hermione started, and she saw the girl’s shoulders drop. “For you to sit on the side.”
Liza’s eyes went wide at the words, and Hermione could see Fred grinning from the corner of her gaze.
“You won’t learn very much just by watching quietly,” Hermione continued, glancing up to look at Fred. “So long as Fred is okay with it, you’ll learn a lot more if you sit with me and I show you and explain to you what I’m doing.”
“Really?” Liza whispered, positively breathless as she turned back to look at Fred in question. “Is that okay?”
“Yeah, it’s fine,” Fred said, ruffling her hair with his only functional arm. “So long as you don’t get any ideas and start cutting arms off things.”
Liza’s face contorted into an indignant mess and her mouth fell open in shock as a strangled noise left her lips.
“I would never,” Liza breathed, clutching her notebook to her chest. “How could you say that?”
“It was a joke?” Fred shrugged, but he let out an exhausted sigh. “Cut me some slack. I’m losing my arm today, and I’m off my game.”
The girl’s eyes softened, and her brow creased. “I’m sorry, Fred.”
“Nah, it’s okay,” Fred said, ruffling her hair again before meeting Hermione’s gaze. “Yes, it’s okay. Losing the arm is bad enough, so if we can gain something from it – then I would rather that than have this exercise be nothing but a complete loss.”
“Alright.” Hermione nodded, but then she turned back to look at Liza once more. “Bad jokes aside – Fred isn’t entirely wrong. What I’m going to teach you is for your notebook and your notebook only. You are not to practice it or ever use it unless you are working with me, do you understand?”
“Yes.” Liza nodded firmly, turning back to look at Hermione seriously.
“You will not try these spells. Not on anything. Not even an inanimate object,” Hermione said, and the girl nodded once more. “This is strictly a lesson, and it will largely be in biology. If I find out that you did tinker with anything that I show you here today, we’re going to have a long conversation about it, and I’ll never teach you anything again. This is serious. Being a healer is serious. It is a professional career, and if you want to study it, then you need to be professional and ethical. You have to respect the power that information has.”
“I will,” Liza said firmly, standing straight once more. “I promise – I won’t ever use anything that you show me today.”
“Good.” Hermione nodded, then she gestured with her head over her shoulder. “Then let’s get started.”
They made their way down the hall toward the drawing room, and Fred confirmed that he did not care that Nasir was there for the operation. In fact, if anything, he seemed pleased to have the opportunity to talk to the man. He and George were working on something new, and they had been having some issues, so he thought Nasir might help.
In the end, the arrangement worked rather well.
Nasir stood nearby in the room, talking to Fred and George and answering their questions far more freely than he ever had before. It acted as a distraction while Hermione worked on his arm and showed Liza what she planned to do. She let the girl cast the diagnostic spell, then showed her the key veins and arteries of concern. She told her how to be mindful of nerve damage so that the blunt end of Fred’s arm wouldn’t ache in pain. Then she showed the girl how she was monitoring and checking the dead cell progression – and why that was critical for their success.
Cut too low, the curse would continue to creep through his arm, and they would need to do it again. Cut too high, and they wasted healthy limb that Fred could have maintained.
Liza took notes the entire time, carefully documenting each explanation that Hermione gave and asking questions every so often. She never got in the way. Each question was well-formed, and she even measured out the calming draught that Hermione gave to Fred before she stunned him and finally made the cut.
In the end, she amputated his arm six inches below the shoulder using her dagger, then healed the end with the counter curse. She explained to Liza that her dagger had the best results for minimal nerve damage and that without it, she would have had to rely on a cutting spell, dittany, and thorough post-cut inspection to make sure that he didn’t bleed out beneath the skin.
Once his arm was fully healed, she took a few tissue samples from the dead limb for further study, then vanished the remains. Then she revived him, lowered his heart rate, allowed Liza to determine his blood replenisher amount, and cleaned up the mess.
The whole procedure took less than an hour, and even though it broke her heart to do it, the smile on Fred’s face when he looked down at his blunted arm – no longer a limp, dangly, mess of black, shrivelled tissue – made the whole process worth it.
Warning:
This chapter contains: excessive anger and explicit language, as well as suicidal thoughts.
-x-x-
Note: I know that some of you are not fans of the Snape POV chapters, but this chapter includes critical plot information, so skipping it will leave many things unanswered.
-x-x-
there will be moments when
you will bloom fully and then
wilt, only to bloom again.
if we can learn anything from
flowers it is that resilience is born
even when we feel like we are
dying.
(Alex Elle, Rebirth)
May 23, 1998
Saturday, Grimmauld Place, 2:27 pm
The room was dimly lit. Soft rays of light from a misty day shone through his threadbare bedroom curtains. He was sitting on the floor, leaning back against his bed, reading a book – an activity that he not only loved, but also one that he could be found doing quite regularly. He turned the page, expecting to find the well-known text he had memorized ages ago only to find a picture. The image changed as he stared at it, morphing through different scenes from his life. They were disjointed and random, not making any sense at all.
This isn’t right.
He stared at the book in confusion, turning the page expecting to see the next set of text, only to see more pictures. He only had so many books. No one touched them because his father had no interest in them, and no one ever came over to his house, let alone in his room. He would rather die than allow his only friend, Lily, to visit him in his home. He could just imagine how that would go and the look on her face when she saw their sparse, worn furniture and lack of anything ‘normal’ that most homes with children would have.
He hadn’t noticed it until he got older, met her, and went to her home. He had always known that he was poor. He had just never realized how much he didn’t have because, well, because he’d never had it, so how could he have possibly known what was missing. He’d seen sweets and treats and things in the shops during his youth, but his mother’s quiet and clipped reply of ‘it’s too expensive’ had only needed to be uttered a few times for him to learn that he was never going to get them. He had just assumed that when she said they were too expensive, it meant that they were too expensive for everyone.
He was wrong.
Apparently, lots of other children got those things. Thinking about it now, he didn’t really regret that aspect of his life. Growing up with less had made him appreciate what little he did have, and it had prevented him from becoming a vain peacock like most men from money seemed to be. Lucius Malfoy came to mind. The man put too much stock in appearance and material items and far too little in his own skills, capabilities, and hard work. Snape, having nothing of value and all the time in the world as a small child – because he’d had no friends – had spent a lot of time learning how to occupy his mind. He’d learned how to think, which was not something many witches or wizards knew how to do.
He snorted in wry amusement.
Apparently, despite his hatred towards his father, he did have one thing to thank the man for. His ability to problem solve and work with his hands. Tobias Snape had not liked magic, to put it lightly, and as a result, Snape had learned how to do things by hand and how to solve problems using his head and not his magic. Funny enough, that skill had given him an advantage over the other kids in school and helped put him at the top of his classes. Not that that did him any favours from the social perspective of a typical student, but Snape had never been a typical student. Nor had he been a typical person in any shape of the word.
He watched the memories flick by. They seemed to span across decades, and they were all colliding in the wrong order. His head hurt. He frowned, then glanced up at the room again, and his brow furrowed in confusion.
“Why the fuck am I in my childhood bedroom?”
The second he said the words, the walls started to melt. There was no heat. No smoke. No fire. Yet they melted like wax, bending and morphing as the pain in his head grew worse. He gritted his teeth, dropping the book to the floor with a thump and staggering to his feet. An agonizing pain was starting to radiate from his neck.
It hurt.
A lot.
Not as bad as the rune carving had hurt, but this was a close and unpleasant second. He groaned, wondering how the hell his mind could feel so befuddled and yet so coherent at the same time. It didn’t make any sense. Then again, none of this made any sense. The walls continued to melt around him, and dull streams of light started to peek through the cracks in the walls. He could hear birds chirping. A soft breeze ghosted across his face. He could feel warmth encasing his body like he was bundled up in a cocoon. It felt calm and reassuring – yet that did absolutely nothing to calm or reassure him.
There was something pulsing in his veins.
Something that didn’t belong there.
It was warm, pleasant, light – nothing at all like anything that he knew. He grimaced, trying to move his hand to block out the light that was shining in his eyes. The fog outside was starting to clear, and the rays were getting brighter. His eyes dropped to the book on the ground, and they widened with horror as he saw that the floor was melting too, and his feet were sinking into the wood.
He tried to move his legs, but they were too heavy.
He tried to inhale as suddenly his chest grew tight, but he wasn’t sure that he remembered how to breathe. He could recite the ingredients required for a draught of the living peace. He could have brewed his strength potion with his eyes closed, recalled every book on his bookshelf and exactly the best place to harvest snakeweed, yet the simple task of breathing escaped him. Come to think of it; he couldn’t remember how to blink either – or wait, were his eyes even open?
Maybe they were closed, and he couldn’t remember how to open them,
He didn’t know.
He could feel panic building in his chest as he struggled to make sense of the melting world around him as memories and bits of information rushed into his head. He could hear a storm raging in the back of his mind. It was dark. It was painful. Something was piercing his neck, poisoning his body, and tearing him to shreds. He had to get out. He had to get out, or he would surely die here – which didn’t make any sense because he should already be dead.
He heard his mother call his name.
Then Lily’s voice echoed in his head.
He tried to turn to look at them, but his body wouldn’t move.
His vision flickered, fading in and out like the ebb and flow of water as the warmth around his body became more prominent. Everything hurt. Dear god and Merlin, why did everything hurt so fucking bad? Wasn’t death supposed to be peaceful? Had he not suffered enough?
Probably not.
He deserved this, he was sure.
The pain in his neck tripled, and he groaned out once more, forcing his arm to move as he tried to pull the snake fangs from his chest. Something collided with his body; he felt it – there was another voice. Something was moving. His body was shifting. Memories swirled like a hurricane, each piece rapidly falling into place with a heavy thunk within his mind. Malfoy Manor. Hogwarts. Losing part of his soul. The hillside. A fire that had terrified him to his core. Hordes of Inferi. The Dark Lord calling him loyal. The painful burn of Nagini’s bite. He was dying. Dying before he could do his job, and it cut through his heart like a knife.
He could see Potter through the crack in the melting wall.
The stupid boy had to know.
He had to know the truth so he could end this fight, and he had to do it quickly before everyone here died. The Dark Lord wouldn’t stop. The Dark Lord never stopped.
He felt sick.
This was his fault.
He reached for the boy, trying to grab onto his jacket as the waxy walls around him shone brightly in a vivid array of colours. Everything was rushing in. Suddenly he was staring into brown eyes as the blood drained from his body and a painful groan split from his lips.
“Woah, woah, woah–”
Someone was touching his arm.
Why the FUCK was someone touching his arm?! He hated being touched.
He yanked the limb away as his eyes shot wide, and he inhaled sharply, sounding ragged and broken like he had not breathed in years. His hand flew up, clutching at his chest as it ached in pain. It was bright. Way too bright. He blinked rapidly, trying to clear the haze and focus on his surroundings. Light was streaming in from a window. Clean white lace curtains were blowing in the breeze.
“Just breathe – you’re safe–”
He flinched as someone touched his arm again and turned so rapidly toward the voice that he gagged and nearly threw up.
“Snape, you have to slow down–”
His eyes latched to the petite frame standing by his side. His gaze rapidly travelled up – up and up until his eyes found familiar brown ones – and then his body seized as his mind crumpled in confusion.
“Granger?”
That could not possibly be his voice. It couldn’t. What the hell had she done to him? Sewn together fragmented pieces of vocal cords then dropped those in acid? It was deeper. Rougher. It cut out in random places and sounded like he had smoked ten packs a day for eighty years.
“Good, you remember me,” the witch said, and Snape’s brow only furrowed further as he stared at her bewildered.
“Of course I remember you,” he sneered, though it didn’t really sound like a sneer. It was much too weak and lacked his usual inflection. He grimaced in pain, the sensation shooting through his neck and chest like little burning daggers and the warmth under his skin itched uncomfortably. “What the fuck is going on?”
“The war is over,” Granger said quietly, putting something behind his back before sitting down on a chair beside his bed. “I – I don’t know how much you remember, but you nearly died in the Shrieking Shack. I was able to save you, though. You’re at Grimmauld Place right now.”
He stiffened.
He could feel his pulse starting to quicken, and it felt funny in his chest. It was too smooth. Too functional. It beat much too readily and much too steadily. Yet that was not what his mind was focused on right now. Instead, his mind had latched onto two things that Granger had said, and suddenly, he felt an old familiar flicker of rage ignite in his chest. He could see her casting two different spells from the corner of his gaze as he sat there frozen. One was a diagnostic, the other was used to confirm that minds and memories had properly reconnected after a coma, and that realization only made the tiny flame in his chest burn hotter.
“You what?” Snape rasped, his head slowly turning to look at the girl as she rapidly checked over the information floating in the air above his shoulder.
She stilled, her gaze dropping back down to meet his. She stared at him for a moment, seeming to hesitate before she reluctantly said it once more.
“I was able to save you,” she repeated, but this time the words were less sure. She almost looked like she wished she could take them back and rephrase them. Perhaps remove that ‘s’ word at the end.
But it was too late for that.
“Save me,” Snape whispered, his eyes growing dark as the fire in his chest churned and his body started to tremble. She seemed to sense an impending explosion because she opened her mouth to speak, but she wasn’t fast enough. “Save me – you think you SAVED me? Did it ever occur to you that I didn’t want to be saved? I asked you to let me die, Granger! Why the fuck would you try to save me!?”
“We needed you,” she said quickly, her face remaining calm despite his shouted words as she quickly cancelled the spell she had used to check his mind. He’d already glanced at it, he knew his mind was fine even if it was a bit hazy, but she left the diagnostic floating in the air as she met his gaze. “We didn’t know what was in those memories – we had questions and we needed to talk to you. I kept you alive because you were too valuable to let die. We didn’t know what we were dealing with.”
Snape blinked his eyes, everything around them coming clearly into focus as he glared at the girl and struggled to breathe. It hurt to sit up. It hurt to speak. Every muscle in his body ached with pain, but he ignored it. He could remember. He could remember it all, and it hurt worse than any of the physical pain in his body.
“That wasn’t your decision to make,” Snape whispered, the tone coming out deadly even though his voice was a mess. “I asked you to let me die.”
“And I just told you that I couldn’t do that,” Granger said stiffly. “We couldn’t let you go before we knew what was in those memories. I didn’t have time to wait to hear back from Harry. I couldn’t stay there with you – I had to get back to the fight, and I didn’t have a chance to sort through everything until after. By the time everything was over, and Voldemort died, we knew what you had done. We knew that you had helped, and so did Shacklebolt, because Phineas told him everything under McGonagall’s permission as Deputy Headmaster.”
Those words stirred a wave of nausea in his gut, but he pushed it down, focusing on the burning anger in his chest.
“It wasn’t your decision to make, Granger,” Snape repeated, his voice ragged and vicious as his blood boiled with rage. “You could have let me die after you knew.”
“Shacklebolt has ordered me to keep you alive and–”
“Oh, well, if Shacklebolt’s ordered it, then I guess the decision has been made, and I have no fucking choice!” Snape spat, then he closed his eyes in pain.
His head throbbed. His body shook. He couldn’t handle the agony and anguish coursing through his body. He couldn’t handle the what-if questions as he wondered what the fuck Phineas might have said. It made him sick. Sicker than anything else. He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to talk to her. He didn’t want her to save his life, and he didn’t want to fucking live. He couldn’t do this. He absolutely could not do this, and he had no capacity to keep it in anymore after his one and only choice in life had been ripped away from his cold, dead fingers.
So it all poured out like venom from his mouth.
“I asked you to let me die!” he wheezed, opening his eyes to glare at her in hatred. “I wanted to die! I was supposed to die! THAT was my fucking role in this war! Do you seriously think that people are going to allow me to live after everything that I’ve done?! Were you actually stupid enough to think that this was a good idea?! That people would welcome me with open arms?! They will crucify me in the street, Granger – as they fucking should!”
She stared at him. Silent and still, having never flinched or blinked throughout his outburst, which only made his anger burn worse.
“Well, lucky for you, it isn’t ‘up to people’,” Granger said slowly. Her voice was calm, but the strain beneath it was noticeable even if her face remained carefully impassive. “It’s up to Shacklebolt and the Order – and a few other key people selected to form a temporary government after Thicknesse and several others were removed.”
“Lucky,” Snape breathed, his body shaking more violently. “You think I’m lucky.”
He’d been ready to die. Willing to die – and he’d wanted to.
It was his choice to go face the Dark Lord. He had known that it would likely be the end, and even though he’d not entirely finished his task, he’d still accepted his death. He’d still been okay with it. But no, no – apparently, he couldn’t even have that. Apparently, even death was too good for him, and it had to be ripped from his grasp, and he’d been dragged back to life by none other than the most annoying and irritating student he’d ever had. The warm flutter in his veins itched under his skin in an irritating, almost nagging manner.
Then he snapped.
“YOU THINK I’M FUCKING LUCKY?!” he bellowed, the distorted sound ringing harshly in his ears.
The very idea of living made him so nauseated he was sure he would throw up. Thoughts of a future littered with more people using and abusing him flashed before his eyes while his mind still tried to play catch up with his body and the situation that he was in. He couldn’t stomach the idea of another day – let alone another lifetime of being in someone’s debt when he’d finally had the chance to be free. He couldn’t handle the idea of owing anything to anyone, let alone her – especially not after how he’d treated her for all those years. After she’d seen him at his lowest bleeding out on the floor. After she’d seen his mess of memories and heard whatever it was that Phineas had to say.
He wasn’t even sure all of what had slipped into the collection that he gave Potter, but he knew he could not handle living with people seeing it.
His heart felt like it was dying. He couldn’t handle the thought of seeing them look at him with pity or judgement or pathetic sympathy, and he just did not have it in him to care how he was reacting right now. Grown man or not, he was throwing a fit. Lost was the mournful regret and apologies he’d felt as he’d laid dying, and all of it was replaced with a burning agony that set his bones on fire.
He hurt.
Everything hurt – and his one chance at being free of this pain and the burdens that gripped him was taken away without his consent. He had, once again, been used. He would, once again, be made to do things he didn’t want to do while living forever in the debt of another. Just another master who would hold this above his head and make him wish he was somehow even more dead than just the regular kind.
He couldn’t tolerate the thought of the Ministry pretending like they gave a shit or that they were trying to help while under the guise of using him to push their inevitable new post-war agenda. He couldn’t stomach the idea of looking at Potter again, of seeing his stupid fucking face with Lily’s green eyes – or seeing Granger watch him sympathetically like how she looked at the house-elves. It was just too much – too much, and he couldn’t take it.
He wanted out.
He wanted her out.
He wanted this all to fucking end like it was supposed to have.
Forcing his limbs to move, he ripped off his blanket and hauled himself from the bed. It registered somewhere deep in his mind that he did not seem to be in the same clothes that he’d been wearing at the Battle, so someone had gotten the bright idea to undress him and change his clothes. He wanted to vomit. His new white dress shirt was entirely unbuttoned, leaving his chest and runes exposed – he shoved the thought aside, forcing himself to focus on his anger instead of the raging, sickening insecurity and anxiety eating him alive.
“You naive, ignorant little chit!” he seethed, his rasping voice like broken glass as he groaned in pain from the effort of standing. He grimaced as the flutter in his veins grew warmer, and he fought to ignore the feel of it as he pushed past her. “There is nothing left for me here! I was supposed to die, Granger! I WANTED to die! You had no fucking right! Why the hell am I here?! I want out of this fucking house!!”
He was only two steps from his bed when he felt a rush of nausea wash through his body, his knees buckled, and blood rushed to his head like a wave. Everything blurred before him as his blood pressure plummeted, and he staggered only to hear a muttered “oh for fuck’s sake” to his left.
You’ve got to be kidding me, he groaned internally as his body started to fall.
After all that, he was going to collapse on the floor of Grimmauld Place like an invalid. He dropped a foot before two warm hands braced against his chest and a feather-light charm washed over his body. Then Granger’s voice rang out close before him as he felt her arm wrap tightly around his waist.
“You can’t stand up like that, Professor, you–“
“I’m not your fucking professor,” he spat viciously, cutting her off. But his vision was spotting with black, and his head was pounding. His words hardly seemed threatening when he couldn’t see her, and he was being entirely supported by the small girl. He felt her carefully turning him, moving his body under the help of the feather-light charm like it was the easiest thing in the world until he felt the bump of something against the back of his calves.
“Fine.” Granger’s tight voice sounded near his ear as she guided him down until he was sitting on the edge of the bed – he practically groaned in irritation at how easily she could maneuver him. He hated that he could feel her hands on his skin, and yet he couldn’t even do anything about it. “Sir – you can’t stand up like that. You may not be in critical condition anymore, but you’re still healing. You need to adjust to the repaired tissues in your body. Narcissa warned me that you would be stubborn about this, but she forgot to mention that you might also be idiotic and suicidal. You’re a smart man, Snape. You should know better than to haul yourself from bed like that given what you’ve been through.”
“Narcissa?” Snape’s body tensed as he continued to blink away the black specs from his vision. He forced his eyes to focus, and Granger swam back into view before him, but his heart still felt faint and weak in his chest – like all his energy and rage had been ripped from his body from that small display of effort. “You spoke to Narcissa?”
“Yes,” Granger said, as she forced him to lean back against the pillows once more, and he tried to ignore the fact that she seemed unbothered by touching him. She straightened once more and gave him a thoughtful look. “She’s with Malfoy, and they’re currently being held at an unplottable safe house until we can verify the rest of their accounts. She’s going to testify against the few remaining Death Eaters and snatchers that escaped from the Battle. She’s agreed to give us anything and everything that we might need, and in exchange, she and Malfoy will be given house arrest, parole, reparations, and a string of other things – but they’ll live, and they won’t go to Azkaban.”
“You’re giving Malfoy parole?” Snape asked almost dumbfoundedly. He could feel his hands shaking gently against his legs as she took her seat beside him once more, but he tried to ignore them.
“Draco Malfoy is getting parole,” Granger clarified, her voice remaining level and calm. “During the Battle, Harry and I ran into him in the Room of Requirements, and we gave him a choice. He made the right one – and with the help of Thomas, his mother, the Black family house-elves, and some of the ones working at Hogwarts – he led the evacuation of the students. They cleared everyone from first and second year before Voldemort even came onto the grounds. He apparated hundreds of students to safety, doing so until he physically collapsed and nearly blacked out while his mother fought in the final Battle alongside the Order, protecting several students and helping Mrs. Weasley and several others bring down Bellatrix. Malfoy Senior, on the other hand – died before the main fight broke out after you’d gone to the Shrieking Shack. He tried to cross Aberforth’s fire to flee, but he wasn’t quick enough. Look, Snape – you’ve been out for three weeks, I know that may not feel like a lot in the grand scheme of things, but a lot has happened in that time.”
“Clearly.” Snape grimaced, raising his shaking hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. The headache behind his eyes felt like it had tripled since getting up, and it was making it even more difficult to think.
“Does your head hurt?” Granger asked him, and he nearly rolled his eyes.
“No, I just enjoy sitting like this for fun,” he spat bitterly, his right arm vibrating softly as he pinched his eyes closed and tried to wish himself dead. Yet despite his best efforts, his heart continued to beat within his chest.
“Here.” He heard the noise of something whizzing through the air and cracked his eye open to see her handing him an uncapped potion vial.
“What is it?” he asked, taking the bottle from her and grimacing as the pounding in his head continued to grow.
“It’s just a headache cure potion – you can take it, it won’t disrupt anything else you’re on,” Granger answered. She watched him as he hesitated and very nearly rolled her eyes. “I didn’t keep you alive just so that I could kill you later with poison. Just drink the damn vial.”
Glaring at her, he downed the bottle before sending it to the nightside table. It seemed to take a ridiculous amount of effort to move the vial magically, which was concerning. But he felt the relief wash through his body like a wave, the pounding in his skull instantly lessening as his tense muscles started to relax. But as his head started to clear and his body started to calm – his thoughts grew angry once more.
“I asked you to let me die, Miss Granger,” Snape said tightly, his hoarse voice shaking with rage again as his eyes flicked to her once more.
He glared at her hard, summoning every ounce of anger that he had, but it was getting hard to maintain. Not only did he not have the energy for it, but it seemed at odds with his own body as the unfamiliar feeling of warmth in his body began to grow warmer. He glanced at the diagnostic still floating in the air, trying to figure out what the hell was going on with his body. Was it the lingering effects of Nagini’s venom? No, that wasn’t it. The diagnostic showed that it was all gone. His eyes scanned the multiple lines that he knew how to read as the warmth fluttered once more and itched beneath his skin until he couldn’t ignore it.
“Fuck,” he breathed, scratching at his arms and tensing uncomfortably as he fought to ignore the sensation. “What the fuck is this feeling. I–”
Snape shook his head as if to shake feeling away, but the fluttering was practically glowing and rushing through his body like a current as he pinched his brow once more and flexed his right hand in irritation. He could feel it tingling everywhere. Foreign and warm and light. But the more he focused on it, the warmer and stronger it seemed to feel.
It was like someone had bottled the essence of hope or some other absurd form of kindness and jammed it into his veins. It was irritating. It was persistent. It was annoying. It was strong and determined – and it felt like someone had embedded it into him. His body tensed again as he tried to track the feeling, but it was impossible because it truly was everywhere in his body. And the light flutter was fucking relentless. Almost as if – as if… his mind stalled, and his body grew still. The final images of his last memory floated through the haze to the forefront of his mind, and his heart – which he wasn’t even sure was his heart anymore – stuttered in his chest as his hand gripped the fabric of his bedsheets so tight he could no longer feel his fingers.
“You gave me your blood.” Snape’s voice was cold as stone. So low and so deadly it practically vibrated in the air as he shifted his head to look at her once more. She was staring at him unblinkingly. She didn’t say a word, but she inclined her head in a quiet nod of confirmation, and that lack of reaction was all it took to break the teeny tiny threads of calm he had established. “YOU FUCKING GAVE ME YOUR BLOOD, GRANGER?!?! Do you understand what you did?! Do you have ANY idea of the impact that has!”
His breath came in as a rasp as he twisted fully towards her in rage.
“What the FUCK were you thinking giving me your blood?!?!” he screamed, inhaling sharply as the warm flutter rippled through his body.
“I was thinking I was saving your life,” she said tightly, her jaw clenching in frustration.
“Oh right!” Snape sneered, a distorted laugh coming from his lips as he continued to glare daggers at her and sarcasm dripped from his voice.
But Granger didn’t speak, and her jaw simply clenched tighter as he continued.
“Of course you were. Keep me alive so that you can use me later – for whatever mission you and Potter are on next?! Cash in on the life-debt I owe you?” Snape spat. He ignored the pain in his throat. It felt like he was tearing his vocal cords – like he was screaming louder than ever before, but the sound somehow still came out hoarse, tight, and strained. “I WANTED TO DIE! Was what I gave you and that idiot Potter not enough?! You couldn’t just fucking let things be, could you?! You just had to go and play hero – couldn’t live with the guilt of leaving me to die, so you thought you would help?! And now what?! What exactly is your fucking plan now? Have me come back and teach potions at Hogwarts and pretend like everything is fine? As if the parents of those students would EVER let me near their kids or that school again!! But what the fuck else am I supposed to do?! Where the fuck does someone like me go, Granger?!”
“Wherever you want,” Granger said flatly, almost cold. Her eyes were locked to his. She was seemingly entirely unafraid of him and entirely unimpressed by his outburst. Her tone was clipped as if disappointed and annoyed. “Despite what you clearly think, Snape, I didn’t save your life so that I could exploit you later.”
Either he looked far less threatening than he used to, or, and he knew this was part was definitely true, she’d been through so much that at this point, there was little that scared her anymore. His face twisted in annoyance at her words, and he opened his mouth to rage further but stopped as she let out a heavy, worn sigh and shifted in her chair. The cold detachment radiating from her eyes all but fell away as she leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees – and suddenly, she looked older.
Far older than someone her age should look. Not physically, her features were still young – but emotionally. For the first time since Snape woke, she seemed to let her guard down, and he noticed the bags under her eyes, the tension in her shoulders, and the exhaustion that seemed to radiate from her small frame in waves. And then he realized just how thin she was.
She looked worn.
She looked like she’d not slept properly in days, and she looked – his body tensed as she shifted her gaze up to meet his once more. He recognized the look in her eyes. He’d seen it countless times as he looked at himself in the mirror over the last decade.
She looked broken.
Damaged. The word flitted through his mind as he stared at her. It was the sort of bone-deep heavy agony that only someone with a rune would understand, and maybe that was why he felt an odd sensation tug across his chest, and he, uncharacteristically after being sent into a rage, remained silent.
“I’m sorry,” Granger said quietly, her eyes slowly shifting over his face, taking in his appearance before they dropped down to stare blankly at the rune on his chest. He tensed, but he didn’t say anything as her voice became lower and her shoulders visibly sagged. “I know I didn’t do what you asked, Sir – please believe me that I would never have given you my blood unless it was the only option. I actually do understand the lingering effects it has on the body, and I wouldn’t just do that to someone unless I felt like I had to. I was out of potions; we were short on resources, and had I not done it – you would have died. I did some more research and spoke to Nasir – the feel of my magic should lessen slightly over the next few days, but I know it will always linger like a foreign feel across your body, and for that, I am truly sorry. I know you wanted to die, and I know I didn’t listen. At the time, I wanted to ask you for answers. But as it turns out, most of my questions were answered by the memories that you gave to Harry. That said, there are still a few things that I’d like to ask you some time-- if you’d let me, that is. And I’d love to give you the chance to speak for yourself instead of making assumptions.
“I think,” Granger hesitated, and her voice grew softer, almost distant. “I think enough people have made assumptions about you over the last two decades, myself included, and it only felt right that you get the opportunity to set the record straight yourself, in your own words. If you don’t want to or you don’t wish to speak about anything that happened – or to anyone else, then that is your decision. Shacklebolt has already promised that you would not be pulled in to testify or be asked to participate in any of the war trials. Narcissa will be taking on that role, as I said, because she lived in the house with Voldemort for the past year and has several portraits that can corroborate her stories and confirm identifies. Besides – I know you’re immune to veritaserum, so any information you provide couldn’t be used by the Ministry courts in a hearing anyways – so they won’t be able to drag you into this.”
Snape’s brow furrowed at her words, but she continued and quickly answered the question that he’d not even asked.
“Narcissa told us. So your situation has already been dealt with separately. Once Shacklebolt verified your memories were untampered with, he had Narcissa and Malfoy recount their experiences with you. Combining that with what Phineas and the other Hogwarts portraits said, the story they painted was pretty clear. It was irrefutable, and they aligned in their recounts.
“All of them,” Granger said quietly, her eyes finally shifting back up to meet his gaze. Snape felt his body tense under her gaze, and he desperately tried not to think about what the portraits might have said. “Needless to say, your case is closed, and your records are sealed. You have been officially pardoned, and there will be no parole, no trial, and no follow-up questions. No information will be released to the public aside from the formal statement citing that you were acting on the Order’s behalf for the entire duration of the war and that as per Dumbledore and Shacklebolt’s instruction, you infiltrated the inner rankings of the Death Eaters, gained the support and trust of Narcissa Malfoy, thus making her an ally, and helped to bring an end to the war. The case file summary that is released will clearly state that you have been fully exonerated. So, like I said, it’s up to you what you want to tell anyone – if you choose to say anything at all. You are free to do whatever it is that you want.”
Snape’s body remained rigid as she continued to stare at him with those bright brown eyes. An image of her hovering above him flittered through his mind, and he recalled all the scars that had littered her body that night as she desperately fought to keep him from bleeding out.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, and this time the words felt like a knife to his heart as she looked at him, not with the pity that he had been so desperately dreading since he woke, but with understanding. “I’m sorry that I didn’t listen to you in the shack. I’m sorry that we always doubted you over the years, but more than anything – I’m sorry for what Dumbledore did to you. I obviously don’t know everything that happened, and I’m not going to pretend like I understand you or all the moving pieces within the war. But after speaking with him – and hearing what Harry had to say, that man was in the wrong.
“How he handled this war was irresponsible and short-sighted. How he handled us was unbelievable. We were kids – fucking kids – and he used us. And what he did to you? What he asked you to tolerate, what he asked you to do – alone – it’s–” Granger paused, and Snape saw something painful and tight flash across her eyes as she looked at him. She shook her head and let out a breath before forcing herself to continue. “I don’t even have the words, but it was wrong. All of it. What he did to you is beyond what any single person should be asked to bear, and I’m sorry.
“You don’t owe me a life debt, Snape, and I don’t want anything from you,” Granger said slowly, her eyes searching his face. Her eyes creased as she sat back in her seat once more, and it felt reminiscent of the time he had woken with Narcissa by his side. “To answer your earlier question, you’re here because it was the safest place for you to heal. St. Mungo’s was out of the question – it was a security risk for multiple issues, and they didn’t really have the room anyway because so many were injured. As it is, they’ve had to conjure mattresses in the hallways.”
“I see,” Snape said tightly. He stared at her in silence for a while, struggling to decide what to say. He had a million thoughts, and he felt like he needed time alone to process them all. So he asked the only simple question he could think of. “How long am I staying here?”
The distaste and tension were glaringly obvious in his voice, but Granger ignored it and simply answered his question.
“Shacklebolt directed us to monitor you until you get a clean bill of health,” she said simply, like dragging him to his childhood bully’s home and forcing him to stay there simply because it was more convenient for them was acceptable behaviour. He could hear a hint of her old know-it-all self in there. She was trying to state it like a fact because she knew he hated it here, but she was only doing her duty, so thus, that made the decision to hold him at Grimmauld Place against his will okay. “Once Nasir clears you, we’ll bring you home. It will probably be another two weeks – possibly a bit more, depending how your body recovers. In the meantime, Nasir popped by your place and grabbed some of your stuff.”
Snape groaned, and his eyes shut as he let out a deep sigh. He had definitely not at all thought through the ramifications of giving Nasir part of his soul. That man had access to everything now – Hogwarts, his home, and anything that he had coded to his magical or biological signature. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that Nasir had modified the wards on his house to give the Order access.
He hated this.
He hated them.
He hated everything.
He was so fucking pissed at all of them, but more than anything, he was pissed at himself for being so fucking stupid.
“You gave Nasir a piece of your soul, didn’t you?” Her voice had gone quiet and low, but his eyes snapped open to glare at her once more as a fresh wave of annoyance surged through his body.
“He didn’t tell me.” Granger cut him off before he’d even opened his mouth to speak. As if she had immediately picked up on his sparking rage and inner thoughts and knew he was going to explode once more. Almost as if she could read his bloody mind and understood how he worked – his eyes narrowed at her in suspicion. “And before you ask – no, I didn’t tell anyone either. Only Harry and Shacklebolt know, and that’s only because of your memories. But that’s as far as that piece of information has travelled. As far as we are concerned, that business is between you and Nasir. Not every memory you gave to Harry was used in your case file. The majority of them have been sealed – I have them, they’re safe, and I will return them to you now that you’re awake.”
Snape stared at her in silence, disbelief flooding through his mind as he tried to understand the girl sitting there beside him. He’d never have thought that she would keep that information quiet. He’d always assumed that she and Potter shared everything with their friends and that she would be the type to condemn things like soul carvings. It was far too dark for someone like Granger, and he would have thought that she would want it included in his case so that he could be judged fairly.
He frowned.
She seemed oddly comfortable sitting by his side and dealing with his angry outburst. She seemed oddly calm about all of this – about his memories, what he’d done and Nasir’s dabbling in dark magic. She also seemed to intuitively know how he would react and was strategically structuring her responses and words to cater to him. Had Nasir’s behaviour changed that much after taking a piece of his soul? Was she used to dealing with him now, or was she actually that annoyingly intuitive?
His brow creased.
Either way, he didn’t like it. He didn’t like any of this, and he still desperately wanted to leave or just die.
“That was your payment to Nasir, wasn’t it?” Granger said slowly, her eyes flicking across his face in curiosity. “For helping us.”
“Technically,” Snape said slowly, watching her carefully. “It was payment for fixing your arm – for treating the muscle tissue damage and the cruciatus tremors.”
“I see,” she said quietly, and Snape wondered how much she really knew. She accepted the information readily, and if anything, it seemed as if it aligned in her head with some other piece of data she had. Then she spoke again. “You made the nerve regeneration potion as well, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Snape said hoarsely, and he could feel discomfort starting to inch throughout his body. How had this turned into a calm and casual conversation? It felt too normal. He didn’t like it, and he wanted to leave, but he already knew just by looking at her that she would never allow that to happen.
“And experimental potions #47 and #21 – you made those as well?”
“Yes,” he said the word, but he could feel his jaw growing tight.
“And you placed the sword in the pond.”
“Obviously.” He stared at her, the fluttering itch in his veins now gnawing at the back of his mind.
“Then you certainly have no life-debt, Snape,” she said quietly, and he felt his body still. “Even if you don’t believe me when I say that I don’t want anything from you – maybe this will put you at ease. You saved my life twice just in the last two months alone with those two potions – and that doesn’t include all the other times that you kept us alive in the past. You don’t owe me anything. If we’re keeping a tally, I am the one that owes you, and I owe you several times over. You are free to do whatever you want.”
He snorted. The sound was terrible to hear, but it was nothing in comparison to the pain it caused in his throat. He had to fight not to grimace as he looked up at her with a sneer.
“I’ll never be free,” Snape said hoarsely, hating how weak his voice sounded after yelling so much. Hating that he knew the girl would be able to see the pain in his eyes as he spoke his next words. “There is nothing left for me here, Miss Granger – no future. Even though you’ve allegedly cleared my name, what now? Where do I go? What do I do? Who in their right fucking mind would want me – the school? You think I can go back to teach? You think the world would welcome someone like me because you had Shacklebolt legally clear my name? What sort of prospects do you think I have? I thought you’d lost your naivety, Granger – I thought that surely someone as brilliant as you allegedly are would know that there is no place for me here. Not after what I’ve done – not with my history. There is nothing left for someone like me in this world, and you took away the only bit of peace I’d had in twenty years.”
Granger stared at him hard, and to his surprise, a small, sad smile crept over her lips.
“And that, sir, is where you could not be more wrong,” she said quietly as she firmly held his gaze. “There has never been a time in all of wizarding history where the world needed you more than it does right now.”
He would have scoffed at her words if not for the tone she’d maintained while she said it. She didn’t sound like she was lying. She didn’t sound like she was mocking him, and he’d been an accomplished legilimens long enough to know when people didn’t believe what they said. He could tell just by looking at her now that Granger not only believed those words – she meant it. Her voice was serious, and he couldn’t describe the look in her eyes as she watched him.
It was almost desperate, as if she needed him to believe it too.
“Peter died protecting the Order, Herbert was murdered for refusing to help, and now the apothecaries are a mess. St. Mungo’s potions stores are all but depleted, and I’m currently brewing four cauldrons in the main floor drawing room just to keep people from dying while Fleur and Mrs. Weasley man six others at Shell Cottage. Nasir is watching three others while he tries to figure out what cursed some of the students in the final fight. Harry helps as much as he can, but he’s still recovering and has to sleep for large portions of the day, so we’re constantly falling behind. We have a castle to rebuild, a curriculum to redesign, teaching positions to back-fill, and more than two dozen high-level Ministry positions to fill – not to mention about a hundred other low-level ones and a fuck ton of new legislation to pass. We have war trials to finish, evidence to confirm, and a fresh round of werewolves that need our help. There is a mass ceremony for the dead next weekend to coordinate and an entire wizarding world to rebuild from the ground up,” Granger said quietly, her body looking even more ragged as she spoke. It was as if stating everything going on revealed even further how blatantly exhausted she was – yet her eyes remained bright despite the fact that her voice grew more solemn. “We need everyone we can get, and – we have students who killed people three weeks ago.”
She looked at Snape for a long quiet moment, a deep sadness creeping in behind her eyes once more as she spoke.
“It was the first time some of them had ever even hurt someone, let alone taken a life. They did it to survive, no one faults them for their actions, but some of them don’t know how to cope with it,” she said quietly. “They feel alone and guilty. They need people who understand them, people who’ve been through what they’ve been through and who have experienced the guilt that they feel to stand up and show them that they aren’t terrible people. That they’re not ‘beyond saving’ or doomed to become social outcasts or terrible witches and wizards who are inherently bad just because they did what they had to do and what was needed in order to survive.
“The blood of this war is on everyone’s hands, sir – even on the hands of those that did nothing,” Granger said firmly. “And I refuse to allow the bystanders who were too afraid to pick up their wands to criticize those that did what was necessary. I refuse to allow the people who hid away and waited this out to revel in the victory and claim the hard-earned winnings while they ostracize and condemn the behaviour of those who earned that victory for them because they didn’t want to get their hands dirty – because they couldn’t stomach the idea of taking a life, so they didn’t bother to show up at Hogwarts when we needed them most, despite our calls for aide. Yet they volunteer now when the danger is over to help rebuild and somehow think they have some inherent right to dictate how we should all move forward. Right now, they’re out there celebrating and congratulating each other that Voldemort is dead and his reign at the Ministry is finally over – seemingly and conveniently having forgotten the fact that they allowed a single man to nearly execute a genocide and expose our world because they were too afraid to raise their wands. Because they were too weak. Because they didn’t want to shoulder the consequences or suffer any pain. Because they didn’t want to lose what they had, didn’t want to sacrifice their lives or resources or risk the ones that they love or live with a guilty conscience. They didn’t want to have to take a life, yet they had no issue allowing others, students, to do it for them. All because they didn’t want to have to deal with the harsh reality that the world is hard, war is hell, and life isn’t fair.”
Her eyes burned as she stared at him, and Snape could hardly breathe.
“You know that better than most, just as I do,” she said quietly. “Life is not easy. Sometimes you have to do things that you don’t want to in order to do what’s right.”
Granger let out a breath and shook her head.
“No, you couldn’t be more wrong, Snape,” she said, her voice taking on an edge of hope and desperation as she spoke. “There has never been a better time for people like you to take a place in the world and become a leader. This ridiculously held wizarding belief of there being good and evil, or light and dark magic with no opportunity to change, is part of the problem and what led us to this point – because in reality – we are all grey. We are all people. We are all human, and humans are riddled with flaws. We’re complicated, and we make mistakes. If we take away people’s opportunity for redemption, then we have no reason to change and then what are we left with?
“This world needs you – I need you. Harry needs you. Narcissa needs you.” Granger was speaking so passionately now Snape could practically feel her words buzzing through his body. “We need to be better collectively, the wizarding world needs to change, and the generation at Hogwarts that just defended themselves through war and killed people to fight for what’s right needs to know that there is a place for them here. They need to know that the world is more complicated than black and white and that it’s okay to have flaws – that they’re not condemned for what they did and that we can all move forward to something better.”
Granger shifted, standing from her seat and taking a step towards him as her tone dropped low.
“Take a moment to think about it – to really think about it and decide what you want. Not what other people want from you. Not following the plan of a foolish old man who seemed to think he was God, pulling the strings while having no real understanding of what was going on in the war and what it would require of people to win, while he tried to limit the sacrifices to a small chosen few. Don’t just accept the death note that he signed blindly on your behalf because he thought he knew what he was doing, when in reality, he didn’t. Don’t do what other people have told you to do. Or what they have told you you should want to do, or what they’ve said you deserve – think about what you want, Snape.” Granger paused, the heated passion that had been flaring in her eyes began to shift into something serious, and she met his gaze hard like a stone, and he felt his body stiffen. “Decide what you want. Forget everyone else, because anyone who would judge you has no fucking idea what war is. There isn’t a single person in the wizarding world not guilty, and those who didn’t show at the Battle and hid away throughout the war are the worst fucking ones. They have no right to say whether you belong in this world or not. Because I’m telling you that you do. I’m telling you that you have a place here if you want it, wherever you choose it, and I’m telling you – you are not alone. Not anymore.”
Silence rang through the room, and Snape could hear his heart beating in his ears as she levelled him with a stare so piercing and so serious, he actually felt his chest constrict and his breath catch in his throat.
He knew that look.
“And if after that,” Granger said quietly, her voice so low it was nearly a whisper. “If you still wish to die – then I promise you on my own life – I will grant you that wish.”
He watched her silently, his entire body rigid as a board.
“I will kill you myself,” Granger said softly, her body unmoving, her eyes unblinking as she looked at him with a dead stare.
He believed her.
She would do it.
He could see it in her eyes, and he didn’t know what to say, so he stared at her in silence. She had disassembled any retort that he may have been able to generate before he could do so. Her words had been perfectly pieced together as if this was not the first time she had recited them, and he wondered if she had practiced this and anticipated his anger. She stood over him with such power and such confidence that he couldn’t wrap his head around it. This was Granger, the annoying know-it-all from his hellish teaching days, and yet she wasn’t, because she had become something else entirely during the time he’d been away. She’d basically lectured him two ways from Sunday, and that left him feeling like a rocky mix of sick.
“You probably want to shower – I imagine it might help you feel a bit better,” Granger said with a small exhale, some of the dark emptiness dissolving from her eyes as her gaze flicked to the wardrobe along the wall at the end of the bed. She didn’t move, but she’d obviously cast something because the doors opened, and a collection of neatly folded clothes flew out of the wardrobe and through the door, likely making their way to the bathroom just down the hall. “I would offer you assistance, but I know you’ll just reject it.”
“You would be correct,” he said roughly, his eyes still narrowed and watching her closely.
He felt unnerved by her speech – that old bitter part of him, the spy part that had been manipulated and guilt-tripped by Dumbledore for years, was skeptical. That part didn’t believe that she meant it. It was wary and cautious and deeply concerned that she’d only said those things to manipulate him or sway him into some kind of arrangement – that she’d convince him to stick around and use him in some conniving way.
But another part of him, not Granger’s magic, but a small piece of his broken soul-- a very, very, very small part that he thought he’d strangled the life out of years ago – fluttered with a dull pulse as if her words had somehow uncovered its grave and sparked it back to life. And it was mixing with the unnatural and unfamiliar feel of Granger’s warm magic that was flowing through his veins. But he wasn’t really sure what to think of it, because that part felt like hope, and it wanted him to try.
And he hadn’t felt that sensation in decades.
“Well, just move slowly,” Granger said, looking back down at him. She glanced over the diagnostic charm once more, but left it hovering there, probably knowing that he would want to look it over in private. “Nasir is at Hogwarts trying to help McGonagall with a mess in the Slytherin common room. Apparently, some of the upper years were pissed about being locked in there during the fight, and even though McGonagall sent elves to evacuate them partway through to a warded safe house, they left behind some nasty surprises and she accidentally triggered one last night. He’ll be there for another few hours at least, so if you aren’t mindful of your blood pressure, and if you move too quickly and fall or pass out in there, I’m the one that will have to come in to get you. So be careful. You should be fine to stand and walk around now – but avoid quick movements. Don’t bend over completely, use the handrails that I put up in the shower, and don’t use your magic. I’ll wait in the kitchen – when you’re done, we can eat.”
With that, Granger turned and moved out of the bedroom, leaving Snape alone in the quiet, staring after the empty space where she’d been standing.
Warning:
This chapter contains: excessive anger and explicit language, as well as suicidal thoughts.
-x-x-
Note: I know that some of you are not fans of the Snape POV chapters, but this chapter includes critical plot information, so skipping it will leave many things unanswered.
-x-x-
May 23, 1998
Saturday, Grimmauld Place, 3:45 pm
As it turned out, moving to the bathroom had been more difficult than he’d anticipated. So had removing his clothes and carefully stepping into the deep tub after cranking the water and setting it to be as hot as humanly tolerable.
He would never say it out loud – but fuck was he glad that his shirt had been undone. The idea of undoing that many buttons seemed impossible to him, and casting magic was out of the question in his current state. He could manage the odd small things – very small things – but each time he used a simple spell, he felt even more drained and even more nauseous. So, he begrudgingly took Granger’s advice and opted to move about as slow as a flobberworm while being mindful of every single limb and the position of his body as he shifted. He even used the stupid handrails. He hated it, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
The last thing he wanted was to blackout and have her come upstairs to help him. If that happened – he would just ask her to kill him right then and there.
After cautiously stepping out of the shower, he inspected his body in the mirror and tried not to frown at the sight. He was ragged and thin; so thin he could see his ribs and even the muscles across his abdomen – not because he was strong or fit, but exactly the opposite. He’d become so dangerously thin there was hardly anything left on him but skin and bone, and any small amount of muscle that he did have was clearly visible since it had nothing to hide beneath. He was nothing but bone and sinew.
His skin was pale like usual. His face was gaunt, and his black eyes were circled by dark rings. His hair was a bit longer, and it was lanky like usual – though the grease had clearly been maintained by cleaning charms, and he had washed away what little remained of it in the shower. It was significantly improved since he’d not spent the last three weeks hovering over a cauldron and eating a shitty diet. Like most of his physical attributes, his hair had never been nice, and it had always been more greasy than not. But being a potions master with no sleep and copious amounts of stress for nearly twenty years hadn’t helped. It had made the pre-existing condition worse and nearly impossible to manage.
Despite what his students thought about him over the years, he didn’t lack proper hygiene, nor did he live in a filthy dungeon. He was far too particular to be a slob or avoid showers.
The truth was, he was just unhealthy. Vastly unhealthy – malnourished, dangerously sleep-deprived, run absolutely ragged off his feet from teaching so many students and acting as a double agent. Add his habit of abusing potions to the list of stressors along with his practice of using himself as a guinea pig for new experiments, and his health had never stood a chance. He had permanently damaged several of his internal organs over the years, and they did not work properly. His kidneys didn’t filter toxins as they should, and his small intestine did not properly absorb the nutrients that he so desperately needed, which made addressing his malnourishment much more difficult.
That said, he’d never been an attractive man. He didn’t have features that were commonly associated with ‘handsome good looks’. His nose was too big. His teeth were stained and uneven. His body was gangly and thin. His eyes were too plain and unwelcoming, and his skin was sallow and unhealthy looking. He had been doomed since the very moment of his birth to always be on the unattractive side of the scale. At best, had he not completely destroyed his body and abused it over the years, he might have been able to pass as average – not ugly, not handsome, not good-looking – just plainly average in every way.
But he wasn’t even that, because his life had been hard.
Between the aforementioned items – which had all strained his body and left him as the worst and most physically unattractive version of himself – he had also endured countless hours of torture throughout his life. His body was covered in scars. His soul was blackened by the things that he had done and the monstrosities that he had witnessed as he fought to survive and play his part.
His eyes skimmed down his thin body. The rune and red border were still there like a stain on his skin. The multitude of other scars which littered his body were still there as expected. The Dark Mark on his arm remained, lifeless like an old tattoo. The thin silver scar where Nasir had drawn blood, the old lines on his forearm from a time he would rather forget, the marks on his legs, feet, and stomach – all old, all familiar – all expected.
What was new, and what caused his heart to still, was the collection of scars that now spattered across his chest and marked his neck from where Nagini had bitten him. He had known before he looked that it would be bad. The injury had hurt too fucking bad for the scars to be anything but unseemly and disturbing. But looking at it now, he was lost for words.
How the hell had Granger managed to save him?
Thin silver lines trailed across his neck in a twisted mess of red raised skin. His flesh was angry. It was bumpy. It was horrid and awful. The scarring covered the entire left side of his neck, stretching from just below his ear all the way down his throat, across his neck and shoulder before fanning out across his chest. It looked like a piece of artwork gone wrong. Like someone had spilled cans of red and silver paint, but his body was the accidental canvas on which they landed.
There were dark red jagged circles further down on his chest near his rune and sternum, and he knew they were from where Nagini’s fangs had sunk in and punctured his lung. All of the muscles on his left side were stiffer than the right, and he knew it was because they were new. She had repaired the tissue, but it was still not fully healed, and his body had still not processed the trauma of the injury. It would take time for his mind to connect the dots, and he doubted that the stiffness would ever go away, but looking at it now, it seemed like the snake had damn near bitten his head off. The scars wrapped nearly the whole way around his throat.
He twisted slowly, wincing as he turned his head to look over his shoulder to see the damage that spanned across his back. There were matching dark puncture wounds and a feathering of silver scars.
He stood there staring in silence for a long time as his face remained passive and his mind slowly began to churn. The warm flutter of Granger’s magic itched under his skin. He swallowed, turning to face the mirror directly once more before he let out a shaky breath and gripped the bathroom counter tightly. Some of his old familiar aches and pains were missing. He hadn’t noticed it right away upon waking, but after showering and staring at his own reflection, the difference in his body, while subtle, was glaringly obvious.
Someone had fixed his cracked teeth.
Someone had fixed his displaced rib.
Someone had rebuilt his damaged ankle, because it no longer hurt to stand on.
Someone had fixed his wrist, rebuilt his nose, hardened the bone, and mended the damaged tendons in his elbow.
Someone had spent an inordinate amount of time painstakingly working their way over his body, inch by inch, fixing the damage that he accumulated over the years – even taking the time to re-break and realign his toes.
He felt sick.
His eyes slowly shifted to the diagnostic that Granger had left activated, and he felt his body tense as he looked over the data. His suspicions were correct… and that someone had even healed his stomach ulcers.
His gut twisted painfully.
Granger had healed him all right.
She’d healed him in his entirety, save for his pre-existing and unresolvable kidney damage. His eyes skimmed over to another line and his heart faltered. Or, more aptly put according to the line that he was currently looking at, the heart that was currently beating in his chest faltered – because it certainly wasn’t his.
His eyes dropped from the diagnostic back to the mess of scars on his chest, and he instantly found it. A long, thin line. Silver. Unmistakable. The only remaining physical evidence that Granger – and he could only assume that Nasir must have helped her – had replaced his heart because his own had hardened and failed.
He could taste bile at the back of his throat.
Anger sparked in his chest, and yet he wasn’t even sure if he should be angry. Indignant? Upset? Violated? Definitely violated. He couldn’t even stomach the idea of Granger having seen him shirtless, let alone the fact that she had undoubtedly split his chest open, tore out his failing heart and jammed a new one in. He didn’t want to know whose it was, and yet in the back of his mind, he already knew the answer, because he could feel the same warmth in it as he could in his veins, and that made him sicker than anything else – even sicker than the idea of her having spent the time to fix his body.
He didn’t know what to do with this.
He literally could not handle it.
He felt like he was on the verge of having a breakdown as each breath came quicker than the last, and he stared at his reflection for what felt like forever until his eyes finally locked to the pale blue rectangle on his arm, and he stiffened once more.
He had noticed it in the shower.
He had tried to peel it off, but whatever it was, it was stuck to his skin with an incredibly powerful charm. He could tell that the object was laced with magic, but he couldn’t tell what it was because he simply didn’t have the stamina to complete a diagnostic charm – not without running the risk of collapsing and passing out on the floor.
Glaring at the pale blue tag one final time, he begrudgingly let go of the counter and began to carefully pull on his clothes – socks, underwear, his more comfortable black pants, a plain white t-shirt, and a soft white dress shirt. He didn’t want to think about Granger having summoned them. He didn’t want to think about Nasir having gone to collect them, nor did he want to think about the fact that his razor was sitting on the counter by the sink along with the rest of his toiletries.
So he didn’t think.
He shut it all out as best as he could as he tried to do up the buttons on his dress shirt after he had tugged it on with a painful groan. He tried. And then he tried again. But his hands were still trembling, and he could not for the life of him get the stupid buttons into their stupid holes. His hands started to shake harder, and he felt his throat burn as everything he was trying to push down just came bubbling back up.
He wanted to be sick.
He wanted to die.
He let out an anguished groan as his fingers failed to do up even a single button, and he gave up, knotting his fingers in his hair as he stared at his reflection once more.
Why the fuck was he here?
Why the fuck didn’t he die?
Why the fuck had Granger touched him and helped him? He didn’t like to be touched.
He never had, and he probably never would – a parting gift from a shitty childhood and years of torture as a spy that he would likely live with forever. He always carefully avoided physical contact if he could, and yet somehow, this year, it seemed like he was a magnet for it. It was bad enough that Nasir had all but manhandled his body to carve the rune on his chest – but then the Bones girl had run straight into him at school. The Weasley girl had boldly grabbed him not too long ago, and, worse still, Narcissa had touched him to clean him up after collapsing at Malfoy Manor. And now – now Granger, of all people, had done the same to bring him back from the dead.
He’d let too many people into his life this year. He’d allowed too many people to get close, both physically and mentally, and he felt like he was falling apart at the seams. He didn’t know what to do. He could feel the burn in his throat getting worse as he stared at the mess of emotions on his own face, and he struggled to breathe. He couldn’t do this. He felt so confused and conflicted as anger surged in his chest.
Alone.
Afraid.
Nervous.
The thoughts kept piling up, and he dropped his hands from his hair to grip the counter tight as he fought against the sickness curling in the pit of his healed stomach.
He’d stood before the Dark Lord and lied to the demon’s face, and yet somehow, now, the idea of letting people in or having a life of his own was more terrifying than everything else that he’d done to date. It was a sad thought when it struck him that he was hardly a person at all – that he was nothing. Nothing without his task of spying, fighting in the war and playing two roles. He felt his borrowed heart constrict as something painful echoed through his chest. It was like a hollow blow as the words circled through his mind. They threatened to break the quiet of the bathroom and send him into a fit of rage and tears as the realization hit him painfully hard.
I don’t know who I am.
It hurt, and he found it harder to breathe.
I don’t have anything left.
He’d said those last words countless times before; in fact, he’d said them to Granger only moments ago in the bedroom, but saying them now as he looked at his reflection, it cut into his soul as painfully as a rune. He wasn’t even a whole person – both literally and figuratively – and he hadn’t been for decades. He’d given up his life to perform a task, and by doing so, he’d given away nearly everything that made him who he was. He didn’t know how to rationalize that. He didn’t know how to rationalize his own existence because he had fundamentally lost his sole purpose and identity.
He was nothing.
He had nothing.
He had always been nothing.
Everything he’d done in his adult life, he’d done for someone else. Everything he’d done he’d done based on someone else’s orders, and he was okay with that – he’d accept that.
But he didn’t know where to go from here.
He didn’t know how he was supposed to do anything else. Sure, he’d made some decisions on his own towards the end with enlisting Nasir’s help, but it had still been in an effort to complete his assigned task. His eyes dropped to the counter as he forced himself to breathe. One breath in, one breath out, again and again, or soon he would pass out. His heart was starting to race. The beat was becoming erratic. He could feel the wave of panic surging in his chest.
He’d made no plan for this.
He’d put no thought into this.
He’d never even imagined that he’d have the fucking chance to do anything for himself or to be anything other than what he was. He’d never had dreams. His only dream was that the war would end and the Dark Lord would die, and that had already happened, and he wasn’t even there to see it.
His knuckles grew whiter, and his knees started to grow weak.
What was he supposed to do?
He was so fucking livid. So tired and hurt – and he couldn’t tell if he was upset because he was alive or upset just because. He was angry at everything and nothing all at once, and he didn’t know how to handle it.
He knew Granger was downstairs, and he knew that eventually she would come up here to get him if he did not go down. She was too irritating, too annoying, and too god-damned pushy to just allow him to stay upstairs or to leave him alone as he tried to figure out his purpose in life now that the war was done. As he stood there frozen in panic, he slowly began to realize that he had only two immediate options and two long-term ones.
His eyes darted to the razor sitting on the counter by the sink.
He could take out the blades and slit his wrists. He knew he had nowhere near enough stamina right now to end his life magically, so that was the only immediate practical option that would grant him death, but he sincerely doubted it would work. Fucking Granger would know – he didn’t doubt that she was monitoring him somehow, and his eyes darted to his right forearm where the pale blue tag sat hidden beneath his shirt. He would bet every fucking galleon he had that it was charmed with a diagnostic spell and was being monitored in some way.
The intrusiveness of finding a tag glued to his skin had ‘Granger’ written all over it, and his instincts were usually spot on.
No, he thought bitterly as his eyes flicked back up the mirror before him. If he attempted to kill himself now, she would know, and she would undoubtedly come up here and just save his life all over again. He frowned. His second option was to concede and go downstairs and eat.
Long-term, his options were rather similar – he could ask her to kill him, and he didn’t doubt that she would do it, or he could live. It sounded so simple and straightforward when he said it – yet, he couldn’t stomach even thinking about the decision, let alone making it.
He closed his eyes, desperately pushing the long-term options from his mind. He was too fucking tired and exhausted to think about anything in the future. He was barely managing each breath as they came. His brain was still a mess, he wasn’t functioning at one hundred percent, and even he could tell his emotions were erratic and all over the place.
He couldn’t do this now. He couldn’t make any kind of well-informed decision, and besides – his stomach growled painfully, and he let out a sigh. He was hungry. He forced his eyes back open to look at the battered man in the mirror, the scars on his neck plainly visible because his collar was undone and nowhere near high enough to hide the mangled mess of skin. He sighed again, willing his new heart to slow as he met his own weary gaze.
Loathe as he was to admit it, the tiny burning warmth of Granger’s magic in his veins was all but blatantly coaxing him to just relax. It was still uncomfortable. It still itched. He didn’t like it – it was warmer than anything he was used to, intense, but kind in a fundamental way he couldn’t explain. And it was making the idea of bloodying up a new white shirt in an attempted suicide seem less appealing than a hot meal. But even with it coaxing him down from the ledge – he was still miserable.
And he was still angry.
He groaned, knowing that he had already made up his mind even if he didn’t want to admit it. Then, somewhat begrudgingly, he turned and left the bathroom to go downstairs.
Making his way carefully down the steps, Snape grimaced in pain but silently thanked Merlin that Granger had not shown up to try and help him complete the task. It was bad enough that she was here to see him in this state – bad enough that she’d been the one to heal him, touch him, and then support him upstairs when he’d nearly collapsed on his face. The only thing that could have possibly made any of that worse was if it had been fucking Potter. But thankfully, he was glad the witch seemed to have some sort of understanding of pride and dignity. Thus, she was allowing him to make the slow and steady journey down the stairs on his own without her aid while she no doubt monitored him from afar.
He wasn’t sure what he was expecting to see when he got to the main floor and shuffled down the hall toward the kitchen. But the smell of delicious food filled the air, and the sight of a cauldron brewing on the counter met his gaze as he pushed the door open and forced himself to move inside. Granger almost looked like she was dancing as she tended to the cauldron while simultaneously stirring a pot on the stove and opening the oven. He stood there awkwardly, feeling immensely uncomfortable and unsure of what to do or say while trying to keep his pain, discomfort, and anger in check as her voice finally split the air.
“I hope you like pasta,” Granger said over her shoulder as she quickly kicked the oven door closed after pulling out what looked to be garlic bread and then completed a few counter-clockwise stirs on the cauldron. Apparently, this cauldron was important enough that she had decided to haul it into the kitchen so she could work on it as she cooked. “If not, I can make something else.”
Snape watched her work for a moment, the unease of seeing her moving around so comfortably within a place that he hated sinking deep into his skin like a splinter. He fought the urge to walk away and yell at her once more for saving his life, mostly because he was exhausted, and his throat hurt like a bitch – but also because at this point, he knew it would do nothing. So instead, he clenched his jaw and just replied tightly.
“Pasta is fine.”
“Great – here, drink this and take a seat – it will help.” She grabbed something from the counter and sent it over to him.
Carefully taking the glass from the air, he slid into the seat nearest the door with the back to the wall. He stared at the oddly coloured liquid, then gave it a careful sniff. It smelled like – bananas? Chocolate? He frowned; it didn’t seem to be a potion, but Granger was busy placing a stasis charm on the cauldron and offered no additional information. So, he took a small sip, secretly hoping maybe it was poison this time and it would solve his problems and remove his need to decide what to do – but his eyes shot wide, and he nearly blanched at the taste.
“Jesus fuck,” he spat, fighting against the urge to gag. It hadn’t smelled bad, but god, it tasted awful. He turned to look at her in disgust. It was quite possibly the worst tasting thing he’d ever had – and that was saying something. “What the fuck is this?”
If he was going to die by poison, there were a hell of a lot of them that didn’t taste like absolute shit. Surely she could have picked one of those.
Granger snorted at his reaction, glancing over her shoulder at him again as she continued to work. “It’s a protein shake – I never said it would taste good, but you need to drink it anyway. I’ve loaded it with a bunch of vitamins and minerals, that’s why it tastes terrible, but there is nothing wrong with it. Trust me, drink it – you’ll thank me later.”
Snape scowled, his hand clenching into a tight fist on the table as he glared at her. He glared at her so hard he thought he might give himself an aneurism, but he drank the stupid glass – blocking out the taste and ignoring the urge he felt to gag as he placed the empty cup on the table and grabbed the water that she sent him viciously from the air before downing that too. He wasn’t an idiot; he was a smart man, and he knew when to pick and choose his battles.
He knew in his current position at his current strength and with Granger’s loyal and hefty backup resources – he had lost this battle before it had even started. It was the reason why she was allowed to be here with him alone. He wasn’t a threat. They didn’t even consider him remotely dangerous at all, and they knew that he wouldn’t even be capable of harming her or doing anything even if he’d wanted to. Sure, he could get up, walk out and make his way home – but he didn’t doubt that the moment he did it, Nasir would miraculously pop up, barge into his house and extract him. Then, if she wanted to, she could force the drink down his throat while Potter or some other Order helper held him in a chair. Asking him to drink it was the illusion of freedom; there was no real choice, but at least drinking it on his own still had some sort of dignity to it.
Silence filled the kitchen as she continued to finish the food after freezing the potion in place. He sat there awkwardly, wishing his heart would just give out so he could die and not have to deal with this anymore. But it didn’t, and he knew it wouldn’t, because this heart wasn’t mostly dead like his had been. He felt his pulse start to quicken once more as his stress level started to rise. He didn’t want to be here. He hated this fucking house. He hated everything about it, and the itch of her magic was starting to grate at his mind as he unconsciously started to scratch at his wrist.
“I’m sorry again for making you stay here,” she said, her voice cutting through the air and stopping the mindless motions of his hands. It was as if she could sense his discomfort, and then, stupidly, he realized that she probably could. She glanced at him over her shoulder as she started to cut the garlic bread. “I promise you; I will bring you back home as soon as we can.”
Snape said nothing and simply glowered at her as she worked, hoping that perhaps she might be suffering and feeling the awkwardness along with him.
“You probably have a lot of questions,” she said, trying to engage him in conversation once more, though this time, her words truly did pique his interest.
“A few,” he said slowly, reluctantly.
He hated that she could read him so well and seemed to know exactly what to say. He wasn’t sure how the tag on his arm worked, but surely it was giving her an unfair advantage here. He watched her summon several plates and tried not to think about the fact that the nasty concoction he’d just drank was actually beginning to make him feel a bit better. His throat burned a hair less, and he didn’t feel so weak. He’d been wrong – Granger had put some sort of potion in there. Possibly a mix of a few, so it was no wonder it tasted so horrible.
“What would you like to know?” Granger asked, glancing at him again with a controlled and impassive face.
“What was the damage?” Snape asked quietly. He wasn’t sure why that was the first thing he said, it was something that he wanted to know, yes, but it was also just the first thing that fell out of his mouth.
“The main entrance was split open,” Granger said almost robotically, as her eyes remained carefully blank and she began to dish out food on two plates. She used a spell to portion the meals, but then she added some extra to the larger plate. “The ceiling in the Great Hall was damaged. The main courtyard is destroyed along with the archway and columns. The main bridge and the entire eastern front are destroyed, and the southern one isn’t much better. A few greenhouses caught fire, one exploded, and the stone on the south side of the castle cracked. The school wards are severely weakened, sections of it are broken, and the northern bridge was demolished. Some of the hallways inside the school are collapsed – here you go–”
Granger slid the larger plate before him, summoning silverware from the kitchen drawer before moving to take a seat at the opposite side of the table with her smaller plate as she continued.
“The astronomy tower was blown off, the edge of the forest was damaged, and the Hogsmeade hillside was scorched beyond recognition.” Granger picked up her fork and began to twist some of the pasta around it as Snape somewhat reluctantly grabbed his too. “We’re working to see what we can do to remove some of the dark magic and seal the grounds. Bill is getting involved, and he identified a group of people from the Gringotts extended staff that have experience in it – so we’re hoping to start on that in a few weeks and work to repair the damage.”
“I see,” Snape said quietly as she took a bite of the pasta.
He swallowed his first bite as well, and it was so fucking delicious he had to fight against the urge to shovel the entire plate into his mouth. His eyes narrowed at her, searching her face as he wondered if she put something in the drink to increase his appetite. But her face remained impassive and unreadable as she took another careful bite from her own plate. He frowned, dropping his gaze back to his fork and resisting the urge to eat far too quickly. As he took another bite, his mind wandered, circling with endless questions before it quickly settled back on her words and the thought of Nasir obliterating half the school grounds and then offering to help repair it.
It was absurd.
It was so unexpected that he wasn’t really sure if he believed it.
Why the hell would that man offer to repair the damage he caused? What had Shacklebolt and the others promised him in return for his aide? Or did he seriously think that repairing the grounds would change anything? Did he think that it would make the wizarding world trust him and accept him? He, of all people, should know better.
He felt his grip tighten on his fork as he thought back to Granger’s naive words upstairs and the dull flicker of annoyance in his core grew.
The world would never accept that man. Not after what he did. Not after all those people saw that fire. They would use him, then abandon him just like the last time because despite what Granger naively wanted to believe, there was no place in this world for people like him. The Ministry and public would make sure of that no matter how hard she or Shacklebolt tried, and he would disappear just like he had in the past, and the thought made him sick.
Angry.
Bitter.
Devastated.
He couldn’t stop thinking about it. He couldn’t stop thinking about how close they had come to losing and that if Dumbledore had had his way, they all would have died. These assholes had no fucking idea what they were dealing with despite his warnings – despite Alastor Moody’s warnings and even Shacklebolt’s himself at times. They had all foolishly thought that they would win the war simply because they deserved to. Because of a prophecy. Because they were on the right side, doing the right things, and fighting for good. More than half the wizarding world had no idea just how close they had come to dying and losing this war.
He shook his head, his annoyance sparking into disgust as the snide words left his lips.
“It’s a good thing you managed to get him on your side,” Snape said darkly, glancing up at Granger as she continued to eat. “Otherwise, I sincerely doubt you would have come out victorious.”
Granger nodded as she slowly chewed her pasta, and somehow that only made him more angry. Maybe it was just the lingering resentment over her saving his life, but the indifferent and emotionless look on her face got under his skin and made his anger flare.
“It’s doubtful that anyone else would have been willing, or capable for that matter, of blasting away the Inferi and claiming well over two hundred lives in that blaze,” Snape said, his hoarse voice making his tone even more distasteful. “Not to mention the acromantula, Inferi, and werewolves still lingering on that hillside.”
He wasn’t even saying it because he was judging. He was just pointing out the sad truth of the Order and the foolish old git who had nearly led them all to their deaths. He wasn’t even sure if he was saying it to her or if this was just an open rant because of the anger he felt over the audacity of her naive words upstairs. How could she still not get it? After everything that she had been through – how could she still be this fucking naive and think that there was a place for him or anyone remotely like him here in this world?
Fine, some students killed some people. It wasn’t the same thing. They didn’t watch people get skinned alive and do nothing. They didn’t kill people because a psychopathic maniac ordered them to and then sat in their mind as they did it to test their loyalty. They weren’t irredeemable like he was, and they weren’t shrouded in blood and death like Nasir. And the fact that she couldn’t tell the fucking difference just showed that the Order and its members still hadn’t learned a god damn thing.
Sure, she’d grown up some. She had experienced more than most her age should, and she’d killed some people – but apparently somehow, unbelievably – she was still hopelessly hopeful for the future. She still believed in redemption. She still thought that people bathed in dark magic could find a place to belong and be welcomed back with open arms despite what they’d done. She actually believed that she could change things, so obviously, she had no fucking idea how politics worked or how quickly people would change their tune and go from calling a hero a villain.
Killing a handful of people was nothing in comparison to bearing the burden of what had been required to win that war, and the Order had, in their classic fashion, placed that burden on the shoulders of a man they deemed disposable.
Because at the end of the day, even though she and Potter and the Order had stepped up their game and fought with the expectation of casualties – they’d still relied on the dangerous, broken, and damaged Revenant man to stomach the mass majority of their dirty work. And that knowledge made his very thin veil of self-control fracture to dust, smothering the tiny piece of him that seemed to desperately want to believe Granger’s words. It was a pipe dream. A child’s dream – and he was fucking done with it.
“It’s not a task most could stomach,” Snape said bitterly as he shifted the pasta on his plate. “In fact, it would break more than most people. So I’m not surprised that they relied on Nasir to do it. I didn’t know the Dark Lord had buried Inferi on the grounds. No one knew, so yes, it was impossible to be fully prepared. But still, it’s a fucking sad indication of just how fucked you all were and just how idiotic Albus was. Honestly, it’s as if no one remembers the last war – as if people just forgot the sorts of things that the Dark Lord would do to amass numbers.
“Without that blaze, your losses would have been catastrophic – we would have without a doubt lost,” Snape said pointedly, anger lacing his voice as his tone became caustic and sarcastic once more. “It’s a good thing that the small piece of soul Nasir does have is already tainted and beyond repair, because repairing that school certainly isn’t going to clear his conscience. There is no way to atone for that sort of death and dark magic use. It’s not something you can just swallow down. You don’t have a normal life after that. That sort of destruction is irreparable, and I don’t mean the damage to the land; I mean the damage to the caster. A blaze that size would have been like the weight of the fucking ocean – and it could only be done by a damaged and blackened soul – so thank fuck you found one.
“But of course, the Order and the wizarding world managed to once again get away with passing the burden on to someone else without shouldering it themselves. It’s a good thing Nasir is basically already dead inside, so he’ll be able to live with it. The Order has no fucking idea how lucky they are that he was willing to do that on their behalf, because that Inferi rush would have nearly wiped out everyone in that castle. He might be considered a hero right now, and the Ministry and everyone else will go on and pat themselves on the back for their hard-earned win just as you said,” Snape said darkly. “But trust me, Miss Granger, they’ll be the first ones to condemn him and use that massive death count as justification to toss him away the second he isn’t useful to them anymore. Because he’s too risky, he’s too powerful, and he’s too fucking dangerous. They’ve done it before, and they’ll do it again.
“There is a reason why the other Revenants were removed from this earth, and there is a reason why you never heard of them before Nasir,” Snape said sharply as he stabbed his fork into a heap of pasta. “The Ministry doesn’t trust them. They use them, then they delete them – and it’s only a matter of time until it happens again. Frankly, Shacklebolt is lucky that they didn’t come after him in the past or label him as a threat. They fucking did it to Albus – you saw it happen. Once the school reparations are completed, they’ll change their tune. You’ll see. They’ll get rid of him and wipe him from the history books just like all those before him. That’s the problem with too much power, Granger. First, they love you. You’re a beacon of hope to be admired and a promising student. Then, you’re unnerving, and the uneasiness sets in. Soon after, they alienate you; they can’t compete on your level, and that causes distrust. Eventually, inevitably, whether deserved or not, you will be feared because everyone who has power fears losing it. Nasir demonstrated his power with the blaze. It’s only a matter of time now until they condemn him for it.”
As Snape made to collect another bite of pasta, he glanced up to Granger and noticed that the girl had gone impossibly still. Her body was rigid like it’d been in second year, petrified like a stone as her gaze remained glued to her plate – but her eyes revealed a myriad of thoughts. It seemed his words might have sunk in, and he almost felt smug about that – almost – until she slowly lifted her gaze to meet his, and he recognized the look in her eyes as contemplation. She was thinking about something, weighing her options before speaking.
He watched her in silent confusion until she shifted in her chair and spoke in a voice so quiet, he barely heard it.
“Actually, sir,” she said, whispering the words. “That was mine.”
“What?” Snape frowned, his brow furrowing as he stared at the girl before him, not understanding what she meant.
“The fiendfyre on the hill,” Granger said slowly, her eyes glancing away from his almost warily before she swallowed hard. “That – that was mine.”
Snape felt his mouth go dry as his heart stuttered in his chest.
He stared at her in disbelief as his brain tried to digest the words she’d just spoken, but it continued to reject it as false information. It wouldn’t accept the data. It refused to process it. He tried to imagine the small girl before him being responsible for the blaze he’d seen on the Hogsmeade hillside that night – her, Granger – being accountable for the death and the darkness that could literally be smelt in the air as the land was ravaged and ripped to shreds in the most violent display of magic that he’d ever seen.
“What.” The word was hoarse, raspy, and weak. He felt like an idiot for repeating it a second time as his fork remained frozen, hovering above his plate, the untouched pasta dangling there as he continued to stare at her. But he’d been unable to say anything else.
“Nasir’s fiendfyre is a dragon,” Granger said awkwardly, almost as if she was trying to turn the conversation into a casual discussion but felt uncomfortable revealing the information. She cleared her throat and pushed on, not faltering as she continued despite the bitter sting he could see in her eyes as she attempted to pretend like his previous scathing words had not just cut her deeper than a knife. “Specifically, his is a Hungarian Horntail. You would have found this out eventually from the others since they were there at the bridge when it happened, and most people already know because of what happened on the eastern front – but mine is a Nundu. It was my fiendfyre on the Hogsmeade hillside. Harry’s, well, his is a snake, a death adder actually. Though it might change now that Voldemort’s soul is no longer there – it’s hard to say. He’s not cast it since the Battle, so we don’t know for sure.”
Sickness twisted in his stomach as every muscle in his body tensed. He felt like his heart was repeatedly being stabbed by a knife through the chest as he stared at her – and suddenly, her passionate speech and seemingly desperate need to believe that the damaged and broken people of war had a place in this world held all new meaning.
Foot meet mouth.
He’d just massively fucked up.
Sure, he didn’t really care for the girl or her feelings. He found her annoying, and yes, he was upset that she’d kept him alive without his permission – but even he was not that cruel. Even he would never have said what he just did if he had known that that was her.
Merlin’s fucking beard, I’m an asshole.
He could feel the tension and remorse pulsing through him like nausea as his own harsh words echoed in his head, and she continued to stare at him warily, uncomfortably. Like she wanted to be anywhere else in the world but sitting across from him. But yet – her eyes were burning with defiance as she forced herself to remain because she refused to give up, and she was duty-bound to stay there.
For him.
Until I have a clean bill of health, he thought in self-disgust.
He’d mistaken her calm demeanour and her comfort shifting around the kitchen with him in it as true comfort. He had just assumed that she was so entitled and so annoyingly confident in her perfection that she was actually comfortable being left in charge of him and was genuinely indifferent to his presence. But looking at her now, when his aggressive anger had finally taken a back seat, and his eyes were finally wide open – he knew he’d been wrong.
Entirely wrong.
Granger was not comfortable.
She was the farthest thing from comfortable. She was doing her best, likely using occlumency and cold detachment to deal with this and hide her crippling lack of emotions. And it was glaringly obvious looking at her now that her façade and carefully blank face had fallen away, that she was incredibly stressed and anxious. She was exhausted, and she was struggling far more than she had let on.
He faltered, his mouth falling open as shame burned through his veins, and his brain finally looked at the whole picture.
She’d just fought a war. In less than a year, Granger had been mauled, hunted, tortured, and cut up – in addition to drowning, nearly losing her arm, and facing endless difficulties and problems. Then, after all that, she’d single-handedly shouldered the weight of hundreds of deaths, sacrificing herself to win the war so she could protect those around her.
Even the ones who didn’t want to be saved.
And she healed my body, donated her heart, gave me her blood, sat by my side waiting for me to wake up, tolerated my explosions, monitored my vitals, and cooked me dinner.
The thought brought the taste of vomit to his mouth.
She was here alone, left responsible for watching him on her own because Potter was injured and Nasir was out working. Meanwhile, the Order was trying to tackle the laundry list of tasks she’d rhymed off to him upstairs – and he didn’t doubt that she’d shortened it for him because it was probably endless. She was dealing with the aftermath of the worst war in wizarding history, her own trauma, her damaged soul, and he’d just unknowingly laid into her. Unknowingly carved another hole in her heart. Unknowingly ruined everything.
Again.
Just like he always did.
He’d figured that her exhaustion was simply because of experiencing the war. He’d never thought in a million years that she had been the one to devastate that hillside – to crush the countless streams of dead corpses and enemies. He hadn’t known that it was her magic that night, and if he had known, he never would have said that. And he certainly wouldn’t have said it in that way.
For Merlin’s sake, he’d just told her that she was damaged beyond repair. He’d just told her that she’d never recover from the weight of those deaths. He’d told her that the Ministry would throw her under the bus the second that she wasn’t useful and lock her away or dispose of her. He’d said that she was dangerous – that her soul was irreparably damaged and blackened.
He’d just implied that no one else in the Order, including her, had been willing to do what was required – because he’d thought that to be true – and he’d been wrong. He’d mocked them and their efforts – he’d mocked her, and he’d been entirely wrong.
Fucking again.
He’d thought that he’d had Granger figured out.
He’d thought he’d had her number.
Even with seeing her walking into the school and using magic well beyond her years when they had duelled in the hallway, he still thought he had her pegged down. Even with knowing what she’d done and what she’d been through up to that point, he somehow still thought that he knew who she was: the insufferable know-it-all, naïve, proper girl who was unrelenting on her morals. Sure, she’d killed a few people in order to stay alive this last year – but he’d never even dreamed that she’d be capable of something like this, let alone be willing to do it.
But evidently, he did not know her at all. But worse still was the realization that hit him like a wave of sickness as his fist tightened into a ball by his plate, his fork slowly lowered, and he felt his brow crease in pain.
He, Severus Snape, had fallen back into the same angry, bitter, self-loathing, resentful, and deplorable behaviour which had gotten him into this mess in the first place. She had offered him a hand. Upstairs, she had extended him an olive branch with the chance of something better, something different, something new – telling him he could belong if he wanted to. She told him he could have a future free from life debts and guilt, and he’d fucking lit it on fire and spit on the ashes.
Yes, he was injured. Yes, he was tired. Yes, he was angry and emotionally compromised right now, but that was no excuse.
It had never been an excuse.
This was Lily Evans all over again, and he might as well have just screamed in her face and called her a fifthly mudblood because it was all the fucking same. It was him being an ignorant, miserable dick. He swallowed hard, his right hand vibrating softly as a cold stone dropped to the pit of his stomach with a painful thud.
He was the worst.
The absolute worst.
He meant what he said as he died in the Shrieking Shack. He meant every thought, and he had meant that apology to his core. Yet he’d woken up and immediately fallen into the rut of his old behaviours. And if he didn’t do something to change this right now, he might as well ask her to kill him on the spot, because he already knew he couldn’t spend another twenty years living the same miserable way that he had before.
“Miss Granger,” Snape said hoarsely, his eyes flicking across her face as he tried and failed to find the words that he wanted to say. He felt almost desperate, like he could physically see his final chance at the possibility of something better slipping through his fingers. There was a tight ball forming in his throat, and it was making it difficult to breathe as pain started to radiate through his entire body. “I didn’t know that was you. I – I’m s–”
“It’s okay.” She cut him off and gave him a pathetically weak smile before shifting her pasta around her plate. Her eyes dropped to the meal before her, and she let out a small breath. “I’m actually glad you said that because I – I–”
She hesitated before swallowing hard. A small shake had become visible in her left arm, and she quickly pulled it from the table and dropped it across her lap as if to make it less noticeable. She forced her eyes to meet his once more, and it only made the sickness in his stomach worsen as she spoke.
“I didn’t know the count, and there were no bodies after the blaze so… I’d been wondering how many. That’s the um, the thing with fiendfyre. You don’t feel it quite the same way as you do with the killing curse or sectumsempra, do you?” Granger said slowly, her voice quiet and calm as if they were talking about the weather or some normal activity that people experienced. As if he had any idea what it felt like to roast hundreds of bodies in a blaze of death. Her eyes dropped to her plate once more. “In the heat and the chaos, it all sort of melds together. I could feel each one, but eventually, it became hard to separate. So, to be honest, I wasn’t sure how many died, and no one else would tell me.”
Her last words had been said weakly, and suddenly the bags under her eyes became more prominent as her glamour failed. Her arm started to tremble a bit harder, and Snape’s mind finally saw the full picture before him.
This girl was haunted.
She was tormented like he was, and somehow in the last year, her death count had surpassed his and skyrocketed into the triple digits. Yet despite this, she had refused to give up. She was actively fighting to be here. He could literally see it on her face as she fought to stay in her chair and her shoulders tensed with anxiety. She was fighting against her own body, fighting to contribute and have some semblance of a life outside of war – outside of her daily and nightly torment of living with what she had done. Even despite the fact that her life was entirely fucked up, even though she knew it would never be normal and she would never be the same, she was still choosing to fight for it.
Because it was hers.
Because it was all she had.
And so, she was choosing to take control of it.
“I’m not sure that I could have handled over two hundred souls using a different spell,” she said quietly. She glanced up at him, and he saw her eyes soften a fraction as if she understood his outburst, once again giving him more forgiveness that he did not deserve. “But you’re right, though. Many members of the Order weren’t willing to make the sacrifices needed despite the warnings that Harry and I gave. Despite the ones that you had been giving all along and the ones that Moody preached at nearly every Order meeting, as you said. In fact, I don’t think there were many besides myself, Nasir, and Harry willing to do it – Shacklebolt might have, but he would have struggled with it. But honestly–”
She paused and gave him a look. It seemed to be a tormented mixture of sadness and relief, and her next words stung his poor shattered soul in a way that he couldn’t begin to describe.
“I’m glad they didn’t,” she whispered. “I’m glad they weren’t there, and I’m glad that they didn’t have to do it. I wouldn’t want any one of them to have to bear this – and I wouldn’t change a thing. I would do it all again, in a heartbeat, just to spare them from this agony.”
Snape opened his mouth as if to say something, having no idea what was going to come out – but it didn’t matter because she cut him off once more.
“Anyway, you should eat. You’re probably starving, and you need to gain some weight.” Granger smiled at him, but it didn’t reach her cold dead eyes before her gaze dropped back down to her plate, and she started to eat.
But Snape didn’t move.
He just sat there and watched her. Each of her movements looked forced, like she was only eating because she knew she had to. His eyes flicked to the pasta on her plate, and he recalled how she’d dished it out. Her portion had been carefully measured. He’d recognized the spell that she’d used to do it because his mother had used the same one when he was a child, and they’d been short on money and food. It measured out only precisely what she needed to eat and nothing more – and she was doing it because she had no desire to eat because she was still dealing with the after-effects of dark magic use. She was going through the steps, putting her body through the paces, giving it the nutrients that it required, but the bags under her eyes and weariness in her bones made it clear she was struggling.
Yet she wasn’t stopping, and that relentless resilience resonated with something so deep in his core he physically felt it like a shiver through his body.
He sat there. Unmoving. Despite the fact that the food before him smelled delicious and his stomach was still twisted with desperate hunger, he couldn’t bring himself to eat. He felt more disappointed and more disgusted with himself than he had since the night Lily died. He was ashamed. He was sickened. He’d never thought himself a good person. He’d never thought himself kind or caring at all. In fact, he knew that he wasn’t – but what he’d just done hadn’t been necessary. If he had taken two seconds to actually look at the girl before him instead of raging about being alive and allowing his emotions to control him, he would have instantly known just how bad things were and just how deeply disturbed and damaged she was.
He had always been intuitive. He had always had a keen eye. He should have spotted this from a mile away, but then again, he had always been a dick, too. So he’d let his worst qualities get the best of him. He had mocked her before and tormented her in school – but that was different. This wasn’t even comparable. He could make up excuses, blame it on the fact that he was hurting too, dealing with stress and feeling used, manipulated, and betrayed. He could blame it on his damaged body being blinded by his own pain – but those were all lies.
Those were the same excuses he had used in the past and the same ones he had thought about as he lay dying.
The truth was, this was a low moment even for him. He could barely bring himself to breathe as he felt like his world was starting to crack around him, melting and warping like the wax house in his mind. He could feel the bitter and resentful commentary in his mind being challenged by the warm flutter in his veins and the desperate cry of the tiny near-dead part of him that wanted to live as it fought to breathe. And it was all because if this stupid tiny chit before him, and yet as he thought he words, he knew that she wasn’t the stupid one in the room.
She had never been the stupid one in the room.
He felt sick.
He was going to throw up.
He wanted to fix this, but he didn’t know how.
He didn’t know how to change.
He wasn’t sure that he could, and he wasn’t yet sold on the idea of living. But even if he did decide to give it a go, he didn’t even know where to start – how could he apologize? He’d already done it once, and he’d nearly immediately fucked up. What in Merlin’s name could he do to make this right? The small part of his heart that wanted to start over was screaming at him to sweep up the ashes from the olive branch that he had burned. It wanted him to somehow repair the damage he’d caused before this final chance completely fell from his grasp. He could feel it, like an agonizing burn through his chest and throat as he desperately tried to figure out what to do.
Was saying sorry enough? Could he try to explain himself?
That thought made him sicker.
“Sir, you really should eat,” Granger said, glancing up at him once more with genuine concern lacing her eyes.
Never mind her own problems, she was still worried about him despite his harsh words at her today. Despite the fact that he’d been a dick since waking. When he didn’t move, she frowned, looking back to her fork as if questioning the quality of the meal.
Merlin, she really was insufferable… but then again, so was he.
“I know you might still feel a bit nauseous, Snape, but–”
“It’s Severus,” he said quietly, his quick response cutting her off. He watched her freeze mid-word before she glanced up to stare at him. He didn’t know why he’d said it. He didn’t know why it seemed to be the only logical sentence in his brain at the time in an effort to make things right.
In the future, he would look back on this moment and wonder precisely what it was that had shifted – what had made him do it. Was it her? Was it knowing what she had done for the Order, for the school, for him, and for the wizarding world as a whole? Was it the shared weight and understanding they both carried from having runes? Was it the guilt of being an asshole his whole life? Or was it that he had some sort of bizarre newfound understanding and sense of unity toward the girl after knowing what she’d done and what she’d been through?
Or maybe, it was the passionate speech that she’d made upstairs that was finally sinking in and making him wonder if living might not be the worst thing in the world. Like she had planted a seed of hope that was festering in his soul in an irritating and almost parasitic way.
Then again, maybe he was just tired of fighting.
Maybe he didn’t want to be angry anymore because it was so exhausting he couldn’t stand it.
Or maybe, it was the knowledge that he wasn’t entirely alone in feeling like he was undeserving of life and damaged beyond repair. Maybe it was knowing that there was someone else out there hurting as badly as he was. He wasn’t the only one in agony, and if she could bear it, if Nasir could do it and rejoin civilization after all he’d done and be accepted, and if Narcissa Malfoy could move on to parole with a version of Draco Malfoy that had helped younger year students escape from Hogwarts – then maybe, just maybe – trying really wouldn’t be the worst thing.
“You can call me, Severus,” he said again to try and remove the disbelief and surprise that shone in her eyes.
He shifted awkwardly in his chair as she stared at him. Maybe he couldn’t repair the olive branch she’d extended to him, but he could make his own, and he held it out to her along with an unspoken apology for what had transpired. She didn’t want to hear him say he was sorry for the words he’d said tonight because she didn’t need to hear it. She didn’t need his reassurance, his approval or his pity – she knew what she’d done, and she’d already accepted it along with all the consequences.
But this... he watched as a slow, shy smile shifted across her lips... this was different.
This is a sign of trust, he thought as he watched her. A sign that he might not ask to die and a sign that he might be willing to try.
And besides, he thought as he let out a low breath and then finished the pondering thought out loud. “I hate my last name.”
Warning:
This chapter contains: excessive anger and explicit language, as well as suicidal thoughts.
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Note: I know that some of you are not fans of the Snape POV chapters, but this chapter includes critical plot information, so skipping it will leave many things unanswered.
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May 23, 1998
Saturday, Grimmauld Place, 5:05 pm
“Okay,” Granger said slowly, her head nodding as she eyed him with newfound curiosity. “You should eat, Severus – it will help you recover faster.”
His name sounded odd coming from her mouth, but he fought back his discomfort and instead started to eat. A heavy silence filled the space between them until her quiet voice spoke once more.
“Did you have any other questions about what happened?” Granger asked him, picking up the small piece of garlic bread on her plate and taking a bite.
“Yes,” Snape said after he finished the pasta he was chewing. He’d been debating asking it since waking, because he knew it was a touchy subject, but he also knew there was no point in delaying it. “What were the casualties?”
“They were high,” Granger said slowly, and he could see her mentally closing off to protect herself as she answered the question. “We don’t have a full count because some bodies still haven’t been recovered. Right now, they’re identified as missing, although it is pretty safe to assume that they are dead. I don’t know the numbers at the Ministry yet or the totals across the country, but regarding the final Battle, we lost a dozen allies from the Ministry that Shacklebolt had called in, a few people from Hogsmeade who rushed the grounds to come help towards the end, sixteen centaurs, five house-elves, and several members of the Order. That includes Tonks, Augusta Longbottom, and Charlie Weasley. We also lost Ron, Professor Slughorn, Professor Sprout, Professor Trelawney, Professor Sinistra, Professor Flitwick, Percy Weasley, Penelope Clearwater, Luna Lovegood and her father, Dean Thomas, Seamus Finnigan, Lavender Brown, Ernie Macmillan, Michael Corner, Colin Creevy, Katie Bell, Parvati Patil, Romilda Vane, and seventy-six other students that I’ve yet to memorize the names of, but I will. Outside of the deaths, countless more were injured, and some are still in critical care at St. Mungo’s.”
Snape stared at her, his heart sinking in his chest as he rapidly did the math. Sixty percent. It was the equivalent to losing sixty percent of the seventh year students in a single night. He knew that the ages would vary, and the deaths were likely split across fifth, sixth, and seventh year students, but still – eighty-six students had died at Hogwarts in that fight. That number was devastating. It was a massive blow to her generation within the magical community, and it would take years to recover. Yet even as the bile burned the back of his throat, he knew that number could have been so much worse. They could have lost so much more.
“I see,” Snape said quietly, his voice sounding softer.
Silence rang between them again as they finished their meals, and Snape’s appetite had significantly decreased after her summary of the losses. When they were finally done force-feeding themselves, Granger sent the plates to the sink to self-wash.
“How are you feeling now?” she asked him, meeting his gaze from across the table once more.
“Better,” he said stiffly, pausing a moment before forcing the next words out. “Thank you – for making dinner.”
“It was no problem. I’m glad you feel a bit better.” Her eyes glanced down at her covered forearm at the same second Snape felt something tingle against his arm. He watched as she pulled up her right sleeve, revealing more silver skin and a collection of different coloured tags. One was pale blue like the one he had found on his arm, but there was also a green one, a red one, a white one, and a purple one. The pale blue tag seemed to be displaying text. Intrigued, he yanked up his own sleeve and looked in surprise at the message that was displayed.
N- Nearly done at school.
N- Be back in another hour or so.
Snape arched a brow and looked back up to Granger, she was holding her finger to the tag, and he felt another buzz.
Hr- See you then.
“I take it this is your invention?” Snape said, his hoarse voice causing her to look up at him once more.
“Yes – sorry, I forgot to explain that. I tagged you in the Shrieking Shack so we could monitor your vitals while we finished the war. I had to leave you with one of Narcissa’s house-elves once you were stable to go help Harry – but I wanted to make sure you were alright,” Hermione explained. “I’ve since replaced the tag, and we’ve restructured the communication lines, but each tag lets us send small messages back and forth. Some of them are charmed to collect vital signals and send them back to either myself, Nasir or Shacklebolt so we can keep an eye on each other until things settle down and safety is less of a concern.”
“How do you get them?”
“In my head, almost like a display screen that I can flip through. It takes a bit to get used to because you can feel each person’s heartbeat like a flutter in your mind, but it’s been very useful.”
“I don’t doubt that.”
“I’ll take it off once Nasir clears you.”
He nodded, then his gaze shifted back to her arm and his brow furrowed. He wasn’t exactly a fan of talking, and this was Granger – but he was curious to know more about the tags, the war, and what had happened. And to be honest, if he had to pick between Potter, Nasir, and Granger for whom he wished to speak to in order to get a recap – he probably would choose Granger. She was the safer bet of the three. He would have preferred Shacklebolt, but clearly, the man was engaged elsewhere sorting out this mess.
He let out a quiet sigh. He supposed, if he was thinking about thinking of trying to try, he should at least find out more about what’s going on. Gathering more information would help him to decide if he actually wanted to live. So, he ignored his instincts and instead just allowed the questions to come without thinking too hard about it.
“So the different colours,” he said slowly, tracing his eyes back up her arm to meet her gaze. “They’re connected to different people?”
“Yes.” Granger nodded. “They all work the same way, and some people have more than one. I think of them as channels. Only myself, Nasir, and Shacklebolt have a pale blue tag connected to yours, but right now, only Nasir and I are monitoring your vitals. The purple is a private text-only line I keep with Arthur, green is for the main group of Order members, and it has a general trace so we can locate each other in an emergency, red is connected to Malfoy and Narcissa, and white is for communication directly with Shacklebolt.”
“You implemented an illegal trace?” Snape raised a brow.
“Yes,” Hermione stated bluntly, as if daring him to challenge her on the ethics of legalities. “But everyone was informed and consented to it before we applied the new tags. The trace does not activate unless there is an emergency – only Shacklebolt or myself can use it, and it’s only temporary until things are a little less crazy.”
“I see.” Snape moved his left index finger over the tag and gently tapped it. He saw Hermione glance down at the words that appeared on her arm.
Sv- Test
“Very useful indeed,” Snape said thoughtfully as his eyes darted up to meet her gaze once more. He stared at her for a moment. Then his mind circled back to the duel that they’d had in the Hogwarts hallway and then his brow creased in curiosity. “You and Potter did seem to be able to communicate rather effectively during our fight.”
She didn’t say anything, and his eyes narrowed in suspicion as his eyes dropped down to her now covered arm once more. She did not mention having a private line with Potter, which was odd. He supposed that she might have more tags on her other arm, or perhaps she had some disguised and coloured one to match her skin. She was clearly just as skeptical and paranoid as he was – for Merlin’s sake, she was using tags and traces to ensure that what little remained of her friends were safe – but he suspected something different regarding her ties to Potter. When they’d come to Hogwarts, they seemed to be able to communicate, but they had definitely not glanced down at their arms.
“What else did you use, Miss Granger?” he asked quietly, meeting her gaze once more.
“Does that matter?” Granger asked him. The small twitch of her lips and her words were so reminiscent of Nasir it made his muscles tense, and his gaze narrowed further.
“No,” he said slowly. “I was just curious.”
She hesitated a moment, eyeing him calculatingly as if debating if she should trust him with the information. Then, to his surprise, she spoke.
“I created a bond between us.”
There it is, he thought almost in victory. He’d suspected as much.
“How?”
“Runes.”
He blanched, his eyes widening and his mouth opening in advance of the string of lecturing words he planned to bestow upon her as if she was once again his student and she’d just done something incredibly stupid. He knew Nasir was a risk, but he’d never imagined the man would teach her how to carve runes – that was crossing the fucking line. But he stopped when she laughed, and his harsh lecture died on the tip of his tongue.
“Not like that – not with a traditional rune carving.” Granger grinned, showing him a second genuine smile that night. “I know how those work, and I would never inflict one unless it was a life-or-death situation. Getting one was enough, and I don’t plan to take any more if I can help it. Besides, I’m pretty sure that Nasir would have my head if I did. He is, believe it or not, incredibly strict about what he teaches me, and he made it abundantly clear that I was not to tinker with runes without his explicit involvement. We created a banded bond in which runes are carved into the material.”
Granger held her silvery right arm out, pulling up the sleeve once more so he could see the thin silver line that ran up her forearm beneath the multiple tags. She tapped it as if pointing to something inside. “We inserted them simply to avoid them being in the way, being noticed, or getting damaged.”
“That’s still rather risky, Granger,” Snape said slowly as he eyed the mark on her arm. It seemed Nasir had indeed been a better mentor than he’d given the man credit for, but still, magical surgical modifications came with their own issues. It was still considered dark magic for a reason, and doing something like that should concern most witches or wizards. “If unbalanced or implemented on someone you did not trust completely, you could have a real problem. Not to mention the issues associated with embedding it in your arm.”
“I know.” She nodded, her gaze becoming more serious, and she pushed her sleeve back down. “We discussed it at length. Nasir reviewed the work and the consequences with us before we did it. It was the best option we had and the lowest risk. After what happened at the Manor, we knew that we couldn’t afford to be separated without communication again.”
Snape watched her for another moment before he couldn’t help himself, and he asked. “How does it work?”
“It creates a permanent occlumency connection,” she answered. “We can push thoughts or images across the channel, but I designed it so that you cannot pull anything from the other side. It has to be given.”
“I see.” Snape could already imagine the runes she might have used to accomplish this, and he knew more magic was involved than what she’d identified, but she was smart not to divulge more information. That sort of magic was dangerous in the wrong hands, and thus, he had to agree that hiding the band internally was actually the smartest option. “So, Potter finally figured out occlumency.”
“He did.” Granger nodded, a quiet slipping between them once more before she cleared her throat. “So – was there anything else that you wanted to know about the Battle? Harry won’t be up for another few hours, and Nasir won’t be here for a while still, so I have time.”
Snape hesitated. Out of everything, there was one thing that he wanted to know most, and yet somehow, he felt irrationally anxious to ask about it. Knowing that she was monitoring his vitals only made it worse because she could no doubt feel the pick-up of his heart rate. Yet she seemed comfortable waiting for him to proceed at his own pace, and she didn’t question him on it.
“Yes,” he said slowly, sitting forward slightly in his chair. “How did he die?”
“Voldemort?”
“Yes – wait.” He frowned, grabbing his water glass. “Who else could I have meant?”
“Well, I guess any of the others, or even Harry, but I suppose you don’t know that yet.”
Snape practically sputtered on the drink he’d taken as he looked at her incredulously. “Potter died?! Obviously I knew he was supposed to, but when you mentioned him being alive and healing, I just assumed he’d found some way around it.”
“Well, technically, yes, you’re correct. He did both,” Granger said calmly, and Snape could only stare at her. “He died in the Forbidden Forest before the final fight to buy us more time to evacuate the students and because he knew that it was the only way that we would stand a chance at killing Voldemort. He refused to live as a Horcrux because he knew that Voldemort would be able to take over his body and use him as a vessel, so he truly did go to die. But when Voldemort cast the killing curse, severing Harry’s soul from his body and attempting to destroy it, the curse destroyed his own soul fragment that was living in Harry instead.
“It’s a bit of a twisted story,” Granger said slowly, and Snape couldn’t help but lean forward as she spoke. “We didn’t fully understand it until a few days after the war, but it wasn’t just luck. When Harry went to die, it actually would have been impossible for Voldemort to destroy Harry’s soul. He could kill him, yes, and send his soul to the After – which he did – but he would never have been able to terminate his soul permanently.”
“Why?” Snape breathed, and Granger leaned forward to rest her elbows on the table.
“Because Harry was still under the blood protection that his mother gave him, and he was the true master of the Elder Wand,” Granger said quietly, and Snape’s body stilled. “Harry disarmed Draco Malfoy at the Manor, and Malfoy was the one who disarmed Dumbledore on the astronomy tower. You were never the master of the wand, Severus. Voldemort got it wrong, and the wand never truly belonged to him, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t use it or that Harry owning it made him immune to death. He wasn’t. Voldemort killed him with the Elder Wand once, and he very nearly killed him a second time in the end.
“But there is a big difference between just killing someone and destroying their soul,” she said, her brown eyes creasing as if in pain. “They’re not the same thing. When you die, your soul passes on to another plain that exists outside of this reality, and it’s difficult to explain. There are apparently lots of different plains. They’re all layered against each other, and one of those plains is called the In Between. It’s the place you go before you cross over to the After, and while you’re there, it’s still technically possible to come back.”
“How?” Snape whispered, and Granger shifted in her seat.
“Anima Avocaret.”
Snape stiffened. “That’s just a legend.”
“It really isn’t,” Granger said quietly as a small smile touched her lips. “Nasir found it decades ago. He’d never tried it before, but he agreed to try it with Harry. I was his call, and Nasir was his soul guide. Had Voldemort physically destroyed Harry’s body, it never would have worked. He would have permanently killed Harry, and his soul would have been forced to pass on. But he didn’t, because Voldemort was arrogant, and something as muggle as ‘double-tapping’ a body to confirm death was beneath him. All it would have taken was a single hit to the head, a stab through the heart – and if we weren’t there with his corpse to heal it when Nasir yanked his soul back to our plain, Harry would have died yet again instantly upon his return and then remained dead.
“Thankfully,” Granger said as she sat back in her seat once more. “That wasn’t the case. Apparently Voldemort was pretty shaken and livid after attacking Harry and getting blasted back himself. He didn’t harm Harry’s body, and he had Narcissa go to confirm Harry’s death. She lied. She gave him one of your potions actually – the one you gave her when you accepted her help. She faked Harry’s death, then messaged Malfoy, telling him to let us know he was alive as she levitated his body back to the castle. He still suffered damage, and the cross-over has permanently affected him, but he lived. As for how Voldemort died – well, Harry and I took him down with Nasir while the Order fended off the remaining Death Eaters and supported us.”
“How?” The word was out of his mouth so fast she’d hardly finished speaking. “How did you kill him after all of that? How did he die?”
“Well, we–” She hesitated, her eyes scanning over him quickly as if completing an assessment while simultaneously contemplating something. She swallowed, seeming to think for a moment before her voice grew quieter. “Do you want to see it?”
“See it?” he repeated, and his brow pinched in confusion. “Did you extract the memory?”
“No, we don’t have a pensive – the one Dumbledore had is being used by the Ministry right now, but–” She hesitated again, eyeing him slowly before continuing. “You’re an accomplished legilimens. If you would like to see it, and if you’re feeling up to it, I’ll let you watch it. My mind is pretty organized. It’s not perfect yet, especially given what happened, but I can pull forward only what you need so it won’t be as taxing on you – and it would save a hefty explanation and a bunch of questions, I’m sure. It’s your choice. Your vitals are strong, but don’t push yourself if you’re too tired.”
Snape stared at her in disbelief. Granger was offering him to look inside her mind – she was trusting him to look inside her mind. She knew who he was, and she knew that if he wanted to, he could pull nearly anything he wanted from there. This was a second olive branch she was giving him, and it was a big, fat, hefty one – either that or Granger had mastered her occlumency so much so that she did not feel threatened by having him in her head. Which was possible – but even then, she’d still be vulnerable. Snape was known for legilimency for a reason, and he was incredibly skilled at extracting information.
He could feel the anxiousness curling in his chest as he thought about the idea of being able to see what had happened. He had dreamed of the day when that wretched demon would die. He had wanted to see it. He had wanted to be there, but that chance had been taken away from him when he’d nearly died on the floor of that disgusting shack. And now, Granger was offering him that chance – offering him the opportunity to see the one thing he had actually wanted to witness in life.
He nodded slowly, his heart practically pounding against his rib cage as he forced himself to breathe.
“Okay,” she said as she pulled herself up from her seat. He watched her as she moved around the table, taking the seat to his right and turning to face him. “How much of it do you want to see?”
“All of it.” The words felt breathless as they left his lips before he could even think.
He realized that that might have sounded greedy or demanding, but he couldn’t help himself. This had been his life for nearly twenty years, and that Battle had been the single most important part of it. He had been waiting for this, living for this, slowly killing himself and ready to die for this – and when she met his gaze, he knew – she understood that.
It was why she had offered-- because she seemed to understand what that day had meant to him.
“Alright, I’ll start from just before he arrived at the castle.” Granger took a deep breath and closed her eyes. A crease formed between her brow as she focused, no doubt pulling together a string of memories for him to view until she finally opened her eyes once more and met his gaze. “Whenever you’re ready, but stop if you need to, or I will kick you out if you push yourself too far.”
He nodded, turning in his chair to face her and resting his hands on his thighs for support as he stared into her unblinking brown eyes.
“Legilimens.”
Snape felt the strain on his body as he tumbled forward into Granger’s mind. It was much more taxing than it usually would be. Thankfully, he had always been gifted at mind work, so it wasn’t unbearable – but thank Merlin, she hadn’t been lying. Granger’s mind was organized, meticulously so, with everything neatly locked away and no running commentary circling her mind.
It was exactly how he kept his own mind, exactly how Nasir kept his, and he wondered if she’d done this herself, or if perhaps Nasir had helped her restructure it. Either way, it was so well organized that there wasn’t the usual overwhelming and crushing feel of unregulated thoughts assaulting him as he landed. If that had happened, he doubted he would have been able to handle it. Instead, the strain was minimized as he sat in the empty nothing waiting for Granger to pull the scene forward. Just as he was wondering if she’d changed her mind, the first memory was presented, and he immediately took it.
Granger was standing in the rain, gripping Nasir’s hand. She looked horrible. Her clothes were too big. They appeared to be borrowed from the man beside her, and the expression on her face left his stomach uneasy and sick. Blood smeared her skin and was matted in her hair. Her body was shaking. Her arm kept twitching. She was barely holding it together because Potter had died, and fragmented pieces of memories kept slipping into her mind – her screaming for Potter, Nasir tackling her to the ground and holding her down.
He could see a row of students, professors, and Order members behind her. They looked just as battered as she did, all of them barely holding on by a thread.
Even in the dark, he could tell that the grounds to the east were ruined, and he could feel the unease and tension from the memory leaching into his skin. She was trying to keep her own thoughts and feelings separated from the memory, but she was still learning. Her occlumency was good, but not that good, and he could catch snippets of her internal unsteady ramble as she stared into the darkness and fought not to fall apart.
Granger was unhinged.
Seeing her now, standing here like this, it was honestly a fucking miracle that the girl was still functional. Her eyes twitched, then he saw the others behind her shift as dark figures started to fade into view. He watched the scene unfold in silence, barely able to breathe as the Dark Lord and his most prized followers arrived in the main courtyard, then the demon began to torment them further by standing there in silence. When he finally spoke, Snape couldn’t stop the shiver of fear that slid down his spine.
He watched the exchange.
He watched Nasir bait the Dark Lord, taunting him to attack until all chaos broke out and people began to scream. Minerva shut the wards. Narcissa poured his experimental potion down Potter’s throat and then joined in the fight. Snape’s heart raced in his chest as he watched the scene unfold – unable to breathe, unable to speak, unable to think as blood and magic filled the air. Explosions rattled his head. Granger was downing a potion and screaming out a war cry that shook his bones. She cut people down left, right, and center as Potter rose like a phoenix from the ashes and charged into battle.
All he could do was watch in disbelief as the trio worked their way across the courtyard toward the Dark Lord, taking out everything in their path. The students behind them were astonishing. The Order was unbelievable. They fought desperately, violently, relentlessly. He couldn’t tell what was more brutal – the way Granger hurled dark magic or the way she severed heads and gutted things with a dagger. Seeing it now, he realized that he’d not stood a chance that night in the hallway. Had she wanted to, had they wanted to, the three of them – her, Potter, and Nasir – could have killed him in a moment.
The fight continued as explosions rocked the air and colour lit the sky.
They tried to force the Dark Lord east, but he wouldn’t go. They protected those behind them from his attacks and then chased him down toward the bridge when Potter got inches away from electrocuting the demon with a wall of water. He watched the Dark Lord’s face twist with rage at Nasir’s apparition, and Snape felt his lips twitch.
He knew.
The Dark Lord died knowing that Snape had betrayed him, and that alone was more than Snape could have ever possibly hoped for.
The rest of the fight played out like nothing Snape had ever seen. The damage was unbelievable. The destruction was immeasurable. The Dark Lord fought with cruelty. He baited them, watched them, prayed on their weaknesses and exploited them any chance he got until Nasir nearly landed a hit, and suddenly his posture changed. He ignited a blaze that rattled the earth. Then Snape watched Granger react on instinct, terrified to her core, choosing to ignite the fiendfyre once more to protect the school behind her.
He watched the flames spill into the air as her Nundu took place. Nasir gripped her neck. He could feel her raging panic calm, and then, the most extraordinary display of magic he had ever seen exploded across the grounds. Wings ripped through the air. Heat burned her lungs. Black lightning crept over the abomination’s form until black fire – which actually looked to be extremely dense black lightning – poured from the beast’s mouth.
He couldn’t breathe.
He couldn’t think.
He watched the memory whizz by before his eyes, faster than real-time but slow enough for him to see everything as Granger tried to sacrifice herself and darted across the ruined grounds. Potter covered her. Nasir apparated. He summoned her like the tool she had made herself to be, and then all the air left his lungs as she rolled up from the ground and drove her dagger through the demon’s chest. Hot blood splattered across her clothes as her bones physically broke from the impact, but she didn’t stop, and she drove the weapon up through his torso – cutting through his bones like butter.
There was a crack.
Nasir appeared, driving his own dagger into the Dark Lord’s back before he barely managed to apparate the girl to safety as Potter made the final attack. His apparition failed; they collided with the ground. He watched them rolling across the wreckage as Potter dual cast – fucking dual cast – and a bright white explosion shook the memory so hard he thought he might get sick.
Then it stopped.
Everything went dark, and Snape found himself sitting in her empty mind once more, struggling to breathe. He had no idea what to think. No idea what to do. Where the fuck did one go from here? He couldn’t seem to get his body to move or his brain to do much of anything as cold sweat covered his skin.
What the fuck was even left of the Dark Lord after that?
Something started to trickle into the black that surrounded him, and he realized it was another memory taking shape – but this one was only a snippet – like a photo, and he stilled when he saw it. It was the broken charred remains of a corpse and fragmented wand pieces. Unmistakably the Dark Lord’s and it was most certainly dead in every meaning of the word. Then the image vanished, and he was left in the dark empty void once more.
He didn’t know how to feel. So much happened in that Battle. All of it was overwhelming, and as a result, his body seemed to just be throwing up any and every emotion it was capable of making. It was rocking through his body like turbulent waves as he fought to remain calm and process everything that he’d seen.
A huge part of him wanted to celebrate. It wanted to scream out in relief that the end had finally come, and yet that hardly seemed appropriate given the carnage and bloodshed of that night. It didn’t even feel like a win. It just felt empty. Hollow. Void – like the life had been sucked out of him. He felt so entirely lost and alone.
Yet, he wasn’t alone.
Granger hadn’t kicked him from her mind. He was, for all intents and purposes, sitting in her head, standing in the blank, black, empty space. Logically, he knew that his body was in a chair seated a foot or so away from her, but all he could see was the blank canvas of her mind as she let him sit there and get himself under control. This emptiness would terrify some people, but he found it oddly comforting because it was familiar, and maybe that was why she let him sit there and stew. She could tell he was more comfortable here than he was in Grimmauld Place – even though he knew he was still in Grimmauld Place.
He let out a careful breath, closing his eyes and forcing his pulse to slow. Yet when it finally did, she still didn’t kick him out.
So, he sat, quiet and unsure until his curiosity began to get the better of him, and he carefully – cautiously and full of hesitance – called into her mind once more and asked to see the memory of the werewolf den. It materialized before him with no resistance. She gave it to him freely, picking up from the beach of Shell Cottage as the Order stood in the rain and prepared to apparate to Birmingham. He watched it play through, noting the way that Granger held Potter’s hand tighter than ever, the way she called out to Nasir before he left, the book the man left her with, her terror as the heart rates in her mind skyrocketed, and the adrenaline that coursed through her body as she and Potter jumped into the sewer and raced their way down to the den.
He felt his own heart quicken once more as they looked into the pit, the smell of fiendfyre, death, blood, and terror still fresh in her memories and crisp as ever. He could smell it; he could feel the heat as Potter and Granger dove into the mess and began to help the others escape. He watched with baited breath as Granger meant to sacrifice herself for Arthur only to be saved at the last moment by Nasir, who lost his hand in the process. He watched them narrowly escape as Nasir stayed behind to obliterate the den while Granger and Potter completed the impossible and got the others outside of the wards.
He could feel her exhaustion. He could feel the agony in her bones over what had just happened and her guilt over failing to save the man who had given her so much.
She played the entire memory, including their arrival at Shell Cottage and the chaos that ensued inside as she jammed Arthur’s bones back into his leg and forced the limb to heal. She loved that man – no matter how hard she tried, she would never be able to remove the emotion from the memory, and it was clear to him that she looked at Arthur Weasley as a surrogate father.
She played the entire rest of the scene until she and Potter ran outside, apparating away to go save the muggle woman’s son. When the memory faded, he once again found himself standing in the blank and comforting canvas of her mind, and to his further surprise, she again let him stay there. So he asked again, this time for the memory of the sword, and she complied, bringing forth the cold of the winter as she and Potter warily made their way into the snow to retrieve the sword.
He watched as she defeated the Horcrux from her perspective, then with his hesitancy over requesting memories fading, he asked again – and again, watching each clip as she brought forth everything and anything that he asked for.
He watched their break-in at Peters, the muggle in the alley that she killed with mercy, the initial attack that had left her scarred, and the fight at Xenophilius Lovegood’s. She even showed him fragmented pieces of their capture at Malfoy Manor before revealing some of their training and events at the cottage – their conversations with Shacklebolt and the Order.
As more and more memories whizzed by, he felt his confusion grow. He didn’t understand why she was doing this. If he didn’t know any better, he would assume that she had no control and that he was forcing her to show them. But he did know better, and he knew that he wasn’t forcing her to do anything. He was simply requesting memories into her mind, and she was willingly pulling them up for him to view.
But with each and every memory of the Order’s ordeals and of her and Potter’s escapades, he began to understand. She was showing him what he’d missed. She was showing him the side of the war that he’d been fighting on for years but that he’d never gotten to participate in because he was acting as the traitor Death Eater and playing the role of spy. He’d never once been able to participate directly in an Order mission. He’d never once been able to outwardly fight on the side that he supported, on the side that he belonged to, and she was giving him that. She was giving him the chance to see, to feel, to experience, and participate in the things that the Order had been through.
And, he didn’t notice it at first, but it became a theme he eventually picked up on; she was showing him how everything he’d done fed into their tasks. She was stitching together a patchwork quilt of his battle – but from her side, and he felt his chest constrict as the realization hit him hard.
Why?
Why would she do this for him after everything?
The final memory he requested was the bridge and the Hogsmeade hillside, and he felt his body tense impossibly tight as he watched the scene uncurl. The death, the bodies, the blood, the carnage – all of it flashing before his eyes. He could feel the burning rage that lurked within her heart and the darkness that had crept through her soul as she unleashed that terror.
It was horrifying.
It had been horrifying when he saw it firsthand, but standing behind her as the monstrous flames shot up into the night’s sky while the skin melted from her arm made it so much worse. It had nearly consumed her. She had been lost in it, and if not for Nasir apparating behind her and taking over control, she would have burned to death in her own blaze. He watched her throw up tar and blood as something in his broken soul cracked, a hairline fracture cutting into his heart like a physical wound. Nasir carried her away. The bridge blew up. The man healed her arm, and then she made her way to the Room of Requirements with Potter.
He watched Malfoy change sides.
He watched them rush to the Shrieking Shack, and then he watched himself bleed out on the ground until his own eyes went dark, and he finally pulled himself from her mind.
She was sitting before him silently, and as his vision flickered back into view, he saw tears streaking down her face. She had cried as she played him those memories. Her body was trembling. The masking charm she had been using to hide her scars had failed, and the crimson symbol on her neck was clearly visible.
His hand twitched as he swallowed, and he realized that at some point during her memories while viewing the story that he’d never gotten to see, he had reached out to her and grabbed her left forearm. She didn’t pull away, and instead, she just sat there in the uncomfortable wooden chair before him and stared at him in silence.
“Why?” he whispered, the word breaking like glass as his throat started to burn.
He didn’t understand.
“I just showed you,” Granger said quietly. She blinked, one final tear trailing down her face as she visibly shoved her emotions into a box and then met him with a level stare. “None of this would have been possible without you. Your actions tied into everything that we did – we just didn’t know it at the time. You have no idea just how important you were. Without you, we would have failed. You deserve a chance to live.”
“I don’t deserve anything,” he whispered hoarsely, his throat growing tighter as he found that he could not make his hand let go of her arm or his body move at all.
“Then neither do I,” Granger whispered, and the break in his soul split further.
“Miss Granger,” Snape whispered, his words shaking as they left his lips. “Our situations are entirely different. You didn’t–”
“I showed you what I did,” Granger said, cutting him off and the look in her eyes was pure agony. “I showed you everything that I did, what we all did – what everyone in the Order did. You know what Harry has done, what Nasir has done, and that the others slaughtered countless people during that fight just the same as us. Shacklebolt is just as guilty as me and–”
“Shacklebolt?!” Snape wheezed, his eyes creasing in disbelief that she was lumping Kingsley into the same classification as his degenerate soul. “Killing people during an outright battle isn’t the same thing, Granger – Shacklebolt never–”
“After the end of the first war, Alastor became incredibly paranoid – which you already know – and Shacklebolt agreed with him.” Granger cut him off again, and her eyes grew serious once more. “They didn’t agree with the way that Dumbledore was handling things, even though they agreed to follow him. There was an incident in 1982 that shook Shacklebolt to his core. It was when he met Nasir and when he decided that more needed to be done. So he and Alastor decided to work together. Alastor kept tabs on the defected Death Eaters, and Shacklebolt helped to identify resources that could make for good allies.
“Nasir was one of them – along with Thomas, Peter, Martha, and a number of others. They were never formally recognized as members of the Order, but they were part of the network that Shacklebolt and Alastor cultivated over the years,” Granger continued. “Shacklebolt was worried about our resources. He knew how hard it was to round up enough loyal allies. So after the Order reformed in 1995, he pushed Dumbledore to bring in more people. As you know, Dumbledore disagreed for fear of information leaking, and he rejected the idea. In the end, Alastor and Shacklebolt agreed to follow him even though they disagreed with him. But, in the background, they started pulling on their strings. That’s why Aberforth showed up to fight. Alastor and Shacklebolt made a deal with Nasir, then sent him to Bulgaria because they knew that if they didn’t start working around Dumbledore’s orders, they would never win.
“They confunded Nasir’s supervisor so they could get him officially transferred to Shacklebolt’s department, and then they forged several legal documents to complete the process,” Granger said, and Snape’s mouth went dry. “Then Shacklebolt helped Alastor send two crews to France. They worked with Dumbledore and behind him. They broke countless rules, laws, workplace safety requirements, and they lied to the Order – doing this on their own because they knew that it needed to be done. And most of the people they sent overseas or sent on missions here locally never came home. They didn’t survive the war, and most of them will never even know what they were fighting for.
“Thomas was one of them,” Granger whispered. “He helped clean up our messes, he organized supplies, he apparated over three hundred and fifty students to safety the night of the Battle – and he didn’t stop until he collapsed. Martha was another, I never met her, but she monitored the inner workings of the Death Eaters within the Ministry and provided Shacklebolt with reports. They killed her at the Manor, and she never even knew that she was helping the Order. She just did it because she trusted Shacklebolt and because he’d asked her for her help.”
Granger’s eyes were shining now, and she leaned forward a fraction as she stared at him hard.
“Then there was Peter.” Her voice wavered, but she refused to stop. “And you know exactly the fate he met. Shacklebolt enlisted his help in ’96 to provide supplies, store ingredients, and sabotage the Death Eaters the second Voldemort returned. He got the man to agree to regularly have his memories modified by Nasir in ’97 to protect the Order in case he was ever caught – which was yet again, another person persuaded by Shacklebolt to join the fight.
“And before you even ask, yes, Shacklebolt knows what Nasir is, and no – he doesn’t care,” Granger said firmly, her eyes all but burning. “He’s destroyed Nasir’s file and personal records and has him permanently working in his department listed as staff so people can’t bother him – which, yes, is also illegal. If the laundry list of things that Shacklebolt and Alastor did to try and fight this war was ever exposed, they would both be in Azkaban, and that doesn’t even take into consideration the dark magic that he used during the fight, or the dark magic that Aberforth used, for that matter. Should we take both of them and throw them in Azkaban? Should we kill them? Should we call them war criminals and condemn them?
“What about Arthur, Remus, and the other Order members?” Granger said as her arm started to shake more violently. “Technically speaking, they’re all guilty of treason against the Ministry. They’re guilty of fraud, coercion, extortion, and the murder of innocent muggles. Should they be charged too? What about McGonagall? Students died under her watch; is she responsible for that? Should she be charged for that? What about Bill? He helped us break out of Gringotts and is partially responsible for the damage inflicted there – not to mention the lives that he took during the fight inside the vaults. Charlie Weasley died protecting the school, but he also helped Nasir spy and illegally blow up that storehouse. What about me? I killed innocent muggles, I destroyed the Hogwarts grounds, I used dark magic, I’ve broken more laws than I can count and killed so many people I can barely feel anything anymore. Are you saying that we all deserve to die? Because honestly, Severus, sometimes I think that I deserve it. Sometimes I think that things would be better that way – it would, at the very least, be easier.”
She stared at him carefully once more, her hollow gaze making the nauseous, uneasy feeling in his chest grow. Then her tone dropped lower, and he felt himself stiffen in his chair.
“I showed you all that so that you would know what you helped accomplish and so that you would know that you were instrumental to winning this war. That without you, despite everything that we did, we would have failed, and countless more people would have suffered. I showed you – because you never got the chance to be a part of our efforts directly, when really – you deserved to be more than most. You deserved to be on the front lines fighting with us so that everyone knew where you stood, but instead, you sacrificed yourself silently to help secure the win because you understand that life isn’t fair.” Granger’s voice was all but a whisper, and he found he wasn’t breathing. “You deserve a chance at redemption – or at least the option to try and earn it. Because I believe that Nasir deserves a chance, that Harry deserves a chance, that Shacklebolt should be forgiven for his actions and that Alastor Moody died a hero. I believe that what they did was both brave and logical – not dark and evil. I think that Bill deserves to live even though he slaughtered dozens, and that McGonagall shouldn’t be condemned because of what happened to the students while she commanded the school. Ron deserves to be remembered for his bravery even though he abandoned us, because at the end of the day, when it truly mattered – he stepped up. He played his part, and he sacrificed himself for the safety of everyone in that school. And then there’s Malfoy and his mother.
“Believe me when I say that he’s not my favourite person, and his recent actions don’t erase the terrible things that he has done in the past. Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying – I do not like him, and he is not a good person – but he and his mother are not inherently evil, either,” Granger said quietly. “Were you aware that Narcissa saved the lives of five muggles captured by snatchers by faking their deaths in her dungeon? She risked her life to sneak them out of Malfoy Manor and return them home after the first set died under Bellatrix’s torture because she couldn’t bear the thought of it happening again. Then she chose to fight in the final Battle, abandoning her husband and past life because she decided that she wanted something more for herself and her son, and she was willing to suffer and fight to get it.
“Life is complicated, complex, riddled with impossible decisions,” Granger whispered, as her voice grew hoarse and her body started to sag under the impossible weight on her shoulders. “You’re not alone, Severus – not anymore. The Order isn’t filled with angels and saints and heroes. The world isn’t good or evil. You’re not different from any of the rest of us. We’re all just people; we all did what we had to do, and we all made mistakes – but those don’t have to define us for the rest of our lives. We always have the choice to change. We can choose to be better at any time, and we have the choice to grow and become more than what we once were.”
He stared at her dumbfounded. Completely lost for words as she met his gaze with an almost desperate look.
“And if we all deserve a chance to begin again, to have a life and a future in which to live to the best of our ability, despite the actions that we’ve taken in the past – then so do you.”
He couldn’t look away from her, and yet he desperately wanted to, because it felt like she’d just stabbed a knife through his heart and sucked the air from his lungs. The warm and unfamiliar flutter of her magic was racing through his blood, making the part of him that wanted to live grow stronger with each beat of his heart.
“Miss Granger–” he said slowly, his voice an agonizingly quiet and broken tone.
But she cut him off one last time.
“Just sleep on it,” she said, the exhaustion hanging heavy from her words. “Think about it, please – and then, as I said, I will do whatever you ask of me. My offer doesn’t expire. I will always upkeep my promise to you, and you may change your mind at any time. But please – just extend yourself the same courtesy that you’ve extended to me and to everyone else who fought in this war – and give yourself just a fraction of the forgiveness that you are so ready to pass out to others.”
Snape found he couldn’t speak. His jaw was clenched tight, and his body was rigid.
What was he supposed to say? Logically, he couldn’t argue with her. Otherwise, he would be telling her outright that he thought that she and the others deserved to die for what they’d done. He knew life was shrouded in grey and impossible to categorize into neat little boxes. He knew that these people had only done what they had to do, and many of them would be permanently damaged from the actions they’d taken. He genuinely did not think that Granger or the others should die in penance for what they did.
But he couldn’t seem to grant himself the same pass.
He couldn’t.
It wasn’t the same.
He didn’t deserve this.
He had deserved to die in that shack in pain and agony. He had been ready to die, willing to die, and expecting to die. It had always been the end to his plan, but as he stared at her haunted and agonizingly sad eyes, the warm flutter in his veins stirred like a beacon, guiding him toward something that he’d never felt before – and he felt his head shift in a nod.
“Fine, Miss Granger.” His voice was barely a hoarse whisper. “I will think about it.”
“My name is Hermione,” she said quietly, a small flicker of relief shifting across her features. It was as if the idea of having to kill him now would have been more than she was capable of bearing, yet he knew in his gut that she could have done it if he had asked. She let out a breath and then extended him yet another olive branch that he did not deserve. “You may call me Hermione.”
Warning:
This chapter contains: explicit smut (which does include some relationship/plot progression)
-x-x-
June 24, 1998
Wednesday, Grimmauld Place, 9:37 pm
“Fucking hell,” Hermione groaned, running a hand through her hair before bending to pick up the book she had dropped.
She was in the small library on the second floor, trying to find a book that might be useful for her project, but so far everything was completely useless. Groaning loudly in annoyance, simply because she was annoyed, she scooped the large tome from the ground and then made her way over to the table. There were already a dozen books scattered across it next to her notes. Things had gotten so cluttered in here over the last few weeks that she had made extra desks and chairs, and they all now had their own individual space.
Hers was in the corner near the window, turned to face the door so she could see people coming and going. However, that didn’t always prevent her from jumping in alarm when a voice suddenly rang out by her side. Unfortunately, there was nothing that she could really do about that. She had always gotten lost in her work, and even with Harry having adjusted the wards so that they could check them any time to locate people within the five-storey home, she was still occasionally caught off guard. Short of having a permanent proximity alarm cast around her body, there was nothing she could do about it – but her jolty reactions had been improving. Sleep and time had been helping with that, but mostly it was because she knew in the back of her mind that it was impossible for anyone to get inside Grimmauld Place unless she, Harry, or Nasir let them in.
And Nasir never let anyone inside their house. Even if they knew people were stopping by, and even if the wards indicated it was someone she trusted completely, like Arthur – he still would not open the door on his own unless she or Harry asked him to grab it for them, which she actually really appreciated.
She let out a sigh and turned to look at the other cluttered desks.
A lot had changed at Grimmauld Place over the last month. Fleur had come over and helped them clean everything up while Nasir had assisted them with removing several problematic curses. The house was no longer dingy, the paint no longer peeling or dim. Each room was now clean, bright, freshly painted, and free of the smell of mildew. Even the old Black family tree had been repaired and freshened up, so it didn’t look so foreboding.
They had collected up everything they didn’t want to keep but were hesitant to throw away and moved it all to the basement to be sorted through in the future when they had more time. Now, each room was not only clean and tidy, but they were also pleasantly furnished – since Fleur had been able to reuse, repair, and restore most of the existing items. It hardly looked like the same home. Upon entering the foyer, you would never know that you were inside Number 12 Grimmauld Place because the home was unrecognizably welcoming.
If Hermione had to pick a favourite room, the library might very well be it. It was cozy and warm. The fireplace worked, the windows stretched floor to ceiling, and the evening light was glorious.
Harry’s new desk was next to hers along the same wall. Nasir’s was across from theirs near the window, and next to his was Snape’s. She had added it for him while he was living here and recovering, so he had a place to work if he wanted it. She had also added a desk to his temporary room, too, in case he didn’t want to be around them – but to her surprise, he used the desk in the library more than she thought he would. She supposed that was likely due to convenience; it was easier to work directly next to books you might need than not.
She had left the desk set up even though Snape had returned to Spinner’s End a week and a half ago because he had agreed to help her with a research project. So, in between working with Nasir, Harry, Shacklebolt, and the others in the Order, Hermione was constantly splitting her time between Grimmauld Place and Spinner’s End as the two of them worked together.
It wasn’t easy.
He grew frustrated with her, and she grew just as frustrated with him. He seemed to forget that he had nineteen years of brewing experience on her, and she had never once invented a potion in her life. She had told him as much today after they had gotten into an argument and wound up yelling to the point that Nasir came in to see what was going on. In the end, she had forced herself to take a deep breath. Then she calmly tried to explain to him that her brainstorming ideas were not meant as insults and that trying to develop a new potion together was not a competition. That if she made a suggestion, it was not her implying that he hadn’t thought of it already or tried it in the past – they were just ideas – and she was relying on his experience and countless years of brewing. That she needed him to work with her instead of fighting with her constantly if this was going to have any chance of working.
To her surprise, Snape understood, and he said that he would try.
Apparently, and she hadn’t known this when he agreed to help her try to brew a less addictive and harmful batch of dreamless sleeping draught, he had tried it before and failed. During the failure, he had been severely injured, and it was the reason why his small intestine was several feet shorter than it should be. She had stood there in silence, staring at the man in disbelief as he quietly told her that his anger was not because of her but was instead because of how bad he knew things could go if they fucked up and weren’t careful. He told her that she needed to slow down and that her desperate desire to help would get people hurt because potion creation was not the same set of skills as potion brewing.
It was dangerous.
Incredibly dangerous, and she had not appreciated how dangerous until he had told her. She hadn’t appreciated just how difficult it was and just how many times they were going to fail until they got it right. In the end, despite the conversation being stiff and awkward, she felt like she understood him better, and she felt like they would now work together more smoothly.
She let out a sigh and shook her head. Who would have thought that half of Snape’s bitchiness, abrasive nature, and rough edges were actually manifestations of concern and not wanting people to get hurt? Though then again, if she really thought about it, it made sense and it was consistent with his behaviour as a professor. He had always been very careful in the classroom, and he had always taken safety with potions extremely seriously.
Most people thought that he was a shitty teacher – and while she would agree with them to an extent, it was not truly a fair valuation of his teaching skills. He had been horrible at Hogwarts. Just absolutely horrible. He was rude, condescending, mean, a bully – he would pick on kids and treat them terribly. Looking back on it now, she suspected that a lot of that was tied to him hating the job and not wanting it in the first place, though that wasn’t an excuse for him being a dick.
Working with him now, though, she realized he was actually a very good teacher. If you could cut through his deplorable outer shell and wade through the aggressive bullshit, he actually explained things well. Without the stress of multiple students in the room threatening to burn the entire place down, he was a lot more bearable, and he seemed to tolerate her better now than he had in the past, and he most certainly tolerated her better than most of the other Order members. That said, it still wasn’t a walk in the park and working with him was likely always going to be a challenge.
Dropping the book on the corner of her desk, she made her way back over to the shelves to try and find another book. She was lost in thought, checking the second row when Harry’s voice startled her.
‘How’s the work going?’
‘Ugh – awful, just awful, Harry. You scared the bejesus out of me.’
‘Sorry.’ She could practically hear the cheeky grin in his words. ‘I’m just heading home now. Fleur wanted to know if you would like some scones.’
‘Sure, why not.’
‘Good, because she already gave them to me.’
Hermione smiled, a small laugh leaving her lips as her eyes skimmed the next row of books. “Oh!”
‘Tell her I found a book that should help with the charmwork she wanted to look into.’
‘I’m not an owl, you know,’ Harry teased, and she grinned wider.
‘I know, but do it anyway.’
‘Already done.’
‘Good.’ She bent down to look at the next row and let out a sigh. ‘So how long until you get here? I wanted to tell you about my new idea.’
‘Two minutes!’ he said, his voice slipping into her mind with ease. ‘I’ll see you soon.’
‘See you soon.’
She heard the wards chime in her head exactly two minutes after his words. Then Harry’s footsteps followed as he entered the room a few moments later.
“So,” he said, making his way across the library towards her. “What’s your new idea?”
“I want to propose to Shacklebolt that they implement a preschool for magical muggle children – or a summer program that can run before the kids go to Hogwarts,” Hermione said, pausing mid-browse to turn and look at him. “I’ve been thinking about what I want to say at our meeting this Friday, trying to organize my thoughts and get everything ready.”
“A program like that would have certainly been helpful,” Harry said, letting out a sigh and stopping by her side. She watched him lean against the bookshelf, his dishevelled hair still long and uncut falling in his face before he pushed it back out of the way. “You’re nervous about the meeting.”
“A little.” She nodded, letting out a sigh and leaning against the shelf beside him. “It’s hard not to be. Shacklebolt said Narcissa will be there like we talked about, but – I don’t know. I’m just anxious.”
“I know,” Harry said gently. Then his brow furrowed, and his eyes scanned across the library. “Where’s Snape?”
“I sent him home,” Hermione said, and Harry snorted.
“Did you two explode again?”
“Not this time, and I actually think that’s going to get better. We talked about it and sorted some stuff out,” Hermione said, and Harry arched a brow.
He had been carefully avoiding Snape as much as possible since the man woke, which seemed to be what they both preferred. She had told him that they would need to talk eventually, but she knew Harry was still processing everything and figuring out how he wanted to proceed. So until that day eventually came, she was their buffer.
“I sent him home because he hasn’t slept properly in like three days, and the stiffness in his neck was getting worse, and his vitals were going downhill. He needs to rest, or he’s going to run himself into the ground.”
“You’re one to talk,” Harry said quietly.
“I could say the same thing about you, Harry,” Hermione said, turning her head to look up at him. “You were brewing before I was even awake this morning.”
“I’ve slept for ages these last two months, Hermione,” Harry said, his piercing eyes creasing with amusement. “I have lots to catch up on. Besides, I’ve just been feeling manic lately. There’s so much going on; my mind is spinning, and I couldn’t stop thinking last night, so I figured I should go do something useful since I had all that energy.”
“You could have woken me up.”
“No.” Harry shook his head, meeting her gaze. “You needed your sleep.”
“I know,” she sighed, closing her eyes and letting out a breath. “It’s just hard some nights.”
“Have you been having more nightmares?” Harry asked softly, and she felt him shift closer.
“No – not the last few nights,” Hermione said, opening her eyes to look up at him. “It’s more like what you said. I feel manic. Like – I know my body is tired, and I know I’m exhausted, yet I feel so pent up and amped all the time. It’s overwhelming. I keep thinking of new ideas and getting up in the middle of the night to write them down. Last night I scribbled down half an arithmancy calculation for the banding magic to check the new runes we talked about. The night before it was notes for this new potion, and the night before that, it was notes for our NEWT revisions. I know I need to sleep, but I just can’t.”
She let out a deep sigh as Harry nodded in understanding, and her fingers reached out to curl around his.
“I think I’m going to go run at Shell Cottage tomorrow morning,” she said slowly, her brow creasing as she stared at his chest in thought. “I know we started working out again, and it’s helping, but I’m so pent up and anxious I just feel like I need to go run a mile as fast as I can. Just go and go until I can’t breathe anymore.”
“Want to go now?”
“What?” Her eyes widened as she glanced up at him. “Seriously? Now?”
“Yeah, why not?” Harry said, pushing off the shelf and gripping her hand tighter. “You clearly need to burn off steam now – waiting till morning won’t help you sleep tonight. Fleur is still brewing. She’ll be at it for the next two hours at least, so we have lots of time. We’ll go, we’ll run, then we’ll come back here exhausted and sleep.”
“Alright,” Hermione said, a slow smile creeping across her face. “I’ll message Fleur – but you can’t overdo it, Harry. You still need to be careful; it’s only been a month.”
“You and I both know the best thing I can do for this body is use it,” Harry said, a smile creeping over his face as his fingers threaded through hers, and they made their way to the door. “So long as I’m not damaging it – which you would never allow – pushing it isn’t going to hurt it.”
“Yes, yes, I know,” Hermione said, nodding her head as she messaged Fleur. As she had anticipated, the blonde wrote back immediately, welcoming them to use the beach tonight as they pleased, and Hermione felt her heart warm. “Fleur says we’re good to go.”
“Then let’s go.” Harry grinned.
She summoned the book for Fleur before they left, stepping out of Grimmauld Place by Harry’s side and immediately apparating to the beach at Shell Cottage.
“Fleur,” Hermione said, greeting the woman who opened the door at the sound of their appearance. “Here’s that book – are you sure you don’t mind us running tonight?”
“Not at all ‘Ermione,” Fleur said, taking the book Hermione held out and shaking her head with a smile. “Bill is at ze school still with Nasir and Shacklebolt – I don’t zink zat zey will be back for a while, and I will be brewing. It is much safer for you both to run ‘ere zan out on ze streets in ze city. I much prefer zat you exercise here. You do not need to ask – you’ ave ward access, so you can come and run anytime.”
“Thanks, Fleur,” Hermione said quietly, and the woman’s eyes creased with genuine warmth.
“You do not ‘ave to thank me, ‘Ermione. It is no trouble at all. Go run – I’ve got to get back to it,” Fleur said, gesturing with her hands for them to get going.
They waved their goodbyes, moving along the familiar beach through the dark before they transfigured their clothes. Hermione stretched out her arms. The tension in her body was unbearable, and she knew that Harry was right. If she had tried to go to sleep tonight, it would never have happened. She would have been up working and researching or pacing the house.
“Ready?” she asked, turning to glance at Harry as he stretched out his leg.
“Ready.” He nodded, casting a small light to float along before them. “Normal lap route, you set the pace, and we go until you can’t anymore.”
“Sounds good.” She nodded, and then they took off.
Her heart started to race with each step. Her tired muscles ached. She could feel the pain of her bone-deep exhaustion shifting down her spine, but her rune felt lighter, her heart felt warmer, and this was exactly what she had needed. She picked up the pace, running even faster as the cool night air tugged at her braided hair. She could smell the ocean. She could hear the waves. The familiar sound was relaxing as she raced across the damp sand into the night with Harry at her side.
She should have slowed down.
When they completed the first lap, she should have stopped – but she didn’t. She couldn’t. She felt like she could hardly breathe, and yet she felt more alive than she had in days as her body buzzed with endorphins. She forced her legs to move faster, and they made their way around the entire beach again. Sand had collected in her shoes. Her eyes were stinging from the wind. Mist covered her face as they raced along the water, then jumped over a large piece of driftwood only to bypass the cottage a second time. She could feel Harry’s heart thudding in her head, and it only urged her to keep going.
He was loving this.
She glanced over to see him grin as they both sped up and rushed across the property once more toward the far south edge by the cliffs. It wasn’t part of their normal route, but it was a straight line, and they both seemed to be naturally picking up speed.
“First person to touch the rock wins!” Harry called out, barely giving her a chance to process his words before he took off at a full sprint.
“Cheater!” Hermione yelled, running along behind him and urging her legs to move faster.
Her lungs ached in pain. Her legs burned. Her heart was thudding against her ribcage, and all she could hear was the wind in her ears as they both sprinted as fast as they could.
‘Three hundred feet!’
‘Out of my head! It’s distracting!’
‘You’re falling behind!
‘Your legs are longer!’
‘Sounds like excuses.’
‘I will win and make you eat those words!’
‘One hundred feet! You’re too slow!’
‘I swear to god, Harry, be quiet!’
A yelled groan split from her lips as she surged forward, jumping over the long piece of driftwood and rushing toward the rock with everything she had. She was just a foot behind him. Less than a foot behind him. She outstretched her hand, straining it forward as she groaned out in pain and lunged toward the giant rocks. Her fingers just barely skimmed the stone before his did, and then they both rolled to the side to avoid colliding with the rockface.
“Unbelievable,” Harry wheezed, collapsing on the ground in ragged pants as Hermione dropped to her knees and let out another groan. “Impossible.”
“Sore loser,” Hermione panted, rolling onto her back and looking up at the starry night sky. “You’re – just mad – you lost.”
“Don’t – get used – to it,” he panted, rolling onto his back as he clutched his side. “My lungs – still no good – next month – you’re totally doomed.”
She laughed, struggling to breathe as her head rolled to the side, and she looked at him in the dark as Harry cancelled the small light that had been racing along beside them. He turned his head in the damp sand to look at her, and she saw him grin. There was sweat across his brow, sand on his neck. His hair was an absolute mess, and yet still, he was the most attractive man she had ever laid eyes on.
She felt her heart surge with love as she looked at him and her emotions danced closer to the surface – she could almost feel them. This was how it worked. She had researched it, spoken to Nasir, and figured it out a few weeks ago. She knew that the damage was permanent and that her emotions would never come back. They would always be blunted and buried beneath a fog, but she was okay with that. She could still feel her love for Harry, and that was all she would ever need.
That was the unpleasant secret of dark magic – the more one used, the more it damaged their soul and blunted their emotions. It made the pain, anger, sorrow, and anguish more prevalent while smothering the other emotions beneath a fog and making your body numb. And eventually, over time, if you used enough of it – it made everything disappear except for the pain.
But it was a scale, and it was all relative. Someone like Voldemort had nothing left, and he would have been incapable of feeling anything but pain – possibly nothing at all. Whereas for someone like her, who was damaged but not unsalvageable, her other emotions were not totally gone. They were still there. It wasn’t like she felt nothing – it was just numb. She felt flickers. Hints. Glances. They were subtle, like a whisper in her head.
If she wanted to, she could access them. She had figured out how, and Nasir had confirmed it, but he had told her that it wasn’t worth it. He had told her it was addicting and the quickest way to fall into a path of self-destruction. He asked her to trust him, telling her to drop it and let it go and instead learn to accept what little she still had. So she did. She trusted him, and she took his word for it.
Then she promised Harry that she would never do it.
It had concerned him. He had been worried about her when he found out what she had discovered. So she had assured him that she would always keep their bond open and tell him if she was ever feeling lost or desperate, because he didn’t want her to fall into the trap.
Pain.
That was the key.
Blunted emotions could be accessed through pain. The more violent she was, the more she would feel. The more pain she inflicted on herself and others, the stronger her emotions would become. It was the sick and twisted double-edged sword of dark magic. It was why she always felt more when she was injured. Why she could feel it when she was in physical pain, emotional pain, or when her body was in dangerous, life-threatening positions.
If she wanted to, she could cut her arm open, and she would be able to feel temporarily once more. But it was a downward cycle that would make you less human in the end. It was like chasing an unattainable high as your body and soul deteriorated in the process until eventually, that high would no longer be possible. Each time you did it, the ceiling got higher, and eventually – you would be left with nothing.
Exactly like Voldemort.
She refused to fall into that hole. She refused to get anywhere near it, not after everything that she had done, not after how hard they had fought and everything she had already sacrificed. Not when she had Harry. Not when she could still love him. That was all she would ever need, and through that connection to him, she could love all the other people around her.
And that was enough.
Besides, she had found that exercising excessively brought her emotions just close enough to remind her that they were there and that was good enough. It was her little reminder that she was human, and the rush made her feel alive.
“Feel better?” Harry asked, rolling onto his side to look at her when they had both finally caught their breath enough to speak.
“Yes,” Hermione exhaled hard, grinning up at him. “Mostly – I need a shower now. I’m disgusting.”
“Only a little,” Harry said, laughing as she rolled her eyes at him. “Here – come on.”
“What?” she questioned as he grabbed her hand and pulled her up from the sand. She watched him strip off his shirt in confusion, then understanding hit as he reached for the tie on his comfortable sweatpants and glanced back up at her once more. “You’re serious?”
“Deadly serious,” Harry said, undoing the tie before pausing once more. Sweat glistened on his skin in the night as he stepped towards her, and when he placed his hands on her shoulders, she instantly felt her body relax. “I know you love swimming, Hermione, and while I understand it seems silly now after everything that we’ve been through – I think we need to try to at least do some things. Otherwise, we’re always going to feel disconnected. But I know you won’t join in if the others have a beach party, and I would never ask you to – but no one is here now. It’s just us. If you don’t want to go in, I’ll take us home. I just thought that maybe you might want to try it?”
She stared at him, licking her lips almost nervously as her eyes darted to the waves just a few feet away. She swallowed. She could feel her slowing heart start to race again at the thought of getting in the water. It was a bit overwhelming, but she knew he wasn’t wrong. They had said that they would try. She had promised herself, him, and Arthur that she would fight to get better and to find joy in the things that she had loved once more. She genuinely wanted to rebuild her life and make something for herself outside of war, and she would be lying if she said it wasn’t a tempting idea when sweat was dripping down her spine.
“Okay,” she breathed, slowly nodding her head before glancing back up to him with a nervous smile. “Okay – I’ll swim.”
“Okay,” he whispered, squeezing her shoulders gently before leaning down to kiss her. She couldn’t help but lean into it. Pressing herself against his sweaty chest as his lips moved softly against hers until he pulled away. “Let’s do it.”
He stepped back to take off his pants, and Hermione cast a small masking charm around them just in case before stripping off her own clothes and vanishing the sand from her skin. It felt weird to be standing outside naked. She had never done it before, and stripping down to jump in the pond was hardly similar to this. She could feel her heart starting to quicken once more as she dropped her bra on the ground, then her eyes shifted back to Harry, and she froze.
He was staring at her.
His eyes had been locked to her face, but then, slowly, they trailed down her neck, chest, arms, and legs, all the way down to her toes, and she shivered. Her eyes followed a similar pattern as they both stood there in the darkness, the faint light reflecting off their silver patches of skin. She could see every mark on his body. The cracked scars around the runic symbol on his chest seemed to glow like fire in the starlight, and she stared at it transfixed.
He was beautiful. Exquisite – like a piece of art, unique and shaped by their time together and the world around them. She loved every inch of him, every knick and every scar.
“You’re so beautiful,” his low voice rumbled, and when she met his gaze, she saw the desire.
He truly meant that.
She didn’t need to see his thoughts or be connected to his mind to know. Harry not only loved her unconditionally, but he also genuinely found her beautiful despite her many scars, and feeling his surge of attraction through the bond made her body even warmer than before. She moved to him, her feet soundless in the sand as he watched her every motion until she was standing before him.
“Kiss me, Harry,” Hermione breathed, meeting his dark green gaze as she reached for his neck and pulled him closer.
His lips were on hers before she could move another muscle, and then she felt a rush of heat throughout her body as his hands touched her skin. She groaned into his mouth, gripping him tighter and letting him guide her back down. He summoned a shirt – or something – transfiguring it into a clean blanket without a word to separate them from the sand. His hands found her body in the night; one trailed up her spine to knot in her hair while the other caressed her side. She shivered at the touch as the cool gentle breeze ghosted over her skin. She opened her mouth to him, welcoming him in.
His tongue traced over hers. He tasted like mint – fresh and clean – always, no matter what. It was another bizarre change to his body after coming back, but she had no complaints. It didn’t bother her, he tasted amazing, and he smelled like the night air around them. Her breath came quicker as he gently bit her bottom lip, then pulled her closer to his chest as his weight hovered over her body.
She loved the way he kissed her.
She loved the way that it felt like a full-body experience, and she got lost in it every time.
Her arms wrapped around him, pulling him even closer as the sound of the waves filled the air around them, and she shivered at the cool breeze. Then his silently cast warming charm encased her body, warm enough to cut the chill but light enough that she could still feel a slight sting from the cold water that reached her toes.
His hand moved up her side, skimming her scarred skin in that familiar, gentle way until he reached her breast and his thumb ghosted over her nipple. She breathed out, pulling him closer still as the desire grew in her center. She wanted to feel him everywhere. She needed more of him.
Always.
Despite their exhaustion and his recovery, their physical intimacy had been increasing over the last month, and she had been with him in some form of the word nearly every day. She couldn’t help it. She couldn’t stop it. She couldn’t explain the desperate, burning urge to draw him into her, aside from obvious – she loved him, she wanted him, she had already lost him once, and she never wanted to lose him again. She didn’t want to waste any of the time that they had. She didn’t want to ever regret another decision between them again. If she had time to be with him – she took it, and she indulged in it.
Two days ago, they’d had sex in the shower. The morning before, she had woken up in his arms then crawled onto his lap, and two days before that, she had found herself on her knees between his legs with his cock in her mouth as he groaned in pleasure and gripped her hair tight. It wasn’t always sexual, but it was always intimate. Sometimes she just laid with him, so tight and close to his side it was impossible to tell their limbs apart. She always circled him, and he always circled her, both of them orbiting like planets as they watched each other from across the room and worked to try and make the world a better place.
Now, as he pushed into her body and clutched her tight to his chest, she could feel her desire burning. She could feel his length getting harder as she pressed up against him, desperate to get closer. She wanted him, and he wanted her. His hands trailed down her sides, moving over her hips and curling beneath her to lift her from the blanket beneath them. She wrapped her legs around his waist, circling her arms around his neck as she kissed him deeper.
She rocked herself against him, seeking out that delicious friction between her legs and revelling in the feel of his strong body pressing against hers and his stiff cock rubbing on her clit. His hands moved back up her body, touching her everywhere and memorizing her skin. She groaned when his thumb pressed into the tired muscles at the back of her neck, and she felt him smile against her lips.
“You like that?” he murmured, slowing their pace and doing it again.
“Yes,” she groaned, dropping her head back against the blanket as he massaged her neck, and she gripped him even tighter. “It feels so good.”
“Maybe I should try giving you a massage some time,” he whispered, moving his head to kiss along her jaw.
“Yes, please,” she breathed, arching into his touch as her eyes fluttered closed in pleasure when his thumb pressed into a tight spot on her shoulders.
She felt him chuckle before he captured her lips once more, kissing her slowly and with purpose, like he didn’t have a care in the world, and he just wanted to experience her. Her fingers knotted into his hair tighter as she turned her head to kiss him deeper. She could feel the familiar coil in her center winding as she continued to rock herself against him and moan softly into his mouth.
It didn’t take long for their pace to quicken once more, both of them still riding the rush of their run as the cold water reaching their feet made the heat between them feel even warmer.
“I want you,” Harry whispered against her lips as his hand stopped the massaging motions on her shoulders to slide down and grip her hips tight. “I want to feel you. I want to make you come. I want to feel you shake–”
He kissed her hard, his finger digging into her skin as she gasped in pleasure.
“Take me,” she panted, pressing herself up against him hard before she pulled back from his lips to look at his dark gaze in the night. It was burning with want, and she knew it reflected her own as a shiver of desire and excitement raced down her spine. “Fuck me, Harry.”
He groaned, crashing his lips against hers. She reached between them, aligning him with her center, and then he pushed inside her with one deep thrust. It was tight. It was heated. She shuddered as the cool breeze rushed over her shoulders and dropped her head back as Harry’s lips moved down her throat.
“Fuck,” she breathed, gripping him tight and rocking her hips up into his.
Her eyes fluttered open, and she looked up at the stars as Harry gripped her hip, pulling it up harder over and over again in time with her motions. It was beautiful. It was perfect. It was surreal. It felt like they were the only ones alive in the universe as she stared up at the galaxy and groaned. She could feel every inch of his stiff cock. It was hitting her g-spot, making her muscles tense with pleasure as his body rubbed against her clit.
She couldn’t believe that this was happening right now.
She couldn’t believe that this was her life.
She had Harry. They had lived. They had survived, and now they were alone under the stars, moving with the waves of the ocean as her nails bit into his skin. It was overwhelming. It was all-consuming. The sky looked far too vast and large for just two people, and she felt like she was getting lost as the panic in her chest grew and threatened to take over.
“Hermione,” Harry’s low groan filled her ears. She tore her eyes away from the stars, and she felt the growing panic seize as she met his dark green gaze. “I’ve got you.”
She was okay. She was safe. Harry was here, and Harry was her anchor. He would never let her fall into the sky and get lost in the stars.
“I know,” she whispered, the air in her lungs burning as she lifted her head to kiss his lips. “I know.”
She rolled her hips up, kissing him hard, and she clung to him tightly, trusting him to keep her safe in the endless darkness that surrounded them. His tongue traced her lips, her teeth, her mouth. She groaned as he worked his way down her neck and laved at the pulse point on her neck that made her squirm. She kissed across his temple, threading her fingers into his hair as she kept her legs wrapped around him and continued to roll her hips.
She could feel the tension growing.
The unbearable anxiety and pressure that had been mounting in her body all week was close to releasing itself. She groaned as his teeth grazed her skin, then she moved her hips faster, desperate for more as the cold water tingled over his ankles. His hands gripped her tighter, angling her hips to hit each spot just right as he watched her vitals and used them to guide his motions. He shifted, his hand dropped between them, circling her clit as his hips slowed, and he started to draw out each touch in slow and agonizing ways.
“Harry,” Hermione panted, desperate for release as she rocked against his hand and tried to move her hips quicker. “Please – you’re – you’re driving me crazy. I – I can’t–”
She could feel him smile against her skin as his fingers circled her clit in just the right way as he thrust deep inside her.
“Come for me,” he whispered in her ear, and she shuddered against him.
“Fuck,” she groaned, gasping for air as he finally started to quicken his motions. “Ughh – fuck – just like that.”
His fingers rubbed her clit. His mouth traced her skin. He held her close, loosening his tight grip on her hips so she could move freely once more, and she rolled her hips. Harder. Faster. Fucking herself on his hard length as he groaned in her ear. Each noise he made nearly sent her over the edge, and she trembled in pleasure. It felt so good.
He felt so fucking good.
Making him groan only turned her on more. It felt good to make him feel good. She loved it when he gripped her tight and pushed into her hard. She relished the feel of his warm breath ghosting along her skin as he panted and murmured by her ear. She could make out every word, and it made the coil in her center wind impossibly tight.
“Come for me, Hermione,” he murmured, his breath short and ragged as he moved both hands to grip her hips hard. “I want you to come on my cock – I want you to fall apart.”
Her breath caught in her chest, a low moan leaving her lips as her entire body started to shake.
“Harry,” she panted, her nails scraping against his skull as she fisted his hair and crushed her lips against his.
The wall was building. It was way too big. She couldn’t hold it back – she couldn’t even breathe. He pushed into her hard, and the tension snapped. She groaned into his mouth, her body convulsing against his as he gripped her tight and her channel clenched hard.
“Fuck,” Harry groaned, his motions getting faster and jerky as her head fell back against the blanket and she moaned. “You’re so fucking tight – so fucking perfect – fuck, I–”
She heard him groan. She felt him fall apart as he came undone. She could feel the pressure of his release as he filled her and her bleary eyes opened to look at the sky once more.
It was beautiful.
It was perfect.
And it didn’t feel nearly as overwhelming as he gripped her tight and gasped against her skin. She turned her head, catching his lips in a heated kiss as she rocked her hips against him. She kissed him slowly, revelling in the feel of his twitching jerking motions as he clutched her tight to his chest, and they both came down from their high.
She loved him.
She would always love him.
He was hers, and she was his. It was how things were meant to be, just the two of them in this vast wide world, orbiting each other beneath the starry night sky.
-x-x-
June 26, 1998
Friday, Shacklebolt’s Safe House, 2:45 pm
“So, how is the potion coming along?” Shacklebolt asked after they landed inside the wards of the safe house at an undisclosed location.
“It’s coming,” Hermione said, letting out a sigh as she dropped Nasir’s hand, who in turn dropped the Minister’s. She kept her grip on Harry as they quickly made their way toward the porch to get out of the rain. “We only just started, so we’re still hashing out ideas. We probably won’t get to trial batches for a while because we don’t want to waste ingredients, but I had some success with my latest arithmancy calculation, and Severus is checking it over today.”
“That’s good,” Shacklebolt said, turning to glance at her as he unlocked the door and led them all inside.
The house was small but tidy. It was in the country like the Order farmhouse, and it was likely just as old. It was difficult to imagine Narcissa Black and her son living here after having seen their mansion – but then again, Malfoy Manor was roped off and essentially a crime scene for the foreseeable future. There was old dark magic there that needed to be addressed, curses and problems that were so old and ancient they didn’t have names. Nasir was helping Shacklebolt with it because, as it turned out, the Revenant was still employed by Shacklebolt, and he technically worked for the man. Although, in the past, he had been exceptionally picky about which tasks he agreed to complete.
Now though, with the war over, Nasir had agreed to help Shacklebolt in his efforts to change the world. So, in a twist she had not expected when she and Harry agreed to join his team – they were technically following Nasir’s lead, joining his team and working alongside him – not the other way around. It had been a pleasant surprise, and it only further cemented her belief that Nasir deserved the chance to start over with the rest of them, because she had not asked him to join them. He had made this decision on his own, and that made her heart ache with hope.
As for Narcissa, Hermione wasn’t sure what the witch’s long-term plans were. Until the war trials were over, she was going to remain at this safe house while under strict rules. She wasn’t allowed to go anywhere, and she wasn’t allowed to return to the Manor unless escorted by Shacklebolt or someone on his team. The woman had agreed to the terms without hesitation, and Hermione knew that there were even more stipulations regarding money, restitution efforts, and other details going on behind the scenes that she wasn’t privy to. Yet something about the woman’s calm acceptance of everything thrown in her face after the war was oddly reassuring.
Hermione still didn’t like Narcissa Black, and she thought that her son was a piece of shit.
However, she also wasn’t stupid. Just because the war was ‘over’ and the battle was won, it didn’t mean that there weren’t pureblood families out there who still held outdated and prejudiced beliefs. Not every pureblood family had been Death Eaters. Not every pureblood family had followed Voldemort or supported his cause – but that didn’t mean that they liked muggleborns, either. There were large numbers of magical families within the wizarding world who did not like the current system or how it was set up, and they existed on both sides of the spectrum.
She knew Shacklebolt wanted to unite them, and if he wanted to do that, then he had to gather support, resources, and a desire for change on both sides. Thus, his team needed to include people from both sides if there was ever going to be a way for them to coexist peacefully without hatred, even if they did not like each other.
Narcissa Black was the link to the purebloods, and she had agreed to help in whatever way was necessary to ensure that a war like this never happened again. She wasn’t interested in starting another war. She had no desire to fight. She didn’t want power. She simply wanted to exist in peace after everything that her family had been through, but she also wanted to protect wizarding culture and try to find a way to ‘end the nonsense’ while solving the ‘undeniable problem that existed with muggleborns.’ So, she was going to participate in this meeting to represent purebloods and give Shacklebolt a better idea of their ideals and what they wanted.
Hermione took off her shoes, casting a silent drying charm before following the tall man through the house toward the kitchen. Her body buzzed with nerves. Her muscles felt tight. She wasn’t particularly pleased about having this meeting in an unfamiliar place, and she wasn’t exactly excited to sit down and have a long conversation with Narcissa. She had only spoken to the woman once in passing before Snape woke up, and the conversation lasted for less than two minutes. But she trusted Shacklebolt, and she knew that both sides of this discussion had to come to the table open and willing to listen. Otherwise, this would never work, and they might as well give up now.
Besides, Hermione thought as she let out a tight breath and reached for Harry’s hand once more, this woman had saved her life at the Manor, saved Harry’s life in the Forbidden Forest, and saved countless students’ lives in the final Battle.
Yes, Hermione didn’t doubt for a second that those actions had been taken with her own self-preservation and interests at heart – but she had still done it. She had still risked her life. Her son had still helped, even if it was out of fear. They may not be benevolent people; they might be selfish and self-interested. She doubted they would ever complete a good deed simply for the sake of it – but they were not the enemy here, and they were not evil.
Moving into the kitchen, Hermione saw a large, worn, wooden table. It was set with teacups and small plates. There were biscuits and cookies – tea, milk and sugar.
It felt weird.
It felt normal, too normal. It was hard to imagine Narcissa preparing tea and biscuits, and yet she knew the woman had because there were no house-elves here. Her eyes shifted to the blonde standing in the center of the room, and she stiffened, freezing in the doorframe behind Shacklebolt and Nasir.
Their eyes locked – crystal blue hesitantly watching her stiff body. She didn’t move as the tall woman’s gaze slowly trailed over her form. Her eyes lingered briefly on the symbol which marked her neck – the one she hadn’t bothered to hide because, and perhaps it was stupid, but she had wanted to come to this meeting without a masking charm in place. She had wanted this woman to know exactly what it had cost them to get to this point and exactly what they had suffered to win. Hermione didn’t want to start off an alliance by hiding the damage that Narcissa, her family, and the people like her had caused to her body. So, while her scars were not exposed for everyone to see, they also weren’t hidden.
The red line on her neck was plainly visible. The topmost werewolf scar peeked out from the collar of her sweater. Her silver-skinned hand was clear as day, along with all the little knicks and lines that marked both of her hands. If she were to push up her sleeves, the word ‘mudblood’ would show. And if she were to lean forward and let the collar of her shirt sag, the top of her rune would be visible, along with the starburst scar that this woman’s sister had carved into her skin.
Hermione swallowed.
It hadn’t been leaving easy Grimmauld Place without a glamour and a masking charm. Even now, she was second-guessing the decision, but as Harry’s hand squeezed her tight, she forced herself to calm, rolling her shoulders back as she raised her chin a bit higher – daring the woman to react.
She didn’t.
Her blue gaze travelled back up her body, then locked to her eyes once more – and she nodded. Hermione stared at her, then slowly, incredibly slowly, inclined her head in greeting as well.
“Should we get started?” Shacklebolt asked, turning to glance back at Hermione. He seemed aware of the tension in the room, but like Nasir, he was either unbothered by it or simply too focused on his task to let it be a problem.
“Of course,” Narcissa said, tugging her eyes away from Hermione to nod at the Minister. “Where would you like to begin?”
They began at the beginning. Or as close to it as they could. Hermione awkwardly accepted the tea, not drinking from the cup until she saw Nasir drink from his own. She listened to Shacklebolt’s plans, fighting to keep her gaze away from the silent and rigid blonde who sat at the opposite end of the table as the Minister spoke. He indicated that he had already engaged McGonagall and that the woman would be joining their next meeting, but that he had wanted to have this smaller conversation first to get a feel for the opinions on both sides before they started to look at what they could actually do about it at the school.
He did note that the woman had plenty of modifications and outright changes that she planned to make on her own, including the abolishment of the existing house system in favour of a truly random selection, along with revisions to the History of Magic curriculum.
After he explained his plans, his thoughts, his research, and his biggest areas of concern for the challenges that they would face, he let Narcissa go first, giving her to the floor to say her piece. And to Hermione’s surprise… she found that she didn’t disagree with the majority of what the woman said. They seemed to share a lot of the same viewpoints – they just looked at them from the opposite side of the same coin. Narcissa explained that she and the other purebloods felt like they were losing their culture. She explained that she did not doubt that magical beings could be born into muggle families, nor did she question their magical capabilities – though she admitted there were many in her community that did, and she agreed that it was a problem. However, the bigger issue that tended to drive the pureblood mindsets and feed into the fear within those families was, again, the loss of their culture and history.
She felt like muggleborns were not properly introduced to the wizarding world. She felt like they weren’t taught enough about the culture or the history, so sometimes they were disrespectful and rude. They brought their own culture with them to Hogwarts, but didn’t bother to learn about the magical world. They didn’t understand the traditions. They didn’t appreciate how dangerous and how old magic was. They didn’t respect the way the world functioned, and they didn’t fit in at Hogwarts because they were not given any proper lessons prior to attending.
She actually brought data with her to prove it.
Where she got it, Hermione didn’t know, but it was years’ worth of statistics showing that muggleborn witches and wizards were not only more likely to die at a younger age, but they were five times more likely to get hurt at school during their education. They were six times more likely to be the cause of accidents in the classroom, two times more likely to be the cause of accidents at work, three times more likely to score below an A on their OWLs, and two times more likely to score poorly on their NEWTs.
She presented the data calmly, never once raising her voice. She didn’t sneer. She didn’t speak down to them. She didn’t say anything rude – she just simply presented the data for what it was and indicated that this was the biggest issue that they had. Muggleborns were a problem in wizarding society. They put pureblood students at risk while at school, and they often – not always, she conceded – were poor performers.
“I’m not saying that muggleborns are not welcome in our world,” Narcissa said quietly as she held her teacup before her. “But they are a problem. This has always been a problem, but anytime someone tries to address it, it either gets twisted into extremist views or shoved back under the rug. No one seems to want to do anything about this, and in the end, it is our future generations and our world as a whole that suffer as a result.”
Hermione stared at the papers on the table, and heavy silence filled the room. Shacklebolt seemed deep in thought. Harry was reading a set of data more closely with his brow pinched in concern, and Nasir was simply sitting there in silence watching them all carefully.
“You’re right,” Hermione said quietly, and she heard everyone turn to look at her as she let out a deep sigh.
She lifted her gaze, slowly looking around the table before her eyes locked to the surprised blue ones across from her. She could see Shacklebolt arching a brow from the corner of her gaze as Harry’s hand squeezed her thigh gently under the table.
“We are different from purebloods,” Hermione said slowly, her voice coming out almost solemn and resigned. “And we are a problem. We don’t know your customs. We don’t know your history. We’re dangerous, and we don’t fit in here, and honestly... I’m not sure if we ever will.”
Hermione paused, flicking her eyes over to Shacklebolt before she continued once more.
“But that isn’t our fault. We are set up to fail, and this data is proof of that,” Hermione said quietly. “We will never belong in this world with how things are currently structured. There are real and valid reasons why the two worlds have been kept separate for so long. The tension between us is logical – and I’ve read enough history books to understand why we can’t just announce ourselves to the world. While biologically the same species, muggles and wizards are fundamentally different in how they think and in what they value. It’s cultural. Our worlds are separated by a giant chasm, and there isn’t a single proper bridge across it.
“For the first eleven years of my life, I was raised as a muggle. I was taught to work with my hands, to think, to problem solve – I was taught maths, science, history, politics, and literature for our world just as you taught your children about the magical one,” Hermione said slowly as Narcissa stared at her intently. “You taught them spells. You showed them magic. They grew up surrounded by it. They developed habits and learned the traditions and culture of the wizarding world. They know what creatures are safe. They know what plants are dangerous. For them, flying on a broom hundreds of feet in the air and falling to the ground is normal. In my world, that same scenario equates to instant death. Pureblood children know the world they’re born into just like I knew mine. Some of them attend prep schools before Hogwarts. Some of them have tutors. They are set up for success in the magical world from the second they are born, and while wealth gaps are another contributing factor to that, it isn’t the main issue. It’s about exposure, understanding, and experience.
“I didn’t find out I was a witch until I was eleven,” Hermione continued, sitting back in her seat. “The strain that not knowing put on my family over the years due to accidental magic issues is yet a whole other sub-problem with the way that muggleborns are introduced to the magical world, and it needs to be addressed – but we can get to that later. My point is – my parents were informed on a Sunday afternoon over tea. How well do you think that was received? How much time and preparation do you think a muggleborn can complete when they find out they’re magical the summer before they’re supposed to attend a new school and leave their life behind? Of course muggleborns are dangerous at Hogwarts. Of course muggleborns perform poorly, get lower grades, and set classrooms on fire – they have no idea what they’re doing.”
Hermione shook her head, letting out a strained breath. “Everything about the magical world is different, right down to your currency. The mentality in everything that you do is different. Your risk tolerance is exceptionally high by muggle standards because you have magic to fix injuries, and thus, over time, your culture developed to be tolerant toward it. So that acceptance is not only inherent, but it makes sense from a magical perspective. It doesn’t, however, make sense from a muggle perspective.
“No self-respecting muggle parent would ever allow their child to attend Hogwarts if they knew about the shit that went on at school. But they don’t know, do they?” Hermione said quietly, her eyes flicking back to Shacklebolt. “Because no one tells them. Not the Ministry. Not the school. Those sorts of things are kept quiet because you know that muggle parents won’t understand it. And you know that leaving a magical child unattended in the muggle world is dangerous. So, at some point in time, someone realized that it was just easier to leave those details out because it’s too hard to explain to muggle parents that breaking an arm isn’t a concern. Or that getting cursed to puke up slugs for an hour is harmless. It’s hard to tell them that brooms don’t have seatbelts, and passing out on a greenhouse floor from a Mandrake’s scream is ‘no big deal’.
“Even as young kids, we muggleborns notice that fundamental difference. It’s the first thing that we pick up on during our first month of school, and even though it’s terrifying for us, we accept it, because magic is a part of who we are. We can’t leave. We can’t go back to the muggle world after setting foot into the magical one, not after the first time you cast a spell and feel that warm rush. So, we learn to accept that new world, and we desperately try to learn more about it and understand it, but during that process, while we fight to fit in – we lie,” Hermione said, glancing back at Narcissa. “And that drives the wedge deeper, making the gap even wider. Yes, there are the odd muggles out there who accept the magical world for what it is, and they adapt – Ava is a prime example of that. But the truth is... most of them don’t. Most muggleborn parents don’t like the magical world because they don’t understand it. They’re afraid of it, just like how purebloods are afraid of us – because it’s different.
“Some of them even grow to resent magic or try to exploit you for it because they misunderstand and think that it will solve all their problems when it won’t. But it’s difficult to explain to a muggle father who is dying from cancer why you cannot help him after you just magically filled his glass with water.” Hermione’s voice grew tight. “They don’t understand the difference, and muggleborn students are hardly equipped to explain it when they themselves have only been in the magical world for a few years.
“The issues related to muggleborns entering the magical world and straddling the line afterwards are endless and hugely problematic,” Hermione said as her heart started to quicken. “But no matter how you look at it, no matter how you slice this cake, the truth remains the same.”
Hermione stared at Narcissa hard as her voice dropped low.
“Muggleborns are left paying the price,” Hermione said, her voice coming out cold. “Your sons and daughters might have their safety statistically threatened by being around us at school, but they have the advantage. They’re more likely to make the right decisions and avoid injury. They’re more likely to succeed – they have fallback plans, support, and a secure place to belong. We don’t belong anywhere.”
Her eyes dropped to the table, and her throat started to burn.
“We’re not completely welcomed in the magical world, even though magic flows in our blood,” Hermione murmured. “We’re made fun of at school for having never seen Bertie Botts’ Every Flavour Beans and teased because we think chocolate frogs are gross. We have no idea what our professors are talking about in class, but yet we’re expected to participate at the same level as our peers. We rapidly fall behind, but no one wants to partner with us or help us because then we would only bring them down. Professors don’t have time to tutor us one-on-one because they’re teaching classes, rotating staff duties, and trying to do their jobs. We’re almost exclusively guaranteed to be cut from Quidditch teams and any other extracurricular group activities because we suck at them all. Purebloods and halfbloods have been playing these games since childhood – meanwhile, we’re just trying to learn how to stay on our brooms.
“Then we go home to the muggle world for Christmas and start to realize that we don’t really fit there either. We can’t talk about everything that’s going on at school for fear of our parents freaking out and pulling us from Hogwarts. We lose touch with our muggle friends because what the hell are we supposed to say to them? You can’t tell them what you are, you can’t tell them where you’ve been for the last few months, and lying about a fake boarding school is exhausting and brutal – so eventually you just stop,” Hermione whispered as her hands started to clench against the table. “You stop talking about the magical world at home because you can’t, and you don’t talk about the muggle world at school because it’s just a big joke to them. Purebloods aren’t educated about the muggle world, and the Hogwarts’ Muggle Studies class is a fucking elective that hardly anyone takes, which honestly is for the best because it’s so outdated it’s embarrassing. It makes us look like barbaric idiots or monkeys in a zoo using tools for the first time.
“And it just gets worse and worse as each year goes by because no matter how hard we try, no matter how hard we study – we’ll never catch up. There are just some things about the culture that are not written down in books,” Hermione said, swallowing hard. “There are things that can only be learned from living and growing up in the wizarding world, and we don’t know what information we’re missing until we find out it exists. We are always the brunt of the joke. We are always at risk of looking stupid, insulting the wrong person, or embarrassing ourselves. We are always at risk of getting hurt, and yes – we definitely put pureblood children in danger in the classroom along with everyone else there because we have no fucking idea what we’re doing half the time. Which, as your data shows, continues into our careers and makes us more likely to fail in the wizarding world as adults.
“So I am, and will forever be, destined to be a nomad, straddling the endlessly deep crevasse between my two worlds while never belonging to either of them.” Hermione forced the painful words out. “And I honestly don’t think that there is a way to change that. I don’t know if our two worlds can ever properly coexist, but I can promise you that two months’ notice is not enough time to prepare a muggleborn child for the most life-altering experience of their existence. They need a prep school to learn about themselves, their magic, and the wizarding world. Muggleborns need to be told what they are earlier, and magical history needs to be taught to them. They need resources at Hogwarts to help them adjust. They’re only eleven years old when they get there – for many of them, it’s the first time that they’ve ever been away from their families, let alone abandoned in a new culture, and they’re left with no support system whatsoever.
“Muggle Studies must be mandatory. It needs to start in the first year – preferably in the pre-schools, and the entire curriculum needs to be redesigned,” Hermione said, her voice getting louder as she spoke. “We’re not a joke. Muggle methods are not barbaric – they’re ingenious, they’re creative, they’re incredible, they save lives, and it needs to be taught as such at school. This isn’t a simple fix. It can’t be done in a single year. It’s going to take time, and it will require resources and funding and a desire for genuine change – not a superficial bandage. Muggleborns are a problem, but they are not the problem, and it has been shown time and time again throughout history that muggleborns spark innovation, they are just as talented as their pureblood peers, and they work harder than anyone else.
“We want to be here,” Hermione said firmly, forcing her gaze up to look at the woman before her once more. “We deserve to be here. But we cannot fit into this world by force or by our own hand. We need a fair start, and we need you to allow us a place to belong.”
There were a thousand things racing behind Narcissa’s eyes as Hermione held her gaze. The woman’s body was tense. The faint scar along her temple from battle was barely visible under the glamours. The silence stretched between them as the air seemed to grow tight, and then, the woman shifted.
“I agree,” she said quietly, and Hermione felt all the air leave her lungs as Narcissa Black smiled at her and her pale blue eyes warmed. “Hermione is correct, and I would like to help fix this.”
Warning:
This chapter contains: mentions of past childhood abuse
-x-x-
July 21, 1998
Tuesday, Spinner’s End, 5:16 pm
“Severus.” Granger’s voice was low, her tone almost hesitant as Snape continued to root around in the far corner.
“What?” Snape asked, fighting back the urge to sneeze as dust clouded the air around him.
He hadn’t been up here since he was a small child, and he could hardly seem to remember where anything was. He had blocked those memories out ages ago, buried them deep under thick layers of occlumency the second he learned how to use that mind magic, and now after two decades of keeping them locked up, he found it was harder to pull the memories forward.
“There is a letter here addressed to you.” Granger’s voice was quiet still, and he heard the girl shift ever so slightly.
Snape sighed, fighting back his annoyance. They had a bunch of brewing to do and now was not the time to get distracted. They had only come up here because they needed more supplies. Diagon Alley was fresh out of cauldrons, vials, stirring rods, mashers, and just about anything else that one would need to complete a brew. They were currently using all his supplies, all Granger’s supplies, and everything they had managed to uncover in Grimmauld Place the past weekend. But they still needed more – because they both refused to use their good equipment for the experimental brew when there were still people on the verge of dying depending on their potions.
Thus, if they were going to work on the modified dreamless sleeping draught and test out a few new ideas, they needed to find some spare cauldrons and equipment. Otherwise, their plans would be put on hold for the foreseeable future. Which was the only reason why he had come up in this attic, because he knew he had some old salvageable cauldrons buried around here somewhere from the experiments he’d conducted during his youth. He had intended to search on his own, but after being up here for ten minutes, Granger had climbed the ladder to see what was taking him so long and then proceeded to help him look when it became apparent that he had no idea where the cauldrons were.
He had been positive that they were over by the window, but they weren’t, and thinking about it now, he was starting to wonder if his father or mother might have pitched them. After all, he hadn’t seen them since he was sixteen. He’d had no use for them when he had a fully functional potions lab at the school. Now, looking at the small, empty, and extremely dusty cabinet that he had just opened, he was starting to think that there was a decent chance they were gone.
“And?” Snape asked dryly, not really listening to her as he closed the cabinet doors and pushed aside another box to look along the wall. “There is a ton of useless old crap here, Hermione. I’ve not been up here in over two decades – there are undoubtedly several of my old things lying around, and I would appreciate it if you didn’t snoop. We’re looking for cauldrons. They should be obvious to find, and they’re certainly not going to be inside an envelope. That’s probably just one of the many letters written home from Hogwarts or a list of required school supplies – all of which I plan to burn the second I have a moment of free time, and you are out of my house.”
“Yes, but–”
“Granger,” Snape sighed in annoyance, reverting back to using her surname as he tended to do when his patience was wearing thin. He scowled at the contents of the second small cabinet he opened. It was filled with old books, vinyls, and other useless trinkets. “Adventure time down memory lane in my attic can wait – in fact, for you, it can wait indefinitely because it is none of your business. It’s bad enough that you and Potter and Nasir come and go as you please. I don’t need you rooting through my past any more than you already have and reading through the amusing letters that document my school life. And more than that – I have no interest in it, the past is dead as far as I am concerned, and I’m going to burn all this shit and this entire fucking house to the ground the second potion demands slow down. Or have you forgotten that the only reason why I’ve left this place standing is because of the wards, because the location is hidden, and because we can’t afford to waste time trying to find and set up another location? Focus on your task – they should be up here somewhere.”
“Severus, I really–”
“Granger, I swear to Merlin, if you don’t vanish that stupid piece of paper right now, I’m going to ban you from this house,” Snape hissed as he slammed the cabinet shut. “I don’t give a shit if Nasir gets mad – I’m going to toss you out on your ass in three seconds. That man takes too many liberties with my soul as it is, and you are incapable of not being nosey!”
He heard her sigh, the tight exhale coming out strained before her feet started to clunk across the old wooden boards of the attic, and he turned to face her in annoyance. Her expression was tight. Her jaw clenched as she closed the distance between them and came to stand just before the small little window less than two feet away.
“This,” Granger said, her voice tight as she held up an old envelope with his name scrawled across the front. “Is not a letter from Hogwarts – it’s a letter from your mother.”
Snape felt his body tense and his chest constrict as she then held up the yellowed and folded pieces of paper that were in her other hand as her eyes pinched. She looked angry and annoyed, and yet – sad. Then before he could even open his mouth to lash out at her about her having no respect for his privacy, she cut him off as if she’d been able to read his mind.
“And before you even start with me – no, I didn’t read it. I only took it out of the envelope because I knew if I didn’t – you would just vanish it like the stubborn ass that you are,” Granger said, her voice carrying an edge of challenge as if she dared him to say otherwise. She knew him too well now, he hated that, and she knew that he knew that she was right. Her face softened, and she shook her head. “Hogwarts doesn’t send letters in envelopes like this, Severus – and this one had never been opened. This is a letter to you, and it’s personal – I could tell from the second I touched it because it had some sort of weak charm on it. Your name didn’t appear on the front until my fingers touched the paper. This was charmed so that only someone with magic could read it, but it doesn’t seem to have been coded to you specifically.”
She took a breath, her eyes trailing over his tense and unmoving frame before they softened.
“Look, I know we have a lot to do – I know you have your issues with your family, but I think you should read this. I can’t explain why, but there is something – warm, about it.” She held the letter out to him, but he didn’t move and instead just stared at it. She let out another silent sigh, and he watched as the girl reached forward, took his hand, and made him take the letter.
“Read it,” Granger said firmly, squeezing his hand once before she let go. “I’m going to go recheck our arithmancy calculations. We can still start our trials tomorrow without those cauldrons – we’ll just use the half-melted ones from Neville for now. Besides, I need to message Nasir about some stuff, so just take a minute and read it. We have time.”
Then, she turned and left him there, making her way soundlessly toward the ladder and climbing down with ease until he was alone in the dimly lit attic. He could feel her through the wards, shifting her way across the narrow hallway down the staircase back to the kitchen, where she presumably got to work.
Yet Snape stood there motionless; his eyes fixed on the time-worn letter that was clutched in his right hand. He couldn’t seem to breathe. He couldn’t seem to think. Never once in his entire life had his mother ever written him a letter. Never once had that woman ever written him anything, and a part of him wanted to believe it wasn’t true. A part of him wanted to believe that this was a joke, that Granger had been wrong, and she had simply misread the name.
But he knew that wasn’t true.
Granger knew his mother’s name now, and even though a huge piece of him wanted to deny it, he knew that this letter was hers. He could feel it. That warmth that Granger had described was her magic – it was the charm that she used to use when he was a small boy to leave him things secretly so that his father wouldn’t be able to find them. She would charm them to become visible only when he touched them, and he would find them by following the warmth that he could sense in the air.
It was a game they’d played when he was only four or five. It hadn’t lasted long – and she’d only ever left him small things like used books, a tiny chocolate bar, or a new trinket she had managed to find while at work. But for a short time, for just over a year, it had been their little secret. It was the only thing from his childhood that made him believe that his mother might have loved him, and it had been theirs.
Only theirs.
The only thing that had brought joy to his childhood.
His eyes traced over the paper as he slowly moved, unfolding the letter to look at the slightly tilted scrawl that covered the pages. It was unmistakably her handwriting, except perhaps a bit messier than what he remembered. The warmth was faint now, only barely noticeable – which made sense. His mother had been dead for twenty-two years, and it was astounding that the charm was still present at all.
He felt his heart start to clench as he shifted toward the small window, holding the folded pages up before him so he could read them. A part of him wanted to burn them where he stood. A part of him wanted to burn the whole bloody house down right now – potions or not, Granger or not – he wanted to destroy the entire thing because feeling that tiny tingle of warmth and reading the date on the top of the letter ignited a burning rage in his heart that he’d spent the last two decades suppressing.
After everything.
After all of it.
She had left him a letter?
As if a letter was going to do anything. As if a fucking letter was going to fix anything or give him any sort of closure.
“I should burn this right now on principle alone.” Snape’s voice was hollow as his eyes stared unfocused at the scrawled words before him.
He was unwilling to read it on pride alone. He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to know. He resented everything about that woman and had long ago locked those memories away and killed the part of him that felt anything other than hatred towards his family. There was nothing that woman could say to him now that would ever make what happened okay, and truth be told, there was a better chance of the letter blaming him for everything that happened than it being an apology.
But even if it was an apology – it wasn’t welcomed.
He glared at it, feeling his left hand tighten at his side so painfully he could no longer feel his fingers. He didn’t know how long he stared at it while remaining unmoving and without reading it. It felt like ages. It felt like forever. And then, despite the shaking rage that was coursing through his body and trembling through his limbs, he shifted, bringing the page up closer so his eyes could make out the shaky words that covered the worn pages.
Severus,
I have no way of knowing if you will ever find this letter, if you will ever read it, or if you will simply just dispose of it without even opening it. If you do burn it, which is what I suspect that you would do if you ever did find this – I wouldn’t blame you.
You owe me nothing. I don’t deserve your time, and you always were an incredibly loyal boy who stood firmly on your principles. I know that you let me go a long time ago, and I know that you do not forgive those who have wronged you. I’m proud of you for that, but I also know that I had absolutely nothing to do with making you that way – aside from acting as the example of what not to become, I’m afraid that I gave you very little guidance as a child and I was not a good role model.
In fact, I was no role model at all. I was instead quite possibly the worst influence on your life aside from your father – though arguably, in a lot of ways, I would say that I was worse.
I always did find it somewhat fascinating how you could look so much like us and yet be nothing like us at all. The world is a strange place, is what I have come to realize over the years and yet despite everything that has happened – despite this being my final day where I am filled with nothing but regret, agony, and disgust that runs so deep it makes me feel physically ill – you are, and will always remain, the one thing in my life that I do not regret.
You were, are, and will always be – the only good thing that ever happened to me, and it is with great pain and shame that I sit here knowing that I am probably one of your biggest regrets in life. That I am the worst thing to have happened to you. That I have disappointed you to no end and that I have failed you so fundamentally, I fear that the damage has been cut so deep into your soul that you might never recover.
I hope I’m wrong.
I want you to know that this isn’t your fault. None of it was. You never did anything wrong. Children do not get to choose their parents, and you, while being unwillingly born into this broken home, took it in stride and gave your everything to try and help me when I did not deserve it. I do not know how well your memory is or how far back you can recall, but even from a young age, you always gave more than you should have. You always bore more than any child should be asked to bear, and you were always there for me. You always tried. The first time you asked me to leave with you – you were only five, do you remember that?
I do.
In fact, I think about it often. It was after your father broke my nose and blackened my eye. We were sitting in the garden trying to get the tomato plants to grow, and you asked if we could run away. You asked if I would leave with you. I remember smiling and laughing at your adorable expression and telling you ‘no’. I remember telling you that your father didn’t mean it, that it was an accident, and that sometimes parents fight.
It was a lie, and even then, at only five years old, I knew you understood it was wrong. I knew that you knew I was lying, but you chose to humour me. You chose to smile and say ‘okay’ because you trusted me, because I was your mother.
Even if I was a deplorable one – you still loved me unconditionally, and you still gave me your trust. I didn’t deserve it, and I broke that trust over and over again.
Yet you stayed.
And you asked me time and time again to leave with you.
But I didn’t.
And to this day, I still can’t even explain why.
You would think that seeing the man you love hurt your child would awaken something within a mother. That it would call forth some undying love, some inner strength, or resolve that could allow them to step up and do what’s right – to do what they know is right. Maybe there is something wrong with me. Or perhaps I was selfish. Perhaps I thought things would change and kept holding onto the hope that it wasn’t that bad. Maybe I didn’t love you as much as I thought I did, or maybe… maybe I was just that pathetic as a person that I could do nothing. Maybe it was the shame of it all that kept me frozen in fear and unable to act, but regardless, no matter how bad it got, I could never seem to make myself do what I knew I needed to.
What you knew I needed to do, and I couldn’t leave.
Even when you grew older, and you began to realize that you could distract his attention and bring it on yourself – I still couldn’t do anything. Even when you would step in at only eight years old – just to spare me – I still couldn’t do anything. Looking back on it now, it positively sickens me, and it makes me wonder how disturbed and broken a woman must be to allow their husband to beat their child. Or was I allowing it because, for once, it wasn’t me, and if he beat you, then I might be spared for one night? I don’t know. That question plagues me, and yet it is somehow only a tiny bone in the massive closet of skeletons that I will carry to my grave.
And yet somehow through all the horrors, you remained my boy. You remained my wonderful, kind, and caring boy. You never complained. You never cried in front of your father, you never let him know just how bad it hurt, you never left – and you never abandoned me. Even though I had abandoned you. You took the time to write to me while at school. You worried about me. You helped me tend to my injuries, and you always came back home from the Evanses – even though I know they invited you to stay with them during the summer and the holidays – but you didn’t, because you didn’t want to leave me alone with him. You would beg me to go with you. You would beg me to leave, and you even once, after your third year, packed all our belongings and tried to drag me from the house.
You never gave up on me.
Until finally, one day, you stopped asking. And it was at that moment that I knew I had broken you because something in you had changed. It was during your fourth year at Hogwarts – you became colder. Distant. Closed. You rarely spoke, you never reacted, and you no longer asked me to leave, yet you still took my beatings for me any time you could.
There was something dark in your gaze that summer. At one point, I thought you might retaliate, but you didn’t – you still never raised your fists in return, and you still never complained. You still hadn’t entirely given up on me even if you had resigned yourself to stop asking me to leave him.
Until after your fifth year.
Until that one night in June before you returned for your sixth year, because after that night – you gave up. After that night, everything changed. You had shut down. You shut me out. I don’t know what happened to you at school that year, but when you came home you had closed yourself off from the world and retreated into a darkness that I’d never seen before – and then, you stopped talking altogether.
And it was in that moment that I knew you’d finally given up on me. You’d finally had enough, and you were finally done. You no longer saw me as a victim that needed to be saved, and instead, you saw me as part of the problem. You saw me as a source of your pain – and frankly, you were right.
I’ll never forget that day. It is so ingrained into my mind that even now, I can replay the entire scene before my eyes and still see every little detail. You’d come home later than you should have. To this day, I still have no idea where you used to go, but it was dark by the time you had gotten home, and your father was already drunk and dragging me down the hall. So naturally, you picked a fight with him to get him away from me.
And after a year of you no longer asking – you asked me one final time – you asked me to leave with you. I can still hear the words, and I can still picture the look on your face as you stood at the top of the stairs, hand outstretched, asking me to come. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t – and your face hardened like stone as he laughed at you.
He hit you. Harder, I think, than he had ever hit you before. I can still hear the sound of your jaw cracking as he broke it. I can still see the blood that trickled down your face as he split your lip and brow before blackening your eye. I can still hear the unbearable sound of you being thrown down the stairs before he followed after you and unleashed his full rage.
I failed you, Severus.
I failed you in the most fundamental way. I failed you as a witch. I failed you as a fellow human being, and I failed you as a mother. I watched silently while he broke nearly every rib in your body and then put his cigarette out on your chest. And I did nothing, except watch as a piece of you died that night. And your eyes darkened with a hatred so violent, so profoundly deep, and so sinister it scared me – I’d never seen anything like it before. But you weren’t looking at your father, Severus…
You were looking at me.
And it was in that moment that I realized, as your hand twitched at your side and you forced yourself not to draw your wand on him as you hauled your yourself from the ground and brushed the ashes from your shirt – that you were going to kill him.
That you would do it without hesitation and without an ounce of regret – and it was my fault. I led you to that. I led you to feel that rage, that hatred, and that anger so deeply it made you capable of killing. I left my own son, my own flesh and blood, alone to face the horrors of that man for sixteen years while I did nothing.
I abandoned you.
No child should be capable of murder, but yet there you were at only sixteen – barely restraining yourself from doing it right then and there. If not for the trace, if not for the warning that Dumbledore had given you, how close you were already to being expelled from Hogwarts, and the fact that you had nowhere else to go – I think you would have done it that night. I didn’t have a doubt in my mind that you were capable of it, too – only a person familiar with dark and dangerous magic could have had that look in their eyes.
The look of knowing that the person before you is going to die by your hand – the look of a man who would kill and will kill. And I knew it then deep in my soul that we were dead to you. That I was dead to you – and you were going to kill him the second you turned seventeen and could safely use your magic at home. I knew that was the only thing preventing you from doing it that very second, and I knew when I watched you turn and leave that night that I wouldn’t see you again until your birthday.
I knew that you wouldn’t come back after that – and you didn’t.
And so that will forever be my last memory of you. I will never see your face again.
I still have no idea where you went or where you stayed. I know as a child you would spend time at the Evanses’, and they largely took you in as one of their own, but I also know you stopped talking about Lily sometime during your fifth year. So, I know you didn’t go there. Before you met her, I know you used to lie awake in terror when our screaming got too loud and that sometimes you would sneak out to the park through your bedroom window and sleep there. I know you stayed there several nights, even in the rain and even once in the winter. The sad thing was, I never worried about you being alone in the park at night because the truth was – you were safer sleeping there than sleeping in your own bed.
So perhaps that’s where you went that night. I hope it wasn’t. I hope you found somewhere safe to stay for the rest of that summer. I used to lay awake worrying about you. I used to lay awake wondering where you had gone and if you were safe. It killed me as a mother not knowing where you were, but the worst part is, I don’t even deserve to feel that way because it is my fault.
I have no right to agonize over your childhood because I allowed it. I had no right to wonder about where you went or who you were with for those last two months before Hogwarts because I drove you to leave.
I put you in that position. I failed to provide you a safe home.
You’ll never forgive me, nor should you because this is my doing, and I am solely responsible for everything that you went through. I allowed this to happen. I allowed that man to hurt you, and I allowed you to watch him hurt me. I did that, Severus.
No one else.
Not you.
Not your father.
Me.
And I’ll never be able to apologize. There is nothing that I can ever say to make this right, and there is no way you would ever accept my remorse or apology, even if I ever did manage to find the words to capture my thoughts. I’ve spent the last seventeen years of my life under that man’s control. I allowed him to break me as a person. I allowed him to beat me, control me, and terrorize me, but I don’t even regret that because that was my choice. What I do regret was that I allowed him to break you – my child. I allowed him to fill your soul with anguish and hate that no child should ever know. I let him take your happiness. Your innocence. Your potential – and I let him crush and squeeze it from your body.
I watched him drain the life from you.
And I did nothing.
Yet, I cannot go back and fix this. And even if I could, Severus, I am ashamed to say that I would probably fail yet again. I’m not a strong person. I never have been. I’m not, nor was I ever, a good mother. I got pregnant with you before we were married at 17, just after graduating Hogwarts, after only knowing your father for a few months and I was terrified. He said that he’d take care of me – he was older and had a job, and he seemed so sincere. He didn’t know that I was a witch back then, and while I know you’ll never believe this now – your father was a good man.
But after only a year with you in our life and after revealing what I really was, everything fell apart, and I crumbled with it. These aren’t excuses. I’m not asking you to forgive me, and I’m not even asking you to understand – these are just all the words that I never said to you, pouring desperately from my pen in the final moments of my life.
I’m not asking you for anything now – but I do want you to know that I love you. I loved you. I’ve never stopped loving you, and at one point in time, your father loved you too. He cried when he held you for the first time, and it was the happiest he’d ever been.
But that doesn’t change what I allowed to happen. I abandoned you. I let horrible things happen to you, I failed you, and I’ve left you alone in this world as a damaged and broken person to fend for yourself. But I will not allow my son to become a murderer and to carry the burden of my mistakes for me any longer.
I know it probably sounds odd to you... that I have a line, or that a line even exists for me after everything that has happened and everything that I have allowed to happen to you. I can’t explain it, and maybe you’ll never even know because chances are when you inherit this house, you will burn it to the ground and never see this letter at all. I can’t imagine you ever staying in this horrible place, and even if you did – it’s possible that still, you’ll never find this because I know you’ve blocked out the past. I know you’ve buried it all down deep, and so maybe you no longer remember the game we used to play and never find this note.
But if you do ever find this.
If by chance, you stumble upon this letter, I want you to know that I am sorry.
I know my words hold no value after everything, and they long ago lost their meaning, but it is the truth – I am sorry. You deserved a better life. You were a good boy, a smart boy, and at one time when you were small – you were a happy child. I’m going to hold out hope that someday in the future, you can find that happiness again. That without me and without your father lurking in the background as nothing but pain and sorrow, you can start over and create a life of your own, free of the past and free of the horrors that haunted your childhood – but that you do it without the weight, the darkness, and the pain that comes from taking a life.
Because you’re a good person, Severus, you always were. And one day, you will be a good man. You are not, nor have you ever been, anything like your father or I. It was never in your nature to be violent – it was a reaction to the environment in which you were raised, but it is not who you are. It never has been. The tarnish on your soul is my doing, it belongs to me, and it is time that I take responsibility for it and set you free.
The truth is, Severus, I cannot leave your father. Even after all these years and even though the man I married died ages ago, I still cannot leave him. Perhaps that makes me deplorable as a human being. Perhaps that makes me pathetic as a witch... and I know, without question, that it makes me a reprehensible abomination as a mother.
I accept that.
But after nearly two decades of doing nothing, after letting you carry the burden for so long and allowing it to warp and damage you as a person, after watching my son turn from a happy, peaceful, kind-hearted, and brilliantly smart child to a cold, closed, resentful, and angry young man – I cannot allow it to continue.
And I can, at least, do this.
Merlin, give me the strength to finally do what needs to be done and let me finally free you from this hell. Let me, finally, take the burden from your shoulders and carry it for you, my son. I know it fixes nothing. I know it changes nothing. I know this.
But I will do it regardless.
I feel like a part of me always knew this was how it would end, one way or another. Looking back now, a small part of me wants to laugh at my own ignorance and naivety – at how stupid and utterly useless I have been, while a much larger part of me is crying in agony over what my life has become and what I have done to you. I feel like deep down, since the first time your father hit me, I always knew this would be the end – I’d just been trying to ignore it. Trying to look the other way. Your father won’t let me go, and I won’t leave him – but the violence continues to escalate, and so it was only a matter of time.
Even now, at this moment... my left hand and arm are broken, so I am writing this with my right, and that is why it looks so terrible. And yet, I still have no courage to do anything about it. I still have no strength to take any action. I cannot make myself heal my arm because the truth is, I deserve it to be broken, and I’m not sure I even remember the spell to fix it.
Even if I had wanted to mend it, I’m not sure that I could anymore.
In a strange way, that is how I know that this is what I have to do as I sit here at the table thinking of your face that night – thinking of how strong you became despite me. Perhaps even in spite of me.
I was your mother, and I was supposed to protect you – I promised I would, and I didn’t. And I know if I do not do this now and you come home over the holidays – I won’t be able to stop you. I’m not even sure if I would try to stop you, but I cannot live with myself knowing that I drove you to that point. I cannot live with the regret of knowing what has happened by your hand because of my neglect.
I cannot allow this to happen. I cannot allow you to do what has always needed to be done on my behalf. So this will be the final and last words that I write because when your father comes home... I will end this.
It’s for the better.
You’ve lived your life alone without me thus far, without my help and without any of the things you should have had. You’re a survivor. You will survive this too and be better for it – better without me here. Better without your father. You always were smart, Severus, so I’m sure if you find this letter, you will figure out how I did it. And even if you never do see this letter, I’m sure that you will be suspicious. Either way – at least we will be gone from your life. At least I will die knowing that you are alive, free from this hell, and free from the weight that you would have carried if I’d done nothing and allowed you to turn seventeen while your father still lived, and you inevitably took his life.
If there is an afterlife, your father and I will both surely go to the worst part of it to rot and burn for our sins for all time, but I pray to Merlin and to any other deity out there that I never see your face again. That you find peace. That you find happiness. That when the time comes, and you meet your end, you find yourself on the side for those that lived good lives and for those that made good choices – to the side of the after where you belong. Somewhere you can be free, somewhere you can be alive, somewhere you can be at peace.
Because you deserve it.
You deserved so much more than I was ever able to give you. You deserved to be happy. You deserved a childhood without fear. You deserved to be loved and cared for, and while I love you, loved you, and will always love you – I know it means nothing. It was never enough, and I was never deserving of the unconditional love that you gave me as a child, nor the care you showed me as a young man.
Be well, Severus.
Don’t let my mistakes and the deplorable transgressions of your father keep you from finding a life of your own. You are more than your blood. You always have been. You are you – and you are free to become your own person outside of me and the horrors of your childhood. You are, and will always be, the only good thing to have come from me. You are the best parts of me, my biggest failure, and yet simultaneously – my greatest accomplishment. I was always proud to call you my son, but I was always ashamed that I was your mother – because you deserved so much more.
With love,
Eileen Prince
Snape stared at the letter, his hand shaking softly in the faint light of the attic as the skies began to grow dark. It was as if someone had turned off his brain and removed his ability to think or function. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. His body just stood there motionless as the words on the page circled around in his head on an endless loop.
He understood each word individually. He knew what they all meant, and as he read the sentences, his brain comprehended each phrase – but he seemed incapable of accepting them, processing them, or doing anything with them aside from staring at them with a cold, hollow empty as something began to stab painfully into his heart.
He hated Tobias Snape.
He hated Eileen Prince.
He’d come to terms with their role in his life over a decade ago, and he had pushed past it. He had, indeed, been intending to kill his father on his seventeenth birthday the second the trace was removed from his body, and he’d known exactly how he was going to do it. He’d already planned it – he’d had it all prepared. He was going to poison the man’s liquor and watch him scream in agony as his liver failed and his heart gave out. There would be no evidence. There would be no suspicion. No autopsy, whether magical or muggle, would have ever found a trace of what he had done.
It would have worked. He never would have gotten caught – no matter how watchful Dumbledore had been over him at the time. There would have been no way to prove it, and at seventeen, without the trace, he would have been able to brew the potion he required outside of school without getting caught.
No one was going to know.
To this day, no one had ever known of his plan.
Except – as it would seem, his mother – who had known the night he left home in 1976 and never returned. He’d spent the first term of his sixth year at Hogwarts stealing and gathering all the potion ingredients he required from that fool, Slughorn, and the greenhouses. He’d been stockpiling it all and preparing to bring it home over the Christmas break before his seventeenth birthday. He was even debating trying out a few of his new spells on the old man when suddenly, midway through November, he was called to his Head of House’s office and informed that his mother and father had both passed away.
Apparently, Tobias had died from alcohol poisoning – which at the time, he had not found suspicious. But his mother had allegedly died from a heart attack – which he had always found a bit unlikely. He’d always assumed that his father had just finally accidentally killed her during one of his regular beatings and then drunk himself to death. That suspicion had been all but confirmed when he’d gone to verify the bodies and finalize their burial – his mother’s arm had been broken. There was bruising along her neck and face, and her body was so thin and frail it was frankly beyond him that she’d managed to live as long as she had.
It was, he decided as he looked at her, possible that she’d died from a heart attack. That, or Tobias had strangled her again until she passed out and she’d died while unconscious.
Either way, he’d never pushed for a magical autopsy. He’d never even considered it, because at the time, he hadn’t cared. Slughorn had been prepared with a box of tissues in his office when he had revealed the news, and the daft idiot had been rather gobsmacked when Snape had simply stared blankly at him and nodded, standing from his chair and saying that he would take a day of bereavement leave to go and deal with it tomorrow.
And that was exactly what he did.
He went to the muggle morgue with McGonagall because he wasn’t allowed to apparate or go alone, and Slughorn was unable to sub his classes.
He signed several papers.
He met with the lawyers, he inherited the house, and then he returned to Hogwarts before dinner the next day as if nothing had changed. His professors had been alerted of the news, and he could see them all dancing around the issue, trying to ensure that he was alright while they offered to cut him slack. Their awkward attempts at sympathy had not only been unwelcome, but they’d also been absurd and laughable given that his professors had never given a shit about him up until that point. It seemed ridiculous that they should care now simply because his parents had died.
If any of them had ever bothered or attempted to get to know him, they would have known that he didn’t care. They would know that he’d cut his emotional ties to his parents years ago and that he literally felt nothing as he’d looked at their dead bodies. Truth be told – the only thing he had felt was disappointment. Disappointment that he’d wasted his time collecting ingredients he no longer needed and disappointment that he couldn’t kill the bastard himself.
He knew that his outward lack of emotion and reaction made them all uncomfortable. He knew that they didn’t know what to do with him, and he knew, as he’d sat in Dumbledore’s office refusing to speak while Slughorn and McGonagall stood behind him looking concerned, that they were all worried. And that had made him outwardly laugh.
He could still see the scene in his head as if it was yesterday. McGonagall had suggested to him that he take a week off to process it while Slughorn nodded and agreed, and Snape chuckled darkly – stopping both of them mid-sentence as he stood from his chair, straightened his robes, and then turned to give the Headmaster a dead empty stare.
‘May I go now, sir? Or is there anything else you wish to say to make yourselves feel better about this? Because I have two essays I was hoping to start tonight,’ he’d said rather dryly, his voice hollow as his eyes flicked over Slughorn, McGonagall, and Dumbledore in turn.
Both Slughorn and McGonagall had seemed taken aback by his words, but Dumbledore had simply remained silent and stared at him. His infuriating and twinkling blue eyes glinted in the firelight.
‘Severus,’ McGonagall had said, her voice almost strained. ‘Given the conditions of your parents’ bodies upon their deaths – I think it might be good for you to take a week off. Perhaps you could go speak to Madam Pomfrey? She is a certified grief counsellor, and she has experience dealing with… domestic issues. It – It might be… helpful for you to get some counselling given the circumstances.’
Snape knew that the woman meant well.
He knew that she didn’t know about it – it wasn’t like the professors ever completed home visits. Slughorn was too daft to ever notice or pick anything up, but Pomfrey wasn’t. The first time she’d treated his injuries after a brawl with James Potter, the first thing she commented on was the evidence of past injuries from his childhood. At the time, he’d been too insecure and nervous to deal with it. He’d only been eleven years old, and that woman was the first person to ever show a hint of concern for his well-being. So, naturally, it had terrified him. He’d closed down and pushed her away. He’d lied and said he was fine – said he had no idea what she was hinting at because he was terrified his mother would find out, then his father would find out, and it would only make things worse.
Pomfrey, being the dedicated healer that she was, had alerted Slughorn about her concerns and documented them in her files. Slughorn had come to him to ‘talk about it,’ and the whole experience had been excruciating, unbearable, and it was obvious to Snape even at that young age that his Head of House was just as uncomfortable with talking to him about it as he was.
So, Snape lied and had assured the man it was fine. He’d told the man that his mother just happened to be poor at healing spells and that they didn’t have much money, so they had to heal his injuries ‘the muggle way’. And Slughorn, who knew nothing about muggle healing methods, had simply accepted the answer and never brought it up again. It had been far better for Slughorn to know that he was poor than for the man to realize that his father beat him on a regular basis.
After that, Snape took exceptional care to avoid going to see Pomfrey at any cost.
He had always suspected that Dumbledore was made aware of it, but the man never commented on it or did anything. So Pomfrey was, and remained for the entire rest of his school career, the only person to ever identify the past evidence of injuries lingering throughout his body for what they truly were – signs of consistent, brutal, and relentless physical abuse.
Yet on that day, at that moment – even though logically he knew that McGonagall had not known the situation of his home life – her words were like a knife in an old injury being twisted under his skin. Like a blade thrust right into the deepest, darkest, and angriest part of himself. The part that hated everything. The part that resented his parents, resented his homelife, resented the school, and hated all the assholes who taught there. The part that loathed that fucking piece of shit Dumbledore who had known and done nothing, and who had shown him the year prior that he didn’t give a fuck about Snape or his well-being when he let the Marauders off with a warning and measly detention after Sirius had blatantly tried to kill him.
And just like that, he felt the cold, angry hatred spread through his body like a wave at the audacity of her words. At the utterly disgusting and pathetic behaviour of his professors for the last twenty-four hours as they pretended to care.
They’d spent years punishing him for things that were not his fault, for pranks that Potter and Black had pinned on him. Then, after ignoring all the torment he’d gone through, all the bullying, the teasing, and the utter torture he’d endured at the hands of the other students while at school – they’d berated him when he’d finally decided to stick up for himself and to do something about it. He’d been slammed with detentions and blasted with point losses while the Marauders were lauded as fucking heroes half the time. He’d been labelled as a goddamn villain before he’d even had the chance to stand on his own two feet or define who he was going to become simply because of his school house, because he came from nothing, and because the most popular students in the school didn’t like him.
So, as he’d looked at the woman before him that day, he felt something snap. It was dark and insidious, and it had filled his heart like heavy freezing water as his eyes narrowed into slits.
‘Given the condition of their bodies,’ Snape repeated, his words dark and laced with condescension.
He saw McGonagall straighten; the woman’s jaw flexed as she clenched it. Then, surprising even himself – he laughed. The small dark chuckle seeped from his lips like poison, and he’d smiled. Fully smiled, for the first time in years, before shaking his head and looking at them all once more. Then, his face had twisted into a sneer as he glanced back at McGonagall once more.
‘It’s been sixteen years, professor,’ Snape had practically hissed, looking at her in disgust. ‘Sixteen years – why the fuck would I want to talk about it now? They’re dead, and they’re better off for it. The only thing I have to say is that it’s a shame they didn’t die sooner.’
Silence had rung throughout the Headmaster’s office for a painful beat as he glared at them. His cold, dead eyes traced over each one of them one final time before he forced his face back into an impassive and blank look. He could still remember roughly shoving the chair he’d been sitting in back under the desk, the noise of it scraping on the floor making the professors around him cringe with discomfort before he casually stuffed his hands into his pockets and then turned to look at the Headmaster once more.
‘I have homework to do,’ he’d said dryly, turning towards the door and not stopping to look and see if they were watching him as he moved.
It hadn’t been the first time that he’d ever cursed in front of his professors, but it was the only time none of them said anything about it as he pushed his way out of the office and made his way back to his dormitory.
Now, standing in the attic of his childhood home holding the suicide note and confessional that his mother had left for him using a game that they’d played together when he was a small child – he felt totally lost. He felt entirely confused. Nothing in this letter excused what had happened. Nothing in this letter made anything from his childhood okay, and he sure as fuck did not forgive his mother.
As a young boy, he’d been far too forgiving. He’d loved her unconditionally because he didn’t know any better. She was all that he had, and he wasn’t strong enough to live in this household without her – without believing that she loved him in return. Or that she was there for him and was doing her best. Until he’d met Lily and met the Evans family, he hadn’t known that what happened in his home wasn’t normal. He’d always suspected it. Deep down, at even as young as five years old, he had always known that what was happening was wrong on some level – but he’d had nothing else to compare it to.
It wasn’t until he got older, until he’d grown and learned and saw Lily with her parents, that he’d fully realized just how screwed up his family truly was. How violent and angry his father was. How unforgivable his actions had been. How deplorable his mother was – how much she had utterly failed him as his caretaker. She’d stood by and watched as her drunken piece of shit husband had used her son as an ashtray and a human punching bag.
At one point or another throughout his life, he had broken every single bone in his body at least once – and the majority of those breaks had happened between the ages of four and sixteen, and they’d been at the hands of his father.
His mother had chosen to stay with that monster even though she’d watched him break her son’s arm, even though she’d watched him throw her child down the stairs – across the floor, onto the ground, locked him out of the house or screamed at him relentlessly. And eventually, slowly, finally – over the years, Snape had come to realize that she was as much to blame as his father.
Was she a victim too?
Yes, of course she was. He was old enough to understand that now.
Tobias Snape had a hold on her like no other, and she had suffered just as badly, if not worse than he did. But she had had a duty to him as his mother, as his guardian, as a fucking adult to take care of him and protect him, and she’d failed him absolutely in every sense of the word.
She was the number one reason why he didn’t trust anyone, why he never let anyone in, why he’d kept everyone at arm’s length and pushed them away when they got too close, and why he struggled to believe that anyone would ever care for him. His father, on the other hand, was the reason why he was so cold and distant. Why he was closed down nearly all of the time and why he buried his emotions into neat little boxes that he avoided at all costs. That man was the reason why he didn’t feel like a normal person. He was the reason why Snape never drank or smoked. Sure, Snape had dabbled with potions, and he’d experimented to try and demand more from his body, which he knew was his own form of substance abuse, but he never touched liquor or drugs, and he refused to ever touch it because of what he had suffered and endured at the hands of a drunk.
Literally, the only useful thing he had ever learned from his parents was how to survive – how to get the shit beaten out of you and not cry. All said and done, he gave them credit for his extremely high pain tolerance, his ability to mask his emotions, his ability to lie, his resilience to emotional pain, and his capacity for self-sufficiency.
It had made him into a hell of a spy.
But even he knew that wasn’t a good thing.
The two of them – the monstrous disaster which was Eileen and Tobias’ marriage and their total incompetence and inability to function as human beings – had entirely shaped his life. It had impacted every single facet of who he became and the choices that he’d made.
They weren’t responsible for what he’d done – he knew that was on him, and he accepted full responsibility for his own actions and shortcomings. But what they did to him had factored into everything. They had very nearly destroyed him as a person. Had he not been born a magical child, he suspected he would have died at the hands of his father before he reached ten years of age.
And this fucking letter – changed everything and nothing!
And now, twenty-two years later, he was standing in the attic of his wretched childhood home realizing that his mother – his broken, useless, and utterly rubbish mother who he’d given up on and loathed with a burning hate fire hotter than hell – had killed his father and killed herself to save him.
To save him from himself and to keep him from becoming a murderer.
He didn’t know what to do with that information.
He didn’t know how to process it.
Her parting words and her final wish for him to find happiness and her hope that he would make the right choices never came to fruition. She may have spared him from taking the life of his own father, but he’d killed dozens of other people over the years. He’d made deplorable life choices that had nearly ended his life, and now he was left as a ruined, broken, damaged, angry, bitter, and hateful man.
He couldn’t even remember a time when he was happy.
He was fairly certain that he’d never actually ever been genuinely happy in his life, and the few instances when he was, smug would be a more appropriate term to describe it. And the idea of that woman – his mother – wishing him happiness and hoping he could move on with his life without her made him furious beyond belief because it was such a fucking cop out and such a shit way for her to try and remove herself from his life and deny any long-term responsibility or accountability for her actions.
She couldn’t have done it sooner?
His mind spun with a flurry of anger and emotion.
She couldn’t have just killed Tobias and then stuck around?
No – apparently, she had to go kill herself, too. Seriously?! She couldn’t have done anything else? Nothing? Not a thing when I was a child? Not a single fucking thing when I had actually needed her help? It had to get that far for her to finally do something about it?
After all that time?
He let out an audible groan of frustration as anguish ached in his heart.
By the time she had written this letter, by the time she had decided to actually do something to help him – he hadn’t needed her help anymore. He hadn’t needed her to save him. The damage was already done by that point. It was etched into his soul and carved into his heart.
His body and mind had been so deeply scarred that he was already drowning under the weight. The piece of him that she was trying to save had died years ago – she’d just never noticed it because she wasn’t paying attention, and he’d become impossibly good at hiding it. But her son, Severus Snape – the good little boy who had been happy, giving, loving, and kind – had died right alongside his mother at the hands of his father when he was not even eleven years old.
And yet, oddly, there was a deep pain radiating through his chest at the sentiment that she had, in her own twisted way, still cared for him. Cared for him enough that something about that night, whether it had been the look in his eyes or not, he really couldn’t say, had shaken her so deeply she’d finally gathered the courage to do something. And she’d done it for him – or at least she claimed that it was for him.
He could see his arm starting to shake before his eyes as a whirlwind of emotions stormed through his body.
What the hell was he supposed to do with this?
Why would she even bother writing it and leaving it for him?
What the fuck had been the intent? Had she simply been trying to clear her conscience so she could die feeling better about herself? Or was this letter just the broken ramblings of a shattered mind that had been beaten against a wall one too many times? Maybe it was a way of her expressing her guilt and trying to get it off her chest before she poisoned her husband – or maybe she did genuinely want him to find it, and she did genuinely want him to be free and happy.
He didn’t know.
And he would never know, because she was fucking dead.
He couldn’t breathe. His body was still healing, it was barely strong enough to handle a full day of brewing, and now he was up here dealing with this – and he didn’t have the strength to do it. Not to mention that he couldn’t even deal with it alone because he knew that Granger was in his kitchen monitoring his vitals, and they had started to skyrocket with his stress as his neck and left shoulder tensed in pain.
What did it mean?
Why the hell would she write it?
He could feel his heart starting to race, and every muscle in his body tensed.
What did she want him to do with it?
What the fuck did this stupid letter mean?
It felt like his sanity was slipping through his fingers as his entire body started to shake.
“What the fuck am I supposed to do with this, Eileen?!?!?”
The words came out like a snarled growl, and before he even realized what he was doing, he’d punched his hand through the glass of the attic window.
His heart beat erratically in his chest, his body shook so violently he couldn’t feel his legs, his lungs burned, and it felt like his magic was exploding in his chest. He heard something breaking beside him as his vision blurred with rage, and before he knew it, he was kneeling on the dusty attic floor holding the bloodied letter, panting hard. He could see broken pieces of glass and wood scattered around him. Exhaustion flooded his body as his blood pressure started to plummet. His vision speckled with black, there was red covering his arm, and as his gaze fell back to the floor, he could see it pooling by his knees across the floorboards.
He saw movement from the corner of his eyes, yet he couldn’t even make his mind focus on it as he felt someone take hold of his slashed and battered arm. He sat there numb, staring blankly at the shattered window as he felt shards of glass being picked from his fingers, his palm, his wrist, and his forearm. He knew who it was. He knew she was there, but he couldn’t look at her. He felt each piece tugging from his skin as she worked in silence, each movement careful, light-handed, and cautious.
There was a stinging sensation as the cuts were cleaned, a small billow of green smoke, and then he felt her fingers grazing over his skin as she checked to make sure everything was healed. The fabric of his white shirt tugged, and his eyes finally, and rather begrudgingly, shifted to look at the mis-matched hands that were currently rolling his sleeve back into place. He watched as the ripped fabric sewed itself back together, and she refastened the buttons at the cuff for him. Then, with a flick of her finger, the blood vanished, and his gaze shifted up to the small bottle that was held out before him.
Blood replenisher.
The real reason why she was here.
His body was still so damaged that it struggled to replace his own blood, and as a result, any blood loss he suffered was extremely hard on him. She was here to make sure that he didn’t pass out. She was here to make sure that he took blood replenisher in time so that he didn’t cause any additional damage. She, Nasir, Potter, and Shacklebolt – the four of them. Perpetually watching him, lingering in his home, monitoring his vitals, and making sure he was fine.
Always.
But with her, it was different. With her, it was personal. They’d never spoken of it outwardly, and they probably never would, but he knew that Granger had all but taken a personal vow to keep him alive and safe, because she felt personally accountable for him. She felt responsible for ensuring that he was okay until he decided that he wanted to live or die. So, she would be there for him in any way that he needed because she felt like she owed it to him.
Strange as it might seem to some, he understood it. By all logical accounts, he was the one with the life debt. He was the one who owed her everything and owed her his life in return for what she had done for him in the Shrieking Shack – not to mention everything she did afterwards. But yet, in a twisted way, she was the one who owed him, because she’d done it without his consent. She’d saved him despite his blatant request to die. She’d ignored his plea, ignored his wishes, and she had forced him to live.
So the debt had reversed, and she would always feel responsible for his life until her debt to him had been paid.
Just as he had, begrudgingly, been there for Potter all those years to pay off his debt to Lily and James. So, just as he had kept Potter alive and safe, she would do the same for him until he released her from her guilt and told her that he was happy to be here. Happy to be living, glad to be alive – until he thanked her for saving him or until he set her free by asking her to kill him.
But until that day came, she would linger in his life on the sidelines. She wouldn’t allow him to take his own life or do anything too stupid, because she felt like his death – if he desired it – should be her responsibility and that she should carry the weight of it. Some would call it extreme, maybe it was, but he understood it. In a weird way, he respected her for it, and that was why he allowed her to do it, why he sat there unmoving as she had healed his arm and re-buttoned his sleeve.
He didn’t like it.
He hated being touched. He hated having people in his life in any form of the meaning – but he would tolerate it because it is what he would have done in her shoes, and it is what he had done for the last twenty years. Although, in her case, she was probably less resentful about it than he had been with Potter.
In her case, it was a choice, and he knew that she didn’t begrudge him for it. She didn’t resent him or regret her decision to save him. He knew this clear as day even without her ever saying anything, because hatred and resentment weren’t in Granger’s nature. It wasn’t in her blood to be angry or cruel or cold. He knew, because her magic pulsed through his veins, and it was as warm as pure light.
Even after everything that she had been through, she was still fundamentally a good and caring person. She would never hurt anyone unless her hand had been forced. Unless she saw no other option. Even despite the weight that she carried, the horrors she had seen, and the pain she had suffered. Even though it was lonely. Even though it hurt. Even though most people would never understand her, and she was left blunted and broken – she continuously fought to be more than the damaged pieces that made up her whole because she refused to be defined by them.
And that was where they were fundamentally different.
He stilled, his hand slowly moving to grab the vial from her fingers as his numb mind continued to spin.
She was still kind, whereas he had become cruel. The both of them had been shaped by the experiences of their life, and they had both gone through hell – but he had come out through a much different exit, jaded and warped with bitterness. His mother was wrong. It wasn’t in him to be kind. Maybe it had been – a lifetime ago – but it wasn’t anymore.
He had long ago learned to distinguish the difference between ‘he himself’ and ‘the things’ that had happened to him. His childhood did not define him, nor were his parents responsible for what he had become, but he had become it nonetheless, and his childhood had unquestionably been a contributing factor.
He may understand Granger now. Hell, loathe as he was to admit it, he even felt like he understood Potter now, and Nasir, although difficult to figure out at times, was even becoming more transparent, too.
But that didn’t change the past. That didn’t undo the damage that he had caused, and it didn’t change the fact that he was still an incredibly difficult person now. He wasn’t suddenly happy or friendly or kind simply because he was alive and the war was over. He had still been a horrible professor. He had tormented her and her peers. The animosity might have been set aside because they had bigger things to deal with, and they all recognized that finding a way to work together was the only way to succeed, but it didn’t change anything.
Just like this letter.
The past couldn’t be undone by a few simple words. It wasn’t an explanation. It didn’t give him any sense of peace or freedom. It wasn’t closure – and it wasn’t okay, it didn’t make anything okay, and it just left him feeling utterly gutted and confused.
This letter didn’t mean anything.
And yet, even as he thought those words, he could feel his heart aching in pain at the sentiment of her words.
He forced himself to swallow the blood replenisher, knowing that if he didn’t, she would just pour it down his throat. He could feel the warmth of it tracing throughout his body as his blood pressure began to stabilize, and his vision became less blurred. After a moment, he held out the empty vial in the space between them, and he watched as she took it, sliding the glass container into one of her endless pockets. She watched him for another silent moment, but he didn’t look at her, then slowly, she got to her feet.
“I’ll fix the window later, don’t waste your energy on it. You’re still healing,” she said quietly. He nodded, the motion reflexive as his dark gaze bore a hole into the ground by his knees. “Shacklebolt is going to be popping by here with Nasir in less than an hour. They’re having issues with the wards at Hogwarts, and they wanted your input, and Harry is bringing by some Jobberknoll feathers for tomorrow. I can tell them that you’re sleeping if you’d like to avoid them tonight. We can manage without you, and they won’t ask any questions.”
A small scoff left his lips as he exhaled. His eyes shifted to the letter on the floor. Granger had taken it from his hand and removed his blood from the papers, leaving them on the ground by his side after she cleaned up his mess. She waited another moment to see if he would say anything, then turned to head back down the ladder, completely unphased by his lack of response. He watched from the edge of his vision as she shifted away, and then despite himself and for reasons he would later question and never fully understand – he called for her.
“Hermione,” he said slowly, and he saw her frame stop.
She turned back to face him once more, waiting for him to speak. He swallowed, then picked up the letter, his eyes tracing over the familiar handwriting and scanning over the words that he had no idea how to process. Then his voice dropped to a low whisper as he held the pages out before him.
“You’re supposedly the most brilliant witch of your age,” Snape said slowly. “So tell me, what does one do with a letter from the dead?”
Silence echoed around him for a long moment until he heard her shift, her feet scuffing on the worn floorboards as she made her way back to him.
“That depends,” she said quietly, her voice calm and low.
“On what?” Snape asked, his stiff neck turning so he could finally meet her gaze.
She was crouched on her heels three feet away. She always gave him space unless his health depended on it, and that was something that he appreciated. She stared at him. He wasn’t occluding, so he knew that she could see everything behind his gaze.
For such a massive portion of his life, he’d managed on his own. He’d managed without help, and he’d always been fine making decisions. Yet as this war had come to a close, he’d started to slip. He’d slowly enlisted Nasir’s aid, and he’d slowly let Narcissa in. Despite his best efforts, he had become more and more desperate for help and guidance as he struggled to breathe and now, at this moment, holding his dead mother’s confessional in his hands, he felt entirely incapable.
For the first time in his life, he just wanted someone to tell him what to do because this was too much.
This hurt too much.
His body ached.
His soul was broken.
He didn’t have anything left to give, and he simply could not rationalize or handle this information on his own. His eyes trailed over her small form, looking for something – anything – while his insides screamed at him to shut up and lock it all down. How far had he fallen to be asking Granger for her opinion? How desperate had he become? How weak? How pathetic? And sadder than that – who the fuck else was he going to ask at this point?
Nasir?
Arthur?
Phineas?
Narcissa?
Fucking, Potter?
He felt physically sick at the idea of it as he looked at her. Her eyes remained fixed on his face, but they were no longer blank and closed off. She’d dropped her mask, and he could see her brow creasing as she studied him – truly looking at him, and then a quiet sigh left her body before she spoke once more.
“On whether or not you want to give them a voice,” she said quietly, as she held his gaze without falter. “And whether or not you want to listen. The dead are dead, Severus. What they say now cannot change anything. All it can do is change how you see the world and how you choose to understand it, but even that is in your control. They have no control over you. They hold no power over you. Their words have no value unless you deem it so. What you do with it – is entirely up to you.”
He stared at her silently, watching as she shifted to stand once more.
“But personally,” she said slowly, eyeing him carefully as if she was debating her next words. “I think you should ignore the words from the dead unless they bring you peace – unless they bring you closure, joy, or happiness. The dead are separated from us for a reason, Severus, and they are meant to stay that way.”
He watched her for another silent moment, neither of them moving until finally, he exhaled deeply and hauled himself up from the floor. He had to bite back a groan of pain in the process as his body screamed at him in protest. Clutching the letter tightly in his hand, he stepped toward her, pausing briefly to glance back at the broken attic window – the same window that he and his mother used to sit beneath when he was a very small child, and she would show him magic. That was, at least, until things got worse with his father, and she stopped using magic altogether.
He still had no idea what he thought. He still had no idea how he felt. This letter brought him only confusion – not understanding or joy. Not closure or relief. It was hollow more than anything. Empty and unsure. He didn’t know if this letter mattered or if he even wanted to keep it, but he knew himself better than anyone else in the world, and he knew that he didn’t trust himself with it. So, without pausing to think on it and without giving himself a moment to second guess it, he turned back to Granger and met her even stare.
“May I ask something of you?” he said quietly.
“Of course.” She nodded, still unmoving and waiting for him.
“Hold onto this for me.” He stuffed the letter into her hands much like what she had done to him earlier, and then he met her gaze once more. “You can read it if you like – I honestly don’t fucking care. You’ve seen enough of my memories and this house that I’m sure you’ve already pieced it together and figured out what my childhood was like. But if I keep this, I will surely burn it, and I’m not sure if I want to. I’m not sure what I want to do – but I don’t trust myself to keep it long enough to figure that out. So, store it somewhere safe, alright?”
“I will.” Granger nodded, taking the letter and carefully folding it up.
He shifted past her without speaking another word. He didn’t stop when he reached the ladder, and he bit back a groan as he stepped onto it and began moving down the rungs at a slow and even pace before he paused and glanced up to her.
“And don’t tell Potter,” Snape said flatly, his eyes narrowing a fraction. “Keep it to yourself.”
To his surprise, her lip twitched, a small half-smile forming across her face as her eyes creased in amusement.
“Obviously,” she said as if it was indeed the most obvious thing in the world. She slipped the letter into her pocket. “That goes without saying. Anything that you tell me stays strictly between us, unless it is something related to our work or is a blatant safety concern.”
“Good.” He nodded, resuming his descent down the ladder as he muttered under his breath. “The last thing I need is sympathy from Harry ‘the boy who lived and died and lived again’ Potter. Fucking Merlin, his soul-piercing stare is bad enough as it is. I can barely stand it – I don’t need him glancing at me with pity.”
He heard Granger snort as she climbed onto the ladder above him and began her descent. Apparently, she’d heard him.
“You know that Harry can’t actually see into your soul, right?” Granger said as she stepped off the ladder to stand beside him. Flicking her hand, she cast a wordless spell, and the ladder began to fold up into the ceiling once more. Then she turned and raised a brow at him. “He can’t read minds either. He’s just become much more in tune with people’s emotions, so he tends to know what people are thinking without actually knowing what they are thinking. However, you are a natural occlumens and an incredibly reserved man – so he doesn’t pick up on anything extra from you. Though really, why you think Harry would be interested in reading your thoughts or would want to be anywhere near your mind is beyond me. You know we have better things to do than spy on you, right? And we hardly want to hear a bitter-running commentary of all the things we do that you find annoying.”
She smirked at him, her eyes crinkling at the corners once more as his eyes narrowed at her in annoyance. She’d become a bit cheeky since she no longer feared him, and he flexed his newly healed hand at his side in irritation as her warm magic fluttered through his veins. Then he rolled his eyes at her and let out a sigh to hide the small scoffing laugh that he nearly let slip.
“Whatever, Granger,” he sneered, but it was half-hearted at best. His lips twitched into a small smile the second he had turned away from her and began moving towards the stairwell as he spoke. “It doesn’t change the fact that your boyfriend is creepy as fuck. It was bad enough when he just had the arrogant hero complex and incessant need to save the world – now he’s almost as unnerving as Nasir, and that’s saying something.”
He heard her laugh as she followed along behind him, the unease of finding the letter lessening slightly as he made his way back down the stairs and into his kitchen.
-x-x-
July 30, 1998
Thursday, Spinner’s End, 3:35 pm
“Severus, you have a visitor,” Granger said as she stepped in through the door with Potter.
Snape let out a low sigh, his shoulders slumping forward as he gripped the kitchen counter tightly and fought not to scream at the pair of them as he closed his eyes tight.
How the bloody fuck was this his life?
It was like he could not escape them – and if it wasn’t them, it was Nasir and Shacklebolt. Honestly, at times, he couldn’t decide what was worse. At least Potter was silent when in the room with him, which, thankfully, was incredibly rare, and they were never alone. He had left with Granger twenty minutes ago when she was summoned by Shacklebolt – Merlin knows why – and they had rushed out of his house in a flurry.
Usually, they worked at Grimmauld Place because there was more room, and it gave him the freedom to leave and escape them whenever he wanted, which was what he preferred. But Nasir was brewing eight batches of an extremely volatile potion that required nothing else be brewed at the same time, or it would risk contamination even with wards. So, they came here to start the latest experimental batch of modified dreamless sleeping draught, planning to move the operation back to Grimmauld the following weekend once Nasir’s potions were completed.
He wasn’t exactly happy about having them in his house, but then again, he was never happy, and they needed to keep working. Granger and Potter weren’t the only ones who needed this potion to help them deal with their war trauma. His own nightmares had been getting worse, and there was only so much more dreamless sleeping draught he could take. He and a lot of others would benefit greatly if they could get this right, so he hadn’t been willing to stop their progress simply because he disliked them being in his home, especially when he didn’t like his home to start with. It was just a place with a bed, and the second he got the chance, he was going to leave it, move as far away from Cokeworth as he could, and never return.
But that didn’t stop the agitated words that poured from his lips.
“As if you two being here, using my things, and making yourselves at home isn’t bloody bad enough,” he growled, forcing his eyes open as he let out a loud and agitated sigh. “I swear to Merlin, if it wasn’t for Nasir having permanent wards permissions here, I would toss you both out and lock the door. This isn’t a gathering place for you and your friends to get together and visit. We have work to do! There are tentacles to mash! And we still have hundreds of afterfeathers to cut off for our trial batches! Or have you forgotten that we are trying to design a brand-new fucking potion in the middle of a bloody shitstorm? Whose brilliant idea was it to bring over a visitor?!”
“It was mine.”
The quiet but strong voice rang out behind him, and Snape instantly stiffened from head to toe. His eyes went wide. His knuckles went white. Before he could stop himself, his body moved, awkwardly spinning around to face the woman behind him, and he felt his mouth go dry.
“Narcissa?” His voice was raspy like it always was now, but the quietness of it made it sound weak and broken.
She was staring at him, her pale blue eyes locked to his face as she stood there in clean, pressed robes in the doorframe of his kitchen as Potter and Granger lingered behind her down the hall. His heart was beating much too quickly. His palms were getting sweaty. His brow furrowed in confusion as he looked at the woman.
“Why are you here?”
The words came out before he could even think as Potter hung up Narcissa’s jacket, and Granger shuffled to open his front door once more.
“Why am I here?” Narcissa whispered.
Her eyes were burning, her back was ramrod straight, and she appeared both devastated and angry as she looked at him and her eyes creased in pain.
“Why am I here?!” she repeated, and he saw her perfect poise begin to crack.
It was just like the last time she was here. She was breaking at the seams, falling apart before his very eyes as her body began to shake and then she outright exploded.
“Because I asked Hermione to bring me here, that’s why!” she said sharply as she began to close the distance toward him. “Because I wanted to talk to you! Because I wanted to see you, Severus! You – you stupid, stupid man!”
She had reached him a second before her last words ended, and she smacked him hard on the arm in the most un-pureblood manner he’d ever seen to punctuate her words. And then, her barely controlled face split, tears poured from her eyes, and before he could even react – she hugged him.
Narcissa all but threw her arms around him, and he heard a broken sob leave her throat as her face pressed into his chest. He glanced up to the door down the hall in time to see Potter stepping outside and Granger following along behind him. She glanced back at him, taking in the look of panic that was surely on his face before giving him a stern look.
He didn’t need to be a legilimens to understand the raised brow and jerk of her head toward the witch who was currently clutching him so tightly around the middle he couldn’t breathe. It was the most unmistakable ‘what the fuck are you looking at me for, hold her’ message he had ever seen.
He tried to breathe but couldn’t as his arms started to shake. He made the right one move, shifting it awkwardly to pat the back of the witch currently crying on his chest. He heard the door shut. He knew the duo was lingering outside and that they probably weren’t going to leave because Narcissa was still on probation. But evidently, they had gotten Shacklebolt to agree to let her leave the safe house for the first time outside of testifying at the Ministry.
“Narcissa,” Snape said slowly, his voice even more awkward and strained than before.
He didn’t know what to do. He was so massively uncomfortable with physical contact and dealing with emotions. He could feel his tremble getting even worse, but he never got the chance to decide what to say, because the crying witch pulled away, her fingers fisting his dress shirt as she glared up at him through bleary eyes in anger.
“Don’t you dare ‘Narcissa’ me!” she whispered hoarsely, and her vibrant blue eyes filled with tears one more. “Don’t you dare try to downplay this or make up lies as to what happened! What the bloody hell were you thinking, Severus?! Doing this alone?! All by yourself?! You could have told me! I could have helped you! You almost died! I was worried about you! I thought that – I thought that–”
Her fingers knotted deeper into the white fabric as her voice cut out and her glamours fell away. He could see the stress lines around her eyes, and the dark rings that sat beneath them. A long, thin, silver scar ran down her temple. He could see everything across her features as she took a step closer. Her eyes were tracing his face, and they dropped to his lips before circling back to his gaze. She shifted again, moving closer and closer – too close. He could feel his panic rising, the shake radiating through his frame getting impossibly worse as his heart thudded in his ears until his body went absolutely rigid with fear.
Then she stopped.
He stared at her, unmoving, and she stared at him. She was but a mere inch from his face. Her hand twitched against his white shirt, knotting in the fabric tightly once more before she let go. Then, she let out a quiet breath. Sadness filled her eyes, unshed tears making them shine as she slowly took a step back.
“Narcissa, I–” his voice cut out, breaking on the two simple words.
He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what she wanted. Well, he thought he knew what she wanted – but that only left him lost for words. It was completely out of his comfort zone. In fact, he was so far out of his comfort zone right now that he might as well be attempting to tap dance or singing a muggle Broadway song for the whole world to hear. His borrowed heart continued to race dangerously fast, the fear inching down his spine as warmth fluttered in his veins. He couldn’t handle this, and he wondered if she would just leave in irritation.
But she didn’t
Instead, she shook her head and looked up at him sadly.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, and his brow furrowed in further confusion. “I – I know that being close to people makes you uncomfortable.”
She hesitated, her eyes searching his face as if looking for something before she moved again. Slowly this time. So slowly, it was almost unbearable. He watched her reach for him, the fingers of her right hand curling into the fabric of his white dress shirt again before she inched forward, stepping closer once more. Then, carefully, and oh so slowly, she dropped her head against his chest and closed her eyes.
He swallowed hard as he fought to control his breathing and dropped his gaze to stare down at the blonde head resting against his chest.
He wasn’t sure what to do.
He didn’t know how to do this – whatever the fuck this was – but he also wasn’t an idiot, and the logical part of his brain knew what she was looking for even if every other part of him rejected it as an impossibility that was beyond the realm of reality. He swallowed again as her left arm slowly circled his thin body, and her hand against his chest cautiously knotted deeper into the fabric of his shirt.
Her touch was so gentle. So warm and light, it was almost delicate. It was nothing like the desperate and aggressive way she had grabbed him moments ago, and despite himself, he felt his tense shoulders drop.
Then something strange happened. His body moved as if disconnected from the panic in his mind. His left arm slowly wrapped around her small frame as his right came up to land gently on her head.
He felt her shiver, and he tensed even harder, wondering if he had just screwed something up – but she didn’t pull away. She stayed there.
“Is this okay?” she whispered after a long beat of silence had passed.
The warmth of her body was seeping into his own, and as the rigid fear slowly started to dissipate from his frame, he felt the dull tremble return. He knew she could feel it – the shake of his fear. There was no way to hide it, and it made him feel so pathetically weak.
Out of everything he had done in his miserable, wretched life – this was what he was most afraid of, and he hated that she knew it. He hated that she could feel his terror. Yet he couldn’t seem to let go or step away because his body had completely disconnected from his mind. So he closed his eyes, desperately hoping that the shake in his bones wasn’t nearly as bad as it felt. That maybe, even if she could feel it, it could be passed off as exhaustion instead of nervous anxiety. That maybe she didn’t know that this was the closest he had been to another human without the infliction of pain in ages.
He let out a ragged breath, willing his rampant heart to slow.
“Yes,” he whispered, his voice hoarse and rough as his body moved involuntarily again, and he carefully dropped his chin to rest it on the top of her head. “It’s fine.”
And it was, even though he was terrified. Even though he had no idea what he was doing. Even though he had no idea where this was going. Even though a thousand doubts filled his mind and his body continued to shake with fear. Even though every instinct he had told him to abandon ship, shove her away, and run – when she squeezed him softly, gently, he squeezed back in return. And somehow, at that moment, just for a second, it felt like the weight of the world was no longer resting on his shoulders.
-x-x-
August 7, 1998
Friday, Grimmauld Place, 11:45 am,
“There has got to be a better way to categorize these books,” Potter muttered as he browsed the shelves just one row away from Snape. “This is archaic.”
“It’s possible the Black family had a catalogue system somewhere within the wards that only they had access to,” Nasir replied as he gathered a large stack of books from his desk. “I can help you look for it this weekend.”
“Alright.” Potter nodded, and Snape continued to ignore the exchange as he searched the shelf he was standing before. “That would make this a lot easier – thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“Are you going to the school now?” Granger asked, getting up from her seat to stretch. She had been hunched over for the last two hours, and this was the first he had seen her move all morning since she sat down.
“Shacklebolt will be there at noon, but I told Bill I would stop by Shell Cottage to discuss the beach.”
“You’re going to fix the sand, aren’t you?” Granger replied, and he could hear the change in her tone. It always got like that whenever the topic of her fiendfyre damage came up.
“Yes,” Nasir replied, nodding as he leaned the stack of books against his chest. “You’re welcome to come and help if you like. I’ll show you how to create a rune barrier.”
“I’ll go.” Granger nodded. “I would like to fix it.”
“I’ll go, too,” Potter said, turning to look over his shoulder at them and Snape nearly rolled his eyes. Even after death, he was so stereotypical Potter.
“But if you’re popping by Shell Cottage now, though, I have some stuff for Fleur you can take,” Granger said as she followed Nasir toward the door.
He could hear them talking as they left the room together. Granger was already asking questions about how rune barriers worked, and Nasir was calmly answering them just like he always did. Snape would never understand how that man was so patient with her when he had a piece of his soul inside him, but he supposed it was just another one of life’s great mysteries. Though, admittedly, her questions and responses were much better formed now than they had been in the past. She no longer just regurgitated textbooks – a trait that many of her past professors had applauded and mistaken for actual intelligence.
It wasn’t.
Being a know-it-all who could recite mountains of data with no real understanding of what that data was or how you could use it was not brilliant. Yes, being able to memorize data and recall it quickly was an incredible gift. It was a valuable and rare skill. It was impressive in its own right. It was handy, especially in the case of an emergency, and it did make her ‘knowledgeable’, but it had not made her ‘brilliant’.
Brilliance was something entirely different. Brilliance was the ability to discern through incredible amounts of data and use it. It was the ability to observe the world around you, take in things most people missed, examine a problem from a thousand different angles and think it through on your own. It was the ability to take what you knew and twist it, squeeze it, morph it into something new and unique. It was inventive. It was logic and understanding. It was original – it was true critical thinking at its finest, and it was a skill that Granger had not started to demonstrate until her later years at school.
She had always been a good student, but, in Snape’s opinion, she had not truly become brilliant until part way through the war.
Now, listening to the questions she asked as her voice faded away down the stairs, Snape was forced to admit that she truly was brilliant. Still incredibly annoying – but brilliant nonetheless. She was finally using her brain and thinking. She was finally asking the right questions and critically analyzing everything. She wasn’t just asking ‘how’; she was asking ‘why’ and more important than that – she was asking ‘what if’.
He let out an annoyed sigh as he grabbed a book off the shelf and brought it back to his desk. He didn’t feel like crawling through it right now, and he doubted it contained what they needed anyway, so he turned back to return to his search, only to freeze mid-step.
His eyes latched to Potter, who was standing in the middle of the room, staring at him. Then, to his utter dismay and horror – he realized that they were alone. Alone for the first time since he had woken up. Alone in the house that he hated. Alone without Granger or Nasir to act as a buffer.
Completely alone.
His entire body went stiff, and his eyes darted to the door. He couldn’t hear Granger. He couldn’t hear Nasir. He stared at the open space for a moment longer, silently wishing for their return before his gaze reluctantly shifted back to Potter’s motionless frame. His eyes were piercing, staring at him as if he could read him like a book. It paired unnervingly well with his carefully impassive face – the blank look of controlled indifference which Potter constantly wore in his presence, and it made discomfort slide down Snape’s spine. Silence rang out awkwardly between them, neither of them moving as the uncomfortable quiet grew so thick that Snape was beginning to wonder if time had simply ceased to exist.
Then, making it worse, Potter spoke.
“Hermione said that you’re brewing on your own at Spinner’s End now,” Potter said, his tone light and open – as if he were talking to a friendly acquaintance about the weather.
“Yes,” Snape said slowly, his brow pinching with discomfort and annoyance despite his best efforts to keep his expression blank.
He had gotten much better at tolerating Granger over the last two months. He didn’t scowl at her nearly as often, and their yelling had reduced quite significantly. He’d even managed to have a strangely nice conversation with Arthur and the Weasley girl the other day when they dropped off ingredients, but Potter – well, Potter was likely the one exception he would never be able to fully address. He didn’t know how they could ever be on good terms or become acquaintances, let alone friends.
And it wasn’t about Lily.
Hell, he wasn’t even sure if it was still about James or Sirius or any of the shit from his childhood. He just could not for the life of him like the boy before him. It was like it was coded into his blood even if Granger’s magic seemed to try to pull him toward the boy – his own blood rejected it. It was an awkward feeling and a constant battle inside his chest any time the boy was in the same room. He hated the push and pull inside his own body, but there was little he could do about it aside from hoping that one day it might balance out a little more.
“I thought it more useful than sitting around like a Horklump whilst waiting to die,” Snape said dully, expecting to put Potter on edge or make him feel just as awkward as he did. But to his surprise, Potter smiled, his carefully impassive face falling away, amusement shining in his eyes before he cheekily retorted.
“Funny you mention that. The resemblance is uncanny,” Potter said, and his grin only widened as Snape’s eyes creased in irritation.
Apparently, this was amusing also, because Potter chuckled. It was light and short – almost like an exhale more than anything. Then his eyes dropped to the floor, and he shifted. He moved across the wooden boards, stopping less than four feet away, and anxiety curled in Snape’s chest as Potter looked up once more and met his gaze.
There was an odd look in his eyes, one that Snape could not place and one that made him feel even more uncomfortable. He wanted Granger to come back. He wanted Nasir to come upstairs because he had forgotten something. Or better yet, if he was picking and choosing, he wanted to get the fuck out of here and go home. But to leave, he had to walk past Potter, and he got the distinct impression that that was not going to happen.
Worse, he got the distinct impression that Potter had decided that this was happening – it was time for them to talk.
Snape eyed him cautiously, taking in his taller, broader stature and briefly thinking about just how much the boy had changed in the last year. Just how much he had changed since their fight in the hallway at Hogwarts. He had seen Granger’s memories. He knew that this version of Potter was nothing like the version he had thought the boy to be. If it came down to it and they drew wands – Snape would lose, but that wasn’t the only difference. Potter was more controlled now. He was older. Everything about how he carried himself was different, right down to the way that he blinked and breathed. It was all slower. All controlled. Watchful. Cautious. Observant. Snape hated everything about it because it forced him to admit that the boy was no longer an idiot. Nor was he a boy, though that was still how he referred to him in his mind.
His hair was still a mess. He still looked more like a bizarre concoction of his godfather and Alastor Moody than anything else – wrapped in a blanket of Nasir-like silence and Granger-like intellect. He was caring like Arthur. Motivated like Shacklebolt, and just like Granger, he was the fucking embodiment of everything that Snape wasn’t and looking at him still hurt.
“I’m glad you’re doing better,” Potter said slowly, his voice dropping a fraction lower. “But–”
Potter took a step forward as his eyes creased in amusement once more.
“And I mean this in the nicest and most respectful way possible,” he continued. “I still don’t really like you. You were a complete and utter dick throughout pretty much the entirety of my life.”
Snape snorted, the comment catching him off guard, and his eyes narrowed in amusement. This was definitely not what he had been expecting.
“The feeling is mutual, Potter,” Snape said quietly as he watched the boy’s face and tried to figure out where this was going.
“Good.” Potter grinned.
The amusement in his eyes shone for a moment longer before something more serious took over, and Snape’s pulse quickened with nerves.
“That said,” Potter said slowly, and he fixed Snape with an even stare. “I am capable of recognizing what you did for us – and I understand that without you, not only would I have been completely fucked, but we would have lost this war. So, for that, I’m sorry for being an ass to you throughout the years. And – you have my respect.”
Snape’s body stiffened, and he felt his chest constrict.
“I’m not going to try and be your friend, Snape,” Potter continued, his eyes alight with a mix of conflicting feelings that he was letting Snape see. He had completely dropped whatever means of control he usually used to keep them at bay, and Snape could feel his discomfort growing quicker by the second as fear flooded his veins.
He didn’t want to do this.
He didn’t want to hear what was coming next.
He didn’t want to answer questions.
He didn’t want to speak to this boy.
He didn’t want to be here.
“I’m not going to ask you about my dad or my mum,” Potter said quietly, and all the air in Snape’s lungs seized. “Or anything else from the past. I know that you don’t want to talk about it, and to be honest, I – I don’t want to know. Seeing what you showed to me, it–”
Potter hesitated, and for a moment, Snape thought about saying something snide. Perhaps calling him out on realizing that his father was indeed a gigantic jackass. He could so easily tear the boy down and berate him, tell him how much of an absolute idiot he had been in the past for blindly defending his father without knowing a thing about the man. But he saw a flicker of regret and pain in the boy’s eyes and something about the expression on his face made Snape still, and it stopped the current of rude and cutting remarks from leaking from his lips. Instead, his mouth remained tightly clenched, and his body didn’t move as the boy finally continued.
“It’s raised some questions,” Potter said slowly, his voice impossibly low. His eyes were tracing over Snape’s face as if they were looking for something, but he continued without hesitating. “It’s made me wonder about some things, and I’m honestly not even sure what to think about it anymore. I’m not sure that I want to think about it anymore. People are complicated, and if there is one thing that I’ve learned this past year, it’s that life is complex and messy, and sometimes things don’t make any sense. But sometimes, they don’t need to. Things just happen or come into existence with no real reason or defined purpose. We aren’t always in control, and sometimes we make bad decisions based on the information that we had at the time. Sometimes, things just are, even if we don’t understand them. I mean–”
He laughed, almost bitterly, a pinched expression of pain and disbelief on his face as he pushed the longer hair on his head back from his face.
“For fuck’s sake, Snape, I died – not almost died. I actually died, and yet I didn’t. I came back – Nasir pulled me back. But while waiting in the In Between, I had a full-on conversation with my godfather who is alive and well and waiting to pass on. I learned things about this world and what comes after that people aren’t supposed to know, and before that happened – I had a conversation with the portrait of the dead man that I have been blindly following for seven years after watching your memories, only to find out that he kept more secrets from me than nearly everyone else, and he’d been raising me as a sacrificial pig this whole time. And yet, somehow, he’s still not even a bad guy because everything that he did, he did with good intentions. Everything that he did, he did to try and stop this war – he did a terrible job at it. He used and abused people and sacrificed those he thought were necessary to reach his goals, but there was never any mal-intent behind his actions.” Potter’s face twisted into one of question. “How does one reconcile all that? How do I process it knowing what I know now about you, Dumbledore, Alastor, Narcissa, my parents, Shacklebolt, this war, and everyone in it? What am I supposed to do with it after everything that’s happened and everything that I’ve done?
“My point is,” Potter said slowly, his bright green eyes trailing over Snape’s face once more. “After everything that’s happened, I’m not interested in the past anymore. You shared enough of yours with me for me to understand you, or at least as much as a third party can. I’m not going to try and claim that I understand what you went through or how you might have felt, but I know that Hermione has shown you enough of what happened to us for you to understand what we’ve been through as well. All I want to do now, more than anything, is just focus on the future. And I really don’t want to expend the energy to continue actively hating you when the truth is – that I don’t.”
Potter paused again and looked at Snape almost curiously as if he himself could not fully believe the words leaving his mouth.
“I just don’t,” he repeated softly, his head shaking as he spoke. “Not really. I don’t particularly like you, as I said, but – I don’t hate you. And honestly, Snape, I’m having a hard time making myself fully dislike you anymore, even though you’re still a giant ass and downright unbearable at times. I don’t want to be haunted by the past, and I don’t want to carry this mindless bitter resentment and bad blood between us because the truth is – I’ve already let it go.”
Potter slowly reached forward and extended his hand between them. The silver scars from his black lightning traced across his fingers and up under the sleeve of his shirt, along with countless other knicks and marks that littered across his skin. Snape’s eyes traced up the limb, meeting Potter’s entirely open and honest expression, and his heart faltered. There was genuine respect in Potter’s eyes, and it made something in Snape’s gut twist.
“I just want to coexist,” Potter said quietly, his eyes searching Snape’s face as if looking for something once more. “Without the animosity – in some tolerable and hopefully peaceful way. I’m not asking you to be my friend. I’m not asking you for anything at all, because I don’t want anything from you. I’m just hoping that we can agree to be in the same room together without blowing up, hexing each other, or constantly throwing snide remarks and glares while we try to ignore the massive awkward elephant in the room. I don’t want you thinking that I pity you, because I don’t, and I don’t want you worrying that I think you’re obsessed with my dead mother – because I know you’re not. I just want to be acquaintances – just two people treating each other with human decency. This is the only thing that I will ever ask of you, Snape. If you accept it – I’d like to start fresh, without the burden of a decade-old conflict and the lingering hatred that I honestly just don’t hold toward you anymore.”
Snape’s eyes dropped down to the open hand again before darting back to Potter’s gaze. A myriad of emotions were rushing through his mind – hate, anger, annoyance, respect, surprise. He’d not wanted to be alone with Potter because he’d been afraid that the boy was going to bombard him with questions about his past. That he was going to ask him about Lily, or berate him, mock him, and look at him with pity after seeing glimpses of his childhood. He hadn’t been able to stomach the idea of facing the elephant in the room because forcing himself to live each day was bad enough. He’d genuinely been dreading ever being left alone with the boy. He’d genuinely been dreading this moment, and he had certainly not expected this.
He’d not expected maturity, acceptance, or respect. It was so uncharacteristically Potter. So uncharacteristically James – his jackass father surely would have been a complete and utter ass about this, and there was no fucking way Snape would trust the man’s peace offer because that dick had been a conniving little shit. And it was certainly nothing like his mother, either because – Snape’s thoughts froze, and he realized what he was about to say.
It was nothing like Lily either.
He, Harry Potter, was nothing like Lily either.
He was nothing like his parents.
He was nothing like his godfather.
The only thing about the boy that connected him to these people from Snape’s past was his blood and appearance. Yes, there were similarities, and yes, he might share some of their personality traits, but he had grown into his own complete person.
He felt his chest constrict tighter as the realization dawned on him like a wave of frigid water being poured over his head. He looked at the man before him as he struggled to breathe and fought to keep his exterior composed. Potter – Harry – young Potter, was offering him acceptance and forgiveness. The very thing that neither of his parents had ever fully shown him.
With James, it was to be expected. The boy was an idiot, a simpleton, and a bloody arrogant ass who enjoyed bullying kids who he thought were lesser. Their relationship would have been that of a classic bully and traditional loser even if they were both muggle and Lily was never in the picture. They were just too different, and they were born to be at odds with each other.
But with Lily... His heart clenched once more, and he realized that he wasn’t breathing at all as the thought circled his head.
She never forgave you either – she never even considered it an option.
She had never let it go.
Had he deserved her rage? Yes, absolutely, without question. He knew this, hence the reason why he had dedicated his life to trying to right that wrong and correct all the other mistakes that he’d made. But she had never forgiven him. She’d never given him a second chance. She’d never even given him the opportunity to explain himself or to show that he was truly sorry – because he had been.
He was fifteen when he called her a mudblood out of rage and embarrassment. Fifteen. He was a fucking idiot boy at the time who was emotionally stunted. He had no excuse for his behaviour, he knew that, but she’d given him no room to grow or change. She’d simply cut him off and cut him out after years of friendship. She’d not once after that moment even looked at him or allowed him to repent or make amends. He’d contemplated leaving his friends at the time – he’d been willing to give it all up and ignore the temptation for power for her to show her that he was sorry, but she’d refused to even acknowledge he was alive after that incident.
And had he deserved that? Yes, because he’d been an idiot who had brought it upon himself. She wasn’t responsible for his actions; he was. She wasn’t obligated to forgive him or extend him any sympathies. Forgiveness is a choice, and it is up to the individual to grant it. He understood that now.
He’d never deserved her.
He’d never deserved a second chance.
He’d never expected one.
But he had, in a lot of ways, deep, deep down, been hoping for her forgiveness. Not her acceptance. Not her friendship. Not her washing the slate clean and saying that it was okay – because it hadn’t been and would never be – just her forgiveness. Her forgiveness toward a stupid lost boy who had made a terrible mistake. A stupid, stupid, fucking mistake that had haunted him for the rest of his life and led him down a road of regret, misery, and death.
It was and had always been, the only thing that he’d wanted all this time. He wasn’t obsessed with Lily. He wasn’t still in love with her. He was obsessed with his pain and his regret. He was consumed by his remorse because there was nothing he could do to address it. He couldn’t take any of his horrible mistakes back, and he could not force her to forgive him – because forgiveness was hers to give and hers alone to grant but he’d lost his chance to even try again the night she died. And her death was his fault. He’d come to peace with that fact years ago, and he’d accepted it when he’d been dying on the floor of that disgusting shack, even if it meant the hole in his heart and soul would forever be there.
And yet here was Potter.
Stupid fucking Potter.
Standing there calmly, his hand outstretched like the physical representation of the lifeline and forgiveness that he had been desperately seeking for the last twenty-two years of his life – offering it to him freely, without question, without additional explanation, and without demand. After everything that he had done to the boy and said to the boy. After years of torment, shit behaviour, petty attacks, and underhanded methods of undermining the memory of his father and his own failures – there he stood. Offering the one thing Snape had been certain he was going to die without.
Forgiveness.
Open, honest, forgiveness and a chance to be free of his remorse.
Snape swallowed hard. What Potter had surely meant as a simple gesture of just trying to make some sort of amends so that they could coexist without killing each other was so much more than that. It was so much bigger than Potter realized. So much deeper than the boy could possibly understand as his hand remained unmoving before him.
His mind couldn’t process this. He’d not been prepared for this. He felt like he was drowning in a sea of raging emotions – anger and regret spinning around him as a violent storm raged above, the deep, black water threatening to swallow him whole once and for all – only for Potter’s hand to outstretch like a life ring.
His face had faltered partway through Potter’s words. He knew it, and yet he hadn’t been able to stop it from happening. He couldn’t seem to do anything about it, so he just stood there pretending like he didn’t know. He ignored the panic racing through his head, desperately trying not to think about what in Merlin’s name might be flashing through his eyes right now as he stared at the scarred hand before him.
Damaged.
The word circled painfully in his head as he stared at it.
Like his own. Like Granger’s, like Nasir’s, like Weasley’s – like all of them.
The same.
He was drowning. He had been for years, and it felt like time stood still as his body slowly made the decision for him, acting on instinct – desperate for air as the pain in his heart stabbed like a knife. He couldn’t articulate the feeling that washed through his body as he slowly shifted, extending his pale hand out toward Potter’s. His long, thin fingers curling around the boy’s hand as he took what Potter was offering and felt the warm squeeze that accompanied the exchange as Potter shook his hand – and Snape shook his.
His eyes shifted back up to Harry’s gaze once more, to the green eyes that had haunted him for years, and the boy genuinely smiled. It was small, sad, and understanding. Perhaps he did know what this represented. Perhaps Snape looked broken. For all he knew, he’d lost all his composure and was entirely exposed.
He didn’t know.
He would never know.
But something in his chest was breaking.
And then the words came out – unbidden, hoarse, and laced with more emotion than Snape would ever be able to categorize.
“I’m sorry,” Snape said, his voice cracking on the two simple words.
He could hear the shake of it in the air around them as his hand started to tremble. He struggled to breathe as he felt Potter’s hand grip his more tightly, and he had to force himself to swallow.
“For everything.” The whisper came out broken, and Snape wasn’t even sure how he was able to form the words when there was no air in his lungs. “For all of it – if I could take it all back, I would. I–”
His voice cut out, the sound cutting off as his throat closed up, and his entire body seemed to want to fold in on itself as panic and pain fluttered through his limbs. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t breathe. His heart felt like it was cracking in his chest, and a tiny voice was screaming in the back of his mind to bail and get out before the boy before him laughed, and this moment became yet another on the long list of horrifying and mortifying experiences from his life.
But Potter, to his credit, simply squeezed his shaking hand harder as an odd expression shifted across his face.
“I know,” Potter said quietly, his eyes never leaving Snape’s gaze. “I forgive you.”
His words collided with Snape like a bludger, and the tiny last remains of air in his body came out like a wheeze as Potter carefully let go of his hand and slowly stepped away.
“I’m going to go help Hermione with that stuff for Fleur,” Potter said quietly, taking another step back toward the door.
Everything about the boy was calm and peaceful – entirely void of any animosity or lingering feelings of the past – just as Potter had said. He wasn’t leaving because he felt awkward. He wasn’t leaving because he was uncomfortable or could no longer bear to be around Snape any longer. He was leaving because he seemed to know it was what Snape needed, and it was all Snape could do to nod as he watched the boy move toward the door and let himself out of the room.
He didn’t dare open his mouth until the door was closed, and he pretended that he didn’t feel the silencing charm that Potter cast on the room as the door clicked shut. He pretended that he didn’t hear the sound of Potter saying to an obviously approaching Granger, ‘Let’s go make lunch, I think we all need a break,’ before the charm took hold. He pretended that the door before him wasn’t becoming blurry – it wasn’t.
It wasn’t.
He tried to pretend like it didn’t feel like his soul had just been simultaneously broken and stitched back together as he dropped to his knees in the center of the room, and for the first time in what must have been years – he cried, and completely fell apart.
Later, he would blame it on lack of sleep. He would blame it on his exhausted and war-torn body. He would blame it on the fact that his emotions were running high, that he was stressed, tired, and weary from being around so many people he disliked all the time. He would try to convince himself that he’d simply been run down and weakened in his post-bite state. He’d blame Granger for so blatantly accepting him, helping him, and looking at him as a whole person who deserved a spot in this world despite the fact that he was broken and damaged beyond repair.
He’d blame Nasir for healing him, helping him, and talking to him without ever showing an ounce of judgement any time they spoke. He’d blame Arthur for being so fucking nice all the time and for always dropping off interesting books he thought might be useful. He’d blame Miss Weasley for talking to him like a human being, the twins for asking him to review their inventions, Bill, Molly, Fleur, and Ava for sending him food.
Later, he would blame Narcissa for feeding him. Tolerating his most unbearable personality traits and forcing him to be a better human and grow as a person. For putting herself on the line for the war trials in his stead so he didn’t have to be seen in the public eye and could properly recover in peace – because he knew she’d revealed his resistance to veritaserum on purpose. He knew she’d done it to spare him.
He would blame this moment of emotional vulnerability on any excuse he could come up with.
But deep down, he knew it was so much more than that.
It was because, for the first time in over two decades, he finally felt like he was free of the soul-crushing weight of the guilt that riddled his body – that his mistakes had been forgiven. That he, Severus Snape, the traitor turned spy who had done unquestionably terrible things in his life and who had been a despicable person at times, had finally been accepted for who he was, inclusive of his mistakes, instead of being judged and ridiculed.
And although the guilt would always be with him, his past would never change, his mistakes would never be ‘okay’ and he would live with it forever and he would never forget the horrifying things that he had done or the seriousness of his poorly choiced actions – it was no longer in control of him.
Like the letter from his mother. Like how Granger ignored the effect that her dark magic use had on her body. Like how Potter decided to let the past die. It would no longer eat away at his soul or leave him destitute, desperate, and wracked with self-loathing despair.
For the first time in what felt like his entire life – he wasn’t alone.
He belonged somewhere.
And he was, finally, per the wishes of his deceased mother, truly free to start over.
Warning:
This chapter contains: explicit smut (which can be skipped)
-x-x-
November 20, 1998
Friday, Grimmauld Place, 9:13 am
“I can’t do it.”
“You can do it.”
“I’m too nervous.”
“There’s nothing to be nervous about.”
“Nothing to be nervous about? You’re ridiculous.”
“I’m ridiculous? You’ve been staring at that envelope for half an hour. Whether you open it or not, the results won’t change, so you might as well open it.”
“But I can’t.”
“It will be fine; you can do it.”
“But what if it’s not fine? What if I failed?”
Harry stared at her; his expression deadpanned as he leaned against the wall by her desk.
“You think you failed your NEWTs?” he said disbelievingly, and Hermione scowled at him.
“I’m saying it’s possible,” she muttered, dropping her gaze back to the envelope that sat on her desk. Shacklebolt had dropped them off over half an hour ago, and she had yet to open it – which meant that Harry had yet to open his because he wanted to open them together, and he was starting to get annoyed. “I didn’t get all the details that I wanted included in the transfiguration essay, and I had to rush at the end of my charms multiple choice.”
“Only because you wrote a book for the essay portion,” Harry murmured quietly, but she heard him and turned to scowl at him once more.
“It’s not my fault they had to go get more paper,” Hermione said indignantly as she let out a sigh and crossed her own arms. “They, of all people, should know the nuanced complexity of memory charms.”
“I don’t doubt that they did,” Harry agreed, his lips twitching into a smile. “I just don’t think they anticipated you trying to analyze them all during a three-hour written exam.”
Hermione let out a sigh, then slumped forward and dropped her head into her hands.
“I broke his leg, Harry,” she murmured, pinching her eyes at the memory. “I broke the DADA examiner’s leg in our duel. He probably failed me.”
“You disarmed him exactly like you were supposed to.”
“And broke his leg,” Hermione groaned, sitting back to look up at Harry once more. “How are you not worried about this? Don’t you care what results we get?”
“Of course I care,” Harry said, his eyes softening as he looked at her. “I just know that you know the grading system – I know that you know the format just as well as I do, which means that we already know that we passed and got at least As on our NEWTs. Now it’s just a question of what grade per subject. But we’ll never know unless we open these envelopes.”
She stared at him, trying to ignore the way her heart thudded hard in her chest, then she shook her head.
“I can’t,” she said, shaking her head. “I simply cannot open this.”
“Oh, come on,” Harry said, reaching forward to grab the envelope. “You told me after the war that I needed to tell you when you’re letting your anxiety control you, so I’m telling you that’s what’s happening now.”
“Wait! Harry, stop!” She got out of her chair to try and grab the letter from his hand, but he moved out of the way. “I’m serious, Harry! Don’t open it!”
“Well, I want to open mine, and I can’t until yours is opened, so–”
He moved away from her as she made to grab the envelope once more.
“Harry!” she said, rushing across the library floor behind him as he made for the door. “Harry, give it back! Don’t open it!”
“I’m not going to open it!” he yelled, darting from the room and racing down the stairs.
Her brow furrowed in confusion.
“Then why are you running away from me?!” she yelled, chasing after him and taking the steps two at a time.
“Because you’re being ridiculous!” he yelled, and she heard the laugh in his voice as he reached the first landing and started making his way down the second flight of stairs.
“I’m being ridiculous?!” she sputtered, chasing him down the next flight and into the hall. “You’re running around like this is some kind of game!”
“No one is making you chase me!” Harry said as he bolted into the kitchen then ran behind the table.
Hermione skidded into the large room, her sock feet sliding on the newly polished floor as she glared at Harry as he stood behind the table. Nasir, who had been sitting in his usual seat reading through some paperwork, stilled. His eyes calmly flicked between them, then he reached for his teacup and took a slow drink without saying a word.
“I’m chasing you because you have my letter!” Hermione said, panting from the rapid burst of exertion from jumping down the stairs. She moved quickly, using sticking charms on her feet to race around the table toward Harry, but Harry simply circled it to avoid her. She looped it twice, skidding to a stop behind Nasir this time as Harry watched her with a grin from the opposite side. “You’re acting like a child.”
“You’re both acting like children,” Nasir said flatly, though he seemed unbothered by their presence as his eyes remained fixed to his papers once more.
“Tell Harry to give me back my letter,” Hermione said, narrowing her eyes at him from across the room.
“Harry, give Hermione back her letter,” Nasir said dully, turning his page over without bothering to look up.
“Tell Hermione she needs to open her letter,” Harry said, his eyes shining with amusement as he watched her lip twitch in annoyance.
“Hermione, open your letter,” Nasir said with an equally flat, emotionless voice.
“Tell Harry that–”
“This doesn’t involve me,” Nasir said, cutting her off and getting up from the table before she could finish.
He turned away from her, moving toward the door and snatching the letter from Harry’s hand so quickly, Harry didn’t even have time to react. Then Nasir turned to look at her, arching a brow as he summoned his papers from the table and sent the letter to her. She grabbed it out of the air, watching as a small smile touched his lips, and his dark eyes glinted with amusement.
“Open your letter, Hermione,” he said, and Harry grinned at her smugly. “You undoubtedly did just fine. Besides, Shacklebolt would continue to employ you regardless of your results. It was blatantly obvious that you were more knowledgeable than your examiners to anyone who was watching. I’ll be at Shell Cottage with Bill the rest of the day working on some plans.”
With that, he turned and left, the wards chiming as the door opened, and he apparated for Shell Cottage.
“You’re unbelievable,” Hermione muttered, shoving down her anxiety and ripping the envelope open before she could change her mind. “I swear, sometimes it’s like your inner eleven-year-old rears his head and gets control of your body. I was going to open it.”
“I’m sure you were,” Harry said, opening his own envelope and tugging out the paper inside.
They both paused, paper in hand, gaze locked across the table.
“No matter what happens, no matter what these papers say – I love you,” Harry said quietly, his eyes becoming serious once more. “We’ll keep working with Shacklebolt. We can rewrite in six months. You completed seven condensed NEWTs in a week, Hermione – that’s never been done before. You were incredible. So no matter what, this is a success.”
“I know,” Hermione breathed, letting out some of the tension in her chest as she smiled at him. “I love you too, Harry.”
He smiled, both of them staring in silence until not knowing became so unbearable she couldn’t stand it, and she dropped her eyes to the paper in her hands. They shook as she unfolded it, then she sucked in a sharp breath and forced her eyes to focus on the tiny letters. Her body went still. Her heart faltered in her chest. She felt her brow crease in confusion as her eyes traced the words and letters in silence until she heard Harry shuffle across the room.
“H-Harry?” Hermione whispered, her voice sounding unsure as she forced her gaze to leave the paper, and she saw him staring at his own results with just as much confusion.
“I–” He faltered, his brow creasing before he looked up to meet her gaze. “I got all Os?”
It sounded like a question, and at his words, Hermione’s face faltered, then a breath left her lips in disbelief.
“So did I.”
They stared at each other. Speechless and lost until Harry’s face split into a smile.
“You got all Os!” he said, his eyes creasing with joy as his gaze trailed over her face.
“You got all Os,” Hermione whispered, her eyes stinging with tears as she struggled to inhale. “Harry, we got all Os! HARRY, WE PASSED!”
Before she knew it, he was climbing over the table toward hers and scooping her up from the ground. Her arms wrapped around his neck, her paper falling to the ground, forgotten as she kissed him hard. Her chest constricted tight. Her lungs burned as she pulled him against her body. They had worked so hard for this. Hours and hours of studying and practice. Late nights and blisters as they brewed. Paper cuts and ink stains as they reviewed. Exhaustion and pain as they fought to prepare while balancing all the other tasks they had pledged themselves to complete.
She could almost feel her joy.
Tiny flickers of it cut through the dense fog that buried her emotions as she threaded her fingers into Harry’s hair and groaned as her hips hit the edge of the counter.
She loved him.
She loved him so much, and this was just the start of all the things that they would do together. Yes, she knew she was capable. Yes, she knew they would do great things even if their exams had gone poorly. Yes, she knew Shacklebolt didn’t care, and he would have kept them on his team regardless. But scoring clean Os across her NEWTs had been a dream of hers since she first found out she was a witch, and six months ago, she had nearly let that dream die because she wasn’t even sure if she would live. Now, here she was kissing Harry so deeply she could hardly breathe as her life and world finally seemed to settle into something better.
This was the beginning of the future.
This was what they had been working toward, and for the first time since the war ended, she felt like she could truly see the light at the end of the tunnel.
“Harry,” she panted, kissing him hard and groaning as he rocked his hips against hers. “I’m so proud of you.”
“I’m so proud of you,” he whispered, kissing her lips as his hand threaded into her hair. He pushed himself against her, and she groaned at the feel of his stiffening length. “Merlin, you’re so incredible – seven Os on condensed NEWTS– that’s got to be a new record.”
“I think it might be,” Hermione moaned, bringing her hand to his hip only to slip it under his shirt and up his warm skin. He shuddered under her touch, rocking himself against her as she spread her legs for him and felt his thigh push between them. “God, you feel so good.”
He kissed her even deeper, tilting her head and gripping her hip tight as he pinned her against the counter. She could feel herself getting wet as all the pent-up anxiety and stress released from her body, and his touch warmed her soul. She felt his hand shift to the waistband of her pants, and she grinned as he undid the button. Dropping her hold on his hair, she moved her hands to grab the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head.
She could feel her need growing. That desperate urge to seek out his touch and feel his body pressed up against hers. She wanted him to touch her. She wanted him to make her fall apart.
She helped him take off her pants and panties, kicking them down her legs and off to the side on the kitchen floor. She made to reach for his belt as his lips moved down her neck, but he stopped her, grabbing her behind the legs before lifting her up in the air and sitting her on the edge of the counter.
“Harry!” she startled, watching as he leaned down to start kissing her legs. She shuddered beneath his touch, groaning as his right hand trailed over her center and his left moved across her skin. She shivered, leaning back against the top cupboards as he pulled her hips closer to the edge. Her eyes fluttered shut as he pushed her legs apart and dropped his head between them. “Fuuucckk.”
The tremble rolled through her body as his hot tongue traced through her slick folds.
‘Fuck, that feels so good.’
She groaned, her hips instinctively rolling up into his touch as he slowly slid his hand up her leg.
‘Just like that?’ he teased as he traced his tongue over her clit.
She shuddered, groaning and knotting her fingers in his hair.
‘Yes – just like that.’
She could hear his dark chuckle in her mind as he shifted his head, then delved his tongue inside her. She moaned. She couldn’t help it. He knew just how to touch her now. He had a bloody playbook to her body in his head through their connection, and he used it to his advantage all the time. She trembled as he licked her, slowly pushing his tongue inside her before trailing it up to circle her clit.
His motions started to slow, each lave of his tongue delayed and long, the pressure just right, and he drew it out to drive her insane. She could feel her muscles tensing with pleasure as he circled her clit once more, then traced his tongue along her slit like he was savouring her taste. He always ate her out like this. Slowly, purposefully – like he wanted to make sure she felt every single motion he made. Like he wanted to truly fuck her with his mouth before he finally trailed his hand toward her center.
She gasped as his hand reached her entrance, and he slipped two fingers deep into her channel, curling them just so to press up against that delicious bundle of nerves in her core.
“H-Harry,” she panted, her hazy eyes opening to see him touching her on their kitchen counter. Pleasure shot down her spine as he traced his tongue over her clit once more, then pressed his fingers against her g-spot, stroking her firmly as her hips gyrated against his face. “Fuck – I – I can’t – I’m going to come.”
His motions slowed once more, and she nearly groaned in anguish.
‘Not yet.’
He circled her bud, the movement so slow it was agonizing as his fingers pushed inside her once more.
‘Harry – it feels too good.’
Her hips pressed up against his face, her head falling back as her mouth fell open, and a throaty groan left her lips.
‘I’m gonna come.’
‘Not yet.’
His motions slowed further, and her hand knotted his hair tight.
‘Harry! I can’t stand it!’
He teased her a little longer, circling her clit and pressing her g-spot only to stop and pepper kisses on her inner thighs before she groaned out in frustration, and he finally conceded. She heard him undo his belt; then, he pulled her hips off the edge of the counter as he stood up and thrust deep inside her.
The moan that left her lips echoed throughout the kitchen as white flooded her vision and her body jerked.
“Fuckkk!” she moaned, holding on to him tight as her orgasm broke loose and his stiff length stretched her in the best possible way.
He felt so good.
So fucking good.
She heard him groan out in pleasure as he gripped her tight. The edge of the counter dug into her tailbone, but she didn’t care as her jaw went slack and ripples of pleasure rolled through her body. She wrapped her leg around him, gripping him tight as he pulled out his cock only to thrust back in hard.
“Fuck, you feel so good,” he groaned, his hoarse voice making her shudder as his lips traced down her neck.
She turned her head to kiss him, barely able to control her own limbs as he fucked her against the counter and made shivers roll down her spine. He tasted like her. She traced her tongue over his, moaning into his mouth before she broke free from his lips to pant for air. She dropped her forehead against his shoulder, her nails digging in his back as she pushed her hips up into each of his thrusts and clenched her channel tight.
“Hermione,” he panted, a sharp breath leaving his lips. “You’re going to make me come.”
“I want you to come,” Hermione panted, her lips tracing along the skin of his shoulder before her mouth moved up his neck to his ear. “I want you to come inside me, Harry.”
He shivered, her words making his fingers dig into her skin.
“I want to feel it,” she whispered, revelling in the way she could make him tremble with desire. “You make me feel so full, Harry.”
His hips snapped against hers harder – faster – and she knew he was getting close. She kissed her way along his jaw before kissing him once more as her own wave of pleasure started to build a second time. She leaned back from him, balancing on the edge of the counter and pushing her hips out further as her hand reached up to grab the shelf above her for support.
“Fuck, you look so beautiful,” he murmured, his hand pushing up her shirt to touch the skin of her torso. “I want you to come again.”
He slid his hand back down her chest, trailing his fingers along her skin before they stopped at the apex between her legs. He pushed into her deep, Hermione groaning in pleasure as his fingers reached her clit and circled it slowly.
“Ughh,” she moaned, rolling her hips up to meet his as his motions slowed once more. She could feel the coil winding, and her entire body was starting to shake. “H-Harry–”
“Tell me what you want.” His voice was dark as he touched her, his cock getting impossibly hard as his breaths came in pants. His thrusts slowed as he watched her squirm against the counter, and he rubbed her clit with his thumb. “Tell me.”
“I want you,” Hermione panted, cracking her eyes open to see his green gaze grow dark with lust. “I want you to fill me up.”
He groaned, leaning forward to kiss her as his thrusts grew quicker once more. She rocked her hips into his motions as her lungs started to burn. The coil in her center was unbearable. She was sure she was going to die from the pressure as he rubbed her clit faster and thrust into her deep.
‘Harry,’ she panted, her heart racing so quick she could hear it in her ears. ‘Harry, I – I’m going to – I–’
‘That’s right, Hermione, come for me.’
He rubbed her clit, circling it in just the right way as he thrust into her hard and the coil in her center snapped. She cried out, gripping him hard as her entire body shook. The orgasm rushed through her body, consuming her mind as everything turned to static, and she struggled to breathe. She heard Harry groan, and she forced her bleary eyes open to watch him fall apart. His eyes pinched as if in pain, a deep crease between his brow as he groaned out in pleasure. His motions grew jerky, his hips snapping forward unevenly as he filled her slick channel with his release.
She watched his eyes crack open as his motions slowed, the green so dark and piercing it made her shiver as he reached for her face, pulling her into a heated kiss. She panted against his lips, gripping him tight, revelling in the feel of his warmth as he pulled her to his chest. She pressed her forehead into his shoulder, kissing his neck and closing her eyes as she let out a sigh. She could stay this way with him forever, with him buried deep inside her as she clung to his body.
Her eyes fluttered open once more as she pulled back to kiss him, watching the loving way that his eyes traced over her face. And she knew in that moment that they were truly on the road to a new and better future.
-x-x-
August 25, 2002
Saturday, Shell Cottage, 2:32 pm
“You have to kick your legs!” Hermione yelled, squinting her eyes as water sprayed up into her face. She could barely even see what was happening through all the floundering, and she could not wrap her head around how Arthur could splash so much yet forget to kick his legs. “That’s why you keep sinking!”
She watched the man struggle a little longer, then shifted through the water to go help him. They had been at this for a while. Arthur was determined to learn how to swim, and Hermione had kept her promise to be the one to teach him even with him missing half of his right leg. Lots of amputees could swim, and the fact that his leg was a prosthetic from the knee down had very little to do with the disastrous splashing and flailing that had been going on all afternoon. It was his coordination that was off. If he was moving his arms, his legs remained still, and if he kicked, he seemed to mess up his arms.
She hadn’t been sure what to expect when she agreed to help him this summer, but it was so much worse than she could have ever anticipated. Arthur was exceptionally bad at swimming. Despite this, she smiled as she reached him, and he stopped to stand up in the shallow water.
“This is so much harder than it looks,” Arthur said, wiping water from his eyes as he looked at her. “How did you get to be so good at this? It’s exhausting.”
“Years and years of lessons and practice,” Hermione said, grinning at the man as she moved before him once more to demonstrate. “You have each motion right individually, but you’re having a hard time putting them together. Remember the kicking motion we practiced yesterday with the flutterboard? You want to make sure that you keep doing that as your arms go. You need both to swim, but your legs are the strongest part of your body; they’re going to be what really gets you moving. Arms are important, too, but a little less so than your legs. Here, watch the timing again.”
She lowered herself into the water, pushing forward off the sandy bottom and moving her arms in slow even strokes. She made sure to emphasize the kick of her legs as she swam forward a few feet before turning around and swimming back once more. When she stopped and stood up again to look at Arthur, she saw that he was smiling widely, and there was warmth radiating from his eyes.
“What?” she asked almost nervously as she heard a huge splash off to their right.
“You just make it look so easy,” Arthur said, shaking his head. “And I’m just so thankful that we got the chance to do this – thank you for teaching me how to swim, Hermione.”
It wasn’t the first time that he had thanked her, but it was the first time that it had felt emotional, and she felt her face falter as she looked at the man. He had lost so much in the war. Three of his children, part of his body, friends, coworkers – and yet he had never once faltered and he had always been there for her. He had always remained a rock in her life and that of the others.
“Of course, Arthur,” Hermione said, smiling at him softly. “I’m glad we did too.”
There was another splash and a scream as George threw Liza into the water from the cliffside. Hermione shook her head, turning to watch as the girl came up sputtering and laughing before George’s voice cut through the air.
“Ten-point deduction for flailing arms!” George bellowed, and Fred laughed at his side. “Honestly, Liza, that was the worst dive yet!”
“It doesn’t count if you threw me in!” Liza yelled back, swimming towards shore to go climb the cliff. “I call foul – Harry?!”
“Foul.” Harry nodded from his perched position on the edge of the cliffside. “We agreed this would be a non-contact event – ten-point deduction from team Gred and Forge, that puts Madams of Mayhem in the lead.”
“Oh, come on,” George groaned as Liza raised her arms into the air in triumph. “You’re playing favourites.”
“Maybe you just need to get better at diving, so you don’t have to cheat all the time,” Bill countered, looking up from his chair on the beach and smiling as George scowled.
“I wasn’t cheating; she slipped,” George said indignantly, turning and preparing to make his own dive. “The rocks are slick.”
“You’re right, they are,” Ginny said, and in one rapid motion, she shoved him off the edge.
Hermione watched the twins fall. George made a big show of it, flailing his arms and screaming as if he had just been tossed off the edge of a giant canyon to his death while Fred jumped in after him, saying he would save him. Ginny and Susan jumped in after them before they hit the water as Liza rapidly raced up the cliffside to jump again.
This was always how it went.
The diving competitions never had a winner. The points were always forgotten, and they always ended in absolute utter chaos. She shook her head, turning away from the scene to look back at Arthur once more.
“Want to try one more time?”
“Yes.” Arthur nodded, a hint of determination shining in his eyes. “I think I will get it this time.”
He didn’t
Nor did he get it the next three times that he tried, but to his credit, he was improving. They decided to call it quits when Ava came out of the cottage to tell them that dinner was almost ready, and they slowly made their way back to the beach as all the others made their grand finale jumps off the edge of the large cliff. She smiled as she watched Harry dive headfirst off the edge, completing three full rotations before he hit the water.
She cast a set of drying charms over her body, pulling all the water from her bathing suit and board shorts with ease before she made her way towards their bags by Bill’s chair.
Going swimming with the others was never easy for her, and getting to the point of feeling comfortable doing it had taken a long time. She had avidly avoided the water, short-sleeves, and any other activity that would require her to expose her body for three years after the war. And even now, she still wasn’t completely comfortable with it.
She always wore a modest bathing suit, and she always layered it with mid-thigh board shorts. Outside of Harry, Nasir, and Snape, she never allowed people to see her scars. She left the silver scar through her eyebrow and crimson symbol on her neck visible since everyone here already knew that she had them, but every other mark on her body remained carefully hidden beneath her masking charm – which meant that she always had a limit on how long she could swim.
She let out a sigh, casting a silent cleaning charm over her body as she summoned a long sleeve shirt from her purse as Arthur stopped to talk to Bill. She had just transfigured her bathing suit bottoms and board shorts into a comfortable, clean pair of pants and panties and was tugging the loose-fitting shirt over her head when she heard a familiar voice beside her.
“Hermione?”
She turned, looking down at Liza’s dripping wet form. She had grown another foot taller in the last four years, and at sixteen, she was already quite the witch.
“Yes, Liza?” Hermione asked as she tugged the shirt down the rest of her body, then dropped the masking charm with a sigh of relief.
“My friend Riley is coming over tonight for a sleepover, but before she gets here, I was wondering if I could ask you something about school?” the girl said quietly as she picked up her wand and cast a drying charm to remove some of the water from her hair. “I know that vanishing charms are part of the OWLs, so I started practicing them this summer, but I don’t understand why it doesn’t seem to work selectively.”
“Of course.” Hermione nodded, summoning some clothes from her bag and sending them toward Harry as he approached. “I have time tonight.”
“Thanks.” Liza grinned, then her smile faltered. “If you fail your OWLs, do you get to rewrite them?”
“You do,” Hermione said, smiling down at the girl and casting a silent drying charm to remove the rest of the water from Liza’s hair. “But you won’t fail your OWLs, Liza. You already know more than enough to pass.”
“Headmaster McGonagall said that too when she stopped by the other day, and I asked her what books she recommended I read this summer. She said I should just relax and enjoy the time off. Headmaster McGonagall said that – can you believe that?” Liza said, walking along beside her toward the cottage.
“Yes.” Hermione couldn’t help the small laugh that left her lips as the girl looked at her in confusion. “Because she said that to me, too – don’t worry, Liza, you’ll pass your OWLs. Pay attention in class, take good notes, review through mine, and you’ll be fine. I’ll help you study over the Christmas Holidays and, if you’re still worried, you can come stay at Grimmauld Place in the evenings the week before your exams, and we can revise every night.”
“Really?” Liza breathed, her eyes bright with uncontainable gratitude. “You don’t mind?”
“I don’t mind,” Hermione reassured her. “Besides, it will be fun to look through some of my old notes.”
“You have a weird definition of fun, Hermione,” Fred said, jogging up along beside them with Harry as George trailed behind talking to Bill. “I have a much more traditional one – which will be revealed later tonight.”
“You brought fireworks?!” Liza asked, turning to look at Fred in excitement as Harry grinned.
“Maybe.” The redhead winked, ruffling her hair and pulling a dry shirt out of nowhere. “You’ll have to wait and see.”
They all made their way inside, quickly filling the kitchen with chatter and noise as Mrs. Weasley greeted them all and complimented the diving they had watched from the window. Ava went to get Charlie. Fleur sent plates to the table. Bill went to check on Scarlet – their second adopted daughter, next to Liza, who was orphaned in the war.
Dinner was chaotic, which was how meals always seemed to be when they all got together. Hermione sat in her seat nearest the door with Harry at her side, only escaping to the bathroom once to let out a deep breath and count backwards from ten. It was a massive improvement from before. Being around so many people still made her nervous, and she still really struggled with it, but now it was less about the number of people and more about the noise and claustrophobia. She had a hard time handling so many voices at once, and she wasn’t a fan of small spaces. She didn’t like feeling boxed in because it left her feeling trapped, and too much chatter just seemed to bring her mind back to the battlefield. She was sure that some of her paranoia and anxiety were linked to their tunnel crawl through the dark in Gringotts, and the fact that getting boxed in equated to death in her mind.
Yet, despite this, she was improving day by day, and, like Harry and everyone else in the kitchen, she refused to give up. Instead, she fought through it, taking breaks when she needed to and stepping away to preserve her calm. Then she would return to participate once more and do her best to stay the full night.
Once dinner was done, and Bill had left to go pick up Riley, Harry went outside to help the twins with ‘something’ while Hermione followed Liza upstairs to her bedroom. It was a beautiful room, with a window that overlooked the ocean, and over time, the girl had filled it with her own belongings and personal touches just like she had with her room at the farmhouse with Ava. She still split her time between both homes, but this was usually where she spent most of her time towards the end of the summer before returning to school.
Hermione’s eyes glanced around the space, taking in a few familiar items from her own childhood. They were things that had been inside her duplicated purse – the purse that Liza had steadfastly taken care of while Hermione had fought in the Battle of Hogwarts. The girl had tried to return it to her. She had insisted that Hermione take back her stuff because it was ‘important’ and ‘hers’. But when Hermione had looked at the small girl that day, two weeks after the war had ended, she just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t take the beaded bag back from her hands because her own still felt stained in blood. So she had told Liza to keep it, to use it, and to treasure everything in there. The only thing she took back were the photos, which were now safely stored at Grimmauld Place in a box on a shelf in her room.
Here, she could see that Liza had taken her words to heart. Her old study notes and books were stacked lovingly on a shelf along the wall. Her quilt was folded neatly at the end of Liza’s bed. Her childhood dresser was clean, polished, and snuggly fit beside the window with a collection of pictures framed on top. In some ways, it felt like stepping back through time into her old room, and it made her smile every time she saw it.
“So, what part of the vanishing charm are you struggling with?” Hermione asked as the girl grabbed her notebook, and she summoned a chair with a flick of her finger.
“Well, I managed to vanish a few scrap pieces of paper yesterday,” Liza started, pulling out her wand, the same wand that Nasir had given her four years ago, before she launched into an explanation of her problem.
As it turned out, Liza could vanish things just fine. What she was trying to accomplish was something else entirely. The girl wanted to be able to selectively erase things – like vanishing the pattern on a teacup so that she could replace it with something else. Or, vanishing just the handle, but not the whole handle, only part of the handle. She had been testing it and getting frustrated. So, she had turned to her books and was starting to suspect the task was impossible – which Hermione confirmed that it was with the spell that she was using.
So, Hermione pointed her to the spell that she was really looking for – or rather, the two spells. One for vanishing partial pieces that wasn’t taught until seventh year, and one for erasing. They were both distinctly different and had different properties. Hermione demonstrated each one, waiting patiently for Liza to take notes and then working through the wand motions with her before showing her two other spells until a voice filled the air.
“Hey, Liza!” a girl said in excitement as she burst into the room. “Did you know that Harry Potter is outside your house and he–”
The girl froze, her entire body going stiff as her eyes went wide, and Liza turned to look over her shoulder at the her.
“Hey Riley,” Liza said calmly, completely unphased by the idea of Harry Potter being at her house. “Yeah, he’s helping Fred and George with something. I think they’re going to put on fireworks later.”
The girl didn’t move, and she didn’t appear to have heard anything that Liza said as she stared open-mouthed at Hermione from across the room.
Hermione arched a brow at the girl, taking in her flabbergasted appearance with a hint of amusement – it had been a long time since she had seen this reaction, because she didn’t go out in public very much, and most adults were either too nervous or too embarrassed to outright react. They rarely gaped at her like fish. Instead, they tended to watch her quietly from the side while murmuring to their friends. She had learned how to watch people without directly looking at them, so she could pretend not to notice the stares she got at the Ministry.
Riley, however, was not an adult.
She was a girl, a sixteen-year-old girl who had entered Hogwarts two years before Liza during all the chaos of ‘97. They had become fast friends after Liza was sorted into Ravenclaw and, thanks to extensive tutoring by Fleur, Bill, Arthur, Harry, and Hermione herself in the summer leading up to Hogwarts’ official full-year reopening in September 1999, was placed into second year by Headmaster McGonagall so she was with students closer to her own age.
Riley was a half-blood, so she knew all about the war and the role that Harry Potter and Hermione Granger had played in it. She had grown up with the Prophet on her table and seen them in the papers for years, then had experienced hell at the school during 1997 and 1998, getting evacuated before Voldemort set foot on the grounds. Her father had shown up to fight in the Battle of Hogwarts with Shacklebolt’s reinforcements, and he had told her all about what happened that night. Hermione knew that when Riley found out that Liza knew them, she had nearly had a bird and she was shocked to discover Liza’s role in the war. Apparently, Liza had never thought to mention it – being naturally humble, she didn’t think her role was a big deal, and it had taken her classmates by storm a year ago when they found out who she was.
And apparently, Liza had not told Riley that they would be here tonight, so finding Hermione Granger seated by Liza’s side at her desk, in her room while Harry Potter was outside, was apparently quite the surprise.
Hermione stared at the girl, her eyes slowly trailing over her form. She was a bit taller than Liza, lanky with straight brown hair and grey eyes. There was a light dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose, and her skin was tanned from the sun. She seemed incapable of moving as she stared at Hermione in silence, completely at a loss as to what to do with herself.
It was kind of adorable, but it had been nearly two full minutes, and Hermione was starting to feel bad for the girl.
“Hey, Riley?” Hermione said slowly, and the girl’s eyes grew even wider.
“Y-Yes,” she whispered hoarsely, her expression positively awestruck.
Hermione smiled, the grin spreading across her lips slowly as she took pity on the girl.
“Want to learn a new spell?”
Riley’s mouth fell open again.
Despite the girl’s shaking fingers, Hermione managed to teach her how to vanish a scrap piece of paper, then showed her the other two spells that she had just taught Liza. She worked with them for nearly half an hour until Harry’s voice sounded in her head.
‘We’re ready! Tell Liza and her friend to come outside; they don’t want to miss this.’
‘Alright, be out in two.’
“Alright, girls,” Hermione said, closing the book she was using as a reference and standing from her chair. “Show time – let’s head outside.”
She vanished her conjured chair without a word and made for the door, hearing Riley’s hushed words behind her and they made another smile tug at her lips.
“You never said that she was your tutor!” Riley whispered quickly as Liza pushed in her chair.
“She isn’t my tutor,” Liza said. “She just helps me sometimes when I don’t understand something.”
“That’s what a tutor does!” Riley groaned, and Hermione could all but imagine the expression on the girl’s face. “I knew you knew her, but I didn’t know that she came here! I didn’t know you were friends with her – she was in your room, Liza! Do you understand how crazy that is? Hermione Granger was in your room.”
“She’s been in my room loads of times; what’s the big deal?” Liza asked in genuine confusion.
While Liza had always looked up to Hermione, been in awe of her skills, and viewed her with wonder, she had never been star-struck. Her fascination with Hermione was out of respect, love, and appreciation. She viewed her as a mentor. She wanted Hermione’s guidance and approval because she looked up to her, and she desperately wanted to follow in her footsteps and help make the world a better place.
“You could have told me she would be here tonight! You could have warned me – you know she’s my hero. Ughh, and I just looked like an idiot!” Riley whined, her quiet voice taking on a lamenting tone. “That was so embarrassing. She probably thinks I’m an idiot.”
“I doubt that,” Liza said reassuringly as they made their way to the door. “But, she can probably hear you right now, you know. She has really good ears.”
Tight silence followed those words as Hermione’s feet touched the floor in the kitchen. Then she heard a barely contained ‘squee’ noise from the landing above.
“She’s so fucking cool!” Riley whispered, and Hermione heard Liza giggle at her friend. “I can’t believe Hermione Granger just taught me two spells!”
-x-x-
April 6, 2003
Saturday, Australia, 1:17 pm
Hermione stood on the asphalt pathway. Her legs were trembling beneath her. The cool, crisp air tugged at her hair. She could smell the leaves as they danced around in the wind and her heart started to race. She had known she would be nervous. She had been anticipating this, but she hadn’t realized just how terrifying this process would be.
Getting here wasn’t hard. Shacklebolt had arranged a portkey for them to use without hesitation. She had wondered if it was legal, but she hadn’t asked. She trusted the man. He might bend the rules and look for loopholes when required in order to get things done, but he was unquestioningly honourable in his integrity, and so she knew that the portkey had been obtained without harm.
What she didn’t know was what the hell she was going to say.
She could feel Harry’s eyes on her as he stood disillusioned off to the side. Their bond was open, like always, but he was quiet. He didn’t utter a word. He just pushed a small but gentle stream of love through the connection, and it was probably the only reason she hadn’t turned around and walked away already.
It had been five years.
Five long, exhausting, and emotional years, and she wasn’t even entirely sure why she had come here. She didn’t know if she should bother. She had debated this for ages, then spent months researching it in her spare time, only to contemplate giving up. Then, when she and Harry came here and started tracking their movements, her doubt doubled, and she started to feel sick.
How would she explain this? How would she justify it? Would they ever forgive her? Should they ever forgive her?
They had every right to be upset, every right to be angry, and a piece of her wasn’t sure if it was fair for her to step in now, five years later, and destroy the life that they had built for themselves. She had already uprooted them once. She had already toyed with their life and changed who they were. She had already acted like a god, illegally modifying their memories, confunding their brains, and fundamentally changing their lives.
What right did she have to do it again?
The first time, she had swallowed down her discomfort and bore the burden of her actions because it had been for their safety. She had only done it because she knew that they would die in the war otherwise. She had chosen to take away their autonomy, remove their choice in the matter, and act on their behalf, similar to how a mother would step in and govern her children because there had been no other choice.
But this was different.
Coming here was a choice.
It was selfish, and as she watched Monica and Wendell Wilkins make their way down the path – taking their Saturday afternoon stroll like they always did – she was starting to regret ever coming here at all.
They looked different.
They looked happy.
Her father’s arm was casually draped around her mother’s shoulders as they strolled, an action that he had never made before except for in her oldest memories. They had always gotten along, and their relationship was never unhealthy or ‘in danger,’ but it was certainly not loving. The last memory she had of her parents being close must have been from when she was three or four years old. Her mother would kiss her father on the cheek and sit snuggled up into his side at Christmas.
That changed as she got older.
They seemed to grow apart – still content to stay together and compatible, but… there was always distance between them. Her stomach rolled. Looking at them now, it was clear exactly what had caused that distance, what had caused that change, and why they had grown less loving.
It was her.
She was the cause.
Her parents had her, and their relationship changed. They loved her. She knew that they did, but over time they had grown apart because of her, and when she was revealed to be a witch, it had only added more stress to their household and drove the wedge deeper. She watched her father laugh at something her mother said, leaning in to place a kiss on her temple as her mother continued to chatter on happily.
They looked younger.
They looked healthier.
Whereas she felt ancient as she watched them move with ease.
Swallowing down the panic building in her chest, she forced her legs to move. They had come this far. She had to at least see. She had to know. She started walking toward them across the grass, fighting the urge to vomit and struggling to breathe.
What would she say?
She had talked about this with Harry a hundred times and could never come up with the right solution. They had debated going to their house. She had debated pretending to be a patient and going to see them at their dental office. She had debated approaching them at the library or pretending to be a shopkeeper somewhere. In the end, whether stupid or not, she had ultimately decided to just approach them.
Maybe it was because she wanted to see how they would react – if there was some biological part of them that would recognize their daughter. Yes, their memories were gone, but Alastor had told her that even without memories, people could still remember. Even through a confundus charm, her parents might be drawn toward her – they may unintentionally seek her out without understanding why if they saw her, because she was their child and that bond ran deeper than anything else.
That was part of the reason why she had relocated them so far away – to ensure that they never ever had a random chance encounter.
She took a deep breath, shifting her way across the rest of the grass and onto the path behind them. They hadn’t noticed her yet. She trailed them for a few feet as her pulse started to race. She couldn’t follow them forever. It would be weird and unnerving. But she couldn’t seem to make herself open her mouth either.
Do it, she thought, clenching her fists at her side as her throat started to burn. Just do it – you’ve come this far.
Inhaling hard, she picked up her pace and closed the distance between them.
“Umm – excuse me–”
Her voice cut off as her mother and father turned around, then rapidly took a step back. She could see her mother’s eyes darting over her form, tracing over her face without an ounce of recognition as her father gripped her more tightly.
“Yes?”
His tone wasn’t friendly. He was eyeing her suspiciously – warily, like he thought she might be a problem. She could feel the tiny thread of calm she had managed to muster fading away as she stared into the eyes of her parents and realized that not only did they not recognize her at all – they were afraid of her.
She had dressed nicely today.
Her hair was clean, her curls were controlled, and the crimson symbol on her neck was hidden beneath a carefully cast masking charm. None of her scars were visible. Her arm wasn’t shaking, and everything about her was as normal as she could possibly make herself, and yet still – Monica and Wendell Wilkins were looking at her as if she was about to rob them.
Suddenly she couldn’t breathe. She didn’t know what she had been expecting, and while a part of her had quietly wondered and worried that this might happen, she had been completely unprepared to face it.
Her parents were afraid of her, just like so many others were now, and she felt her shoulders drop as all the air left her lungs.
“I uh –,” She faltered, swallowing hard as her mother took another anxious step closer to her father and stared at her through narrowed eyes.
I can’t do this, she thought as her hands started to sweat. And they don’t deserve this.
She forced her face to twist into a smile even though it didn’t reach her eyes, and it felt hollow in her soul. Her rune was getting heavy. She knew that Harry would be concerned, and he was probably already on his way over to try and help, but that wouldn’t be necessary.
Adjusting her masking charm to hide the movement, Hermione summoned a note from her pocket, then shifted the charm once more so she could hold her hand out for them to see.
“I found this on the ground behind you, and I think you dropped it.” She outstretched the folded bill toward them and watched as her mother’s brow creased and her father looked somewhat surprised and taken aback.
“Oh,” he said stiffly, reaching out to take the money from her hand. “Thank you.”
“No problem,” Hermione said quietly, fighting to keep her voice from breaking and hold her masking charm in place as their hands briefly brushed. Then she let go of the folded bill. “Have a nice afternoon.”
“You as well,” her mother said reflexively though still, the words were cautious.
She nodded, turning away from her parents as they awkwardly turned to continue their walk. She could feel her eyes starting to sting. Her chest was starting to burn. Her heart was thudding, and blood was rushing in her ears like a river.
She barely made it six steps, and then Harry was beside her, grabbing her tight as a disillusionment encased her body.
“Hermione,” he murmured, pressing his lips to her hair as he held her tight, and a sob broke from her lips. “I’m so sorry.”
“Just take me home,” Hermione whispered, closing her eyes tight as her nails dug into his jacket. “Please just take me home – I want to go home.”
She felt him nod as he shifted his arm to pull out their portkey. She didn’t move away from his chest and instead just buried her face deeper and clenched her eyes shut tighter.
She had been expecting this. She had run through every scenario a thousand times and pre-planned their conversation. She had examined every option and listed every possible outcome, and this had always been at the top. Yet somehow, despite her blunted emotions and her ability to look at things logically in a cold and detached manner – this hurt.
And it hurt so much more than she ever could have expected.
She felt Harry grab the back of her neck as he activated the portkey, and their bodies twisted and distorted through space. She knew it would take time to process this. She knew her heart would continue to burn for days, and she knew that she would never forget the fearful look on her parents’ faces as they turned around at her words.
But at least they were happy together, and that was ultimately the only thing she had ever wanted. Because in her heart, she knew there was no place for her in their life. There had never been – not truly – and after everything she had done, the Hermione Granger that they knew was dead, along with the possibility of them ever reconnecting.
So she needed to let this go.
She needed to let them go.
But she still had a home with people who loved her. She still had a family, and they would be waiting for her return.
-x-x-
December 31, 2004
Friday, Shell Cottage, 10:31 pm
“This is stupid. This is so stupid,” Hermione murmured, bracing her elbows on the small table and dropping her face in her hands. She could feel her heart racing faster than ever. Her stomach was twisted into a horrible ball, and she felt like she was on the verge of having a panic attack. This was the worst her anxiety had been in years, and she was ninety-nine percent sure she was about to puke and ruin everything. “Why – why did I agree to this. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid – so fucking stupid!”
“Hermione?”
The familiar voice sounded from the door, and Hermione jolted in her seat, her head lifting to look at the redhead who had very quickly slipped inside the room and shut the door behind him. He was wearing a set of new dress robes, a small boutonniere pinned to the breast pocket, and everything about his appearance was perfect in every way. Which was hardly surprising given that Fleur was the one who had coordinated all this.
“Hey,” Hermione breathed, forcing herself to smile as she quickly stood up. She knew it didn’t reach her eyes, and she knew he would be able to see right through it, but she stilled as she looked at the expression on his face.
“Hermione,” he said gently, taking a slow step towards her as his gaze trailed over her form. He looked speechless, and his eyes were starting to shine, which only made the ball in the stomach knot worse. “You look beautiful.”
“Thanks,” she whispered, nodding her head and willing her body to calm down. She couldn’t seem to stop swallowing because her mouth kept filling with spit, and she knew that the vomit was coming. “Or, rather, you should thank Fleur. This is all her – I really didn’t do anything.”
“Well, that’s just not true,” he said quietly, making his way towards her and taking her hands. She couldn’t help but grip them tightly, like he was a lifeline and she was drowning. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” she said quickly, the word coming out like a reflex. Then she grimaced and closed her eyes, scrunching her face and clenching her jaw tight as bile burned at the back of her throat. “No.”
The word came out broken, and she felt Arthur move as his arms circled her thin frame.
“Hey,” he said gently, and her head started to shake. “Hey, it’s okay.”
“I can’t do this,” she gasped, her heart beating erratically as her breath came in ragged pulls. She gripped him tighter, her panic spinning out of control as she fought back the urge to cry. “This is stupid – so stupid – I should have said no. Why did I agree to a wedding? We could have just got married at the Ministry – we could have just sent the papers in! Ginny and Susan just had a wedding last year, and Fred and Lee are having one next year! We don’t need to have another one. I – I can’t go out there like this. I can’t do this in front of everyone!”
Arthur’s hand shifted to gently pat her back, the motion soothing and reassuring as a deep exhale left her lungs.
“If you don’t want to do this, you don’t have to,” Arthur said quietly, and she nodded her head. “Everyone here would understand, and you know Harry will understand.”
“I know.” Hermione exhaled hard, feeling the warm trickle of Harry’s love that crept into her mind. He had been silent all day as they had agreed, but she was starting to regret agreeing to that tradition as well. “I know – I know he would. But Fleur put so much work into this. They’re letting us use their home and the beach. Everyone is here. Everyone dressed up. Molly and Ava cooked all that food. Everyone has done so much, and if I cancel now then–”
“Then everyone would understand,” Arthur said softly, pulling back from her to meet her gaze. She stared at him through bleary eyes, watching as his hand came up to brush a tear from her cheek that she didn’t even know had fallen. “They did this for you because they love you, Hermione, and because they want you to be happy. They’re not here for themselves. So if getting married without them is what will make you happy – then they will be happy for you. They’ll wait outside the tent until the ceremony is done. Or they’ll go home. They’ll come to congratulate you one-on-one later, or they’ll never mention it at all. Either way, no one is going to be upset, because this isn’t about what they want. It’s about you and Harry, and we are here to celebrate your love in whatever way makes you comfortable.”
She nodded.
She knew he was right. She knew her friends and family better than to think that they would resent her for having a panic attack, but that didn’t stop the guilt. She knew if she cancelled now and didn’t at least try, she would always regret it, and she would always feel bad. They had all worked so hard. They had all done everything that they could to make this day as special as possible while accommodating her requests – which was really more of a list of things she didn’t want because she didn’t think she could handle it.
Harry had asked her to marry him nearly six years ago after waking up from the Battle. They got formally engaged one year later, and she had lived with him at Grimmauld Place since the war ended. Never once during the last six years had she ever gotten cold feet or doubted their relationship. Never once had she questioned her decision to marry him. She wasn’t afraid of marrying Harry, and frankly, it probably would have happened sooner, but they had just both been so busy with work that it sort of fell off the radar since they were already living together.
It felt strange to put so much focus on marriage when their relationship was already solid as the hardest stone. Getting a piece of paper and even completing a traditional wizarding ceremony with bonding magic would hardly change anything in their life.
It was superficial.
It was silly.
And in her mind, a wedding was stupid.
Why the hell would she want to waste everyone’s time and resources with a wedding and gifts and make them dress up when they have more important things to do? There were potions to design. There was research to complete. Fleur and Bill were both professors at Hogwarts now, and they had three adopted kids, including Liza, who was now in her seventh year – already tentatively accepted into the healer program at St. Mungo’s pending her final NEWT results. Molly was a teacher at the summer term pre-school for muggleborns, and she had a whole bunch of new ideas that she wanted to get started on in anticipation of the next round of students that upcoming summer. Arthur was working overtime at the Ministry, Shacklebolt was the bloody Minister, Snape was on the verge of a breakthrough, and Remus had a six-year-old to take care of. On top of that – Shacklebolt was still fighting to keep them out of the public eye as much as possible, and news of their ‘wedding’ had made that task more difficult.
She had never been the type of girl to dream of getting married. She had never understood the infatuation with it, the desire to wear a big impractical dress that could not withstand battle or the need to celebrate something so personal and intimate with so many people. Getting married had nothing to do with anyone but her and Harry – so why on earth would they have a wedding?
Yet even as she thought that, she knew that wasn’t entirely true.
Without these people here today, they wouldn’t be here. Without their help, support, and continuous love, they would never have gotten the chance to get married and have a future together. So she supposed that she could understand Harry’s desire to celebrate their love with their family and friends. But even then, that was easier said than done. She still didn’t do well with big groups of people. She still didn’t do well with emotions. She still hated having attention on her, and she still largely tried to go as unnoticed as possible in her day-to-day life.
The idea of standing up in front of a group of people, even a small group of people that she loved, was terrifying.
But she had promised Harry she would try. Just like Christmas at the Burrow. Just like the Easter dinners at Grimmauld Place that they had started two years ago. Just like swimming at the beach and attending every other get-together function – she had promised Harry she would try. She had promised herself she would try, and she continued to fight to try and overcome her anxieties and fears, because she refused to become a victim of war.
Ava had been the one to say those words to her the very first Christmas post-Battle at the Burrow. Hermione had been struggling with all the noise and had wandered outside to get some air. She had ended up spending over an hour talking to Ava, and the woman had really put things into perspective. You didn’t need to die to be a victim of war, and Hermione was no victim.
She was a survivor.
She would fight, cope, and take back control of her life and learn to live once more. Sometimes that meant letting herself cry. Sometimes that meant sleeping in, taking a day off, or drinking with Harry as they reminisced late into the night and shed tears over everything they had lost. Sometimes it meant sneaking up onto the Burrow roof with Fred and Harry to lay on the shingles and watch the stars – only to be joined by Draco when he could no longer handle the noise in the kitchen. Sometimes it meant completing a violent and exhausting round of duelling with Nasir in his back garden until neither of them could stand any longer, and other times it meant sitting with a steaming cup of tea on her own as she watched the sunrise.
She had a million different coping mechanisms.
A thousand different mantras that she repeated in her mind.
And because of that – because of all of those things that she had worked to create and because she desperately wanted to regain control of her life and refused to allow her fear and trauma to define her – when Harry had asked her to have a wedding because it was important to him, because it meant something to him, because it represented the normalcy that he had always craved… she had agreed.
Because she loved him.
She loved him more than anything, and his happiness was just as important as hers. He hadn’t forced her into having a wedding. In fact, he had barely asked her at all because he knew how uncomfortable she was with it. He knew that she was overly practical, and she thought that they were silly. So when he asked, he had made it clear that he was okay with not having one if she didn’t want to, but he had explained why it meant something to him.
She hadn’t been able to say no, but she hadn’t been able to promise him yes completely, either. Instead, she had promised him that she would try – just like she did with everything else, and that had meant the world to him.
Because that was all he would ever ask of her.
That she tried – that they try together, as they fought to move past the war and the horrors of their past.
She let out a deep sigh, forcing all the air out from her lungs as she closed her eyes and nodded her head once more.
“All you need to do, Hermione, is breathe,” Arthur said softly as he squeezed her hands. “It’s whatever you want. Whatever you need – just let me know. If you want to think about it a little longer, we can hang out here until you’re ready. They can wait. Or, we can just stay in here all night. I’ll get Harry to come inside, and you don’t even have to leave this room at all.”
A small laugh left her lips, and she couldn’t help but smile as she opened her eyes to meet his blue gaze.
“I know you would,” she whispered, her eyes creasing as she looked at the man before her. “You’re such a good dad.”
Arthur’s eyes creased at her words, and they shone with tears as he looked at her. “And you’re such a wonderful daughter.”
Her smile faltered as her eyes started to sting, and her throat constricted tight.
“Thank you for doing this, Arthur,” she whispered, two tears falling from her eyes. “It means more than you can possibly know.”
“It’s my honour, Hermione,” Arthur said gently, reaching up to wipe her tears away once more.
They stared at each other in silence for a long while as Hermione’s heart continued to race in her chest. She could feel Harry’s love through the bond. She could feel his magic pulsing in her veins. It was calm, tranquil, and powerful – like blue electricity moving slowly through her blood, dancing perfectly with the warm flutter of her own magic.
He had given it to her two years ago after extensive research and discussion regarding his own slowed ageing. Nasir was the only other person that knew about it. She figured Snape was suspicious of it, but it would be years before they confirmed if the effects were as planned.
She let out a sigh.
It felt silly to be so frightened of a tiny wedding ceremony of less than twenty-five people when she had faced down death, and she was surrounded by people who loved her, cared for her, and desperately wanted her to be happy. It felt foolish to be afraid when this man before her would do anything to protect her. It was stupid to think that a small gathering would defeat her when Nasir was watching her vitals, and he would never allow her to be consumed by dread.
More than all of that, though, it was downright ridiculous to be afraid when Harry was out there waiting for her – when he loved her so much she could feel it in her soul, and all he wanted to do was celebrate it.
She let out another deep breath, closing her eyes and knowing that she was already late to her own wedding – yet no one had said a word, and not a single person had come inside to try and push things back on schedule or find out what was taking so long. Because they didn’t care, and they understood. They were here for her, and they were here because they wanted to be – and they would wait all night without complaint if that was what she needed.
Merlin, she loved these people.
It was so silly to think that celebrating with them would be hard when they were so blatantly caring – so fundamentally kind and filled with love.
“Stupid,” she whispered, opening her eyes to look at Arthur once more and noting the quiet question in his eyes. “I’m being stupid. I promised him I would try, and I want to try – not just for him, but for me, too. For us. I don’t want to give up before I even try.”
“And that’s all he would ever want,” Arthur said warmly, his eyes creasing as he smiled at her. “That’s all anyone here would ever expect. We can stop at any time. All you have to do is say the word.”
“I know,” Hermione whispered, nodding her head once more. “But I won’t – I want to do this. I do – I just need your help.”
“I’ll be there with you every step of the way,” Arthur said gently, gripping her hands tight once more. “You just let me know when you’re ready.”
“Okay,” she breathed out, forcing her shoulders to drop. “I just need a second.”
He nodded, letting go of her hands as she stepped away to look in the floor-length mirror once more. She wasn’t a fan of mirrors. She didn’t often look in them because she didn’t see the point, but Fleur had done her hair and makeup and put a lot of work into her ensemble, so she wanted to make sure that she hadn’t ruined it.
She glanced at her reflection, hardly recognizing herself yet mentally applauding the way that Fleur had made the makeup so subtle. She had highlighted her features and used natural tones instead of doing anything gaudy or overstated. Just a little mascara, a dusting of blush, and a hint of eyeshadow that almost shimmered in the low light – but it was all in tones that matched her skin, so it wasn’t overly noticeable. It left her looking exactly like herself, just... fancier.
But as her eyes traced over her face, she realized that her appearance was still flawless and that Fleur’s talents with makeup went beyond anything that she herself was capable of. Her hair was twisted into a beautiful knot at the base of her neck on the right-hand side. It was loose but elegant, natural, and charmed to stay in place. Small tendrils of curls framed her face, and it looked far more refined than she felt. Staring at herself for another silent moment, she let out a breath then stepped away, moving back to Arthur.
“I’m ready,” she said firmly, ensuring that her masking charm was in place.
She had hidden every single mark on her body beneath it, trusting that if she got too tired to hold it, Nasir would take over and control it for her as he had in the past. She had gotten better at allowing people to see some of the marks that littered her body – but she didn’t want them here tonight. Not when she married Harry. Not when her dress was so beautiful and this night was so perfect. They were a part of her, and she had accepted them, but she didn’t want them to be the focus. She would show them later after the ceremony was over when it was just her and Harry.
And even if she changed her mind or the charms all failed, the dress that Fleur had selected would hide the only scar she truly hated on her body beneath the lace sleeves. The others – the red line on her neck, the starburst on her shoulder, and her topmost werewolf scar, like her silver-skinned arm – didn’t bother her at all anymore. They could show later in the night when she had calmed down. It would be okay, even if it did make her a little uncomfortable.
“Alright,” Arthur said, holding out his arm to her, and she took it with a shaking hand. “One step at a time.”
“One step at a time,” she repeated, smiling at him as he led her toward the door.
The cottage was empty and silent when they stepped out of the room. Hermione fought to keep her heart steady as they made their way across the familiar space toward the opened door. She could see a bunch of tiny little candles floating in the air, and she wondered who had charmed them – and how on earth Fleur had time to set all this up. The cold December air stung her face as they stepped into the night and the sound of the rolling waves filled her ears. She could see the large tent off in the distance, and she felt all the air leave her lungs as she looked at it.
It was decorated floor to ceiling.
Winter flowers hung from the frame of the tent, all but hiding it completely. The roof had been charmed to be mostly see-through, and the entire thing was lit by more candles. It was beautiful. It was quiet. It was calm. It was perfect. And she realized then that Fleur must have gotten half a dozen people to set this up while she did her hair and makeup inside. The tent hadn’t been there when she arrived earlier that day, and there was no way that Fleur would have had time to do this on her own.
Her eyes stung as she looked at it and thought about how much work these people had put in. They were getting closer now, yet she still didn’t hear a sound as they walked across the snow-free path that had been carved along the sand. She could see chairs. She could see people in those chairs. Her heart started to race with panic as she took in all the faces that had turned around to look at her. She felt her legs start to shake. There were so many faces. All of them recognizable, all of them silent, stunned, and staring at her with love as they stood from their seats.
It hurt.
She couldn’t breathe.
She was wrong.
She couldn’t do this.
They were all looking at her, and it was too much.
Her left arm started to tremble, and Arthur slowed at her side.
It felt like her heart was going to explode in her chest with panic as all the guilt came rushing in.
They had done too much. This was too much. She couldn’t handle it.
She gripped Arthur tighter as she struggled to swallow and she stopped at the edge of the tent, unable to take another step.
‘Hermione.’
The sound of her name was breathless and gentle in her mind. She shivered at the whisper, lifting her gaze to the front of the tent. Remus was in the center, Nasir and Liza stood next to the place where she was supposed to have been half an hour ago while Ginny and Susan flanked the right – but she barely even saw them as her eyes found his.
Harry.
Her Harry.
His piercing green gaze was shining in the night. She could see a myriad of emotions racing behind it – a thousand unspoken words as he opened the bond completely and let his love pour through. Tears filled her eyes. She gripped Arthur tight. She inhaled sharply as she looked at the expression of pure love on his face and her heart stuttered in her chest.
‘You look beautiful,’ Harry whispered as his eyes shifted over her form. He couldn’t seem to get enough. Her heart fluttered with panic and want, and when he met her gaze once more, she saw his eyes crease. ‘Just look at me. It’s just you and me.’
‘Just you and me,’ she whispered back, seeing his eyes shine at her words.
‘You can do this,’ he said softly, but she could hear the concern in his voice. ‘But you don’t have to. It’s okay – we can stop.’
But her head started to shake at his words as she inhaled hard. She gripped Arthur tightly for support, then forced herself to take another step, her leg shaking as her foot touched the wooden boards inside the tent.
‘I want to,’ she breathed, sending the words to him as she let out a breath and forced herself to focus on his love. ‘I want to do this with you.’
She felt a burst of love push through the bond, filling her head and blocking out everything else as Arthur guided her up the row between the chairs. Without him at her side holding her shaking hand, she never could have done it. Without Nasir taking over her masking charm and holding it in place, she would have given up. Without Harry standing there before her, watching her like she was the only thing in the world – she never would have been able to overcome the sickening anxiety in her chest.
But he was there.
Always.
Holding her head up above the water and filling her life with love.
She hugged Arthur when she reached the front, watching as the man hugged Harry tightly before giving her hands to him. She couldn’t hear anything. Everything around her was a blur, and at first, Remus’s voice didn’t even register in her mind as he asked their guests to remain standing while he initiated the bond.
Her eyes locked to Harry’s face. Her body followed his lead, her fingers intertwining with his as Remus asked them to join hands so he could start the incantation for the marriage bond. She barely heard the words he uttered before magic rippled over her skin and danced over her body. Then suddenly, her heart started to calm.
Why was she afraid when she was here with him? Why was she nervous when all of these people had done nothing but prop her up and never let her fall? Why was she scared when this was the happiest day of her life, and she had fought with everything that she had to get here?
Remus’s voice started to clear as he greeted their guests, thanked them for being here, and asked them to sit. The blurred edges of her vision sharpened, and she could see the room from the corner of her eye. Harry was looking at her with adoration, and it made her heart explode as a warm, genuine smile split across her lips.
‘I love you,’ she whispered as Remus opened the book he was holding to recite the lines that she and Harry had pre-approved.
‘I love you,’ he responded, and her heart nearly burst.
Her smile split wider, her eyes creasing as her gaze trailed over Harry’s face. His eyes were shining. His hair was cut, yet still dishevelled as always. He was wearing a black tie, perfectly pinned in place beneath his vest and jacket, resting on his crisp white shirt. She hadn’t seen his suit beforehand, just as he had not seen her dress, and she found herself genuinely excited at the prospect of having a picture of the two of them together from this night.
She listened to Remus speak, though her eyes never left Harry’s face.
She recited the lines she had memorized weeks ago, amazed at how calmly and how surely they left her lips. Her voice didn’t shake once. She watched Harry do the same, reciting his verse without faltering before they both uttered the second incantation in unison. Remus spoke again, talking about love, talking about joy, talking about hope. She promised to love Harry and treat him with respect. He promised to love her and support her through the worst. They promised to be there for each other, no matter what, no matter how hard – always.
Then Remus said the final incantation. Harry slid a thin band onto her left ring finger, and she slid one onto his. She felt the marriage bond magic warm, and then it sunk into her skin.
“It is my honour and my great pleasure to pronounce you man and wife,” Remus said, and she could hear the barely contained emotion in his voice. “You two deserve more happiness than the world is capable of giving. May your love keep you strong, may your home keep you warm, and may your friends and family here today keep you safe, happy, and whole. Harry, you may kiss your bride.”
She didn’t even think about it.
She didn’t care that there were people all around.
She stepped forward, reaching up to grip the lapel of his suit tightly as his arm circled her waist, his hand cupped her face, and his lips met her own. She kissed him – she kissed him because she loved him more than anything in the world, and she wanted everyone to know it.
She melted against his lips as the dull sound of applause and cheers filled her ears.
Then everything erupted in a blur of colours.
Fred and George set off fireworks above the tent. Ginny and Susan stepped forward to congratulate them as Remus hugged her tight. She grinned and laughed, smiling so widely, her face physically ached as everyone forgot their chairs, threw the ‘traditional process’ to the wind, and began making their way to the front.
She hugged Liza hard, then buried her face in Nasir’s chest as she thanked him for upholding her masking charm. She nearly cried when Molly brought out her cake, and she held Fleur so tightly, she very well might have bruised the woman as she thanked her for everything. But Fleur didn’t care, the blonde laughed and cried, taking pictures of them and their guests as everything became a blur.
She hugged Arthur hard, her body shaking in his arms as her eyes stung with tears. She spoke to every single guest. She and Harry thanked them all for coming. She greeted Narcissa with a smile, then hugged Snape – knowing he would hate it – and was surprised when he awkwardly patted her back in return. Then they rapidly discussed his potential breakthrough before Narcissa overhead and told Snape to stop and allow her to enjoy the night without ‘work’. She shook Draco’s hand, accepted his gift, and talked to his wife with Harry. She could tell he was uncomfortable being here, but she had asked Fleur to invite him because without his quick action and extensive knowledge of dark magic, she would have died the year previous during a raid gone wrong.
She gripped Harry tightly, moving around the tent with him as they spoke to each person and music filled the air. She thanked Neville for supplying all the flowers and helping to decorate the tent. The chairs were pushed to the side as people began to eat the food on the long table to the north. She tried everything there, then ate a second plate even though she was full because she refused to miss trying anything after all the work Ava and Molly had put in.
She thanked Molly profusely, making the woman cry and nearly getting smothered in the process. She watched Remus dance with Ava as the candles grew dim. She watched Fred kiss Lee Jordan before pulling him out onto the dance floor as Molly’s eyes shone with joy at the sight. George twirled his wife, Angelina, dancing despite his permanent limp as Liza and Riley made their way over to the table to get more food. She grinned as Ginny and Susan dragged Hagrid out onto the floor while Griphook and Ragnok watched quietly from their table. She visited with the two goblins for a while, thanking them for coming and promising them that she was still working on their latest proposal and would have it done soon.
Harry had burst out laughing when Ragnok panicked, telling her not to worry about work during her own wedding. Then he assured the goblin it was not his doing – it was just how his wife was.
His wife.
She was his wife.
And he was her husband.
She leaned over and kissed him before they made their way over to talk to Shacklebolt and Bill. She danced with Harry countless times, knowing that without the firewhisky that Fleur was serving, she probably wouldn’t have been able to do it. Her nerves had burned with anxiety as he twirled her around the floor the first time, but as the night grew later and the candles grew lower, she started to care less and less.
For how could she be worried about looking silly or wasting important time when everyone around them was smiling with joy as more fireworks lit up the sky?
She danced with Arthur twice, holding the man tightly as her heart all but burst. Then, when the song ended, she slowly made her way toward the tall figure quietly partaking in the occasion from the corner as Harry moved toward Ginny.
“Hey,” Hermione greeted, approaching him with a smile. “Do you dance?”
“No,” Nasir replied in his familiar flat baritone, though he smiled at her in return, and his eyes glinted in the low light.
“Oh,” Hermione said, glancing to her left to see Harry take Ginny’s hand and bring her out onto the floor. “That’s too bad.”
She looked back at Nasir, smiling once more and deciding that she would lean against the pillar by his side and wait this song out. But before she could move, he shifted. His arms unfolded from his chest as he pushed off the tent pillar, and then, to her surprise, he outstretched his left hand.
“Nasir,” Hermione said softly, shaking her head as she looked at him. “You don’t have to just because I came over here to ask.”
“It’s your wedding,” he said slowly, taking a step toward her.
“So?” She arched a brow. “Weddings don’t mandate dancing. I’m not going to force you to do it if you don’t like it. We can just hang out here.”
“I said that I didn’t dance, Hermione,” Nasir responded, taking her hand. “Not that I couldn’t dance or that I disliked it.”
She let him guide her out into the open space, ignoring the look she got from Molly and grinning at the surprised expression on Snape’s face as she stepped toward the man’s chest. She tilted her head up to meet his dark gaze as his blunt arm circled her waist, and he held her right hand – then he shifted, and her feet moved with his.
“You actually can dance,” she said in surprise as he moved her around the floor.
“If I couldn’t, I wouldn’t,” he said, looking at her in amusement as she grinned.
Even with their close bond and with knowing him so thoroughly after watching his memories four years ago, he still often surprised her. He was still shrouded in mystery, and he constantly taught or showed her new things. Just last month, she had found out that he could knit – why or how he had learned it, she had no idea. But apparently, his bag of tricks was even deeper than she had expected, and she doubted that she would ever know him completely, no matter how much time passed or how close they remained.
“When did you learn?” she asked him as Remus and Ava danced past their left.
“A long time ago,” Nasir said quietly, and Hermione’s grin returned.
Hearing laughter to her right, she glanced over to see Ginny twirling Harry across the floor. Susan was nearly in tears, clutching the stitch in her side as Ginny attempted to dip Harry without dropping him on the floor. And suddenly, the dull pain that always lingered in her heart ached like a fresh wound.
“Thank you,” Hermione whispered as she glanced up to Nasir’s tall form once more and held his dark gaze. He had changed a lot in the last six years, but he had remained her friend, mentor, family, and colleague through it all. Always nearby, always part of her life, and always there for support as he helped her and Harry become stronger than before. “For everything. I wouldn’t be here today without you. We wouldn’t have gotten a chance at this life without you.”
“It was my pleasure, Hermione,” Nasir said quietly, his voice soft as his eyes creased in a genuine smile. “You and Harry are a truly beautiful couple, and I am honoured to be here to celebrate this with you both.”
Her eyes started to sting again.
She swallowed hard, blinking away the tears before she pressed her forehead to his chest and stepped closer to his frame. She danced with him for two more songs. Then she danced with Arthur once more before dancing with Fred and George. She danced with Ava twice, then let Remus twirl her around the floor, nearly falling over in the process and laughing hysterically with the man when they went to go get another drink. She thanked him for officiating their wedding and waved goodbye to him and Ava when they both left shortly after to go pick up Charlie and Teddy from Andromeda.
She danced with Liza twice, then danced with Riley – which left the girl blushing a violent shade of red. She let Fleur take more pictures and thanked the woman again and again before dancing with Bill. She danced with Harry three more times, losing track of space and time as the night seemed to stretch on into forever.
People were starting to leave.
Her feet hurt.
Her back hurt.
Her face hurt from smiling so much, but she didn’t care. She gripped Harry tighter, looking up into his eyes as he twirled her beneath the stars, and everything else faded away.
“I love you, Harry Potter,” Hermione whispered, pushing up on her toes to kiss his lips as his hand pressed her tightly to his chest.
“I love you, Hermione Granger,” he murmured. He kissed her slowly before his mouth trailed toward her ear. She shivered in his hold, a rush of desire flooding her veins despite the exhaustion in her bones. “Want to go home?”
“Yes,” she whispered, gripping him even tighter. “Take me home.”
-x-x-
Hello everyone,
I am so sorry for the delay in getting these last two chapters posted. Thank you for sticking with me so long, tolerating my delays, being so kind and understanding, and putting up with me. I know that, like this story, I am far from perfect.
I hope you enjoyed the ride.
I can’t believe I’m about to mark this work as complete.
I can’t believe this is over.
Two and a half years.
I’m not really sure what to say. I’m sure later I will have many thoughts, but right now, my mind is empty, and I’m at a loss. This has consumed so much of my life the last few years.
Otherwise... please enjoy the final chapter<3
January 9, 2017
Nineteen years later…
Cold air tugged at her curls. Large, fluffy flakes of snow had started to fall, and they were covering the freshly cleaned walkway, but her feet left no trace as she made her way towards the familiar door. She smiled as she saw it. It was funny to think that the dark wood brought her joy, because she would never have anticipated it nearly two decades ago.
Now, coming here made her heart calm as it filled with nostalgic feelings. After he made the move to the country one year post-war, she had spent endless amounts of time here. Brewing, reading, researching, yelling (it couldn’t be helped), and even sleeping on his couch on a few occasions as she waited for potions to simmer. The man had changed a lot over the years, but then again, so had everyone.
She let out a quiet breath as her smile grew somewhat sad, and she gripped Harry’s hand tighter. She was feeling more emotional today than normal, and even though the feelings were blunted, they still churned in her chest. She felt him squeeze her hand in return as a warm rush of love crept between their bond. Nineteen years later, and she would never get sick of it. She would never get sick of him. She turned her head to look at him through the snow, and his piercing green eyes creased as he smiled at her in return.
Harry had changed a lot after the war too, but in recent years, the ageing of his physical appearance had started to slow. She wondered how it would work. She wondered how long he would look thirty-three and how long she would look as she did. There was no data or research to cite. No one had ever done what they did before, and Harry’s time in the In Between was yet another factor that had impacted his physiology. She didn’t know what would happen as time went on. He might look thirty for the rest of his life, and she might just age half the speed as those around her. It was impossible to say, but she didn’t care.
It didn’t matter.
All that mattered was that they were alive and would continue to live as they loved those around them and fought to make this world a better place.
She returned her gaze back to the approaching home, her eyes flicking to the windows and eavestroughs. There were muggle Christmas lights still up. They glittered in the fading sun, and she smirked, wondering if Narcissa had forced him to do it or if she had just done it herself. She knew he probably hated it, but she also knew that he wasn’t nearly as miserable as he let on, so the idea of him grumbling in annoyance only made her smirk grow.
“Oh!” Hermione said, halting mid-step just a few feet from the porch. Her eyes shifted to Harry in question. “Did you remember the gift? I left it on the bench in the hall, but I forgot to ask you to grab it.”
“I got it, mum!”
“I did grab it,” Harry said, turning back with Hermione to look over their shoulders. “But she was determined to carry it herself since she picked it out.”
“Of course she was,” Hermione murmured, her eyes crinkling as their daughter held the beautifully wrapped box up above her head. It was nearly nine feet in the air, and Hermione shook her head with a sigh. “Don’t drop it, Rose. It will break.”
“I won’t,” Rose said, lowering the box once more to rest it on Nasir’s head. She was sitting on his shoulders, which was one of her favourite places to be, and Hermione knew the girl must have gotten that trait from her father, since she hated heights. Rose grinned widely, completely at ease as the tall man beneath her held her legs to keep her steady while being entirely indifferent about the box resting on his head. “You worry too much, mummy!”
Hermione let out a sigh, rolling her eyes back to Harry and giving him a look, but her husband only grinned.
“I know, I know,” Harry said teasingly as he squeezed her hand while the other two caught up. “She’s too much like me.”
“She’s too much like you when you were a kid,” Hermione mumbled, but her heart only warmed, then her voice dropped to a low whisper. “And I’m happy that’s the case. I’m glad she doesn’t have anything to be afraid of.”
“Me too,” Harry whispered.
“Do you think he will like it?” Rose asked as the four of them closed the remaining distance to the front door. Hermione saw Nasir’s lips twitch into a smirk, and she stifled her own laugh as Harry squeezed her hand again.
“Oh, I’m sure it will be his most favourite gift yet,” Nasir replied, his low baritone making the small girl on his shoulders grin happily as the door opened automatically.
Hermione led the way inside, Harry taking the present from Rose as Nasir ducked beneath the doorframe, then shifted to lower Rose to the ground. Hermione barely managed to get the coat and boots off her daughter before she bolted toward the figure who had entered the hallway.
“SEVY!” she squealed in delight, her dark chocolate curls fanning out behind her as she ran toward the tall man and all but jumped onto him.
The girl had no fear.
Not a single ounce of it in her bones, and she was the only person in the world aside from Scorpius who could get away with calling Severus Snape ‘Sevy’.
The man groaned as he caught her, and he rolled his eyes in annoyance as he frowned. Yet Rose didn’t care. She never cared. She had been exposed to him and Nasir since birth. She had spent time with plenty of people who were permanently injured or blunted from the war. She ran around with Liza in the farmyard pen during the full moon and fell asleep in Snape’s private potion lab while her mother and Snape brewed late into the night – trying to create new potions that could help immeasurable numbers of people. She flew with Harry on his broom and followed Nasir around like a shadow whenever he was at Grimmauld Place. She played with Ginny and Susan’s twins and chased Weasley twin fireworks every summer as she raced across the sand at Shell Cottage.
She always greeted Draco Malfoy with a hug, then would run off with Scorpius to play the second she let go. She loved Narcissa and would follow the woman around the kitchen, asking questions about her clothes or cooking. She never once thought it was strange that Arthur didn’t have a leg or that Ava didn’t have an arm. She would go to Gringotts with Harry and ask to see Ragnok, then show the goblin her drawings – occasionally giving him one to ‘put up in his office’. She helped Fleur pick beach flowers, not questioning the scars that covered the beautiful woman’s arm or the ones that covered Bill’s face. She didn’t think it was weird that the couple had children with different coloured hair because they had adopted three kids before finally having one of their own. She sat with her parents at the table when Shacklebolt came by to discuss work, and she accepted every single person she met for who they were without question.
Because she had never, not once in the entirety of her life, been told to do anything but.
From the second that she was born, Hermione and Harry exposed her to people and creatures from all walks of life. They answered her questions honestly and let her know that the world was not always a perfect place – but they taught her how to try to better it. They showed her that beings of different appearances and natures could be good and that people needed to be measured based on what they did, not what they looked like or where they came from.
The idea that a werewolf was anything different from her was a foreign concept to her mind. The notion that goblins were less than her wasn’t something that registered. She cared about everyone and everything, following her parent’s example and judging those around her by their actions.
Which was why she could hug Snape tightly before grinning up at the man with joy. She knew who he was. She knew what he was like. She knew when he was actually upset, and his rough personality was simply not a deterrent.
“Happy birthday!” she said brightly as Snape set her back on the ground.
“Happy birthday, Rose,” he replied, lifting his head to nod toward Hermione, Harry, and Nasir as they took off their snow-covered boots and vanished the mess on the floor.
“Is Cissa here?” Rose asked, her green eyes growing bright with questions. “And Scorpius?”
“She’s in the kitchen,” Snape answered. “Scorpius and Draco aren’t here yet.”
“I’m gonna go say hi,” Rose said, turning to bolt down the hall before freezing mid-step and looking back at her parents. “Is that okay?”
“Yes,” Harry said, grabbing the present that was floating in the air by his side as they made their way toward Snape. “But you know the rules. No running inside.”
“I know,” Rose said, turning back toward the doorway once more and walking away as quickly as her tiny legs would carry her toward the kitchen at the back of the house.
“You know we don’t have to do this every year just because we share a birthday,” Snape grumbled, but he accepted the gift that Harry held out anyway and started leading them back to the kitchen. “Shouldn’t she have birthday parties with kids her age?”
“That was yesterday,” Nasir responded evenly, as if him engaging in a game of tag and setting off fireworks with the twins to entertain children under the age of ten was the most normal thing in the world. He pulled a small box from his pocket and handed it to Snape as they entered the kitchen. “Happy birthday, Severus.”
“Oh good, another present,” Snape sighed, setting them both down on the table before he pinched the bridge of his nose in irritation. “I said not to bother.”
“We know,” Hermione smiled, patting his arm once before moving around him to peek into the living room. “But it’s tradition now – hello, Phineas! How are you?”
Snape let out a low groan, but she only grinned as Phineas greeted her cheerfully. She had given the second portrait to Snape after the war, but she always made time to say hello. She heard Nasir ask Snape about his latest potion trials as Harry made his way over to Narcissa to say hello.
It was always the same. Every year. Narcissa would invite them to his house for his birthday. He would grumble about it the whole night, they would give him gifts that he didn’t want, and then they would leave to head home after dinner. As time went by, Snape grumbled a bit less, dinner grew longer, and they started to stay afterwards to talk.
Once Rose was born, on Snape’s birthday of all days, things changed again. Hermione would bundle Rose up against the cold and bring her along. Rose thought it was ‘cool’ that they shared a birthday and always insisted on picking out the gift. Malfoy, whose son Scorpius was born the year prior, would come too, and as the kids got older, they started to play. Nasir came every year, too, which was no surprise. The man had become such an integral piece of their life he was almost always around for birthdays, holidays, weekends, or other critical life-changing moments unless there was an emergency going on. In which case, she and Harry would often be right by his side with Shacklebolt helping to resolve it while Arthur, Fleur, or the girls watched Rose.
It was a bit of a strange dynamic, and she was sure that there were some people who thought it weird.
But it wasn’t.
Not for them.
Not after everything that had happened, and the truth was, she wouldn’t have it any other way. She couldn’t imagine her life being anything else.
Harry had gifted Nasir Regulus’s old bedroom on the topmost floor of Grimmauld Place. Then he had charmed the window to remain open but warded, allowing the man access to come and go as he pleased. It was something that just made sense, especially since they worked together so closely at the Ministry. Their jobs and lives were intertwined in a way that could not be categorized or broken, and it was always much easier to work together in the same space than not. So, Nasir split his time between their place and his own, a small cottage in the country which he had bought just two years after the war.
Their days of tent living were long gone, and every time he showed up at Grimmauld Place, Rose would immediately rush upstairs to greet him. It wasn’t uncommon to come downstairs and see him having tea at their table, and multiple times over the years, Hermione had come downstairs to find him and Harry deep in discussion reviewing notes in the middle of the night or reading the Prophet at the table across from one another in the morning. She had spent countless nights having tea with him and endless hours talking to him about new ideas.
They went to his place just as often to train since it was a lot easier to learn dangerous magic when there were no neighbours or other buildings around – but he was always welcome in their home. It wasn’t something that was ever questioned, just like how all the Weasleys, Ava, Remus, Liza, Neville, Snape, Narcissa, Shacklebolt, Scorpius, Malfoy, and his wife could pop by whenever they wanted.
It had taken them some time to get to that point with the others. The first few years of adjusting to life outside of war had been difficult. Even now, there were habits that she could not break. She always cast silent detection spells whenever she landed somewhere new, and she wore her shield charm outside of Grimmauld Place. They had spent so long mastering it, the charm lasted the whole day, and she could easily cast it on any of those that she cared about without fear of hurting them. She always walked with a silencing spell on her feet while robotically vanishing her footsteps. She always double-checked the alarms before bed and kept her notes and research coded. The modified wards around their home helped to ease her lingering anxiety, as they gave her advance notice of guests before they knocked on the door, so she didn’t jump out of her skin. And Nasir’s consistent training over the years left her fit, capable, and more at ease, given that she knew she could easily take out most threats.
But it was still challenging at times.
She had bad days that left her feeling hollow, empty, and worn. The rune on her chest sat as a heavy reminder of their past and the darkness in her soul never went away. But she learned how to soothe it and ease the pain. She leaned on Harry, and he leaned on her. She let her love for those around them and her love for their daughter fill the empty spaces in her heart and mend the anguish that cracked through her bones. She used it like a bandage, refusing to slip into the shadows, and instead clinging to the light and the hope that she’d had back in August of 1997 when they first left the Burrow to try and end the war.
And over time, slowly, with the help of everyone around them – namely Arthur, Shacklebolt, Nasir, and Ava – they had gotten better, and life had become less painful.
She smiled as Phineas told her about his latest eavesdropping in the castle, catching sight of Harry quietly wishing Snape a happy birthday from the corner of her eye. The two of them had a strange relationship, and she wasn’t sure that most people understood it. Watching them, one might assume they disliked each other, but she knew that wasn’t the case. Harry respected Snape, and Snape respected Harry. They weren’t friends. They never chatted for very long, and they were rarely ever seen alone together. Hermione and Nasir still acted as their buffer, but they coexisted with no issues, they never fought, and they were comfortable sitting in silence together. They acknowledged that the hatchet was buried, established a working and functional relationship, then gave each other space, and opted to only make exchanges when necessary or, rarely, desired.
It was more than anything anyone could have hoped for. They’d moved on – both of them had, and it made her heart warm.
Rose darted into the living room, waving to Phineas as Hermione scooped her up from the ground so she could see the portrait better. She held the girl steadily as she told Phineas all about her party the day before, and Phineas listened intently as he leaned against the frame of his portrait. They talked for a few minutes, then the front door opened, and Hermione set Rose down so she could go to greet her friend.
“Go say hello,” Phineas said to Hermione, nodding his head toward the front door. “We can talk later.”
“Alright.” Hermione nodded, gently touching his frame out of habit before she made her way behind Rose toward the foyer.
“Hello!” Rose said excitedly as she grabbed Malfoy’s leg and hugged it tightly. The tall blonde touched her head, ruffling her hair in greeting before she let go.
“Happy Birthday, Rose,” Malfoy said before turning to look at Hermione and nodding. “Granger.”
“Malfoy.” Hermione nodded in return, taking his extended pale hand and giving it a shake. He returned her firm grip despite the tremble in his hand. It had lessened over the years, but it had never gone away; another reminder of what had passed and just how strange their dynamic had become.
It hadn’t always been easy to do, shaking his hand and looking at him without hatred or disgust, but as her eyes glanced down toward her daughter, she knew it was the right thing to do. And she knew that it was the only way to live. She refused to allow her daughter to grow up in the same turbulent world that she had as a kid. She refused to allow the blood-prejudiced views to continue, and more than that, she refused to be part of the problem. Especially when Narcissa and Malfoy were so determined to change their ways – supporting Shacklebolt and working with them on countless occasions.
So it didn’t matter that there had been days in the past where it was hard to smile at Malfoy and treat him like she would anyone else. It didn’t matter that she still held lingering resentment toward his family for their part leading up to the war. She would never forget what happened. She would never forget where they started, and she would always keep it in mind – but she would also never forget that he had apparated hundreds of students to safety and saved her life during a raid fourteen years ago.
So, she had long ago chosen to forgive him and bury the hatchet, much like Harry had with Snape. But, like with everything else post-war, it had gotten easier with time, and she was glad for that.
“Happy fifth birthday, Rose!” Scorpius exclaimed excitedly, holding out a handmade card after kicking off his snowy boots.
“You made me another card?” Rose asked, another smile splitting across her face as she delicately took the coloured construction paper and looked at the card with awe. “It’s so beautiful – thank you!”
“You’re welcome.” Scorpius blushed as he took off his coat. “Um – want to play before dinner?”
“Yeah!” Rose exclaimed. “Come on – let’s go! Sevy still has a tree up, and Cissa said stuff is hidden in it!”
“Okay!”
“Wait, wait, wait – take off your hat!” Malfoy called, stepping forward and narrowly managing to grab the knitted toque Molly had made from his son’s head before he bolted out of the hallway with Rose. He let out a long sigh and turned to look at Hermione with an exhausted look as he tossed the hat on the small bench. “It took me ten minutes to force it on his head. You would think he would be itching to take it off.”
“You would think so.” Hermione laughed, taking the box that Malfoy was holding so he could take off his jacket. She eyed the box curiously, her brow furrowing in thought. “Is there something alive in here?”
“Sort of,” Malfoy said. He smirked as he hung up his jacket, then grabbed the box from her hands before heading down the hallway. “It’s a surprise.”
“I’m sure Severus will be thrilled.”
Dinner was delicious, as it was every year. They talked about work. They talked about research. Narcissa quietly asked her son how Astoria was doing, and Malfoy said that the latest batch of experimental potions Hermione had helped to prepare were helping and that his wife was sad she could not attend, but had helped to pick out Snape’s present. So far, they had managed to avoid runes or other extreme forms of magic to treat her blood condition, but during the potion regimen that she and Snape had developed, the woman was left with little energy. Hermione had tagged Astoria five years ago when the condition first set in, linking it back to Malfoy so he could monitor her and send her messages. That tag was the only reason why he was comfortable going out anywhere and leaving her home alone – because they had constant communication, and he could check her vitals at any time.
He had thanked her profusely for that, offering to pay her back, but Hermione wouldn’t hear of it because she understood it. And Draco’s love for his wife was one of the things she actually respected about the man.
For dessert, Narcissa served pie, and Rose and Scorpius broke out into a loud version of happy birthday, much to Snape’s displeasure. When they were done, and Snape had let out a heavy sigh, Hermione pulled out the rose apple tarts that she had made, knowing that Scorpius would devour them and his father would take the leftovers home for himself at the end of the night – just like every year.
Then Nasir and Snape continued to discuss the latest research they were working on as Harry and Malfoy discussed possible solutions to the newest find of dark artifacts. Rose and Scorpius disappeared into the living room to talk to Phineas, and the dishes were sent to the sink to self-wash as Hermione made tea and Narcissa told her about the latest proposed changes to the wizarding preschool curriculum that she was trying to implement with Molly.
Tea was calm and quiet. The kids were exhausted from the party the day before, but they watched Snape open his gifts with excitement nonetheless. As it turned out, the gift from Malfoy and Astoria was a plant – jasmine – which expanded the second he opened the box and unfolded into a sizable potted shrub. Despite the eye roll Snape made, both Malfoy and Hermione grinned because they knew that he liked it. He used it in his potions and tea a lot, and he was constantly pestering Neville for new supplies, but had never bothered to get one of his own.
Shortly after Snape floated the plant over to the window, Shacklebolt dropped by to give Snape a gift (much to his displeasure). He joined them in the kitchen moments before the front door opened yet again, and none other than Neville Longbottom showed up with yet another plant for his ex-professor.
Out of all the relationships that had formed over the years, theirs might have been the most odd given their history. But the two had formed a working relationship due to Neville’s successful greenhouses and Snape’s private potion practice. Collaborating benefited them both and benefitted the wizarding world. So as much as it didn’t make any sense at all, it made all the sense in the world.
After gifts were done, the conversation continued. Narcissa lit a fire in the fireplace as thick snow collected on the windowsills and ice frosted up the glass. It was cozy. It was comfortable. Hermione excused herself from the large wooden table to make more tea, then leaned back against the familiar countertop as her eyes traced over the room.
Everyone looked happy.
Everyone looked calm.
Even Snape, who ‘hated’ having visitors or people in ‘his space’, had come around on seeing people once a year, though he was still selective about who he allowed to enter his home. Not everyone had free access through the door. That privilege was reserved for her, Harry, Narcissa, Nasir, and Malfoy. The others usually had to be granted access after knocking, but tonight was a rare exception, and she suspected that it was Narcissa letting the other guests in. She knew that he would tolerate Shacklebolt, Neville, Ginny, Susan, Fleur, Bill, the twins, and Arthur without too much grumbling, but any others were usually met with dark glares.
Still, it was progress and a massive improvement from where he had been nineteen years ago.
He never returned to Hogwarts. Not while the repairs were ongoing. Not when the repairs were done. Not even at the request of McGonagall, who wanted help adjusting the ward restrictions. Instead, he told her she could describe the issue to him, and he would help her from his home, or he would not help her at all. It wasn’t something that Hermione ever questioned, and frankly, she didn’t blame him. Thus, carving up Death Eaters on the northern front before apparating to the Shrieking Shack was the last time his feet had ever set foot on Hogwarts grounds.
Over the years, she worked with him in potions research. After successfully developing a less toxic version of the dreamless sleeping draught potion in January 1999, it became apparent that despite the tension that lingered between them, they worked well together. So, when Snape opened up a private potions practice to help fill the gap created by Peter’s death, Hermione became his part-time assistant of sorts next to Malfoy. She helped with the research and experimental brews, splitting her time between his private labs here and the Ministry, working her main job next to Harry and Nasir as they assisted Shacklebolt with the endless list of things that needed to be addressed.
It wasn’t easy.
She burned the candle on both ends for many years and worked herself to the bone. Change didn’t come freely. Shacklebolt wasn’t always well-liked. There were plenty of dangerous moments as they fought to modify legislation and give back rights to werewolves, centaurs, and goblins. She lost the pinky finger on her left hand two years prior. Harry got a nasty scar on his leg. After getting hit with some nasty dark magic, Nasir broke his left femur while saving Shacklebolt’s life for a second time. He broke it so badly, she hadn’t been sure she would be able to heal it. It had taken her nearly a week to repair it with Liza’s help, but, miraculously, they managed it, and she hadn’t even needed to give him another rune – which despite Nasir having gifted Liza a dagger to use for her medical work as a healer upon graduation, was something that Hermione refused to teach the girl.
Most people thought of them as Shacklebolt’s personal guard, his private defence trio that protected him at all times. They weren’t wrong – Harry saved the Minister twice during an attempted assassination at the ten-year post-war memorial, and Hermione had killed six people that night while helping to protect a group of goblins, and that was just one instance – but they weren’t right, either. Together she, Harry, and Nasir did so much more than protect the Minister, and her primary job was technically research. Trouble just seemed to find them, which was nothing surprising given their track record. Yet despite the danger, she wouldn’t have changed it for the world, because in the last nineteen years, things had gotten better.
With Harry and Nasir’s help, she had created a safe and permanent subdermal banding solution for those infected with lycanthropy. The underlying magic was sealed and tamper-proof, and they had managed to keep the design confidential so it would not fall into the wrong hands by establishing the voluntary program as a private company contracted through the Ministry. She was the CEO of said company, and thus she maintained control and made sure their records and methods were confidential despite prying Ministry eyes. The banding was available to anyone infected through Ministry funding, and the program was currently in its tenth year of operation throughout Britain.
Shacklebolt was in talks with the French and American Ministries to discuss sharing the technology, and as a result of her initial test work, Ava and Remus had been independently banded within one year of the war, so they no longer needed to worry about Charlie or Teddy’s safety. And Liza, who was sorted into Ravenclaw in September of 1999, had been able to complete her schooling with no issues.
For the last ten years, other werewolf students went to school unafraid of telling their peers what they were and without needing to be hidden away from the others during the full moon. Instead, they spent the night in their wolf form, calm, controlled, and completely aware of their surroundings. They could choose to remain in their rooms for the night, or they could wander the grounds with Hagrid and play in the paddock that he had made for them by the lake.
It was a different world at Hogwarts now. With the original house meanings retired and the sorting ceremony completely randomized, the dynamic had started to change. Prejudice toward house preference was now more strongly linked to ‘favourite colours’ than anything else, and students were much less anxious about where they would land. McGonagall constantly updated the curriculum to reflect the changing world around them and had implemented a mandatory Muggle Studies course, among other things, to help the two worlds combine.
It wasn’t perfect, but the world was safer, and the statistics showed a huge improvement in muggleborn NEWT performance as well as a decline in accidents at school.
The hatred, while still there, was lessened, and the younger generations that followed them were starting to change. She knew it would take time to completely move forward. She knew those from her generation might not ever completely heal – but that was okay. They were the stepping-stones to something better, and when they finally died, she hoped that they would take the last remnants of the war with them to the grave.
She could already see the chasmic changes as she looked around the room and heard Ginny and Susan’s voices ring out from the door. Yet another unexpected bond that had been forged after Ginny completed her NEWTs, then surprised everyone around her by boldly asking Snape to mentor her in potions. Post-Battle, she had become obsessed with them. After watching them save her father’s life, her partner’s life, and her own life, she dove headfirst into the field and then became the new Potions Professor at Hogwarts seven years after the war, while Susan pursued a career in charmwork for the Ministry.
Hermione watched as everyone shuffled around the large kitchen, a heavy but warm stillness echoing through her heart.
Nasir had lifted Rose from the ground, holding her up so she could show her new birthday card to Phineas properly while Scorpius blushed furiously by their side. Ginny greeted Harry with a hug, Susan shook Malfoy’s hand, Snape looked irritated as he was given yet another gift that he didn’t want, and Neville went to the window to look at the jasmine plant. Narcissa offered them all dessert. Rose asked where the twins (their godchildren) were, only to stifle a yawn behind her hand as Ginny explained that they had fallen asleep on the couch next to their grandfather at the Burrow after dinner. Which inevitably resulted in Rose asking her father if she could go visit Grandpa Arthur tomorrow because she missed him, even though she had seen him at her party yesterday for nearly the entire day – and she saw him nearly every Sunday during the Weasley family dinners. Which were really an open potluck dinner invitation to anyone who wanted to attend.
She stood there silently.
The chatter filled her ears like rushing water, and she felt her chest continue to constrict as she watched two worlds collide in the most beautiful but bizarre birthday party she had ever seen. It was the first time that this many people had ever been here at once, and something about it made her soul ache in pain.
How many people had died for this?
How many more would it take for this to continue – until the hatred finally stopped and this mess of different people and cultures blurring together in peace would finally become the norm? She had lost count of the number of lives she had taken over the years. She had lost count of the number of lives that she could not save. There was no way to quantify the damage that had occurred to the wizarding world or the anguish which those within it had suffered in the last two decades. There was no way that she could ever do enough, but she knew she would never stop.
Her heart started to ache.
The odd sensation was unnameable, and she couldn’t seem to get it to stop. She swallowed hard, trying to force the feelings down as she gripped her teacup more tightly. She felt movement by her side, and it startled her from her thoughts with a jolt as her head jerked to the left, only for her body to relax when she realized that it was Snape. He was holding a fresh coffee in his hands, leaning back against the counter by her side as his eyes skimmed over the chaos in his kitchen.
“You look lost in thought,” he said quietly, his voice still rough even after all these years.
She watched him take a sip of his coffee and smiled. He looked the same, yet entirely different. He was healthy now. His hair wasn’t a greasy mess. His skin wasn’t sallow. He still had trouble with some of his organs, but they were working to address that. His teeth, while still uneven, were no longer stained, and his general appearance didn’t scream death.
“Just thinking,” she said, letting out a low breath to try and release some of the tension in her body as her heart continued to throb painfully.
He scoffed, his eyes dropping to his right to look at her. “When are you not?”
She snorted, a small laugh leaving her lips. “You sound like Harry when you say that.”
“Merlin, don’t say that.” He closed his eyes and let out a sigh. “It’s bad enough you’re all here. I don’t need you comparing me to your ageless husband.”
“So you noticed that, too?” Hermione mused, taking a sip of her tea. “I keep wondering what will happen.”
“Impossible to say,” Snape sighed again, then he rolled his eyes as if in annoyance. “The pair of you will probably just live forever while the rest of us shrivel with age.”
“Maybe.” Hermione grinned.
She watched as her husband laughed at something Neville said. She smiled when he glanced over at her, giving him a tiny nod to reassure him that she was okay. They always left the bond open now, so he could feel her turbulent emotions, but they had long ago stopped panicking when the other was struggling and had learned to give each other a bit of room to manage things on their own. They were still closer than anyone could ever imagine, but they had learned to trust in each other in a less codependent way over the years. His green eyes crinkled as he nodded in return, then answered something Ginny asked as Scorpius came back into the kitchen for another apple rose tart. She smiled, then glanced back up to the man at her side and met his gaze.
“Happy birthday, Severus,” she said quietly so no one else would hear. “I’m glad you’re still here.”
He didn’t say anything, but an odd expression crossed his face as he looked down at her.
“Did you like your present, by the way?” Hermione asked him, and he snorted at her words though the strange look in his eyes remained. “Rose picked it out herself.”
“Yes, of course,” Snape said quietly. “I’ve always wanted brightly coloured potion equipment. I’m sure that having purple and green stirring sticks will make all the difference.”
“I thought so too.” Hermione grinned, then she reached into her undetectable expanded pant pocket and pulled out a tiny little box with a ribbon on it. “Here – this is the rest of your gift.”
“I don’t know how many times I have to tell you, Granger, but I don’t need any–”
“I know.” She cut him off, holding the box out so he was forced to take it. “But this one will be useful, I promise.”
“Do I open it now or later?” Snape asked in exasperation.
“Later,” Hermione said quietly, and Snape’s eyes narrowed at her in suspicion. “Harry had to use a masking charm to snag that from the vaults, so it’s best we not advertise it.”
“Oh, the best kind of present,” Snape said sarcastically, but there was no heart behind it. “The illegal kind that has to be returned before someone finds out.”
“As if you would care about that.”
“Hn.” Snape scoffed, but he quickly pocketed the small box into one of his own many extended pockets that she had taught him how to make years ago before taking another sip of his coffee.
They stood there in silence for a moment, watching the others talk. Out of everyone who had come out of the war, they were the two that seemed to struggle most with crowds and getting back to normal. It wasn’t uncommon for one or the both of them to be seen slipping off to a quiet corner to get some space and breathe. Malfoy was a close second and would often disappear for chunks of time when he needed a break. Nasir did it too, vanishing from sight when he wanted or needed to, but he had improved more than she could have ever anticipated in the last twenty years.
“Hermione.”
Snape’s voice sounded by her side again, but when she glanced up at him, his eyes were shifting over the room before them. The strange and unreadable look still lingered in his eyes. She saw him swallow, discomfort shifting through his stiff body like a wave as he cleared his throat and finally turned to look at her.
“I – I’ve never–” He hesitated, more awkward discomfort sliding across his black gaze as he seemed to struggle to find his words. She didn’t say anything and remained motionless as he swallowed hard again, then opened his mouth once more. “I never thanked you – for saving my life.”
She stilled. Her heart faltered in her chest as all the air left her lungs. Snape shifted with discomfort, but he forced himself to hold her gaze.
“I should have. I should have said it sooner. I – I don’t know why I didn’t. I think I just stopped thinking about it – or maybe I thought it was implied. But I should have said it. So, thank you,” he said quietly, his voice so low there wasn’t a chance in the world that anyone else here would hear it. “For saving my life – for everything.”
She didn’t know what to say. She could feel her mouth parting as her eyes traced his face, and she tried to process his words. In all the years, after all this time, never had he ever thanked her for that. He had thanked her for plenty of other things – just as he had easily yelled at her for others, but his life was always something they never spoke of. It was the only uncomfortable thread that still laid between them – the awkward life debt that hung above her head and made her feel guilty.
She had forced him to live, then encouraged him, like Shacklebolt and the others, to build a new life for himself. And even though he had made himself a new life, she had still taken away his choice to die, and he had never forgiven her – but she had never faulted him for that. She had come to terms with it long ago because she knew that he wasn’t miserable anymore, and she knew that he didn’t hate her.
But still, he had never released her from her debt, and he had never freed her from her guilt. Her offer to him had always remained, and even though she hated it, she had always mentally kept her word to him all these years and would kill him at his request.
Now, at his words, she could feel the weight physically sliding off her shoulders as he cut her free. She could see it in his eyes, or more correctly put; he was letting her see it. He didn’t want to die anymore. He was genuinely glad to be alive and happy to be here, and this was him letting her know she would never need to uphold her end of the bargain.
“You’re welcome,” she whispered.
There were a thousand things that she wanted to say, but somehow that was the only thing that came out as she stared at him and felt her eyes start to burn. A beat of silence passed between them as they both smiled, then Snape cleared his throat awkwardly and looked away.
He had never been particularly good with emotions.
“So, how long are you planning to stay in my house anyway?” Snape asked, his voice uncharacteristically emotional as his eyes scanned over all the people mulling around his kitchen. “Surely you all have better things to do.”
Hermione snorted, looking out over the room with him as she blinked her eyes clear.
“Of course we do,” she teased, pushing off the counter to go join the others and say hello to Ginny and Susan. “But it would have been rude to ignore Narcissa’s invitation – besides, we all know you secretly love it.”
“Hn.” Snape scoffed, but he followed along behind her toward the others. “There are certainly worse things.”
She greeted Ginny and Susan with hugs, congratulating Susan on her promotion before asking how dinner at the Burrow had went. Then she wandered over to Neville, making her way around the kitchen, talking and laughing, her eyes always keeping track of Harry and their daughter. Even after all these years, they still circled each other like planets.
Always connected.
Always in sight.
Always in love.
She smiled when she saw that Rose had finally crashed, falling asleep on the couch next to Scorpius, still clutching her new birthday card. She joined the others in the kitchen for one final drink before heading home but discreetly vanished the firewhisky that was being passed around and refilled her glass with tinted water.
Harry didn’t know yet.
She had only just found out today, but with the birthday parties, there wasn’t a chance to tell him, and the vitals they shared between them would never reveal it. Nasir undoubtedly knew. The protective symbol on her neck gave him a slew of constant information, but she knew he would never say a word. They had long ago established boundaries, and she actually found the connection with him reassuring, just like how she had kept Arthur’s private text tag in place all these years. She had modified it so she no longer got a constant stream of data. Instead, it only alerted her if his vitals reached dangerous or threatening levels. The main purpose of it was the ability to send instant messages for immediate communication.
When the glasses were empty and the desserts were put away, Hermione gave Malfoy the last of the apple rose tarts, then said her goodbyes. Harry gathered Rose in his arms, holding her sleeping form tightly to his chest while Malfoy picked up Scorpius, and they all made their way to the door. It took a moment to sort out jackets, but eventually, everyone was bundled, and they made their way out into the snow.
The cold air nipped at her nose as she walked down the path holding Harry’s hand while he talked to Nasir about the latest project Shacklebolt planned to undertake.
It would be difficult.
It would be dangerous.
She wondered how her news would affect things and how another child would change their life. They hadn’t exactly been trying, but they hadn’t been trying to avoid getting pregnant, either. She had stopped taking the potion four months ago, and they had both agreed not to stress out over ‘actively trying’. Instead, they opted to just let things occur naturally while unprotected for a year before really dedicating themselves to trying to have a second child. She hadn’t been expecting it to happen so soon, but she was glad that it had.
“Did you want to go over those notes tonight?” Harry asked Nasir as Hermione stopped by his side.
“No, tomorrow would be better,” Nasir replied, his low baritone giving nothing away. He glanced at Hermione knowingly as Harry dropped his gaze to shift Rose’s dead weight in his arms. She smiled at the tall man, her stomach fluttering with nerves because she knew the real reason why he was saying no. “I need to gather those scrolls you mentioned. We can meet tomorrow for dinner if that works.”
“That works great,” Hermione said, mouthing a silent thank you in his direction, and he nodded discreetly. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”
They said their goodbyes, and Nasir disappeared into the night. When she and Harry landed at Grimmauld Place, she fought to keep her vitals in check as they made their way inside. She didn’t know why she was so nervous. She had done this before. She knew Harry would be ecstatic, but still, she felt almost shaking on her legs.
“Are you feeling okay?” Harry asked her as he kicked off his boots and juggled Rose in his arms.
“Yeah.” She smiled, taking off her own boots as she vanished the snow. “Just tired. I might have a tea before bed – want one?”
“Tea sounds great.” Harry nodded, kissing her cheek before carrying Rose up to bed while Hermione made her way down the hall toward the kitchen.
She put the kettle on the stove, but then grew too nervous to wait for it to boil naturally and flicked a finger at it to heat the water instantly as she pulled down two mugs. She picked out the caffeine-free herbal tea they usually had at night and quickly made up the two mugs. She had just set them on the table and taken her seat when Harry entered the kitchen with a sigh.
“You would think that after two parties, she would be tuckered out – but before she fell asleep on the couch, she asked if Scorpius could come over tomorrow to make another snowman before going to visit Arthur,” Harry said, sinking into his chair in exhaustion.
“There’s already six back there,” Hermione said, her eyes creasing in amusement as she reached out to take Harry’s hand from across the table like she always did.
“I know,” Harry sighed, running his free hand through his messy hair before leaning against the table on his elbow and bracing his head on his hand. “But apparently, we need one with a broom like Frosty.”
“Ahh.” Hermione nodded. “But of course. How silly of me. I can’t believe we didn’t think of that yesterday.”
They smiled at each other, and she felt her stomach flutter nervously again as they both reached for their teas. It was nearly midnight. The last few days had been busy – actually, the last few weeks had been busy. It was always crazy before the holidays, and they were both exhausted. She watched Harry close his eyes as he took a long drink from his favourite mug. The porcelain was stained, chipped, and old, and when she looked at it in his hand, she couldn’t help but smile.
It was the one he used during their time in the tent, which felt like a lifetime ago now.
So much had changed.
They had changed.
And yet somehow, as she gripped his hand in the cool kitchen air while snow gathered on the windowsills, it felt exactly the same. As if she had been transported back in time, and it was just the two of them alone on the northern coast of Scotland with no one around for miles.
She could wait until tomorrow to tell him.
They were both tired and needed rest.
But that thought only made the nervous ball of excitement in her gut tighten more, and she knew she couldn’t wait.
“Harry,” Hermione said quietly, and at the soft tone of her voice, his gaze instantly met hers.
“Yes?” he answered, his eyes scanning her face with concern.
She stared at him, her heart all but racing now as his grip on her hand tightened. Then she smiled, her eyes crinkling as she gripped his hand in return, and all her feelings flowed through the bond.
“I’m pregnant.”
His body stilled. She felt his heart spike. It took him three seconds to process her words before his eyes widened and a massive smile split across his face.
“You are?”
“Yes.”
“Really?!”
“Yes.” She grinned wider as she felt his emotions roll through the bond.
Happiness, excitement, disbelief, and joy. He gripped her hand tight, then let go as he all but climbed over the table to get to her.
“How long?” he asked, as he pulled her up from the table and against his chest.
“Not long,” she breathed as she gripped him tightly. “I just found out this morning. I wanted to tell you right away, but we were so busy with everything and I–”
He cut her off, kissing her hard as his arms wrapped around her waist. She leaned into his kiss, inhaling deeply as warmth flooded through her body.
‘I love you so much.’
The words poured into her head as she smiled against his lips and opened her mouth to him.
‘I love you, Harry.’
She all but melted beneath him, groaning in bliss as they moved across the floor until her hips met the counter.
“I can’t believe it happened so quickly,” Harry breathed, kissing across her jaw toward her ear, and the low rumble of his voice made her shiver in his hold. “You’re sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” she murmured as she kissed his jawline then ducked her lips toward his ear as her hands knotted into his shirt. “But maybe we should try one more time. You know, just to make sure it really sticks.”
She heard his low chuckle against her skin as his lips shifted to her neck, his fingers tracing the skin beneath her sweater as he pressed himself against her.
“Definitely.”
-x-x-
It is now safe to unfasten your seat belt. Watch your step as you exit the cart on your left. Please follow the signs and hold the handrails. I hope you have enjoyed the ride.
I can’t believe it’s over.
I can’t believe it’s done.
Thank you, sincerely, for sticking with me on this journey and reading this story. I genuinely hope that you enjoyed it. Your comments, kudos, encouragements, and questions are appreciated more than you could possibly know. I could not have written this without you, and it definitely wouldn’t be what it is without you. You all pushed me to want to become better and while I know I am not perfect, I am trying, and I do think that I have improved.
So thank you for that <3
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